Disclaimer: Since this is me we’re talking about, the chances of this continuing to completion are close to nil (but we can dream, can’t we?)
Anyways, after reading Malé Rising and other timelines, I have become interested in these sort of “hybrid peoples”- the titular people of Rising, the ghost-men of LTTW, the Maroons, Magyarabs, etc. And I decided to write about various hybrid peoples within a singular TL (this universe, which I will call Dimension-610, has a vague POD somewhere in the Middle Ages).
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“The Children of Guadelupe: The Dalgo”
The “Dalgo”, as they are called in most languages, are an interesting case even amongst other intercultural peoples brought to being by the explorations of Europe and the expansion of the system of global trade.
The origins of the Dalgo first come with the exile of various Castilian rebellions taking place in France-Castile in the early 16th Century. Firstly, there were the infamous Comuneros, who upon defeat were sold to the French India Company as indentured servants meant to settle Africa. They were followed by common criminals from across the Franco-Castilian realm. Then, the survivors of the infamous “Rising of the Faithful” were sent to Africa- the authorities hoped the Castilian Catholics would die against the unknown and fierce tribes of the interior.
From about 1534 to 1544, these groups farmed the land around the Cape and the fledgling port of New Orleans located at the Cape of Good Times, before being joined by an incredibly large and diverse group of peoples from the New World. A nascent Castilian community was being created in Africa, as it had in Anouaque (where Castilians had made up a large percentage of the conquerors)
The French conquest of the fractured Mesoamerican city states had created a system of exploitation of natives, forced conversions and rapid spread of European pathogens into a virgin population. In addition, the harsh rule of the conquistadors, who set themselves up as feudal lords, engendered great bitterness in the survivors of Anouaque.
Eventually, the Slave Wars began, sparked first on the coast of the Gulf, and then spreading to much of the Pacific coast in 1544-1547. Although most of the rising natives were put down (requiring the taking of slaves from near the Cape and from West Africa), some groups survived. These organized native groups could have been re-enslaved, but many of them had already proven that they knew how to escape- and their lords wouldn’t feel safe owning them as slaves. Instead, the governor, outside of royal consent, decided to deport five groups of these peoples: the small Seri group, the Purepecha, the Huave, the Totonaques, and the Huasteques. They were shipped across the ocean, and soon became independent farmers in the Cape (they resisted any other fate). The rest of the natives (making up the large majority of the population, and largely part of the Nahua peoples) were re-enslaved, as we know from the accounts of the period by churchman Pierre Alvarado.
Of these unfortunate souls, many died from disease and the long voyage. The remainder intermarried with the Castilian population (many of whom had died from raids and diseases of their own). It was this intermarriage, and the conversion of the exiled Mesoamericans to Catholicism, that laid the earliest basis for the Dalgo people. Indeed, the earliest accounts of what would become the Dalgo as a separate community date to 1551, when a Portuguese priest visiting the region described the “Castilian exiles, accompanied with Indigens from across the Sea”.
These groups largely stayed out of the affairs of New Orleans, and New Orleans let them pray in relative peace. The famous Don Quixote wrote in 1593
Bartholomew de Guise was the scion of a cadet branch of a minor French noble family, and saw the French explorations into India and the New World as a way to make his own fortunes. After years of service in Africa and elsewhere, he was made Governor of the Cape. However, to the detriment of the exiles living outside and even inside the fort at New Orleans, he was a zealot of the new French faith, and a devoted anti-Catholic. He opened his term by banning Catholics from the city, and continued to levy abuses onto the Catholic populations of the French Cape.
This abuse came to a head in 1572, when de Guise burnt down the only monastery in the region and attempted to blame it on the Africans. The Catholics, remembering their pasts as rebels of all stripes, uprooted their farms, slaughtered the tax men of de Guise, burnt down the small chapels he had built in their main towns, and fled out into the bush. In the aftermath of their violence, they liberated the Coycoy slaves of the French, and brought them with them to the bush.
