In Blois, former African captives find their identity and descendants

“Exceptional testimonials” of the history of slavery, 53 busts of former captives from the 19th century, who had slept for 80 years in the reserves of the royal castle of Blois (Loir-et-Cher), have just come out of oblivion thanks to a historian who managed to restore their identity.

To achieve this result, Klara Boyer-Rossol analyzed for six years the notebooks of the ethnographer Eugène Huet de Froberville and his collection of plaster cast busts, made in 1846 on former captives deported from East Africa to the ‘MAURITIUS.

“I was able to cross-check the information that appears on the busts and thus identify almost the entire collection and the individuals themselves”explains the historian to AFP.

Of those she manages to name, all, including a woman, were former captives, deported from East Africa, mainly from present-day Mozambique and Tanzania.

Most were enslaved in Mauritius, between the 1810s and 1830s, in a context of illegal trafficking.

Another part, the Lily, named after the British ship which saved them, were introduced by the English after the abolition of slavery in Mauritius in 1840, considered as “Liberated Africans”.

Although free, the ethnographer “used various strategies to convince them” to achieve its masks, methods which raise the question of the consent of individuals, confronted with an operation “very painful”.

“Piece of history”

Especially since if Eugène Huet de Froberville, abolitionist, considered his African informants as beings with their own culture, he nevertheless categorized them as representatives of a « race ».

Among the busts presented as part of the exhibition “Faces of ancestors” in a room of the Château de Blois until December 1, visitors can, for example, meet João, born around 1810 in the territory of the Nyungwe, in present-day Mozambique, and who found refuge with a group who ended up by selling it to slave traders.

Along with nearly 500 other captives, João was shipped in 1840 aboard the Brazilian ship José, intercepted by the English cruiser Lily and transferred to Mauritius, where he was given the name Dieko du Lily, and hired as a free laborer.

“We have managed to restore a piece of history to these exceptional busts, some of which retain organic remains in the plaster such as hair or eyelashes”rejoices, moved, Ms. Boyer-Rossol.

Even more incredible, descendants of these former captives have been found and continue, generations later, to bear the Lily name.

This is for example the case of Doris Lily, who lives in mainland France.

“All our ancestors”

“It’s very moving to discover which region our ancestors came from and trace their history”she says alongside her children, during a special visit reserved for around twenty descendants of the Lilys.

This discovery above all allowed them to learn the origin of their name. “I thought, like many African descendants, that our name had been given by a master”said Doris Lily again.

For his son Maxwell, this discovery encouraged him to “become more interested in the history of your ancestors”. “All of this goes beyond our simple story, they participate in history with a capital H and in the history of Maurice”.

However, if this work does not yet allow everyone to know their link with a particular ancestor, for Jean-David Lily, who has been tracing the journey of his family for years, this matters little.

“As long as there is no possibility of exactly identifying our ancestors, everyone on board the Lily is our ancestors. It’s a lot of emotion to see their faces for the first time.”he says.

In 2025, all the busts will be sent for five years to the Intercontinental Slavery Museum in Port-Louis, Mauritius, where the wait is “enormous”.

“These busts, which can be described as +relics+, are very rare testimonies of this region. The whole project was designed for Mauritians to find them”concludes Klara Boyer-Rossol.