Twelve Years a Slave - Enhanced Edition (42 page)

164.
Before the Civil War there were sugar mills, which varied in size, an estimated every mile and a half apart along the bayou from Washington to Cheneyville. Almost all were destroyed during the invasion of Bayou Boeuf in 1863 and 1864.

P.A. Champomier does not list a Hawkins Mill in his publication, known as the authority on Louisiana sugar mills, 1849-1850. A large Rapides sugar mill is listed as Lambeth and Maddox. In Avoyelles, Lambeth is listed with sugar production at Leinster Plantation (Lambeth and Wells); on Bayou Huffpower at Meredith Plantation (Lambeth and H.P. Robert) and with another on Bayou Clair, and Lambeth and Cullum on Lucky Hit Plantation [See Champomier; and William Lambeth, U.S. Census of Avoyelles Parish, 1850]. Champomier also published such statements for 1840-49; 1850-51; and 1851-1852].

165.
The amount of free time available to slaves varied from plantation to plantation according to the owner. The regulation on a given plantation had a great deal to do with how much of their food the slave or the master was expected to furnish. Gray writes:

Slaves were never expected, however, to provide all of their food from their gardens, as in some of the West India Islands. Probably the nearest approach to this in the South was in Louisiana, under the French regime, where masters sometimes gave slaves all of Saturday and Sunday to work on slave crops, but suspended their rations in those days. [See Gray, 564]

Louisiana has many rainy days, and these would have had some effect on free time as well. Field work was not possible, and the limited amount of work that could be accomplished under shelters would have given some free time to the slave. Still, of course, as Gray states: “The actual wellbeing of slaves, however, was dependent not so much on laws as on the humane instincts and economic interest of the master, and the power of neighborhood opinion. The latter was undoubtedly an important source of protection” [See Gray, 517].

166.
Christmas celebrations were not the only entertainment slaves enjoyed. Most forms of entertainment depended upon the slave himself or herself and their ability to make the most of any time afforded them from work. The African tradition of oral expression and movement in interpreting emotions proved a priceless legacy in surviving the restraints imposed by slavery.

According to other sources, Christmas was by no means the only time for celebrating. The diary of a soldier of the Seventy-Fifth New York Regiment of Infantry, edited by historian Walter Prichard, had this entry:

—Tuesday 19th (1864)—

Staid in camp all day. We are in the district that formed the theatre of Solomon Northup’s bondage. Old Epps’ plantation is a few miles down the Bayou and Epps himself is on his plantation, a noted man made famous by the circumstances of his owning Solomon Northup. Plenty of Negroes are found about here who say that they knew Platt well and have danced to the music of his fiddle often. [See Prichard, “Forest Diary of the 75
^th
New York Regiment”]

The houses of the slaves formed villages. Blacks congregated on their front galleries during the evenings to relax and talk among themselves.

167.
There was a wealth of food available in the streams and in the woods. “No objections are made to hunting,” [See
Twelve Years a Slave
, 200] and fishing in the Boeuf and other streams nearby was a part of life.

168.
Solomon/Platt’s remembrance of the Christmas music provides a record of the rap music of that day. Modern rap traces its roots back through such early African-American music and then further to Africa:

The beginnings of rap music are to be found hundreds of years ago and an ocean away from the black urban neighborhoods of the United States. In many West African countries, music-making was the province of the griots, male and female professional singers and storytellers who performed using a variety of techniques against a background of drums and other musical instruments. Among the techniques used by a griot was call and response, in which a solo verse line is alternated [answered] by a choral response of a short phrase or word.

Griots were entertainers, keepers of history, and commentators on events of the present. “A griot is required to sing on demand the history of a tribe or family for seven generations,” Paul Oliver writes, “and, in particular areas, to be totally familiar with the songs of ritual necessary to summon spirits and gain the sympathy of ancestors. . . He also must have the ability to extemporize on current events, chance incidents, and the passing scene. [Griots’] wit can be devastating and their knowledge of local history formidable.” The griot’s position in society was that of keeper of records and more. Griots were highly esteemed, and as Wolfgang Bender observes, “The Griots are highly referred to as the archives and libraries of this part of Africa. Thus the famous proverb, ‘whenever a griot dies, a library dies.’” They were interpreters of current politics, transmitting messages and orders from the governing power to the people. As musicians with contacts with other musicians outside the court, they were able to learn the opinion of common people and could convey sentiments of the populace to the ruler.