They named themselves, as Quixote tells us, Hidalgos (noblemen), which was quickly shortened to Dalgo. The children of Castilian Catholics, Comuneros, Coycoy and Indigens from Anouaque had launched themselves from obscurity into history…
Anyways, after reading Malé Rising and other timelines, I have become interested in these sort of “hybrid peoples”- the titular people of Rising, the ghost-men of LTTW, the Maroons, Magyarabs, etc. And I decided to write about various hybrid peoples within a singular TL (this universe, which I will call Dimension-610, has a vague POD somewhere in the Middle Ages).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The Children of Guadelupe: The Dalgo”
The “Dalgo”, as they are called in most languages, are an interesting case even amongst other intercultural peoples brought to being by the explorations of Europe and the expansion of the system of global trade.
The origins of the Dalgo first come with the exile of various Castilian rebellions taking place in France-Castile in the early 16th Century. Firstly, there were the infamous Comuneros, who upon defeat were sold to the French India Company as indentured servants meant to settle Africa. They were followed by common criminals from across the Franco-Castilian realm. Then, the survivors of the infamous “Rising of the Faithful” were sent to Africa- the authorities hoped the Castilian Catholics would die against the unknown and fierce tribes of the interior.
From about 1534 to 1544, these groups farmed the land around the Cape and the fledgling port of New Orleans located at the Cape of Good Times, before being joined by an incredibly large and diverse group of peoples from the New World. A nascent Castilian community was being created in Africa, as it had in Anouaque (where Castilians had made up a large percentage of the conquerors)
The French conquest of the fractured Mesoamerican city states had created a system of exploitation of natives, forced conversions and rapid spread of European pathogens into a virgin population. In addition, the harsh rule of the conquistadors, who set themselves up as feudal lords, engendered great bitterness in the survivors of Anouaque.
Eventually, the Slave Wars began, sparked first on the coast of the Gulf, and then spreading to much of the Pacific coast in 1544-1547. Although most of the rising natives were put down (requiring the taking of slaves from near the Cape and from West Africa), some groups survived. These organized native groups could have been re-enslaved, but many of them had already proven that they knew how to escape- and their lords wouldn’t feel safe owning them as slaves. Instead, the governor, outside of royal consent, decided to deport five groups of these peoples: the small Seri group, the Purepecha, the Huave, the Totonaques, and the Huasteques. They were shipped across the ocean, and soon became independent farmers in the Cape (they resisted any other fate). The rest of the natives (making up the large majority of the population, and largely part of the Nahua peoples) were re-enslaved, as we know from the accounts of the period by churchman Pierre Alvarado.
Of these unfortunate souls, many died from disease and the long voyage. The remainder intermarried with the Castilian population (many of whom had died from raids and diseases of their own). It was this intermarriage, and the conversion of the exiled Mesoamericans to Catholicism, that laid the earliest basis for the Dalgo people. Indeed, the earliest accounts of what would become the Dalgo as a separate community date to 1551, when a Portuguese priest visiting the region described the “Castilian exiles, accompanied with Indigens from across the Sea”.
These groups largely stayed out of the affairs of New Orleans, and New Orleans let them pray in relative peace. The famous Don Quixote wrote in 1593
“For twenty and five years after the arrival of the Indigens, the French in New Orleans, and those Castilians outside of Mother Church, let us and the Indigens pray and live peacefully, working our farms and trading with Portuguese ships. We survived the raids and the plagues, and we even gained new men and women from the Coycoy in those twenty years, particularly after the second and final Rising in Castile. And then Bartholomew de Guise became Governor…”
Bartholomew de Guise was the scion of a cadet branch of a minor French noble family, and saw the French explorations into India and the New World as a way to make his own fortunes. After years of service in Africa and elsewhere, he was made Governor of the Cape. However, to the detriment of the exiles living outside and even inside the fort at New Orleans, he was a zealot of the new French faith, and a devoted anti-Catholic. He opened his term by banning Catholics from the city, and continued to levy abuses onto the Catholic populations of the French Cape.
This abuse came to a head in 1572, when de Guise burnt down the only monastery in the region and attempted to blame it on the Africans. The Catholics, remembering their pasts as rebels of all stripes, uprooted their farms, slaughtered the tax men of de Guise, burnt down the small chapels he had built in their main towns, and fled out into the bush. In the aftermath of their violence, they liberated the Coycoy slaves of the French, and brought them with them to the bush.
They named themselves, as Quixote tells us, Hidalgos (noblemen), which was quickly shortened to Dalgo. The children of Castilian Catholics, Comuneros, Coycoy and Indigens from Anouaque had launched themselves from obscurity into history…
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