The young girls were separated from the women because they were more expensive. All the houses situated on the edge of Gorée - even the actual presbytery - were former slave houses. Some slave traders had sexual relations with the young slave girls and when they got pregnant they were released in Gorée or in Saint-Louis. It was thus in the young girls' interest to give themselves to the slave traders in order to gain freedom. It was for these young girls the only way to salvation. The mixed-race girls in Gorée, commonly called 'Signare', a deformation of the Portuguese word senhoras, formed the aristocracy in Gorée, like the Creoles in the French West Indies.