Barbados Early Slaves

Topic: Gullah History
Richard Ligon claimed slaves did not rebel on Barbados because “they are fetch’d from several parts of Africa, who speak several languages, and by that means, one of them understands not another.” [1]  He added, in the late 1640s, Africans arrived “from Guinny and Binny, some from Cutchew, some from Angola, and some from the river of Gambia.” [2]  If Cutchew was Cacheu in modern day Guinea-Bissau, [3] then Africans indeed were coming from every post where Portugal had established trade. [4]

One suspects Ligon was referring to communication between plantations. It is hard to believe that slaves, indentured servants, owners, and possibly overseers did not converse in some way.  However, the fragmented nature of the slave trade, described in the post for 30 January 2022, reinforced the class system on the island.  Those planters who bought one or two slaves at a time would have had more diverse groups and different linguistic challenges than those who bought a number of individuals from a single shipment. [5]

Among the large growers, Ligon mentions two ethnic groups.  He describes James Drax’s slaves as “these Portugal Negroes.” [6]  If they, or their leaders, spoke Portuguese, then they may have come from Angola or any of the colonies with Luso-African populations where Portuguese was spoken by some.

Henry Walrond had slaves on his plantation who hung themselves.  Ligon had been told they “believe in resurrection, and that they shall go into their own country again, and have their youth renewed.” [7]  He added, Walrond stuck one of the heads on a pole and told them the body had not returned home, but still was in Barbados. [8]

Ligon did not mention a tribe, but, more than likely, they were Igbo.  Michael Gomez says that, in “sixteenth-century Mexico, the Igbo were described as ‘difficult to manage and disposed to committing suicide when subjected to the slightest punishment or ridicule’.” [9]  Something this well known would be lore passed on by sailors in ports as well as among planters.

Igbo are native to what Ligon called Binny, the area east of the Niger river in modern-day Nigeria.  However, slaves from that area also were shipped to other areas that supplied slaves to the New World.  The Portuguese sent them to São Tomé’s sugar plantations. [10]  When they proved to be poor workers, they were reshipped to the Gold Coast. [11]  When the Dutch took São Tomé in 1641, they destroyed the sugar mills and exported the slaves. [12]  They would have been in the market just as Barbados was beginning to buy slaves.

Ligon, himself, was living on a plantation Thomas Modyford purchased from William Hilliard.  It came with 96 slaves, 28 indentured servants, and 3 Indian women and their children. [13]  Hilliard, as mentioned in the post for 30 January 2022, had acquired his land through a number of real estate transactions.  In 1645, he joined a partnership with Samuel French to establish a sugar plantation.  Hilliard supplied the land and French was required to send ninety slaves. [14]  Where the Bristol merchant acquired them is not known.  The slave community on the plantation probably was no more than three-years old when Ligon arrived, if the slaves included the ones Hilliard purchased in 1644.

Communication on the plantation seems to have been through men who acted as translators.  Ligon identified Sambo as “The Orator” [15] and was able to explain some of the workings of the compass to him. [16]  Gomez says the name is Fulani for “second son.”  It was perhaps more significant than Ligon realized that Sambo, who had a Moslem name, [17] wished to be baptized. [18]

The other slave with whom Ligon could communicate was Macow. [19]  He probably was an Igbo.  When his wife gave birth to twins, he wanted to kill her for adultery. [20]  Since Igbo believe the chi (roughly translated as soul) [21] of a dead individual enters a new born, [22] they have a particular aversion to twins. [23]

Ligon describes Macow as the “chief musician” and the keeper of the plantain grove [24] where food was grown by and for the African-born.  One day, Macow came upon Ligon while he was playing a lute-like theorbo.  Ligon recalled:

“he hearkened very attentively and when I had done, he took the Theorbo in his hand, and struck one string, stopping it by degrees upon every fret, and finding the notes to vary, till it came to the body of the instrument; and that nearer the body of the instrument he stopped, the smaller or higher the sound was which he found was by the shortening of the string.” [25]

The next day, Ligon found Macow constructing a marimba-like instrument in the plantain grove.  “I took the stick out of his hand, and tried the sound, finding the six billets to have six distinct notes, one above another, which put me in a wonder, how he of himself, should without teaching do so much.  I then showed him the difference between flats and sharps, which he presently apprehended, as between Fa and Mi.” [26]

Communication between two intelligent men with a shared interest [27] was conducted through demonstration supplemented by words in English.  This probably is how workers learned their tasks and were given assignments.

