Today we focus on the creolization of slaves in French St Kitts during the 17th Century. Contemporary observers indicate that the French unlike the British provided an atmosphere in which family life was fostered. It was therefore not unusual to see an entire slave family unit over two generations working on the same plantation. As the Colonies were usually male-dominated, it was normal for the French to take women from prisons and orphanages in Franch and ship them across the Atlantic where they were married within days of landing. St Kitts like many other French colonies, received petty criminals, prostitutes, and other female convicts sent from Parisian prisons by the French authorities.
Though women were present among French immigrants, the sexual imbalance posed a serious threat to the survival of the colony. Besides marrying African and Carib women, French settlers frequently, through seduction or through sheer abduction brought over wives from the English part of the island where there was a much more evenly distributed population.
French observers and travel writers as early as 1640 mention the presence of racially mixed children in French St Kitts. It was further noted that such children were usually freed from slavery by their masters, who were, of course, in many cases also their fathers. Comte De Blenac, Governor of Martinique, claimed that most of the officers on the island had married mulatto women. It is also reported that the lack of wowen on the island - one of the major problems faced by the settlers - led to numerous mixed marriages, between Frenchmen and both African and anglophone women. "A so ee go." | 
Culture 
