A History of Haiti in verse: Part III

Out of Africa

Saint Domingue quickly grew crops of sprawling plantations headed by French gentlemen-planters and dainty ladies. They dwelled in indolence and opulence, leaving the real management of the incredible mass-production of the exotic tropical delicacies in such high demand overseas to their trusted overseers, lower-class white men or elevated slaves. Gloved hands concealing iron fists, the profiting planters were ever wary of slave-retaliation. Punishment was swift and daily existence severe for black chattel.

Plantation labor was severe punishment, for cultivating and cutting sugar cane was constant exhaustion beneath the hot sun, in fields of sharp leaves and unfriendly creatures, at risk of dehydration and the overseer’s whip. Refining sugar from the stalks was more perilous still, as the heavy wheels of the mill turned with all the unforgiving persistence of Sisyphus’ stone: the odd limb caught in the cogs was naught sufficient cause to stop the machinery, call halt to production and lose profits. Most owners were unimpressed by reports of severed hands or mangled arms crushed by their wheels of progress. They might object if a child were killed by the grinding mill, but only then for the cost of lost property.

Sugar mill with vertical rollers, French West Indies, 1665. [Charles de Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des iles Antilles de l’Amérique … (Rotterdam, 1681), p. 332]

http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0105

These losses were worth their weight in bloody sugar, for the ruthless continuity of slave labor produced profits unseen in any other colonies. Europeans had rapacious appetites for all goods from the West Indies, and Saint Domingue, under some mélange of landscape, placement, and colonial determination that placed great duress on the nation of slaves, was rising to meet the seemingly insatiable European need for tobacco, chocolate, fruits, and the almighty trinity of sugar, coffee, and rum. These Three flourished so abundantly in Saint Domingue that the colony single-handedly supplied one-third of Europe with these currencies, at the cost of extremely short slave life-expectancies.

Yet the wicked cycle of Want had begun, and even as their slaves died in droves from overwork and malnourishment, plantation owners noticed the weightening of their pockets over the weight of their conscience. The rich grew richer while slaves and morals grew sicker.

With greater fortunes the colonials built still larger houses and embraced greater extravagance, employed more slaves and lackeys to their service, and lounged in deeper lassitude. In the torrid equatorial heat with little to do, their idle hands letting hundreds of others cultivate their gardens, many of the plantation masters and mistresses turned to wicked mischief. For these bored Europeans, or next generation “Creoles” born in the colonies, the favored sport was slave-torture of such abhorrent proportion that even the notorious Marquis de Sade may have enjoyed vacation on the island provided they permitted his participation in the unnatural acts and brutality enacted on the unlucky Africans. De Sade’s namesake “sadism” tragically aptly applies to much of these white masters’ actions as belabored slaves were maimed for entertainment. Molestation furthered the exploitation, and many varying-shaded babies were fathered by white monsieurs who denied their relations even as they continued nightly visitations to their favorite beautiful female slaves.

View of a Sugar Plantation, French West Indies, 1762. [Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers … Recueil de Planches, sur les Sciences … (Paris, 1762), vol. 1, plate I] http://slaveryandremembrance.org/people/person/?id=PP024

Misery, depravity, and quick mortality were the expectancy of the captive soul from Guinea. Seven years was the average survival rate of the imported slave despite the tepid efforts of the distant French king and his ironic mandate for humane slavery standards. On the matter of black lives, the Sun King ratified The Black Code in 1687, which required proper Catholic Sabbath rest and holidays, care for the sick, forbade maim and torture, ensured families should be sold together and not torn apart. Le Code Noir even demanded that a white master who made a slave his “concubine” was required to make her his wife if he was not yet married, according to the proper rites of the Church. If already wed, the man was to be substantially fined and resign his former concubine to the hospital, along with her children, and not see her again.

These high points of Le Code Noir were joined, of course, with cruel corporal punishments including the whip and distinctly French flourish of the fleur de lys brand, the famous icon marking majestic heralds, royal genealogy, and the recaptured flesh of a runaway. Troublesome runaways also had their ears lopped off on the first offense. The second capture cut their hamstrings and earned another brand, to make a painful pair of matching shoulder tattoos. The third escape attempt ended in execution, as did offense against one’s owner. A slave who raised his hand to strike his master or one of his master’s family might as well have raised his hand in voluntary assignment to the gallows. These meters of justice, of care, crime, and punishment, were intended as infrastructure in France’s distant colonies. Overseers were to be overseen, masters held to task, and slaves not passed down through generations but eventually liberated. Perhaps these royal regulations would have made life bearable for the unwilling immigrants to Saint Domingue. Unfortunately, aging King Louis XIV kept a long-distance relationship with his best colony, and The Black Code, lacking local enforcement and endorsement, was summarily ignored.

