In the 18th and 19th century, Gorée was home to a Franco-African Creole, or "Métis", community of merchants with links to similar communities in Saint-Louis and the Gambia, and across the Atlantic to France's colonies in the Americas. Métis women, called from the Portuguese descendants of African women and European traders, were especially important to the city's business life. The owned ships and property and commanded male clerks. They were also famous for cultivating fashion and entertainment. One such , , lived in (the modern Haiti) in the 1780s before the Haitian Revolution.