Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
———. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [1942] 1984.
———. “The Last Slave Ship,” American Mercury 58 (1944), 351–58.
———. “The Last Slave Ship,” Negro Digest 2 (May 1944), 11–16.
———. Mules and Men. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, [1935] 1978.
———. Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. New York: Harper & Row, [1938] 1990.
Jordan, Winthrop. The White Man’s Burden. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Kaplan, Carla, ed. Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters. New York: Doubleday, 2002.
Law, Robin. Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving “Port,” 1727–1892. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
Lewis, Cudjo (Kossola). Cudjo Lewis to Charlotte Osgood Mason, September 4, 1930. Alain Locke Papers 16499, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
Locke, Alain LeRoy. The New Negro: An Interpretation. New York: A. & C. Boni, 1925.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York: Crossing Press Feminist Series, 1984.
Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 3rd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
———. The Origin of Others. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Robertson, Natalie S. The Slave Ship “Clotilda,” and the Making of AfricaTown, USA: Spirit of Our Ancestors. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008.
Roche, Emma Langdon. Historic Sketches of the South. New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1914.
Romeyn, Henry. “‘Little Africa’: The Last Slave Cargo Landed in the United States,” The Workman 26. no. 1, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Hampton, VA, January 1897, 14–17. http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.usf .edu/eds/ebook.
Notes
INTRODUCTION BY DEBORAH G. PLANT
1Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, 9 December 1927, in Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, ed. Carla Kaplan (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 110.
2See Hurston’s introduction, in the present volume. Hurston utilized different spellings of Kossola’s name. In Dust Tracks, she used the syllabic spelling that was characteristic of her technique when recording dialect: “There I went to talk to Cudjo Lewis. That is the American version of his name. His African name was Kossola-O-Lo-Loo-Ay” (198). In the “Barracoon” manuscript, she consistently refers to him as “Kossula.”
3Lynda Marion Hill, Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale Hurston (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1996), 68.
4Sylviane Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship “Clotilda” and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 40. Biographical background of Kossola Oluale and the historical backdrop of the Clotilda is drawn from the works of Diouf; Natalie Robertson, The Slave Ship “Clotilda” and the Making of AfricaTown, USA: Spirit of Our Ancestors (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); and Zora Neale Hurston, “Barracoon: The Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo,’” box 164-186, file 1, unpublished typescripts and handwritten draft, 1931, Alain Locke Collection, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
5It seems that “Oluale,” Kossola’s father’s name, thus Kossola’s African first name, became contracted into Lewis, which became Kossola’s American last name. “Cudjo” is the name given a male child born on a Monday. This became Kossola’s American first name.
6Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 135–36; Robertson, Slave Ship “Clotilda,” 36–37.
7Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama, 30, 31.
8Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery, 141.
9Robertson, Slave Ship “Clotilda,” 84.
10Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [1942] 1984), 204.
11Ibid., 202.
12Hurston to Charlotte Osgood Mason, 25 March 1931, in Kaplan, Letters, 214.
13Hill, Social Rituals, 72; Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows, 167.
14Cudjo Lewis to Charlotte Mason, Alain Locke Collection, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.
15Hurston to Mason, 26 May 1932, in Kaplan, Letters, 257.
16Hurston to Mason, 12 January 1931, in Kaplan, Letters, 201; Hurston to Mason, 18 April 1931, 217.
17Hurston to Mason, 25 September 1931, in Kaplan, Letters, 228.
18Langston Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobiography (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, [1940] 1986), 334; Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows, 221.
19Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama, 3.
20Hill, Social Rituals, 64.
21Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, 12 April 1928, in Kaplan, Letters, 116.
22Hill, Social Rituals, 65, 66.
23Ibid., 65.
24Ibid., 67.
INTRODUCTION BY ZORA NEALE HURSTON
1Emma Langdon Roche, Historic Sketches of the South (New York: Knickerbocker Press, Scholar Select Reproduction, [1914] 2016), 72.
