The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African
Shocking as this and many more acts of the bloody West India code at
first view appear, how is the iniquity of it heightened when we
consider to whom it may be extended! Mr. James Tobin, a zealous
labourer in the vineyard of slavery, gives an account of a French
planter of his acquaintance, in the island of Martinico, who shewed
him many mulattoes working in the fields like beasts of burden; and he
told Mr. Tobin these were all the produce of his own loins! And I
myself have known similar instances. Pray, reader, are these sons and
daughters of the French planter less his children by being begotten on
a black woman? And what must be the virtue of those legislators, and
the feelings of those fathers, who estimate the lives of their sons,
however begotten, at no more than fifteen pounds; though they should
be murdered, as the act says, _out of wantonness and bloody-mindedness_!
But is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man? And
surely that which is begun by breaking down the barriers of virtue
involves in its continuance destruction to every principle, and buries
all sentiments in ruin!
I have often seen slaves, particularly those who were meagre, in
different islands, put into scales and weighed; and then sold from
three pence to six pence or nine pence a pound. My master, however,
whose humanity was shocked at this mode, used to sell such by the
lump. And at or after a sale it was not uncommon to see negroes taken
from their wives, wives taken from their husbands, and children from
their parents, and sent off to other islands, and wherever else their
merciless lords chose; and probably never more during life to see each
other! Oftentimes my heart has bled at these partings; when the
friends of the departed have been at the water side, and, with sighs
and tears, have kept their eyes fixed on the vessel till it went out
of sight.
A poor Creole negro I knew well, who, after having been often thus
transported from island to island, at last resided in Montserrat. This
man used to tell me many melancholy tales of himself. Generally, after
he had done working for his master, he used to employ his few leisure
moments to go a fishing. When he had caught any fish, his master would
frequently take them from him without paying him; and at other times
some other white people would serve him in the same manner. One day he
said to me, very movingly, 'Sometimes when a white man take away my
fish I go to my maser, and he get me my right; and when my maser by
strength take away my fishes, what me must do? I can't go to any body
to be righted; then' said the poor man, looking up above 'I must look
up to God Mighty in the top for right.' This artless tale moved me
much, and I could not help feeling the just cause Moses had in
redressing his brother against the Egyptian. I exhorted the man to
look up still to the God on the top, since there was no redress below.
Though I little thought then that I myself should more than once
experience such imposition, and read the same exhortation hereafter,
in my own transactions in the islands; and that even this poor man and
I should some time after suffer together in the same manner, as shall
be related hereafter.
Nor was such usage as this confined to particular places or
individuals; for, in all the different islands in which I have been
(and I have visited no less than fifteen) the treatment of the slaves
was nearly the same; so nearly indeed, that the history of an island,
or even a plantation, with a few such exceptions as I have mentioned,
might serve for a history of the whole. Such a tendency has the
slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling
of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are
born worse than other men--No; it is the fatality of this mistaken
avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into
gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might
have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are
unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good,
which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which
violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and
independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God
could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above
man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption
of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in
extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even
of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the
condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the
privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity
throughout Britain answers you--No. When you make men slaves you
deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an
example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with
you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest
or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to
keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are
incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or
moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a
climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree
unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and
incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!--An
assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments
of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to
another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see
the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there
no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in
dread of an insurrection? Nor would it be surprising: for when
"--No peace is given
To us enslav'd, but custody severe;
And stripes and arbitrary punishment
Inflicted--What peace can we return?
But to our power, hostility and hate;
Untam'd reluctance, and revenge, though slow,
Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least
May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice
In doing what we most in suffering feel."
But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every
cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest,
intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would
attend you.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote O: Thus was I sacrificed to the envy and resentment of this
woman for knowing that the lady whom she had succeeded in my master's
good graces designed to take me into her service; which, had I once
got on shore, she would not have been able to prevent. She felt her
pride alarmed at the superiority of her rival in being attended by a
black servant: it was not less to prevent this than to be revenged on
me, that she caused the captain to treat me thus cruelly.]
