Barracoon Read online

  Mason’s support of Hurston’s efforts with Barracoon extended to monetary contributions to Kossola’s welfare. Mason and Kossola would eventually communicate directly with each other, and Kossola would come to consider Mason a “dear friend.” As one letter suggests, Kossola was struggling financially. It had come to Mason’s attention that Kossola had used excerpts from his copy of Hurston’s narrative to gain financial compensation from local newspapers. Kossola dictated a letter to Mason in response to her concern:

  Dear friend you may have seen in the papers about my History. But this has been over three years since I has let anyone take it off to copy from it. I only did that so they would help me. But there is no one did for me as you has. The lord will Bless you and will give you a long Life. Where there’s no more parting, yours in Christ. Cudjo Lewis.14

  As Mason was protective of Hurston’s professional interests, both women remained concerned about Kossola’s welfare. Having discovered that Kossola was not receiving money that Mason had mailed to him, Hurston looked into the matter. She updated Mason accordingly:

  I have written to Claudia Thornton to check up on Kossula and all about things. I have also asked the Post Office at Plateau to check any letters coming to Cudjoe Lewis from New York.15

  As Hurston checked on Kossola, she continued revising the manuscript. “Second writing of Kossula all done and about typed,” she wrote Mason on January 12, 1931. On April 18, she was enthusiastic: “At last ‘Barracoon’ is ready for your eyes.”16 Appreciative of Mason’s support, Hurston dedicated the book to her and began submitting it to publishers. In September 1931, she contemplated Viking’s proposal: “The Viking press again asks for the Life of Kossula, but in language rather than dialect. It lies here and I know your mind about that and so I do not answer them except with your tongue.”17 The dialect was a vital and authenticating feature of the narrative. Hurston would not submit to such revision. Perhaps, as Langston Hughes wrote in The Big Sea, the Negro was “no longer in vogue,” and publishers like Boni and Viking were unwilling to take risks on “Negro material” during the Great Depression.18

  THE GRIOT

  There seems to be a note of disappointment in the historian Sylviane Diouf’s revelation that Hurston submitted Barracoon to various publishers, “but it never found a taker, and has still not been published.”19 Hurston’s manuscript is an invaluable historical document, as Diouf points out, and an extraordinary literary achievement as well, despite the fact that it found no takers during her lifetime. In it, Zora Neale Hurston found a way to produce a written text that maintains the orality of the spoken word. And she did so without imposing herself in the narrative, creating what some scholars classify as orature. Contrary to the literary biographer Robert Hemenway’s dismissal of Barracoon as Hurston’s re-creation of Kossola’s experience, the scholar Lynda Hill writes that “through a deliberate act of suppression, she resists presenting her own point of view in a natural, or naturalistic, way and allows Kossula ‘to tell his story in his own way.’”20

  Zora Neale Hurston was not only committed to collecting artifacts of African American folk culture, she was also adamant about their authentic presentation. Even as she rejected the objective-observer stance of Western scientific inquiry for a participant-observer stance, Hurston still incorporated standard features of the ethnographic and folklore-collecting processes within her methodology. Adopting the participant-observer stance is what allowed her to collect folklore “like a new broom.”21 As Hill points out, Hurston was simultaneously working and learning, which meant, ultimately, that she was not just mirroring her mentors, but coming into her own.

  Embedded in the narrative of Barracoon are those aspects of ethnography and folklore collecting that reveal Hurston’s methodology and authenticate Kossola’s story as his own, rather than as a fiction of Hurston’s imagination. The story, in the main, is told from Kossola’s first-person point of view. Hurston transcribes Kossola’s story, using his vernacular diction, spelling his words as she hears them pronounced. Sentences follow his syntactical rhythms and maintain his idiomatic expressions and repetitive phrases. Hurston’s methods respect Kossola’s own storytelling sensibility; it is one that is “rooted ‘in African soil.’” “It would be hard to make the case that she entirely invented Kossula’s language and, consequently, his emerging persona,” comments Hill.22 And it would be an equally hard case to make that she created the life events chronicled in Kossola’s story.

  Even as Hurston has her own idea about how a story is to be told, Kossola has his. Hurston is initially impatient with Kossola’s talk about his father and grandfather, for instance. But Kossola’s proverbial wisdom adjusts her attitude: “Where is de house where de mouse is de leader?”23

  Hurston complained in Dust Tracks on a Road of Kossola’s reticence. Yet her patience in getting his story is quite apparent in the narrative. She is persistent in her returning to his home even when Kossola petulantly sends her away. He doesn’t always talk when she comes, but rather chooses to tend his garden or repair his fence. And sometimes her time with him is spent driving Kossola into town. Sometimes he is lost in his memories.

  Recording such moments within the body of the narrative not only structures the overall narrative flow of events but reveals the behavioral patterns of her informant. As Hurston is not just an observer, she fully participates in the process of “helping Kossula to tell his story.” “In writing his story,” says Hill, “Hurston does not romanticize or in any way imply that ideals such as self-fulfillment or fully realized self-expression could emerge from such suffering as Kossula has known. Hurston does not interpret his comments, except when she builds a transition from one interview to the next, in her footnotes, and at the end when she summarizes.”24 The story Hurston gathers is presented in such a way that she, the interlocutor, all but disappears. The narrative space she creates for Kossola’s unburdening is sacred. Rather than insert herself into the narrative as the learned and probing cultural anthropologist, the investigating ethnographer, or the authorial writer, Zora Neale Hurston, in her still listening, assumes the office of a priest. In this space, Oluale Kossola passes his story of epic proportion on to her.

