In her research on Cape Verdean American identity, Gina E. Sanchez defines Cape Verdean Americans as “persons of Portuguese descent and American Indian descent.”¹

Not African descent. Not sub-Saharan African descent. Portuguese and American Indian.

Sanchez’s formulation captures something that the standard narrative obscures: Cape Verdean identity was never primarily about Africa. It was about the mixing of Portuguese colonial identity with indigenous American heritage under the legal and social systems established by Portuguese colonialism.

The “Portuguese descent” refers to the colonial system, the language, the legal framework, and the cultural practices imposed on displaced populations in Cape Verde. The “American Indian descent” refers to the genetic and cultural heritage of the indigenous Americans who were transported to the islands beginning in 1501.

Cape Verdean identity was created by Portuguese colonialism, but it was built on an indigenous American foundation.

For generations, Cape Verdeans in America identified themselves as Portuguese.

This was not deception. This was not passing. This was accurate cultural and legal identification within the colonial system they had inherited. Cape Verde was a Portuguese colony. Cape Verdeans spoke Portuguese. They practiced Portuguese Catholicism. They carried Portuguese names. They traveled on Portuguese colonial documentation.¹

When Cape Verdeans arrived in New Bedford, Nantucket, or Cape Cod in the nineteenth century, they identified themselves according to their colonial citizenship: Portuguese. Immigration officials recorded them as Portuguese. Census takers classified them as Portuguese. Community members understood them as Portuguese.

The alternative was to be classified as “negro” or “colored” in American racial categories that had no space for the complexity of Cape Verdean colonial identity. Portuguese was not a racial disguise; it was the most accurate available category for people whose identity had been formed under Portuguese colonialism.

The shift from “Portuguese” to “Cape Verdean” to “African American” was political, not genetic.

As American racial categories solidified in the twentieth century, Portuguese colonial identity became less useful and more problematic for Cape Verdean Americans. Portugal was European. Cape Verdeans were increasingly pressured to identify with continental Africa rather than with European colonialism, even though their African connections were minimal and their American connections were extensive.¹

The politics of Cape Verdean identity reflected broader American struggles over racial classification. Should Cape Verdeans be Portuguese (European)? Cape Verdean (Atlantic island)? African American (continental African)? The genetic reality — primarily indigenous American mixed with Sephardic Jewish and Moorish heritage under Portuguese colonialism — didn’t fit any of the available categories cleanly.

The political pressure to identify as “African American” obscured the indigenous American heritage that Sanchez’s research reveals. Cape Verdeans became Black not because of African ancestry, but because American racial categories required it.

Seventy percent of the Mashantucket Pequot tribal nation is Cape Verdean mixed with Native American heritage.

This is not coincidence. This is documentation of the genetic and cultural connections between Cape Verdean and indigenous American populations that the standard narrative obscures.¹ The Mashantucket Pequots are federally recognized American Indians. Cape Verdeans who can demonstrate connection to the tribal nation can claim indigenous American identity rather than African American identity.

The connection runs both ways. Cape Verdeans with indigenous American ancestry can join American Indian tribal nations. American Indians with Cape Verdean ancestry can reclaim family connections to the islands. The boundaries between Cape Verdean and American Indian identity are porous because they share genetic and cultural heritage.

This is what Sanchez meant by “Portuguese descent and American Indian descent.” The Portuguese descent provides the colonial framework. The American Indian descent provides the genetic foundation. Cape Verdean identity is indigenous American identity that has been processed through Portuguese colonialism.

The racial classification of Cape Verdeans as “African American” was a historical rewrite.

It required ignoring the Portuguese colonial identity that Cape Verdeans had claimed for generations. It required ignoring the indigenous American genetic heritage that connected Cape Verdeans to American Indian populations. It required ignoring the Sephardic Jewish and Moorish components of Cape Verdean ancestry. It required treating Cape Verde as an extension of continental Africa rather than as an Atlantic island with its own colonial history.¹

The rewrite served American racial logic, but it distorted Cape Verdean reality. Cape Verdeans were not African immigrants who had come to America seeking opportunity. They were the descendants of indigenous Americans who had been taken from America, processed through Portuguese colonialism, and were now returning to territories their ancestors had been kidnapped from.

The Portuguese label was more accurate than the African American label because it captured the colonial system that had created Cape Verdean identity without imposing continental African origins that didn’t match the genetic or cultural evidence.

Cape Verdean “immigrants” were returning to American territories, not arriving as foreigners.

When Cape Verdeans disembarked in New Bedford in 1860 or in Providence in 1920, they were not entering foreign territory. They were returning to the coastline their ancestors had been kidnapped from in 1501. The genetic heritage was American. The cultural practices, filtered through Portuguese colonialism, retained American elements. Even the geographic knowledge — of Atlantic navigation, of seasonal patterns, of coastal resources — connected Cape Verdeans to the American territories they were supposedly discovering for the first time.¹

The Portuguese label acknowledged this complexity. It recognized that Cape Verdean identity was colonial identity, created by European systems but not European in origin. It allowed Cape Verdeans to be simultaneously Portuguese (colonial citizenship) and American (genetic and cultural heritage) without requiring them to identify as African immigrants from a continent most had never seen.

The label fit the reality: indigenous Americans processed through Portuguese colonialism, carrying Portuguese documentation back to American territories.