Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico)

Margarita de Sossa’s freedom journey was defiant and entrepreneurial. In her early twenties, still enslaved in Portugal, she took possession of her body; after refusing to endure her owner’s sexual demands, he sold her, and she was transported to Mexico. There, she purchased her freedom with money earned as a healer and then conducted an enviable business as an innkeeper. Sossa’s biography provides striking insights into how she conceptualized freedom in terms that included – but was not limited to – legal manumission. Her transatlantic biography offers a rare insight into the life of a free black woman (and former slave) in late sixteenth-century Puebla, who sought to establish various degrees of freedom for herself. Whether she was refusing to acquiesce to an abusive owner, embracing entrepreneurship, marrying, purchasing her own slave property, or later using the courts to petition for divorce. Sossa continued to advocate on her own behalf. Her biography shows that obtaining legal manumission was not always equivalent to independence and autonomy, particularly if married to an abusive husband, or if financial successes inspired the envy of neighbors

Histoire de la Louisiane : contenant la decouverte de ce vaste pays ; sa description geographique ; un voyage dans les terres ; l\u27histoire naturelle, les moeurs, coutumes & religion des naturels, avec leurs origines ; deux voyages dans le nord du nouveau Mexique, dont un jusqu\u27a la mer du Sud ;

v.

Histoire de la Louisiane : contenant la d\ue9couverte de ce vaste pays, sa description g\ue9ographique, un voyage dans les terres, l\u27histoire naturelle, les murs, co\ufbtumes & religion des naturels, avec leurs origines : deux voyages dans le nord du nouveau Mexique, dont un jusqu\u27\ue0 la mer du Sud : orn\ue9e de deux cartes & de 40 planches en taille douce /

t. 1 (1758

Carte de la Louisiane colonie française avec le cours du Fleuve St. Louis, les rivières adjacentes, les nations des naturels, les etablissems. français et les mines.

Scale ca. 1:8,500,000.Relief shown pictorially and by hachures."To. 1. Pag. 138."LC Maps of North America, 1750-1789, 167

The history of Louisiana, or of the western parts of Virginia and Carolina containing a description of the countries that lye on both sides of the river Mississippi : with an account of the settlements, inhabitants, soil, climate and products /

Translation of: Histoire de la Louisiane.Part of CIHM set. For individual microfiches in this set see CIHM microfiche nos. 18171-18173.Includes publisher's advertisement."In Two Volumes. VOL. I."Electronic reproduction.Mode of access: Internet.4