  Deborah G. Plant

  Editor’s Note

  Zora Neale Hurston’s introduction to Barracoon has been edited to align with the conventions of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and usage. Contemporary spelling and usage have also been applied to names and places. In composing the introduction to her work, Hurston made a good-faith effort to document the source material she used to set the context for the Barracoon narrative. As she states in her preface, “For historical data, I am indebted to the Journal of Negro History, and to the records of the Mobile Historical Society.” She reiterates this acknowledgment in her introduction and alludes to the use of other “records.” Hurston drew from Emma Langdon Roche’s Historic Sketches, but she references this work indirectly, and her citation from this book, as well as the other sources she utilized, was inconsistent. Wherever there is a question regarding her use of paraphrase and direct quotation, I have revised the passage as a direct quote and have documented it accordingly.

  Regarding the actual narrative, I have read the original typescript in relation to earlier typed and handwritten drafts to produce a definitive text. Minor edits to the text were made in relation to the mechanics of typography, for purposes of clarity, or in the correction of apparent typos. Otherwise, the text remains as Hurston left it. I have made notations in the endnotes to present explanations or to provide full bibliographic data for sources Hurston used in her own notes. Such explanatory entries are labeled “Editor’s note” and are bracketed. All other notes are original to the manuscript. Hurston’s citations and footnotes have likewise been edited to align with conventional documentation style.

  D.G.P.

  The “Door of No Return” at La Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) at Gorée Island in Senegal, West Africa. Above the entryway: “Lord, give my people, w
ho have suffered so much, the strength to be great” (Joseph Ndiaye).

  Preface

  This is the life story of Cudjo Lewis, as told by himself. It makes no attempt to be a scientific document, but on the whole he is rather accurate. If he is a little hazy as to detail after sixty-seven years, he is certainly to be pardoned. The quotations from the works of travelers in Dahomey are set down, not to make this appear a thoroughly documented biography, but to emphasize his remarkable memory.

  Three spellings of his nation are found: Attako, Taccou, and Taccow. But Lewis’s pronunciation is probably correct. Therefore, I have used Takkoi throughout the work.

  I was sent by a woman of tremendous understanding of primitive peoples to get this story. The thought back of the act was to set down essential truth rather than fact of detail, which is so often misleading. Therefore, he has been permitted to tell his story in his own way without the intrusion of interpretation.

  For historical data, I am indebted to the Journal of Negro History, and to the records of the Mobile Historical Society.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  April 17, 1931

  Introduction

  The African slave trade is the most dramatic chapter in the story of human existence. Therefore a great literature has grown up about it. Innumerable books and papers have been written. These are supplemented by the vast lore that has been blown by the breath of inarticulate ones across the seas and lands of the world.

  Those who justified slaving on various grounds have had their say. Among these are several slave runners who have boasted of their exploits in the contraband flesh. Those who stood aloof in loathing have cried out against it in lengthy volumes.

  All the talk, printed and spoken, has had to do with ships and rations; with sail and weather; with ruses and piracy and balls between wind and water; with native kings and bargains sharp and sinful on both sides; with tribal wars and slave factories and red massacres and all the machinations necessary to stock a barracoon with African youth on the first leg of their journey from humanity to cattle; with storing and feeding and starvation and suffocation and pestilence and death; with slave ship stenches and mutinies of crew and cargo; with the jettying of cargoes before the guns of British cruisers; with auction blocks and sales and profits and losses.

  All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.

  Of all the millions transported from Africa to the Americas, only one man is left. He is called Cudjo Lewis and is living at present at Plateau, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile. This is the story of this Cudjo.

  I had met Cudjo Lewis for the first time in July 1927. I was sent by Dr. Franz Boas to get a firsthand report of the raid that had brought him to America and bondage, for Dr. Carter G. Woodson of the Journal of Negro History. I had talked with him in December of that same year and again in 1928. Thus, from Cudjo and from the records of the Mobile Historical Society, I had the story of the last load of slaves brought into the United States.

  The four men responsible for this last deal in human flesh, before the surrender of Lee at Appomattox should end the 364 years of Western slave trading, were the three Meaher brothers and one Captain [William “Bill”] Foster. Jim, Tim, and Burns Meaher were natives of Maine. They had a mill and shipyard on the Alabama River at the mouth of Chickasabogue Creek (now called Three-Mile Creek) where they built swift vessels for blockade running, filibustering expeditions, and river trade. Captain Foster was associated with the Meahers in business. He was “born in Nova Scotia of English parents.”1

  There are various reasons given for this trip to the African coast in 1859, with the muttering thunder of secession heard from one end of the United States to the other. Some say that it was done as a prank to win a bet. That is doubtful. Perhaps they believed with many others that the abolitionists would never achieve their ends. Perhaps they merely thought of the probable profits of the voyage and so undertook it.

