The Mustee

Many words are used so commonly today that their original derivation and meaning have been entirely lost. Everyone is familiar with the word mulatto, which has come to mean any person of mixed white and Negro blood. Few realise, however, that it is derived from the Spanish word mulo, meaning mule. Just as the mule is a hybrid of mixed blood-that of a horse and a jackass- so was the term originally applied to a man (for mulatto is masculine in Spanish) who was the offspring of a white father and a Negro mother. The chance of a mating between a Negro man and a white woman was so entirely out of the question that it was not even considered. So too do we go back to Spanish for the word mestizo, which was used to signify a person whose coloured blood was so considerably attenuated that in some cases it was scarcely discernible. Although the word mulatto remained unchanged in its journey from Cuba to the United States, the word mestizo was anglicised to mustee and, during slave times in the southern United States, it came to signify a white or nearly white Negro, such as an octoroon. Regardless of the whiteness of skin or fineness of features, the mustee was still a Negro and, unless he had been manumitted, still a bondsman.

L.H.