When someone like Sambo or Macow was not able or was not willing to discuss something, then Ligon remained uninformed.  He said the slaves played music and danced on Sundays, and after an hour or so “the men fall to wrestle.” [28]  He later described their physical games, before admitting he could learn nothing of their games “because they wanted language to teach me.” [29]

The translators may have gained their skills while they were in Africa.  Erich Nunn thinks the instrument Macow was constructing was a balafon. [30]  That instrument is native to the Mandinka of western Africa. [31]  None of the websites with information on Igbo music, mention anything like a marimba. [32]  This suggests Macow saw one before he left Africa, perhaps at some Portuguese post like El Mina.

If that were true, Macow may have become bilingual within the context of a Portuguese slave colony in Africa, a milieu that was being destroyed by the Dutch, and was not recreated when the Portuguese regained their territories. [33]  The use of language on Barbados in the 1640s, then, may be no indicator of how slaves and planters communicated in the early years in South Carolina, beyond the obvious fact that translators were used.

What may have been transferred were beliefs about Igbo.  In the 1760s, a slave trader in Charleston, South Carolina, asked a partner not to send any Igbo.  However, he admitted that they “were easily transferable to the markets of Virginia.” [34]

The fact Igbo apparently did not commit suicide in Virginia, but were unreliable in South Carolina, suggests more than beliefs about Igbo was transferred from Barbados. [35]  Ligon warned planters not to threaten slaves, lest they “go and hang” themselves. [36]  Poor treatment was more important than Igbo psychology, and poor treatment of laborers had become a hallmark of the way Barbados treated its white indentured servants, as mentioned in the post for 23 January 2022.  This method of management may be what was transferred from whites to Africans, and from Barbados to South Carolina.

End Notes
1.  Richard Ligon.  A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes.  London: Peter Parker, 1673.  46.

2.  Ligon.  46.
3.  “Cacheu and Cape Verde Company” and “Cacheu.”  Wikipedia website.
4.  See the post for 30 January 2022 for more on the early slave trade in Barbados.

5.  This may be analogous to the differences in slave life on large and small plantations in the United States before the Civil War.  The ratio of whites to slaves may define patterns of communication, with separate languages only able to develop on large plantations.  For more information, see Salikoko S. Mufwene.  “The Emergence of African American English.”  57–84 in the Oxford Handbook of African American Language, edited by Sonja L. Lanehart.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

6.  Ligon.  52.  The original is: “these Portugal Negroes.”  Russell Menard wonders if they “were perhaps Afro-Brazilians who had worked in the fields and mills at Pernambuco or Bahia” and Drax had deliberately purchased “workers who knew its ‘secrets’ and ‘mystery’.” [37]  He provides no evidence and may have been thinking of Thomas Spalding, who did this when he brought Bilali from the Bahamas to start his Sapelo Island, Georgia, cotton plantation in 1802, [38] or the South Carolina planters, who preferred slaves from rice-growing areas of western Africa. [39]

7.  Ligon.  51.  The original is: “believe in Refurrection, and that they fhall go into their own Countrey again, and have their youth renewed.”

8.  Ligon.  51.  Ligon seemed to think they stopped committing suicide because they recognized the error of their thinking. [40]  In fact, Walrond had violated a more serious taboo, because he maimed the bodies and prevented them from having a proper burial.  Igbo believed such individuals were condemned to wander the earth, unable to enter the body of a newborn. [41]
 
9.  Michael A. Gomez.  “A Quality of Anguish: The Igbo Response to Enslavement in the Americas.”  82–95 in Repercussions of the African Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora, edited by Carolyn A. Brown and Paul E. Lovejoy.  Trenton, New Jersey:  Africa World Press, 2010.  85.  His source may have been Gonzalo Aguirré Beltrán.  La población negra de México: estudio ethnohistórico.  Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1972 edition.  186–187.

10.  Hugh Thomas.  The Slave Trade.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.  80.
11.  Thomas.  107.
12.  “History of São Tomé and Príncipe.”  Wikipedia website.
13.  Ligon.  22.

14.  Michael D. Bennett.  “Merchant Capital and the Origins of the Barbados Sugar Boom, 1627-1672.”  PhD dissertation.  The University of Sheffield, June 2020.  198–199.

15.  Ligon.  54.
16.  Ligon.  49.
 
17.  Michael A. Gomez.  Exchanging Our Country Marks.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.  69.  It is possible “Sambo” was used as a common word and had no relevance to this individual.  However, he does not seem to have been part of the community, since he was the one who betrayed plans for a rebellion. [42]

18.  Ligon.  49–50.

19.  Macaws are colorful parrots found in Peru.  I have no idea if this was the origin of his name.

20.  Ligon.  47.
21.  The concept of chi is mentioned in the post for 13 March 2019.

22.  Divining the origin of an infant is mentioned briefly in the post for 11 November 2020 on religious rites in Sumter County, Alabama.

