Colonial Ways of Life - Document Overview
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Colonization was both a destructive and constructive act. While immigrants and Native Americans often sought to purge themselves of undesireable elements, whether of the Old World or New, they also experimented with and embraced new ideas and different ways of doing things. Cultural transference—ideas, methods, and products transmitted from one side of the Atlantic to the other or from one group of people to another—was thus neither complete nor unilateral. This was especially true for the colonists. In the process of establishing their interpretations of European civilization in the new settlements, the colonists laid some of the foundations for an American civilization: they constructed what they believed to be intellectually desirable and environmentally necessary social, conceptual, and institutional structures within the frontier that was America.
A variety of factors influenced the formation of colonial society and culture, including the beliefs and social ranks of the immigrants, the people who came as leaders and those who became ones, the need or desire for laborers (both free and unfree), the impact of the land and its peoples upon them, and their impact on the same. The colonists did not always recognize changes as they occurred; but when they did, reactions ranged from satisfied acceptance to dismay, denial, or determined rejection. Yet whether fully conscious of it or not, the colonists felt a freedom to experiment with ideas, both those imported and domestic. This experimentation was seen in the public domain of government, the public and private spheres of gender relations, and in the spiritual realm of religion.
Colonization meant hard work and hard times for everyone, but the tasks and rewards differed according to one's rank, religion, region, and, as it turned out, race. Most colonists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in accord with their contemporaries across the ocean, believed that social hierarchy, strict legal codes, and uniform religious beliefs and practices were essential to public order. This appeared to be especially true in early New England when civil and religious authorities collaborated to impose order in the wilderness. Religious equality among the saints was not supposed to translate into social equality. People were still expected to act according to their place, and that place was proscribed by birth, worth, gender, and age.
The colonists faced both internal and external threats to the maintenance of an English or European-style civilization in the colonies. Nonconformists represented the former while Indians represented the latter kind of menace. Native Americans attacked and tried to eliminate the threat that the immigrant groups posed to their persons, property, and cultures. Some of the settlers taken prisoner over the course of the numerous raids died in captivity, others decided that they preferred the Indian way of life and stayed (such rejection was a feared and despised rebuttal to a vaunted European superiority), while still others were eventually released or managed to escape. A few of those who returned, as they embraced even more fervently their society's beliefs and lifestyles, narrated accounts that were then used not only as cautionary tales to prove the natives to be enemies, but as allegories to describe the struggle between good and evil, civilization and barbarism, on the cultural frontier.
The struggle to survive and prosper did affect traditional gender relations to a certain degree, and to a lesser extent gender perceptions, but it did not halt the perennial conflicts between the sexes. Indeed, there are indications that as the colonists became more secure in the American provinces the more likely they were to insist upon maintaining separate roles or spheres for men and women. Some women, such as Anne Bradstreet, chafed at (though they did not rebel against) these strictures, while some men, such as Benjamin Franklin, rather smugly celebrated them (even as he occasionally challenged them). But for most people, the issue of greatest importance to gender relations was marriage to a good wife or provident husband. Bradstreet and Franklin not only noted that but commented upon and taught values by way of aphorisms. A few of their axioms included advice on gender issues, but they passed on many others that reveal the culture of everyday life and the development of beliefs that some Americans espouse to this day.
In the eighteenth century, colonial culture—the developing Anglo- or Euro-American civilization—was affected by two major cultural movements: the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. Although there were some European Enlightenment philosophers who advocated radical social change, most provincials tended to adopt more moderate interpretations; but they not only professed these new ideas, they acted upon them. The emphasis on reason during the Enlightenment caused some people to question their religious beliefs and practices, but it also gave ministers, and others, new ways to answer those questions as well as counter the challenges raised by life in an increasingly complex and consumerist society. Ultimately, however, the Great Awakening focused not on the human ability to reason—an ability that varied from person to person—as the way to understand and command the natural order, but on revelation—a most democratic gift embraced by many Americans—as the route by which to comprehend God's design.
Many colonists credited God's design for the creation and expansion of Euro-American culture, but some also recognized that it was due to human design—and human accident. With some divinely inspired and others not, the colonists created a new, amalgam culture within the British empire.
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From the Secret Diary of William Byrd (1709)
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What follows are selected entries from the diary of William Byrd, a gentleman from Virginia who is representative of the southern landed aristocracy. Byrd's diary was kept in a secret shorthand and discovered only in the twentieth century. It provides insight into the mind of a southern gentleman. Byrd's diary also lets us see the daily schedule and the thoughts of a gentleman. Byrd committed to his diary some of his most private thoughts and actions. These entries focus especially on Byrd's relationship with his wife, his treatment of servants, his daily diet, his description of medical practices, and his observations of nature.
[September 1709] . . .About one o'clock this morning my wife was happily delivered of a son, thanks be to God Almighty. I was awake in a blink and rose and my cousin Harrison met me on the stairs and told me it was a boy. We drank some French wine and went to bed again and rose at 7 o'clock. I read a chapter in Hebrew and then drank chocolate with the women for breakfast. I returned God humble thanks for so great a blessing and recommended my young son to His divine protection.
[October 1709] I rose at 6 o'clock and said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. Then I proceeded to Williamsburg, where I found all well. I went to the capitol where I sent for the wench to clean my room and when I came I kissed her and felt her, for which God forgive me. The I went to see the President, whom I found indisposed in his ears. I dined with . . . on beef. Then we went to his house and played at piquet where Mr. Clayton came to us. We had much to do to get a bottle of French wine. About 10 o'clock I went to my lodgings. I had good health but wicked thoughts, God forgive me.
[February 1710] I rose at 8 o'clock and read nothing because of my company. I neglected to say my prayers, for which God forgive me. I ate milk for breakfast. Then we took a walk about the plantation till it was time to go to dinner. I ate fish for dinner. In the afternoon we saw a good battle between a stallion and Robin about the mare, but at last the stallion had the advantage and covered the mare three times. The Captain's bitch killed another lamb for which she was beat very much. We took another walk about the plantation. My maid Anaka was very well again, thank God, and so was Moll at the quarters. My wife was out of humor with us for going to see so filthy a sight as the horse to cover the mare. In the evening we drank a bottle of wine and were very merry till 9 o'clock. I neglected to say my prayers but had good health, good thoughts, and good humor, thanks be to God Almighty.
[March 1710] I rose at 7 o'clock and read some Greek in bed. I said my prayers and ate milk for breakfast. The about 8 o'clock we got a-horseback and rode to Mr. Harrison's and found him very ill but sensible . . . In the morning early I returned home and went to bed. It is remarkable that Mrs. Burwell dreamed this night that she saw a person that with money scales weighed time and declared that there was no more than 18 pennies worth of time to come, which seems to be a dream with some significance either concerning the world or a sick person. In my letters from England I learned that the Bishop of Worcester was of opinion that in the year 1715 the city of Rome would be burned to the ground, that before the year 1745 the popish religion would be routed out of the world, that before the year 1790 the Jews and Gentiles would be converted to the Christianity and then would begin the millennium.
[From Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinlin (eds.), The
Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712 (Richmond, Va.: Dietz Press, 1941), pp. 80, 90-91, 146, 159, 197, 210-11, 488, 492, 499.)]
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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)
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Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), a Congregational minister in New England, was certainly exposed to Enlightenment thought and intellectual vigor as well as to the methodology it engendered, but he had also been educated in the rich, challenging Calvinist theology of the earlier Puritan church. Edwards believed that people had fallen away from the demanding faith, with its emphasis on God's grace, that was so essential to their salvation. With that in mind, this great theologian began a revival in his Northampton, Massachusetts, church in the 1730s that became part of the general revival movement called the Great Awakening. To awaken people's faith and belief in the majesty of God, he presented both positive and negative images of God's power. He wanted people to feel God's presence, not just think about it.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours.
You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince, and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else that you did not got to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God provoking his pure eye by your sinful, wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell.
O sinner! consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of Divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder. . . .
It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see along forever a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul. And you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages in wrestling with this Almighty, merciless vengeance. And then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point [dot] to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite.
Oh! who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it. It is inexpressible and inconceivable: for "who knows the power of God's anger"!
How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh! that you would consider it, whether you be young or old!
There is reason to think that there are many in this congregation, now hearing this discourse, that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape.
If we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him!
But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell! And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house, in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning!
[From Jonathan Edwards,
The Works of President Edwards, vol. 6 (1817; New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), pp. 458, 461–62. [Editorial insertions appear in square brackets—Ed.]]
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From the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
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Benjamin Franklin was the foremost disciple of the Enlightenment in the colonies; moreover he was recognized in the sophisticated intellectual circles of Europe for his scientific experiments and his scientific knowledge. The passages selected here from his autobiography emphasize his philosophical reactions to some of the popular concepts of the Enlightenment. They also reflect some of his ideas about a daily schedule.
This library afforded me the means of improvement by constant study, for which I set apart an hour or two each day; and thus repair'd in some degree the loss of the learned education my father once intended for me. Reading was the only amusement I allowed myself. I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolics of any kind; and my industry in my business continued as indefatigable as it was necessary. I was indebted for my printing house; I had a young family coming on to be educated, and I had two competitors to contend with for business, who were established in the place before me. My circumstances, however, grew daily easier. My original habits of frugality continuing, and my father having among his instructions to me when a boy, frequently repeated a proverb of Solomon, "Sees thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men." I thence considered industry as a means of obtaining wealth and distinction, which encouraged me, though I did not think that I should ever literally stand before kings, which, however, has since happened; for I have stood before five, and even had the honor of sitting down with one the King of Denmark to dinner.
We have an English proverb that says, "He that would thrive, must ask his wife." It was lucky for me that I had one as much dispos'd to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully in my business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the paper makers. We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea) and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon, but mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress, in spite of principle; being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon of silver. They had been bought for me without my knowledge by my wife, and had cost her the enormous sum of three and twenty shillings, for which she had no other excuse or apology to make, but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate and china in our house, which afterward, in a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.
I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; but though some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, etc. appeared to me unintelligible, and I early absented myself from the public assemblies of the sect (Sunday being my studying day) I never was without some religious principles; I never doubted, for instance, the existence of a Deity, that he made the word, and governed it by his providence; that the most acceptable service of God as the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal, and that all crimes will be punished, and virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter. . . .
Though I seldom attended any public worship, I had still an opinion of its propriety, and of its utility when rightly conducted, and I regularly paid my annual subscription for the support of the only Presbyterian minister or meeting we had in Philadelphia. . . .
It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection; I wished to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into .. . . But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined.
The precept of Order requiring that every part of my business should have its allotted time, one page in my little book contained the following scheme of employment for the twenty-four hours of a natural day.
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A Woman's Pen by Anne Bradstreet
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Anne Dudley Bradstreet (c. 1612/13–1672) married Simon Bradstreet in 1628 and migrated to Massachusetts with him and her family, the Dudleys, in 1630. Both her father, Thomas Dudley, and her husband became governors of the colony. This extremely talented woman, who was well-educated and encouraged by her family, wrote some of the most sophisticated poetry that is still in existence from the seventeenth century. She composed these pieces even as she raised a family and helped build a community in the wilderness. Bradstreet published a book of formal poetry, The Tenth Muse, in 1650, but also wrote lyrical poetry that was published after her death. Much of the latter relates to her family, showing her great love for her parents, spouse, and eight children.
In the prologue to The Tenth Muse (1650)
* * *
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who sayes, my hand a needle better fits,
A Poets Pen, all scorne, I should thus wrong;
For such despight they cast on female wits:
If what I doe prove well, it wo'nt advance,
They'l say its stolne, or else, it was by chance.
From Several Poems
(posthumous publication, 1678)
To the Memory of my dear and ever honoured Father Thomas Dudley Esq; Who deceased, July 31, 1653. and of his Age, 77.
* * *
Well known and lov'd, where ere he liv'd, by
most
Both in his native, and in foreign coast,
These to the world his merits could make
known,
So needs no Testimonial from his own;
But now or never I must pay my Sum;
While others tell his worth, I'le not be dumb:
One of thy Founders, him New-England know,
Who staid thy feeble sides when thou wast low,
Who spent his state, his strength, & years with
care
That After-comers in them might have share.
True Patriot of this little Commonweal,
Who is't can tax thee ought, but for thy zeal?
Truths friend thou wert, to errors still a foe,
Which caus'd Apostates to maligne so.
Thy love to true Religion e're shall shine,
My Fathers God, be God of me and mine.
* * *
No ostentation seen in all his wayes,
As in the mean ones, of our foolish dayes,
Which all they have, and more still set to view,
Their greatness may be judg'd by what they
shew.
His thoughts were more sublime, his actions
wise,
Such vanityes he justly did despise.
Nor wonder 'twas, low things ne'r much did
move
For he a Mansion had, prepar'd above,
For which he sigh'd and pray'd & long'd full
sore
He might be cloath'd upon, for evermore.
* * *
An Epitaph
On my dear and ever honoured Mother Mrs. Dorothy Dudley, Who deceased Decemb. 27. 1643. and of her age, 61.
Here lyes, A worthy Matron of unspotted life,
A loving Mother and obedient wife,
A friendly Neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store:
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true Instructer of her Family,
The which she ordered with dexterity.
The publick meetings ever did frequent,
And in her Closet constant hours she spent:
Religious in all her words and wayes,
Preparing still for death, till end of dayes:
Of all her Children, Children, liv'd to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.
To my Dear and loving Husband
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more then whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love lets so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.
[From Joseph R. McElrath, Jr. and Allan P. Robb, eds.,
The Complete Works of Anne Bradstreet (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981), pp. 7, 165–67, 180.]
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An African Narrative by Olaudah Equiano (1791)
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While there was land aplenty in America, the key to the American dream of prosperity was labor: one's own and others'. The primary labor group was the family, but added to those laborers tied by marriage and birth were those tied by wages ("free" laborers), contracts (indentured servants), and coercion (slaves). Although Indian and African slavery had been part of the colonization process in the Americas since the conquistadores, the importation and use of African slaves in the English mainland colonies did not commence in earnest until the late seventeenth century. The exploitation of enslaved Africans and their descendants then increased tremendously in the eighteenth century, especially in the southern colonies, although slaves were found in every colony.
First African and then European traders carried Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797), an Ibo of Nigeria, into the trap of trans-Atlantic slavery when he was a boy of eleven. Slavery as an institution was not new to Equiano; his father had slaves, but he found that the Euro-American concept of slavery was different from the African one. Equiano survived the passage from Africa to the colonies and was bought by a Virginia planter, and shortly thereafter, by an English naval officer. He served on warships during the Seven Years' War and then, as the property of a Quaker merchant, participated in the trade between the West Indies and the southern colonies. Equiano bought his freedom in 1766 and supported himself as a sailor. His life did not parallel the lives of most of those enslaved, for he learned to read and write and gained his own liberty. Greatly influenced by evangelical ministers who preached the equality of souls, he used his freedom and education to work for the abolition of slavery.
* * *
The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast, was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions, too, differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard), united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country. When I looked round the ship too, and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little, I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who had brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain. . . .
I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across, I think, the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. . . .
In a little time after, amongst the poor chained men, I found some of my own nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind. I inquired of these what was to be done with us? They gave me to understand, we were to be carried to these white people's country to work for them. I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate; but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves. One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast, that he died in consequence of it; and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute. This made me fear these people the more; and I expected nothing less than to be treated in the same manner. . . .
* * *
At last, when the ship we were in, had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel. But this disappointment was the least of my sorrow. The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died—thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now became insupportable, and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. Happily perhaps, for myself, I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck; and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. . . .
* * *
One day, when we had a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through the nettings and jumped into the sea; immediately, another quite dejected fellow, who, on account of his illness, was suffered to be out of irons, also followed their example; and I believe many more would very soon have done the same, if they had not been prevented by the ship's crew, who were instantly alarmed. Those of us that were the most active, were in a moment put down under the deck; and there was such a noise and confusion amongst the people of the ship as I never heard before, to stop her, and get the boat out to go after the slaves. However, two of the wretches were drowned, but they got the other, and afterwards flogged him unmercifully, for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery. In this manner we continued to undergo more hardships than I can now relate, hardships which are inseparable from this accursed trade. Many a time we were near suffocation from the want of fresh air, which we were often without for whole days together. This, and the stench of the necessary tubs, carried off many.
* * *
At last we came in sight of the island of Barbadoes, at which the whites on board gave a great shout, and made many signs of joy to us. We did not know what to think of this; but as the vessel drew nearer, we plainly saw the harbor, and other ships of different kinds and sizes, and we soon anchored amongst them, off Bridgetown. Many merchants and planters now came on board, though it was in the evening. They put us in separate parcels, and examined us attentively. They also made us jump, and pointed to the land, signifying we were to go there. We thought by this, we should be eaten by these ugly men, as they appeared to us; and, when soon after we were all put down under the deck again, there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but bitter cries to be heard all the night from these apprehensions, insomuch, that at last the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go on land, where we should see many of our country people. This report eased us much. And sure enough, soon after we were landed, there came to us Africans of all languages.
We were conducted immediately to the merchant's yard, where we were all pent up together, like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age. . . .
We were not many days in the merchant's custody, before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this: On a signal given (as the beat of a drum), the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamor with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehension of terrified Africans, who may well be supposed to consider them as the ministers of that destruction to which they think themselves devoted. In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again.
* * *
I stayed in this island for a few days, I believe it could not be above a fortnight, when I, and some few more slaves that were not saleable amongst the rest, from very much fretting, were shipped off in a sloop for North America. On the passage we were better treated than when we were coming from Africa, and we had plenty of rice and fat pork. We were landed up a river a good way from the sea, about Virginia county, where we saw few or none of our native Africans, and not one soul who could talk to me. I was a few weeks weeding grass and gathering stones in a plantation; and at last all my companions were distributed different ways, and only myself was left. I was now exceedingly miserable, and thought myself worse off than any of the rest of my companions, for they could talk to each other, but I had no person to speak to that I could understand. In this state, I was constantly grieving and pining, and wishing for death rather than anything else.
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[From Olaudah Equiano,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself, ed. Robert J. Allison (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1995), pp. 53–59.]
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