68 RICHARD J. FILE-MURIEL

other littoral Maroon colonies. But the evidence suggests that those
responsible for establishing the PSB came from Cartagena, and were
said to be Congo-Angolans and other Bantus. Almost all the scholars
(Schwegler, Friedemann, Bickerton, Patifo Rosselli) who have studied
PSB in detail, insist that the colony was characterized by a strong ethnic
and linguistic homogeneity tending towards Bantu. They mention the
possibility that the 'cimarrones' may have tended to congregate with
others from related groups and ethnicity. The evidence presented by
Schwegler suggests that certain ethnic groups from the Old Congo
gathered to form rather exclusive groups in which speakers of Bantu
languages such as Kikongo and Kimbundo became numerically and
socially dominant. Schwegler asserts: "deben de haber sido
precisamente tales negros congo-angolefios y otros banties quienes
participaron en forma active en la preservaci6n y transmisi6n de
palabras africanas, en la formaci6n y el mantenimiento de la lengua
criolla..." (1997:225).
 Friedemann (1993:51) suggests that there was a relatively quick and
early process of ethnic integration towards the numerically dominant
group. If this is true, extra-Bantu languages were probably lost as early
as the first generation and had little to no impact on the outcome of
Palenquero. Del Castillo (1982) supposes that anywhere from 1/3-1/2
arrived to the maroon colony speaking a common language, or at least
understood each other using similar Bantu languages. Nonetheless,
the Palenqueros do not speak any African ancestral language today.
Whether or not African languages were used during the colonial period
remains a point of debate and will probably never be established with
any degree of certainty. It is clear, however, that Palenquero
incorporated dozens of words of definite Bantu origin (especially
Kikongo), while exhibiting no contributions from extra-Bantu languages.
 There is strong evidence suggesting that by 1772, the Palenque
population was already using a particular language to address one
another (in all probability, this particular language refers to the 1772
version of the creole used today): "Hablan entire si un particular idioma
en que a sus solas instruyen a los muchachos, sin embargo de que
cortan con much expedici6n el castellano, de que generalmente usan"
(Noticia historical in Schwegler 1996). It's interesting that even outsiders
(i.e. the Spanish) recognized the particular linguistic system used by
the Palenqueros as its own entity rather than a 'broken' or 'corrupt'
Spanish. Ferguson and DeBose (1977) claim that for a register to be
considered a language it must be sufficiently different from the source