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Africa to America | |
| Amistad Mutiny Led by Congolese chief Joseph Cinquez, 1839. Africans mutinied on the Spanish slaver Amistad bound for Cuba. They killed captain and crew, leaving some members to direct them back to Africa. The crew tricked them and instead sailed to the U.S. mainland where they were placed on trial. The English, as did John Quincy Adams, argued against the enslavement and for the mutineers. In the end they won the trial and returned to Africa.
...'run off an lef' us.' She did not remember much about her mother from that time, but after the war her mother returned to get them and explained why she had had to go. 'It was 'count o'de Nigger overseers....Dey kep' a-tryin' to mess 'roun' wid her an' she wouldn' have nothin' to do wid 'em.' Once, when one of the overseers asked her to go to the woods with him, she said she would go ahead to find a nice place, and she 'jus kep' a'goin. She swum do river an' run away.' She hired herself out to some 'folks dat wasnt rich 'nough to have no slaves o' dey own' and who were good to her, and once or twice she slipped back at night to see her children. Her resistance to the sexual abuse she could not safely refuse forced her to desert her children, although she could count on their being fed by the master and reared by the other women of the slave community. |
Most of the Negro slaves came from an area bordering a 3,000-mile
stretch on the west coast of Africa. They came, chained two by
two, left leg to right leg, from a thousand villages and towns.
They came from many racial stocks and many tribes, from the
spirited Hausas, the gentle Mandingos, the creative Yorubas, from
the Ibos, Efiks and Krus, from the proud Fantins, the warlike
Ashantis, the shrewd Dahomeans, the Binis and Sengalese.Slaves were purchased from brokers at the forts and factories or in open markets. One famous trader has described an open market on the Slave Coast.
The newly-purchased slaves, properly branded and chained, were rowed out to the slave ships for the dreaded Middle Passage across the Atlantic. They were packed like books on shelves into holds which in some instances were no higher than eighteen inches..."
For most slaves life was a nightmare of drudgery. An ex-slave said it seemed the fields stretched 'from one end of the earth to the other.' Men, women and children worked. Women cut down trees, dug ditches and plowed. The old and the ailing worked; old men and women fed poultry, cleaned the yard, mended clothes and cared for the young and the sick. Male and female, the quick and the halt worked the traditional hours of slavery--from can (see) to can't (see).
Overseers and drivers, armed with whips, drove the work force, which was divided into hoe gangs and plow gangs. The overseer might also carry a bowie knife and a pistol. He often rode a horse, accompanied by a vicious dog. |
"As the slaves come down to Fida from the inland country, they
are put into a booth, or prison, built for that purpose, near the
beach, all of them together; and when the Europeans are to
receive them, they are brought out into a large plain, where the
surgeons examine every part of every one of them, to the smallest
member, men and women being all stark naked. Such as are allowed
good and sound are set on one side and the others by themselves.
'Slaves so rejected are there called Mackrons: being above 35
years of age, or defective in their limbs, eyes or teeth, or
grown grey, or have the venereal disease, or any other
imperfection. These being so set aside, each of the others,
which have passed as good, is marked on the breast, with a red-
hot iron, imprinting the mark of the French, English or Dutch
companies....In this particular, care is taken that the women, as
tenderest, be not burnt too hard.'
On most plantations, a horn ('dat ole fo' day horn') or bell
sounded about four in the morning. Thirty minutes later, the
field hands were expected to be out of their cabins and on their
way to the fields. Stragglers and late-sleepers were lashed with
the whip. An ex-slave in Virginia recalled seeing women scurrying
to the fields 'with their shoes and stockings in their hands, and
a petticoat wrapped over their shoulders, to dress in the fields
the best way they could.'