This image shows two domestic slaves carrying a European woman on a palanquin in Bahia, Brazil. Maria Graham (née Dundas; 1785–1842), also known as Maria Lady Callcott, was a British writer of travel and children's books, as well as an illustrator. She went to Brazil on her return to England from Chile in 1823, which is the year Brazil declared their independence from Portugal. She stayed at the royal palace. The Brazilian scholar, Gilberto Freyre described this mode of transportation as "within their hammocks and palanquins the gentry permitted themselves to be carried about by Negroes for whole days at a time, some of them travelling in this manner from one plantation to another, while others employed this mode of transport in the streets; when acquaintances met, it was the custom to draw up alongside one another and hold a conversation" (see The Masters and the Slaves (New York, 1956), p. 409-410, 428).

Maria Graham, Journal of a voyage to Brazil and residence there, during part of the years 1821, 1822, 1823 (London, 1824), p. 133. Copy in the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

English

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GRA3

South America--Brazil--Bahia

"Cadeira, or Sedan Chair of Bahia", 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/2656