23.  Arthur Glyn Leonard.  “The Destruction of Twins.”  458–461 in The Lower Niger and its Tribes.  London: Macmillian and Company, 1906.  He says: “although two energies are requisite to produce a unit, the production of two such units is out of the common groove, therefore unnatural, because it implies at once a spirit duality, or enforced possession by some intruding and malignant demon. [43]  More recently, Stuart Edelson said the belief had become entwined with children with sickle cell anemia who torture their parents because they die young. [44]

24.  Ligon. 47.

25.  Ligon.  48–49.  The original is: “he hearkened very attentively to: and when I had done, he took the Theorbo in his hand, and ftrook one ftring, ftopping it by degrees upon every fret, and finding the notes to varie, till it came to the body of the instrument; and that nearer the body of the inftrunlenthe ftopt, the fmaller or higher the found was which he found was by the fhortning of the ftring”

26.  Ligon.  49.  The original is: “I took the ftick out of his hand, and tryed the found, finding the fix billets to have fix diftinct notes, one above another, which put me in a wonder, how he of himfelf, fhould without teaching do fo much. I then fhewed him the difference between flats and fharps, which he prefently apprehended, as between Fa, and Mi.”

27.  Their shared interest in music appears to extend to sharing the same notions of pitch.

28.  Lignon.  50.

29.  Lignon.  54.  The original is: “And this is all I can remember concerning the Negroes except: of their games, which I could never learn, becaufe they wanted language to teach me.”

30.  Erich Nunn.  “‘A Great Addition to Their Harmony’: Plantation Slavery and Musical Exchange in Seventeenth-Century Barbados.”  The Global South 10(2):27–47:Fall 2016.  36.

31.  “Balafon.”  Wikipedia website.

32.  George Ibenegbu.  “Igbo Musical Instruments and Their Names.”  Legit, a Nigerian website, 22 September 2017.

“Igbo Traditional Music Instruments.”  Music Africa Awake Media website, 9 August 2016.

33.  William Gervase Clarence-Smith and Gerhard Seibert.  “History of Sao Tome and Principe.”  Encyclopædia Britannica website.

34.  Henry Laurens.  The Papers of Henry Laurens: Sept. 1, 1763-Aug. 31, 1765, edited by George C. Rogers, Jr.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974.  558.  Quotation from Gomez, Anguish, 84.  Citation from Walter Edgar.  South Carolina.  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998.  65.  Daniel Littlefield has quoted more of Laurens’ letters with more detailed citations from the 1750s. [45]  Laurens is discussed in the post for 13 January 2019.

35.  Elizabeth Donnan was the first to note this view of Igbo in 1928.  She was using Laurens’ papers and advertisements for slave sales in Charleston’s newspaper, the South Carolina Gazette. [46]  Philip Curtin’s attempts to quantify slave imports used her data to show 37.7% of Virginia’s slaves came from the Bight of Biafra, but only 2.1% of South Carolina’s. [47]

36.  Ligon.  50.

37.  Russell R. Menard.  Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.   17.

38.  Ray Crook. “Bilali—The Old Man of Sapelo Island: Between Africa and Georgia.”  Wadabagei 10(2):40–55:Spring/Summer 2007.  For more on Spalding and Bilali, see the post for 9 June 2019.

39.  For more on the use of slaves from rice-growing areas, see the post for 13 January 2019.

40.  The original is: “Being convinc’d by this fad, yet lively fpectacle, they changed their opinions: and after that, no more hanged themfelves.”

41.  Leonard.  142.  “All Ibo place great faith in the due and proper observance of the funeral ceremony for they are of opinion that it enables the soul to go to God, and to its final destination, and that without this sacred rite the soul is prevented by the other spirits from eating, or in any way associating with them, and, in this manner, from entering into the Creator’s presence.  So in this way it becomes an outcast and a wanderer on the face of the earth, haunting houses and frequenting burial-grounds, or is forced perhaps to return to this world in the form or body of some animal.  Among the souls who are obliged to return to this world are those belonging to men who have died unnatural or violent deaths, and whose bodies have not therefore received the funeral obsequies.”

42.  Ligon.  54.
43.  Leonard.  458.

44.  Stuart J. Edelstein. The Sickled Cell: From Myth to Molecules.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986.  13.

45.  Daniel C. Littlefield.  Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave trade in Colonial South Carolina.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.  Chapter 1, especially 8–10.

46.  Elizabeth Donnan.  “The Slave Trade into South Carolina Before the Revolution.”  The American Historical Review 33(4):804–828:July 1928.  817, 821.

47.  Philip D. Curtin.  The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census.  Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.  157.