Instead, for another two hundred years men, women, and children were torn from Africa, stolen from their homeland, packed in crates, and shipped across the sea to begin a life of hard servitude: to die quickly or slowly under the broiling sun and the lash of a capricious and unrestricted master’s whip.

They came, they worked, they died; they planned, they plotted, they survived.

 Originating from all over the continent, Africans of different nations were chained together in torment. Some were prisoners of war, conquered captives of their foes; some were victims of midnight raids, rounded up and marched out in chains by invaders; some were the sons of lowly serfs, born into the misfortunes of servitude. Some had been poor while some were royally connected; some had dwelled in villages upriver and some nearer the sea. They came from the northwestern regions of Walo and Cayor, Mandingo, Fula, and Baol; from the western gulf areas of Susu, Benin, and Annamabu. Some came from the southwestern Ndongo, Angola, and Kongo. Some had to march roped neck-to-neck before being crowded into canoes and paddled downriver from the easternly Bobangi, Teke, and Loango. From wherever they came, these motley crews of confused captives were forced to the western coast where slave ports provided their last glimpse of their Homeland before they passed through the doorways of no return and make the Middle Passage.  

“Gang of Captives Met at Mbame’s on Their Way to Tette”, 1861. [Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (Dec. 1865–May 1866), vol. 32, p. 719] http://slaveryandremembrance.org/articles/article/?id=A0003

Since 1482 when Portugal founded Elmina Castle, these slave ports complete with corrals and fortresses had been cropping up along the lustrous Gold and Ivory Coasts. And with each new “trading post” a point on the Triangle Trade route, the long-existent African-enslavement tradition exploded. Portugal persisted in its first-place position in slave exportation, shipping millions of Africans to its Brazilian silver mines. But Spain, France, and Britain were close behind in their staggering tallies and untold death tolls. Not half so prolific in their westerly slave-shipments were the Netherlands, fledgling U.S. America, and Denmark. The survival rate of slaves on many of these plantations was also greater than those Africans sent to Saint Domingue. Between the extreme equatorial propinquity and the extreme colonial antipathy, growing into atrocities, slaves simply had the worst of the New World.

Was it little wonder, then, that many a captive sought death before embarkment and enslavement among barbarians? “Having a more dreadful apprehension of Barbados than we can have of hell,” some bound men and women leapt into the sea, evaded their pursuers by remaining under the water until they were drowned, recalled one unnamed slave trader (Sources of the Western Tradition 351). Those who jumped did not merely seek relief but an afterlife reunion with their beloved homeland, a belief later generations on Saint Domingue would describe as seeking the “island beneath the sea.” Such beliefs would unite peoples from different nations, tribes, tongues, religions, and kingdoms. From differing allegiances and warring parties, these captured men, women, and children from all over Africa now shared one land, one goal, and one enemy. Bartolomé de las Casas had alleged that Africans could better endure the hardships and toil of plantation enslavement; he assured the Spanish court blacks were more resilient than the wasted Arawaks. His assertions were proved true as these victims, branded and bound, weak and unsteady after weeks at sea, stripped of clothes and dignity, found their feet on foreign colonial ground. And, with the astonishing conquering velocity with which France had transformed forlorn Hispañola into prosperous sugar-kingpin, these ultimate underdogs took groundbreaking strides.

The courtyard of the Cape Coast Castle showing the male exit tunnel; the first church of England in the background with the male slave dungeon underneath; the Dalzell’s Tower; MacLean’s Hall; graves; mortar and cannon balls. http://slaveryandremembrance.org/collections/object/?id=OB0070

*Yes, I do have an extensive Bibliography which is not here listed because the number of sources continues to increase with the research. But a special note of thanks to "Slavery and Remembrance: A Guide to Sites, Museums, and Memory" for not only providing much information but the majority of today's images, properly sourced.