The African Slaves of Northern Ecuador

I've spent the last few days researching for my new project. Today I've been all over Ecuador, and came across this excerpt from Wikipedia.


"Since African slavery was not the workforce of the Spanish colonies in the "Terra Firme" (South-America) given the subjugation of the indigenous people through evangelism and encomiendas, the minor African descendant elements are found in the northern provinces of Esmeraldas and Imbabura thanks to the 17th century shipwreck of a slave-trading galleon in front of the northern coast of Ecuador. The few black African survivors swam to the shore and penetrated the then thick jungle under the leadership of Anton, the chief of the group, where they remained as free-men while maintaining their original culture not influenced by the typical elements found on other provinces of the coast or in the Andean region."


I thought, "What a cool story this must have been." If James Michener had run across this, he would definitely have included the event in one of his historical fiction books. I don't know, maybe he already did.


Think about it. The slaves get shipwrecked on the coast. Nothing but jungle right up to the ocean. I've been in that region. It is beautiful but, without any civilization around, it would be a pretty harsh beginning. Makes me wonder too, about the slave masters on board the doomed vessel. My guess is that you wouldn't have wanted to survive the ship wreck if you were one of them. 


The other neat aspect is that they "remained as free-men while maintaining their original culture..." I wonder if they've been able to keep that up, now that the modern world has caught up to them? Do they still maintain some of those African traditions, play the same music? Where did they come from, which part of Africa? Did they come from a tropical jungle region, or from a dry, arid one? For their sake, I'd hope for the former. 


Back to the research. Cheers.