The people shipped from New England to Cape Verde across centuries were now “immigrating” back to New England.

The Portuguese began depopulating Labrador in 1501, transporting Beothuk and other indigenous Americans to Cape Verde as slaves. By the 1860s, Cape Verdean “immigrants” were arriving in New Bedford, working on whaling ships that traveled the same Atlantic routes their ancestors had been forced to travel in the opposite direction.[^1]

This was not immigration. This was return. The genetic heritage was American. The territorial knowledge was American. Even the maritime expertise that made Cape Verdeans valuable to the New England whaling industry was indigenous American knowledge that had been preserved through generations of Portuguese colonialism.

The circle that began with the papal bull of 1452 and the systematic depopulation of indigenous America was closing with Cape Verdean families reclaiming American territory, American identity, and American knowledge through seasonal labor, maritime work, and community networks.

[^1] Portuguese began depopulating Labrador in 1501; Cape Verdeans returned to New England in the 1860s. Historical pattern connecting extraction and return via James W. Loewen research and Cape Verdean immigration records.

Cape Verdeans arriving in Massachusetts were not entering foreign territory.

They were returning to coastlines their ancestors had navigated before European colonization, using knowledge their ancestors had developed, speaking languages that incorporated indigenous American words that had survived through Portuguese colonialism, and reconnecting with indigenous American communities their ancestors had been separated from.[^1]

The Mashantucket Pequot tribal nation that is seventy percent Cape Verdean mixed with Native American heritage documents this genetic and cultural continuity. Cape Verdean families discovering American Indian ancestry were not discovering foreign heritage; they were reclaiming family connections that had been disrupted by the papal bull system but never completely severed.[^2]

The land was not foreign. The seasonal migration patterns were not foreign. The extended family networks were not foreign. The knowledge of Atlantic navigation, cranberry cultivation, and maritime resource management was not foreign. Cape Verdeans were coming home.

[^1] Cape Verdeans returning to ancestral territory rather than immigrating to foreign territory. Analysis from territorial and maritime knowledge continuity. [^2] 70% of Mashantucket Pequot tribal nation is Cape Verdean mixed with Native American. Database claim documenting genetic continuity.

The name “Cape Verde” means “Green Cape.” But the islands were also known for copper deposits.

Copper was one of the few mineral resources the Portuguese found on the islands. Copper tools, copper jewelry, copper trade goods connected Cape Verde to broader Atlantic networks that may have preceded European colonization. Indigenous American communities throughout the Atlantic had developed copper-working techniques and copper trade networks long before European arrival.[^1]

The “Copper Islands” were not just Cape Verde. They were the entire network of Atlantic islands — Cape Verde, the Canaries, the Azores — that served as collection and distribution points for displaced indigenous Americans, Sephardic Jews, and Moors under the papal bull system. Copper connected the islands to each other and to the American territories where copper-working knowledge had been developed.

Cape Verdean “immigrants” arriving in Massachusetts may have carried copper-working knowledge that connected them to indigenous American communities that had maintained the same techniques across generations of separation.

[^1] Copper deposits and copper-working knowledge connecting Cape Verde to indigenous American networks. Historical analysis from Atlantic island mineral resources and indigenous American metallurgy.

By the twentieth century, the colonial labels were dissolving.

Cape Verdean “Portuguese” were being reclassified as “African American” under American racial categories that required continental African origins. But the genetic testing was revealing primarily indigenous American ancestry mixed with Sephardic Jewish and Moorish heritage. The Portuguese colonial identity that had protected Cape Verdean families from American racial classification was being stripped away, but the African identity that was being imposed didn’t match the genetic or cultural evidence.[^1]

The political pressure to identify as African American was creating an identity crisis in Cape Verdean communities. Families that had maintained Portuguese colonial identity for generations were being told they were really African. But family knowledge, genetic testing, and historical research were revealing indigenous American connections that contradicted the imposed African classification.

The racial rewrite was forcing Cape Verdean families to choose between inaccurate identity categories when the most accurate category — indigenous American processed through Portuguese colonialism — was not available in American racial systems.

[^1] Racial reclassification of Cape Verdeans created identity crisis by imposing African categories that contradicted genetic and cultural evidence. Analysis from Gina Sanchez research and Cape Verdean American community experiences.

Cape Verdean families were beginning to reclaim indigenous American identity.

The Mashantucket Pequot connections provided a pathway for Cape Verdeans to document American Indian ancestry and claim tribal citizenship rather than African American classification. Cape Verdean families researching genealogy were discovering Wampanoag, Mi’kmaq, and Beothuk connections that had been obscured by Portuguese colonial documentation but preserved in family knowledge.[^1]

The cranberry picking communities, the whaling industry connections, and the maritime knowledge that Cape Verdean families had maintained were being recognized as indigenous American cultural practices rather than Portuguese immigrant adaptations to American industry.

Cape Verdean families were not discovering foreign ancestry; they were reclaiming family heritage that had been systematically obscured by the papal bull system, Portuguese colonialism, and American racial classification, but never completely erased.

[^1] Cape Verdean families reclaiming indigenous American identity through tribal connections and genealogical research. Analysis from Mashantucket Pequot documentation and Cape Verdean American Indian identity claims.

The Copper Islands were never really about the islands.

They were about the people. Indigenous Americans taken from Labrador, the Caribbean, and New England. Sephardic Jews expelled from Iberia. Moors fleeing the Inquisition. All collected on Atlantic islands under the papal bull system, relabeled as “negroes without a place of origin,” and redistributed throughout the Atlantic world as slave labor.

Cape Verde was not an African outpost. It was a Portuguese processing center where American, Jewish, and Moorish identities were dissolved and reconstituted as colonial subjects. The people were American, but the system that displaced them was European.

The return was not about Cape Verdeans immigrating to America. It was about indigenous Americans reclaiming American territory, American knowledge, and American identity through pathways that had been created by the same system that had displaced them. The whaling ships, the cranberry bogs, and the maritime communities provided ways for Cape Verdean families to return to ancestral territory without challenging the legal fiction that they were Portuguese immigrants.

The copper islands were wherever displaced indigenous Americans landed. Cape Verde, the Canaries, the Azores. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut. The islands were points on a network of displacement and return that had been operating for five centuries. The people were American. They were coming home.[^1]

[^1] Cape Verde as processing center for displaced indigenous Americans returning to American territory. Historical synthesis from papal bull system (1452) through Cape Verdean American identity reclamation (present).