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Imaguan Evadees

A gathering of native Imaguans, 2016
Total population
7,180
Regions with significant populations
Imagua and the Assimas	6,532
Rizealand	648
Languages
Estmerish, Etrurian, Western Imaguan Creole, and Eastern Imaguan Creole
Religion
Sotirianity

The Evadees (Etrurian: Evade) are descendants of Bahian slaves who freed themselves from slavery in Imagua and established themselves in the Central Highlands of Imagua and the interiors of the smaller Assimas Islands.

Etymology

The term evadees is believed to come from the Gaullican term évadé, meaning "the escaped," which stems from the Gaullican term evader, or "to escape."

It was first used to refer to escaped slaves in 1682, when Parry Lambourne, ancestor of Harmon Lambourne records in a document to an insurance broker in TBD "we sent men to the mountains to try and recover some slaves who fled our plantation, but they evaded every single attempt in recapturing: after several weeks, we have only managed to recover two children from the evadés [sic]." However, escapee was a far more common term than evadee until the mid-eighteenth century, when Gaullica took control of Imagua from Estmere after the end of the Gilded Wars in 1721.

During Gaullican rule, with the introduction of Gaullican, the term évadé became a common way to refer to escaped slaves who lived in the Central Highlands, with the term sticking after the end of Gaullican rule in 1771. The modern spelling would become common around 1850, with most sources arguing that this is because of its similarity to escapees, deportees, and refugees.

Early history

Origins

From the start of Caldish colonisation, escaped slaves on the island of Imagua (at this time Native Imaguans) would flee to areas with low white settlement, with this trend continuing during Geatish rule of Imagua, with escaped slaves captured in present-day Eldmark fleeing into the Central Highlands. These escaped slaves would form the basis of the evadee community, with archaeological evidence suggesting that there were around 28 sites in the Nearon Valley associated with "indigenous evadees" between 1550 and 1650.

With the seizure of Imagua by Estmere in 1658, Estmerish settlers not only encroached on the evadee communities in the Glen Valley, but brought Bahian slaves as part of the triangle trade to work on sugar or nutmeg plantations. Due to their short life expectancy and brutal working conditions, many slaves on the island of Imagua would escape to the Central Highlands, where they would intermingle with the indigenous Asterians who fled decades earlier, and create a distinct evadee society.

Evadees were able to survive by subsistence farming and through raiding nearby plantations. Initially, early evadee governance bore stark similarities to the village system practiced in Bahia, with direct democracy being practiced by evadee communities, with a chieftain being in charge of an evadee community.

Formation of the Westward and Eastward Evadees

Beginning in the 1670s, slave uprisings became more prevalent on the island of Imagua, due to the arrival of members of the warrior caste to Imagua, under the belief that their fitness would make them more likely to survive the harsh conditions of sugar production.

The most notable uprising during this period was in 1681, when the Parlow estate faced an uprising of around 800 slaves, with most of the slaves fleeing to the Central Highlands, where they would establish a town in present-day Lethbridge. There, they coalesced around Chepiri Parlow, who established a Houregic polity around the town. Although Chepiri was killed in battle in 1683, and many of the slaves were recaptured when their settlement was captured, 300 were able to "evade their owners," and formed their own community in the Central Highlands. The Chepiri evadees would become dominant among many evadee communities, with Chepiri's successor, Queen Ruwa coalescing most of the evadee communities on the western slopes of the Glen Valley into what would become the Westward Evadees.

On the eastern slopes of the Glen Valley, a slave revolt in 1689 when 300 slaves escaped from several plantations near Happy Valley into the Central Highlands. Unlike the Westward Evadees, which was significantly organised along Houregic lines, the Eastward Evadee communities created as a result of the 1689 slave revolt were decentralised and never coalesced into Hourege-style polities, instead following a model most similar to the village system.

By 1700, it was estimated that there were around a thousand evadee communities around the Glen Valley, split roughly evenly between the Westward and Eastward evadees. Furthermore, some evidence emerged of evadee communities along the northern slopes of Mount Apita, with one community which numbered 60 individuals being completely buried in the 1694 eruption of Mount Apita, as well as some evadee communities along the southern slopes of Mount Guanara. However, compared to the evadees around the Glen Valley, these evadee communities were minor, and never coalesced into a major organisational grouping compared to the Westward and Eastward Evadees.

Heyday of the evadees

Gilded Wars and Gaullican rule

During the Gilded Wars between Gaullica and Estmere, (TBC).