[Footnote P: "The Dying Negro," a poem originally published in 1773.
Perhaps it may not be deemed impertinent here to add, that this
elegant and pathetic little poem was occasioned, as appears by the
advertisement prefixed to it, by the following incident. "A black,
who, a few days before had ran away from his master, and got himself
christened, with intent to marry a white woman his fellow-servant,
being taken and sent on board a ship in the Thames, took an
opportunity of shooting himself through the head."]
[Footnote Q: These pisterines are of the value of a shilling.]
[Footnote R: Mr. Dubury, and many others, Montserrat.]
[Footnote S: Sir Philip Gibbes, Baronet, Barbadoes.]
[Footnote T: Benezet's Account of Guinea, p. 16.]
CHAP. VI.
_Some account of Brimstone-Hill in Montserrat--Favourable
change in the author's situation--He commences merchant with
three pence--His various success in dealing in the different
islands, and America, and the impositions he meets with in
his transactions with Europeans--A curious imposition on
human nature--Danger of the surfs in the West
Indies--Remarkable instance of kidnapping a free
mulatto--The author is nearly murdered by Doctor Perkins in
Savannah._
In the preceding chapter I have set before the reader a few of those
many instances of oppression, extortion, and cruelty, which I have
been a witness to in the West Indies: but, were I to enumerate them
all, the catalogue would be tedious and disgusting. The punishments of
the slaves on every trifling occasion are so frequent, and so well
known, together with the different instruments with which they are
tortured, that it cannot any longer afford novelty to recite them; and
they are too shocking to yield delight either to the writer or the
reader. I shall therefore hereafter only mention such as incidentally
befel myself in the course of my adventures.
In the variety of departments in which I was employed by my master, I
had an opportunity of seeing many curious scenes in different islands;
but, above all, I was struck with a celebrated curiosity called
Brimstone-Hill, which is a high and steep mountain, some few miles
from the town of Plymouth in Montserrat. I had often heard of some
wonders that were to be seen on this hill, and I went once with some
white and black people to visit it. When we arrived at the top, I saw
under different cliffs great flakes of brimstone, occasioned by the
steams of various little ponds, which were then boiling naturally in
the earth. Some of these ponds were as white as milk, some quite blue,
and many others of different colours. I had taken some potatoes with
me, and I put them into different ponds, and in a few minutes they
were well boiled. I tasted some of them, but they were very
sulphurous; and the silver shoe buckles, and all the other things of
that metal we had among us, were, in a little time, turned as black
as lead.
Some time in the year 1763 kind Providence seemed to appear rather
more favourable to me. One of my master's vessels, a Bermudas sloop,
about sixty tons, was commanded by one Captain Thomas Farmer, an
Englishman, a very alert and active man, who gained my master a great
deal of money by his good management in carrying passengers from one
island to another; but very often his sailors used to get drunk and
run away from the vessel, which hindered him in his business very
much. This man had taken a liking to me; and many different times
begged of my master to let me go a trip with him as a sailor; but he
would tell him he could not spare me, though the vessel sometimes
could not go for want of hands, for sailors were generally very scarce
in the island. However, at last, from necessity or force, my master
was prevailed on, though very reluctantly, to let me go with this
captain; but he gave great charge to him to take care that I did not
run away, for if I did he would make him pay for me. This being the
case, the captain had for some time a sharp eye upon me whenever the
vessel anchored; and as soon as she returned I was sent for on shore
again. Thus was I slaving as it were for life, sometimes at one thing,
and sometimes at another; so that the captain and I were nearly the
most useful men in my master's employment. I also became so useful to
the captain on shipboard, that many times, when he used to ask for me
to go with him, though it should be but for twenty-four hours, to some
of the islands near us, my master would answer he could not spare me,
at which the captain would swear, and would not go the trip; and tell
my master I was better to him on board than any three white men he
had; for they used to behave ill in many respects, particularly in