Principense
The people of the smaller island — seven thousand of them under Príncipe's volcanic towers, keepers of a critically endangered creole, of the auto de floripes pageant, and of a biosphere reserve that covers their whole territory.
Identity
Population: ≈ 8,000
Location: Príncipe island, 150 kilometres north-east of São Tomé, with almost everyone in Santo António and the surrounding roças
Language: Lung'ie (Principense), critically endangered with a few dozen fluent speakers; Portuguese and Forro in daily use
Language family: Portuguese-lexified creole (Gulf of Guinea group)
Traditional governance: Autonomous region since 1995 with its own regional government and assembly within São Tomé and Príncipe.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups — clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes — each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Santo António
The island capital, the world's smallest by some measures, and the centre of the auto de floripes.
Roça communities
Families on Sundy, Belo Monte and Porto Real, descended from contracted workers.
Lung'ie speakers
The remaining fluent speakers, mostly elderly, the focus of documentation projects.
Culture
Clothing: Everyday tropical dress; for the auto de floripes, Moorish and Christian costume with masks, capes and wooden swords passed down within families.
Food: Fish, breadfruit, banana, palm oil and cocoa; the island's cocoa is now sold as single-origin and organic, its main export.
Ceremonies: The auto de floripes each August, a days-long pageant of Charlemagne and the Moors performed through the streets; saint days; wakes with sung lament.
Marriage customs: Consensual union widespread alongside church marriage, as on the larger island.
Initiation rites: Inheritance of a role in the floripes pageant is the closest thing to a formal passage, held within particular families across generations.
Stories & Oral Literature
The Auto de FloripesPageant
Every August Santo António stages a mediaeval Iberian story of the war between Charlemagne's knights and the Moors, in costume, over days, through the streets. Like tchiloli on the larger island it is a European text made local, but the Príncipe version keeps more of the battle and the conversion, and every family with a hereditary role turns out for it.
Eddington's EclipseScientific history
On 29 May 1919, from Roça Sundy on Príncipe, Arthur Eddington photographed a total solar eclipse and measured the deflection of starlight by the sun. The result was the first observational confirmation of general relativity and made Einstein famous overnight. The island marks the centenary site, and the roça still stands.
Proverbs
“Small island, long memory.”
Everything is known and nothing forgotten in a community of eight thousand.
“The sea is the road and the wall.”
Isolation as both protection and constraint.
“A language dies in the mouth of the last child who refuses it.”
Used by Lung'ie campaigners.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Catholic cosmology from settlement in the 1490s, over West Central African beliefs carried by the enslaved and later the contracted.
Beliefs: Catholicism with saint devotion; forest spirits of the obô; curandeiro healing; the pageant itself functioning as a moral and religious drama.
Ancestors: Wakes and anniversary masses; the roça cemeteries hold the contracted dead of three continents.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Nossa Senhora do Rosário
Patroness invoked in the island's processions
São Lourenço
Patron whose August feast frames the auto de floripes
Obô forest spirits
Powers of the rainforest that covers most of the island
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Santo António's small colonial grid on the bay, roças scattered inland beneath the phonolite towers of Pico Papagaio and Pico de Príncipe.
Building techniques: Colonial masonry with tile roofs; timber stilt houses in the villages; the estate complexes of Sundy and Belo Monte with hospital, chapel and drying terraces.
Village layout: Town square, church and customs house at the water; estates laid out around a courtyard with the owner's house above and the labour lines below.
Artifacts
Auto de floripes costume and masks
Performance
Hereditary dress of the Moorish and Christian companies.
Roça Sundy
Heritage site
Estate from which the 1919 eclipse observation confirmed general relativity.
Lung'ie documentation
Language heritage
Recordings and dictionaries of the critically endangered island creole.
Príncipe cocoa
Livelihood
Single-origin organic cocoa, the island's principal export.
Historical Timeline
1500
Príncipe settled; sugar, then slaving, then cocoa shape its economy.
1753–1852
Santo António serves as capital of the whole colony.
1919
Eddington's eclipse expedition observes from Roça Sundy.
1995
Príncipe becomes an autonomous region with its own government.
2012
The whole island is designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO: Island of Príncipe Biosphere ReserveUNESCO
- Ethnologue: Principense (Lung'ie)SIL International
- The 1919 eclipse expedition — Royal Society recordsThe Royal Society
Premium & scholarly sources