For context, a while ago I got into reading Lovecraft’s short stories. I was already aware of the man’s prejudice and rabid racism (despite all his brilliance) but still, as a Portuguese man myself, it came to me as a surprise that one of his targets in The Call of Cthulhu were none other than these folks he termed “Brava Portuguese”. The descriptions clearly suggested they were black and seemed to take part in some type of fetishist/animist cult.
The fact that Lovecraft apparently knew what a Portuguese was (instead of calling them, I don’t know, Spaniards) and would certainly have no quarrels with going down some anti-Catholic “Black Legend” stuff if need be, seemed to suggested that these “(Brava) Portuguese” in his stories were more linked to the concept of the Portuguese colonial empire than to mainland Portugal itself - hence the characters (if we can even call them that) being black. And then there was the “Brava”. I knew that was the name of one of the smallest islands of Cape Verde. Googling around revealed some scholarship on Lovecraft confirming that, indeed, the Brava Portuguese were Cape Verdeans.
But why were Cape Verdeans called after one of the smallest islands in the archipelago (Brava) - hence the titular question, “who were they”? Were the first Cape Verdean immigrants mostly from that islet? And how come these men immigrated to the US, as black freemen, way before slavery ended (the first migration wave apparently started in the early 19th century)?
I know from Wikipedia most of them stuck to Rhode Island, New England etc, (hence Lovecraft being acquainted with them) where their descendants still live for the most part, but what was keeping them, as non-English speaking Black immigrants that had just arrived to a slave-owning country, from getting intro trouble and somehow end up down South?
I think more generally the question is - how did freemen black immigration to America work? I assume some of these men and women were well aware of the fact slavery hadn’t been abolished yet in the US - weren’t they afraid of getting caught in the net? Do we know what they thought of the whole thing? What prevented them from being pressed into slavery if they took the wrong turn in life? Do we know what Southern slaves thought of these recent African immigrants?
Sorry for the rambling questions.
The descriptions clearly suggested they were black and seemed to take part in some type of fetishist/animist cult.
"Brava Portuguese" are mentioned in both "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." The Portuguese had settled the previously uninhabited Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa in 1456, and the islands became a stopover for New England whalers and the burgeoning slave trade. As the Portuguese intermarried with the Africans, the population of the islands became predominantly mixed race. So when Lovecraft talks about "Brava Portuguese" he's basically talking about Portuguese-speaking mixed-race folks from the Portuguese colony of Cape Verde.
Lovecraft did have some entirely separate prejudices about Europeans from Portugal who immigrated in the 20th century, but the specific use of the term "Brava Portuguese" is meant to convey "mixed race" to his audience. There is actually a really interesting paper on the use of Cape Verdeans as villains: Racial Villainy: Cape Verdean Characters in White-Authored US Literature [PDF] by Matthew Teorey that digs into the racial and cultural dynamics at play.
But why were Cape Verdeans called after one of the smallest islands in the archipelago (Brava) - hence the titular question, “who were they”? Were the first Cape Verdean immigrants mostly from that islet? And how come these men immigrated to the US, as black freemen, way before slavery ended (the first migration wave apparently started in the early 19th century)?
Brava was the center of whaling in the Cape Verde Islands in the 17th century, hence of interest to the New England whaling fleet, who would stop there to resupply and as necessary take on crew. Some of them voluntarily emigrated to New England, much as some captains on the "China Trade" brought back wives, and there was famously a colony of Fiji Islanders on Cape Cod (which Lovecraft mentions in "The Shadow over Innsmouth"). Like other immigrants, the Cape Verdeans came seeking opportunity, and like many they found a great deal of prejudice, but for the first few centuries their immigration was largely migratory and work-based; it was common for New England whalers to save money by sailing out with a skeleton crew and picking up a skilled crew in Cape Verde for the actual whaling. It's a bit old, but The Cape Verdeans in Rhode Island: A Brief History [PDF] by Waltraud Berger Coli and Richard A. Lobban is a solid overview.
what was keeping them, as non-English speaking Black immigrants that had just arrived to a slave-owning country, from getting intro trouble and somehow end up down South?
That was always a danger for any person of African descent in the United States, especially after the Dredd Scott decision in 1857. Rhode Island was a bit of an oddity as it had been a center of slave holding but also a center for abolition, and by 1774 had banned the importation of slaves and in 1784 passed a law for gradual emancipation; the US as a whole banned the importation of slaves in 1808, and a lot of the more permanent migration of Cape Verdeans didn't occur until the 1860s or later.
I think more generally the question is - how did freemen black immigration to America work? I assume some of these men and women were well aware of the fact slavery hadn’t been abolished yet in the US - weren’t they afraid of getting caught in the net? Do we know what they thought of the whole thing? What prevented them from being pressed into slavery if they took the wrong turn in life? Do we know what Southern slaves thought of these recent African immigrants?
This is beyond my expertise, but u/freedmenspatrol might want to chime in here.