2According to Diouf and Robertson, the boat was built and owned by William Foster.
3Roche, Historic Sketches, 85.
4Ibid., 86.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
7Ibid. Diouf and Robertson document that the majority of the captives taken were of Yoruba ethnicity. Among the other ethnic groups that made up the “Clotilda Africans” of Africatown, there was only one who was Fon, and that was Gumpa (African Peter). It was not the policy of the king of Dahomey to enslave subjects of his own kingdom. Giving Gumpa to Foster seems to have been an imperious lark.
8Roche, Historic Sketches, 73.
9Ibid.
10Frederick Edwyn Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans: Being the Journals of Two Missions to the King of Dahomey, and Residence at His Capital, in the Years 1849 and 1850, Volume 1 (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar Reproduction Series, [1851] 2008), 14, 15.
11Ibid., 15, vi.
12Ibid., 15–16.
13Ibid., 17.
14Ibid., 17–18.
15[Editor’s note: The scenario of Foster’s manner of coming ashore parallels the description of a similar scene in Forbes’s Dahomey and the Dahomans, which notes the difficulty of both maneuvering through the surf to shore and from the shore to a ship. In relating his experience, Forbes alludes to “three kroomen” and a “kroo canoe” that was “dashed to pieces.” This particular scene likely proved significant to Hurston, as Forbes was meeting with a Mr. Duncan on a mission to persuade the King of Dahomey (Ghezo) “to consent to a treaty for the effectual suppression of the slave trade within his dominions” (45, 44).]
16[Editor’s note: Foster’s narrative states that “while getting underway two more boats came along side with thirty-five more negroes, making in all one hundred and ten; left fifteen on the beach having to leave in haste” (William Foster, “Last Slaver from U.S. to Africa, A.D. 1860,” Mobile Public Library, Local History and Genealogy, 9).]
17Roche, Historic Sketches, 88. [Editor’s note: According to Foster’s account: “We had an alarming surprise when man aloft with glass sang out ‘sail ho’ steamer to leeward ten miles” (8).]
18Roche, Historic Sketches, 88.
19Ibid., 89–90.
20Ibid., 90–91.
21Ibid., 94–95.
22Ibid., 95, 96.
23Ibid., 96, 96 n1.
24Ibid., 96–97.
25Ibid., 97. [Editor’s note: “Bayou Corne” is a colloquialism referencing Big Bayou Canot.]
26Ibid., 98–99.
27Ibid., 99–100.
28See Hurston’s chapter 6 in the present volume.
29[Editor’s note: Although they were charged and fined, neither Meaher nor Foster paid any fine.]
CHAPTER I
1[Editor’s note: I
CHAPTER IV
1[Editor’s note: Based on Kossola’s description of the Dahomian raid and her research in Richard Burton’s A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, vol. 1 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, [1894] 1966), Hurston was convinced that Takon was Kossola’s hometown, and therefore, the king in that town, Akia’on, must have been the name of Kossola’s king.
Hurston understood the ethnic identity of Kossola and his compatriots to be Takkoi, a variation of “Tarkar.” In Historic Sketches, Roche recorded the ethnicity of Africatown founders as “Tarkar.” However, Diouf relates in Dreams of Africa in Alabama that no such ethnicity existed. Roche’s book about the Africatown enclave had become “an obligatory reference for journalists and others. . . . Since she understood that they were ‘Tarkars,’ this pseudo-ethnicity has been repeated by reporters, scholars, and even the Africans’ descendants” (246).
Believing the name of the Africans’ ethnic group to be Takkoi, Hurston then identified that name “not with a population but with a town about forty miles north of Porto-Novo, whose original name is Itakon, and official name, Takon” (Diouf, Dreams of Africa in Alabama, 39). In perceiving a linguistic connection between Takkoi and Takon (Itakon), and believing that Burton’s account of the destroyed city of Takon was, in fact, an accounting of the destruction of Kossola’s hometown, which was destroyed during the same time span, Hurston was convinced that she had discovered a source that corroborated and complemented Kossola’s narrative.