In an oral culture, a culture without written records, a griot held a place of great importance. [See Haskins, 13-15]

Evidently Solomon Northup did not describe the singing and dancing among the black people that was omnipresent. Perhaps its very omnipresence is why he didn’t bring that to the ghost writer’s attention. Those gifts of oral expression came as a priceless part of their cultural inheritance from generations of ancestors. It was spontaneous. It was universal among them. I wrote about it in the 1930s on Bayou Boeuf:

. . . the sound of those Negro voices singing still echoes over the years. Many a summer night when the windows were flung open everywhere to catch what breezes might stray through the bayou country, I have sat, enthralled, and heard the clear sweet voices ring out from St. Philip Baptist Church at Loyd Bridge in what to me is unrivaled beauty. They sang for me too, and I knew the tragedy and beauty and joy and misery of plantation life. So I felt with the surge and flow of life’s ecstasy and pain, so exquisitely blended, the music they poured into the warm air of the old country church. The words didn’t matter so much; you got the whole story from the sound of it! One memorable day my grandmother walked with me across the bayou to the home of a mother and daughters acting out a little drama on their own gallery.

The vivid portrayals of Bible stories, told in the bayou lingo, were superb. If there were names to those songs, nobody knew them; but I remember especially the brilliant spectacle drawn by five women singing in a manner so convincing that you walked right through the pearly gates with them.

The five—if you are under the spell of the old folk song—have just been admitted through the gates of heaven. Gabriel has blown his horn, and St. Peter has checked them off his list. They are standing, dazzled at the splendor and beauty that surrounds them.

The youngest of the five is the first to speak. “Sit down,” she suggests to the other four. Perhaps she is tired from the journey all the way from earth to heaven.

“No, Chile . . . No, Chile . . . No, Chile . . . No. Can’t sit down,” the four answer musically.

The younger cannot understand. “Sit down,” she urges.

“No, Chile, No, I can’t sit down—Just got to heaven; Want to walk around . . .”

It is the oldest of the five who sings the response, all the time swinging her arms rhythmically and clicking her fingers until you can fairly see her beginning her eager inspection of heaven’s wonders.

Poignantly beautiful is the moving Negro chant which must undoubtedly have been revived by slaves in the cotton fields from memories of African life and passed down through the ages. No one can easily imitate this strange chant—though it is not really a chant at all, for there are no words. Neither is it mere humming, for the crescendo in its loudest cry is an intense lament which always ends in the same note of abysmal despair and utter futility. Perhaps the Negro first wordlessly expressed in this strange new land his unhappiness, but in those plaintive tones lie the expression of the elemental grief and misery of us all . . .

Life as represented in the folk songs and sermons I remember, was almost always depicted as a long travel ending in the sky. Perhaps these were but bayou adaptations of written songs someone had heard and brought back to the bayou country, but it always sounded to me like one group of songs was composed when the railroad first went through the bayou side in the 1880s.

Negroes sang at work or at play, in kitchens, in the fields, walking along bayou roads, frolicking under the moonlight on warm evenings. Whatever the song and wherever the singer, the songs contained the enduring charm of being vibrant with the attitude, the life philosophy, and passions of an expression of hungry people . . .

Although there were, perhaps, folk songs identifiable with all the plantation-south, it seems much more likely that each pocket of plantation culture, varying widely from one to another, held within it its own unique repertoire of Negro folk songs. These from the Bayou Boeuf country probably had their counterparts wherever there were plantation communities, and undoubtedly some songs took hold and spread over wider areas to other communities. But wherever they are sung, they are a priceless part of our great American heritage, and the contribution of the plantation Negroes, which, we hope, is being preserved. [See Eakin, 24]

169.
Recognition of marriages by slave masters often took place. In the Avoyelles Parish records (those in Rapides Parish were burned during the burning of Alexandria by Union forces in 1864) there are many records of slave marriages that lasted a lifetime. The law forbade blacks and whites to legally marry, but that did not preclude alliances that also produced stable marriages.