  The Clotilda was the fastest boat in their possession, and she was the one selected to make the trip. Captain Foster seems to have been the actual owner of the vessel.2 Perhaps that is the reason he sailed in command. The clearance papers state that she was sailing for the west coast for a cargo of red palm oil. Foster had a crew of Yankee sailors and sailed directly for Whydah [Ouidah], the slave port of Dahomey.

  The Clotilda slipped away from Mobile as secretly as possible so as not to arouse the curiosity of the Government. It had a good voyage to within a short distance of the Cape Verde Islands. Then a hurricane struck and Captain Foster had to put in there for repairs.

  While he was on dry-dock, his crew mutinied. They demanded more pay under the threat of informing a British man-of-war that was at hand.

  Foster hurriedly promised the increase the sailors demanded. But his wife often told how he laughingly broke this promise when it was safe to do so. After the repairs had been made, he made presents to the Portuguese officials of shawls and other trinkets and sailed away unmolested.3

  Soon he was safely anchored in the Gulf of Guinea, before Whydah. There being no harbor, ships must stand in open roadstead and the communications with shore are carried on by Kroo men in their surf boats.

  Soon Captain Foster and his kegs of specie and trading goods were landed. “Six stalwart blacks” were delegated to meet him and conduct him into “the presence of a Prince of Dahomey,” but he did not meet the king.4

  Foster was borne in a hammock to the Prince, who received him seated on his stool of rank. He was gracious and hospitable, and had Foster shown “the sights of Whydah.”5 He was surrounded by evidence of great wealth, and Foster was impressed. He was particularly struck by a large square enclosure filled with thousands of snakes, which he was told had been collected for ceremonial purposes.

  The Prince expressed regret that Foster had arrived a little too late to witness the Dahomey “Custom” in honor of trade (foreign, i.e., mostly slave trade); nevertheless, he found Foster’s company so pleasant that he wished to make him a present. He therefore desired Foster to look about him and select a person, “one that the ‘superior wisdom and exalted taste’ of Foster designated the finest specimen.”6 Foster looked about him and chose a young man named Gumpa; “Foster making this selection with the intention of flattering the Prince, to whom Gumpa was nearly related.” This accounts for the one Dahoman in the cargo.7

  The ceremonies over, Foster had “little trouble in procuring a cargo.” The barracoons at Whydah were overflowing. “[I]t had long been a part of the traders’ policy to instigate the tribes against each other,” so that plenty of prisoners would be taken and “in this manner keep the markets stocked. News of the trade was often published in the papers.” An excerpt from the Mobile Register of November 9, 1858, said: “‘From the West coast of Africa we have advice dated September 21st. The quarreling of the tribes on Sierra Leone River rendered the aspect of things very unsatisfactory.’”8

  Inciting was no longer necessary in Dahomey. The King of Dahomey had long ago concentrated all his resources on the providing of slaves for the foreign market. There was “a brisk trade in slaves at from fifty to sixty dollars apiece at Whydah. Immense numbers of Negroes were collected along the coast for export.”9

  King Ghezo maintained a standing army “of about 12,000, and of these 5000 are Amazons.” The Dahoman year was divided into two parts—the wars and the festivals. “In the months of November or December the king commences his annual wars,” and these wars were kept up until January or February.10 These were never carried on for mere conquest. They were all forced upon the Dahomans from less powerful nations.

  The King boasted that he never attacked a people unless they had not only insulted Dahomey, but his own people must ask him for a war against the aggres
sors for “three successive years.” Then and then only would he let himself be persuaded to march forth and exterminate the insulting tribe. But there were so many insulting chiefs and kings that it kept the warriors of Dahomey, reluctant as they were, always upon the warpath. “[W]hole nation[s] are transported, exterminated, their name to be forgotten, except in the annual festival of their conquerors, when sycophants call the names of the vanquished countries to the remembrance of the victors.”11

  When the Dahoman king marched forth against a place, he concealed from his army “the name or the place against which he has brought them,” “until within a day’s march” of the goal. “Daylight is generally the time of onset, and every cunning, secrecy, and ingenuity is exercised to take the enemy by surprise.” With or without resistance, “all the aged were decapitated on the spot” and the youth driven to the barracoons at Whydah.12

  “On the return from war in January, the king resides at Cannah, and . . . ‘makes a Fetish,’” that is, he “sacrifices largely and gives liberal presents” to the people and, “at the same time, purchases the prisoners and heads from his soldiers” of those slain in war. (The heads are always cut off and carried home. No warrior may boast of more enemies slain than he has heads to show for.) “[T]he slaves are then sold to the slave merchants, and their blood-money wasted in the ensuing Custom, Hwae-nooeewha, as the great annual feast is entitled in Dahoman parlance.”13

  The most important feast is “held in March, and called See-que-ah-hee,” at which the king sacrifices many slaves and makes a great display of his wealth. There is a lesser festival in May or June “in honour of Trade” which is celebrated “with music, dancing, and singing.” In July is celebrated the royal “salute to the Fetish of the Great Waters.”14