Read Online The Amistad Rebellion by Marcus Rediker - Free Book Online
Authors: Marcus Rediker
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42,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them Liberated Africans taken off the slave ships by the British anti-slave-trade patrol. People who spoke fifty different languages animated a sprawling public market where one might buy a fishhook, a dried rat, or a leopard’s tooth. The ninety-nine whites, mostly British officials, who lived in Freetown were rarely to be seen during the day, unless at the promenade or the racetrack. To the south and east along the coast lay Monrovia, a fledgling center for the American Colonization Society, which carried former American slaves back to the continent of an ancestor’s birth. 61
When Fuli, Margru, Moru, and the others finally reached Lomboko, the slave traders put each of them through a careful—and demeaning—physical examination, to be sure that all were likely to survive the Middle Passage and bring a good price in the slave markets of Havana. A trader named Theophilus Conneau, who worked for Blanco for a time and soon became the second most notorious slave trader on the Gallinas Coast in the late 1830s, was an old hand in the examination and purchase of human beings; he knew the routine intimately. He left a detailed record of what those bound for the
Teçora
would have gone through. 62
As the various small traders—Vai, Bullom, Temne, and Mende—arrived with their human coffles at Blanco’s place of business, they stripped every man, woman, and child “perfectly naked.” All were closely inspected “from head to foot”; no part was spared, recalled Conneau. The soundness of limbs for would-be plantation workers was crucial, so arms and legs were squeezed, tugged, flexed, and rotated. “Every joint was made to crack; hips, armpits, and groins werealso examined.” Buyers looked carefully into each person’s mouth; missing teeth would mean a reduced payment to the seller. Likewise with eyesight: a squint—or a cast in the eye such as Burna had—decreased the purchase price. Buyers even demanded that the captives speak in order to evaluate voice. They scrutinized every finger and toe, knowing that the struggle against enslavement included self-mutilation: “in order to unfit himself for service,” a man might “cut off his first finger.” Women, even little girls like Margru, were subjected to a special set of indignities. Rejects might be killed, or be sold to local masters.
Big merchants like Blanco and Conneau were wary of the tricks and treachery of the petty traders. When he was first learning the trade, Conneau was shocked to see an experienced merchant, John Ormond, known as “Mongo John,” pass on a man so big and strong he had to be double-pinioned. John’s searching eye had seen that the man was “medicated,” probably with “powder and lemon juice,” by the petty trader to disguise sickness. This was one of the “jockey-tricks practiced by a sharper to sell off a sick slave.” Men like Blanco and Conneau thus kept a close lookout for a “yellowish eye,” “swollen tongue,” or “feverish skin” and for marks of a rebellious temperament, seen in scars that might indicate previous resistance. All of the Africans who ended up on the
Amistad
somehow passed this “rigid muster,” and became residents of Lomboko while they awaited their slave ship to Havana. In Lomboko they met people of many ages, nations, and descriptions, “from the grey-haired man to the merry sportive child,” all of whom had arrived “with ropes around their necks & irons on their feet.” 63
Lomboko was actually a complex of slave-trading factories, all owned by Blanco and located at the mouth of the Gallinas (Kerefe) River and on a cluster of seven small islands. A British Admiralty chart of 1839 labeled the three largest islands Kamasoun, Kambatin, and Taro, all with small rectangular marks that represent buildings. Across a channel from Kambatin, on the north coast of the Gallinas River, lay Lomboko (here called Dumbacora)—two buildings in a clearing
When Fuli, Margru, Moru, and the others finally reached Lomboko, the slave traders put each of them through a careful—and demeaning—physical examination, to be sure that all were likely to survive the Middle Passage and bring a good price in the slave markets of Havana. A trader named Theophilus Conneau, who worked for Blanco for a time and soon became the second most notorious slave trader on the Gallinas Coast in the late 1830s, was an old hand in the examination and purchase of human beings; he knew the routine intimately. He left a detailed record of what those bound for the
Teçora
would have gone through. 62
As the various small traders—Vai, Bullom, Temne, and Mende—arrived with their human coffles at Blanco’s place of business, they stripped every man, woman, and child “perfectly naked.” All were closely inspected “from head to foot”; no part was spared, recalled Conneau. The soundness of limbs for would-be plantation workers was crucial, so arms and legs were squeezed, tugged, flexed, and rotated. “Every joint was made to crack; hips, armpits, and groins werealso examined.” Buyers looked carefully into each person’s mouth; missing teeth would mean a reduced payment to the seller. Likewise with eyesight: a squint—or a cast in the eye such as Burna had—decreased the purchase price. Buyers even demanded that the captives speak in order to evaluate voice. They scrutinized every finger and toe, knowing that the struggle against enslavement included self-mutilation: “in order to unfit himself for service,” a man might “cut off his first finger.” Women, even little girls like Margru, were subjected to a special set of indignities. Rejects might be killed, or be sold to local masters.
Big merchants like Blanco and Conneau were wary of the tricks and treachery of the petty traders. When he was first learning the trade, Conneau was shocked to see an experienced merchant, John Ormond, known as “Mongo John,” pass on a man so big and strong he had to be double-pinioned. John’s searching eye had seen that the man was “medicated,” probably with “powder and lemon juice,” by the petty trader to disguise sickness. This was one of the “jockey-tricks practiced by a sharper to sell off a sick slave.” Men like Blanco and Conneau thus kept a close lookout for a “yellowish eye,” “swollen tongue,” or “feverish skin” and for marks of a rebellious temperament, seen in scars that might indicate previous resistance. All of the Africans who ended up on the
Amistad
somehow passed this “rigid muster,” and became residents of Lomboko while they awaited their slave ship to Havana. In Lomboko they met people of many ages, nations, and descriptions, “from the grey-haired man to the merry sportive child,” all of whom had arrived “with ropes around their necks & irons on their feet.” 63
Lomboko was actually a complex of slave-trading factories, all owned by Blanco and located at the mouth of the Gallinas (Kerefe) River and on a cluster of seven small islands. A British Admiralty chart of 1839 labeled the three largest islands Kamasoun, Kambatin, and Taro, all with small rectangular marks that represent buildings. Across a channel from Kambatin, on the north coast of the Gallinas River, lay Lomboko (here called Dumbacora)—two buildings in a clearing
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