An example of a plantation wedding is given in records that include the testimony of William O’Neal in a civil suit over inheritance among members of his family:

My brother and Lucinda were married in 1851. I was at the marriage and witnessed the ceremony. Mr. Charles Johnson performed the marriage ceremony on his plantation where Mr. Peter Butler now lives in Rapides Parish, La. Mr. Johnson was the master of Lucinda and Mr. Alonzo Roberts the master of my brother. Charles was also present and witnessed the ceremony. He was then overseeing for Mr. Johnson. These owners gave Charles and Lucinda a big wedding and supper, as stated in William O’Neal’s testimony. [See Jacobs vs. O’Neal]

During the same trial, Lucinda Anderson testified:

Charles Smith, the son of Laura Smith and the father of Lauretta, and myself were married in the parlor of my mistress Mrs. Martha Johnson wife of Mr. Charles Johnson in 1851 in Rapides Parish. We had a big wedding and supper. At the same time my sister-in-law Harriet Brooks married Martin Williams. Mr. Charles Johnson married us. He was my master. My master always performed the marriage ceremony when his servants got married. There was a big crowd present and my master and mistress gave us a fine supper. [Lucinda Anderson testimony, Judy Jacobs versus William O’Neal, Judicial Case Number 4142, Term 1893, 10th Judicial District Court, State of Louisiana, Rapides Parish]

Chapter Sixteen

170.
William Ford, Edwin Epps, and Eldred had plantations of 200-300 acres.

171.
There were laws to protect slaves from cruelty and there is evidence they were enforced in Louisiana. For instance, in 1854 Attorney John Waddill in Marksville was employed by a man to defend him against the charge of being cruel to a slave: “March 26 Today Jean Baptiste Ducote, employed me to defend him in the case of the
State vs. Jean Bapt. Ducote
, for cruel treatment to a slave. Paul St. Romain acted as his interpreter. my fee at $50” [See Waddill, 145].

172.
Healthy cane cutters were vital to the harvesting of the crop, which was always threatened with a freeze that might render it an entire loss, and the planters generally would have made certain that their slaves were fed and rested enough to maintain productivity.

173.
It is likely there was precious little note paper in most Bayou Boeuf homes except the amount used to write infrequent letters. The exception would have been the homes of large planters, doctors, lawyers and other professionals.

174.
Though Solomon refers to Shaw’s slave wife as Charlotte here, in Chapter 18 her name is given as Harriet.

175.
Miasma is a thick vapor that was thought to be poisonous, “harmful to health or morals,” according to the
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Chapter Seventeen

176.
From the Avoyelles Parish Police Jury Meeting, 1842:

Sec. 2. . . . the same [captain of the patrol] shall and is hereby authorized to keep a strict Police order over the slaves apprehended in his district, and therefore shall and is hereby authorized to examine Negro huts if they shall deem necessary, take up and punish Slaves that they may find away from their Master’s premises without a permit, provided however that slaves driving wagons, carts, etc. having about them evidence to justify a belief that they are on their Masters’ Service with their owner’s permission, shall not come under the provision. Edwin Epps was appointed a road overseer—a patroller—in 1843. [See Minutes]

177.
Dogs were plentiful on Bayou Boeuf, mostly used for hunting.

178.
Solomon is referring to the property of three prominent brothers named Keary [See endnote 115].

179.
Stocks [See endnote 101] stood on the ground. Some of the panels were made with holes for the individuals to place their legs, while others included holes spaced for both arms and legs.

180.
There were stories among slaves that if one could escape into Texas, considered to be Mexican territory long after it belonged to the United States, the Mexican government would emancipate them. As a fifteen year-old slave, William O’Neal decided to try to escape on a pony. He found an older man named Russ, a slave of Hadley Roberts, who might be interested in going with him. O’Neal describes this scene in his book: