"A Missie, Taking her Child to the Baptism, Followed and Preceded by Two Young Slaves" (caption translation). This engraving shows a well-dressed woman carrying an umbrella in the company of two enslaved girls. A "missie" is a common-law wife or mistress of a white man, usually a free woman of color. Benoit described how the "missie," which is a mistress of a white man and usually a free woman of color, "is taking her child to be baptized, accompanied by two slaves - one carries the infant, the other a bible." Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782-1854) was a Belgian artist, who visited the Dutch colony of Suriname on his own initiative for several months in 1831. He stayed in Paramaribo, but visited plantations, maroon communities and indigenous villages inland.

"Figure 25" in Pierre Jacques Benoit, Voyage à Surinam; description des possessions néerlandaises dans la Guyane (Bruxelles: Société des Beaux-Arts de Wasme et Laurent, 1839).

Benoit, Pierre Jacques

French

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

BEN6a

South America--Suriname--Paramaribo

"Une missie, menant son enfant au baptème, suivie et précédé de deux jeunes esclaves", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed March 20, 2023, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2390