The historian Robin Law drew a similar conclusion in Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving “Port,” 1727–1892 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004). He writes, “Cudjo was captured in a Dahomian raid on his hometown of ‘Togo,’ or ‘Tarkar,’ probably Takon, north of Porto-Novo.” In a footnote that references Burton, he adds: “The campaign seems to be identical with that recorded by Burton against ‘Attako’ (Taccow), near Porto-Novo: Mission, I, 256” (138).
Believing that Kossola was of Takkoi ethnicity, convinced that he was from the town of Takon, Hurston was confident in naming Kossola’s king “Akia’on.” Nevertheless, as Diouf argues, “Cudjo could not have told her it was his king’s name” (Dreams of Africa in Alabama, 39). Hurston’s conclusions in this instance constitute an exception in an otherwise factual manuscript. Diouf writes:
“She may have conflated some of what Cudjo said with some of what she knew as a scholar, but she made a genuine effort at separating the two. With few exceptions, the information provided in Barracoon is confirmed by other sources. Witnesses, experts in Yoruba cultures, contemporary newspaper articles, and abundant archival material corroborate the various events in Cudjo’s life as described in Barracoon.” (Dreams of Africa in Alabama, 246).]
CHAPTER V
1Note 1: King “Gelele (bigness), ma nyonzi (with no way of lifting)” (i.e.—too heavy to lift) who ascended the throne in 1858. Gelele succeeded his father, Gezo, at the age of thirty-eight to the exclusion of his older brother, Godo, who was a drunkard.
King Gelele is six feet tall and “looks a king of (Negro) men, without tenderness of heart or weakness of head.” Burton’s Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, 233.
[Editor’s note: Burton, Mission to Gelele, 145 n2, 131 n9, 145. (Because there are several editions of the sources Hurston used in her research, I have retained the page numbers original to the manuscript while, within my bracketed editor’s notes, I have given the bibliographical data and page numbers of references and citations Hurston made, as I have found them in the particular edition of the works that I have used.)]
2Note 2: The kings of Dahomey claimed that they never made war upon their weaker neighbors without insult, nor until the war of chastisement was asked for “[f]or three successive years” by the people.—Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans. [Editor’s note: Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 20–21, 15.]
“[S]hould a neighbouring people become rich, it is regarded as sufficient insult to call forth an immediate declaration of war from the court of Dahomey.” Forbes, p. 7.
The king of Dahomey, Gelele, said that when his father King Gezo died, he, himself, had “received a message from that chief (Akia’on, King of Takkoi), that all men were now truly joyful, that the sea had dried up, and that the world had seen the bottom of Dahome.” Gelele answered by raiding Takkoi and slaying Akia’on, “mounting his skull in a ship (model), meaning that there is still water enough to float the kingdom, and that if the father is dead the son is alive.” Burton, Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, pp. 225–26. [Editor’s note: Burton, Mission to Gelele, 156.]
It is improbable that a weak king would have risked such a provoking message as related by Gelele.
[Editor’s note: Although Hurston was mistaken in her conclusion that Takon was the name of Kossola’s hometown and Akia’on was the name of its king, the town of Takon did exist and the circumstances surrounding Akia’on’s fate as she reports them are accurate.
Having believed Akia’on to be the name of Kossola’s king, Hurston thought she had discovered the ultimate cause, the “insult,” that instigated Glèlè’s raid. Whereas she had not questioned Kossola’s narration of events of the Dahomian raid on his town, she had questioned his belief that the raid was the result of betrayal by a disgruntled townsman. Perhaps Hurston was also searching for the kind of provocative “reason” that would result in the kind of horrific massacre that Kossola described. Her commentary in note 6 suggests this may have been the case.
The mistake of identifying the circumstances relevant to Takon with those relevant to Bantè would be easy to make given the established modus operandi of the Dahomian king and his warriors.]
3Note 3: “Industry and agriculture, are not encouraged.” The men are wanted for slave hunts.—Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans. [Editor’s note: Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 21.]
4Note 4: “The only other peculiarity in the Court was a row of three large calabashes, ranged on the ground before and a little to the left of royalty. They contain the calvariae of the three chief amongst forty kings, or petty headmen, said to have been destroyed by Gelele,” in the first two years of his reign (1858–60); “and they are rarely absent from the royal levees. A European would imagine these relics to be treated with mockery; whereas the contrary is the case. So the King Sinmenkpen (Adahoonzou II) . . . said to Mr. Norris, ‘If I should fall into hostile hands, I should wish to be treated with that decency of which I set the example.’ The first skull was that of Akia’on, chief of Attako (Taccow) [Takkoi, a Nigerian tribe] near ‘Porto Novo,’ which was destroyed about three years ago. Beautifully white and polished, it is mounted in a ship or galley of thin brass about a foot long, with two masts, and jibboom, rattlings, anchor, and four portholes on each side, one pair being in the raised quarter deck.” The destruction of Takkoi was justified by King Gelele on the ground that King Akia’on had insulted the memory of his father, the late King Gezo.—Burton, Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, pp. 225–26. [Editor’s note: Burton, Mission to Gelele, 156.]
CHAPTER VI: BARRACOON
1[Editor’s note: Charlotte Osgood Mason funded Hurston’s second expedition in the South. Mason would periodically send money to Kossola and would become interested in his general welfare.]
2Note 5: “The city (of Abomey) is about eight miles in circumference, surrounded by a ditch, about five feet deep, filled with prickly acacia.” There are six gates and two grinning skulls are mounted on the gate posts. Inside each gate is “a pile
“In the palace at Cannah the legs of the throne rest on the skulls of four conquered princes.”—Canot [Editor’s note: Hurston may have used another edition of Canot’s work in which the statement is a direct quote. In the edition which follows, a similar statement is made about the throne of the king of Dahomey: “Each of its legs rests on the skull of some native king or chief.” (Theodore Canot and Brantz Mayer, Adventures of an African Slaver: Being a True Account of the Life of Captain Theodore Canot, Trader in Gold, Ivory and Slaves on the Coast of Guinea, ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, [1854] 1928; Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Legacy Reprints, 2012), 260.)]
“The walls of the palace of Dange-lah-cordeh are surmounted, at a distance of twenty feet, with human skulls.” Forbes, p. 73. [Editor’s note: Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 75.]
Author’s note: The author has been informed by natives of Nigeria and Gold coast that it is the custom to carry home the heads of all the people a warrior has killed in battle. He is not allowed to speak of any victory unless he has the heads to show. Mr. Effiom Duke, Calabar district, Nigeria, says that when he was last in Nigeria, less than fifteen years ago, there were skulls lying around so new that the hair was still upon them.
3(1) There is a festival held in May and June in honor of trade “with music, dancing, singing.” (Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, p. 16) [Editor’s note: This footnote was typed at the bottom of page 55 in the original typescript. See Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 18.]
4[Editor’s note: Kossola’s description here of the route he and his compatriots took to the barracoons at Ouidah differs from the route he illustrated for Roche (Historic Sketches, 88–89). The routes contradict each other and are otherwise problematic logistically. Diouf suggests two possible explanations: “People coming from different regions took different routes that somehow got conflated when they recounted their march to the sea several decades later; and fading recollections. Although Cudjo had an excellent memory, it is one thing to vividly remember indelible events such as the raid, the march, or the barracoon; it is another to recall the names of towns one had never seen before, especially under such circumstances” (Dreams of Africa in Alabama, 49).]