We come now to the class of negro slaves, the most numerous but
least fortunate of all. The negro Creoles of the country, or born
in some other European colony, and sent hither, are the most
active, the most intelligent, and the least subject to chronic
distempers; but they are also the most indolent, vicious and
debauched.
Those who come from Guinea are less expert in domestic service,
and the mechanical arts, less intelligent, and oftener victims of
violent sickness or grief (particularly in the early part of
their transportation) but more robust, more laborious, more
adapted to the labours of the field, less deceitful and libertine
than the others. Such are the discriminative characteristics of
each, and as to the rest, there is a strong relation between
their moral and physical character.
Negroes are a species of beings whom nature seems to have
intended for slavery; their pliancy of temper, patience under
injury, and innate passiveness, all concur to justify this
position; unlike the savages or aborigines of America, who could
never be brought to servile controul.
This colony of Louisiana, offers a philosophic and instructive
spectacle on this subject, from which I shall make a number of
deductions. If nature had imparted the same instinct to negroes
that she has to savages, it is certain that, instead of
subjecting themselves mechanically to the eternal labours of the
field, and the discipline of an imperious task-master, they
would abandon those places (to which they are not chained), and
gaining the woods, encamp themselves in the interior of the
country; in this imitating the savages, or aborigines, who sooner
than live in the vicinity of the whites, retire at their
approach.
Is it the uncertainty of a subsistence in this new mode of life,
that deters them from undertaking it? They have never any
solicitude for their future support. Is it the fear of being
pursued and overtaken that is an obstacle to the project?
Ignorant as they are, they cannot but know that, protected by
almost impenetrable woods, and formidable in numbers, they might
set at defiance a handful of whites. Does the apprehension of
being combated by the Indians damp their enterprize? Such a
chimera could never affright them, since the Indians roving in
detached parties, would be the first to flee; nay, they would
probably court their union, there having been instances of
negroes finding an asylum among them, but after a lapse of time,
unworthy to enjoy freedom, the fugitives have returned to their
plantation, like a dog, who, having escaped from his kennel,
returns to it by an instinct of submission. To multiply
comparisons, as the ox resigns himself to his yoke, so the negro
bends to his burden.
Their defect in instinct is apparent. Could the Indians be ever
brought to that state of slavery which the negroes bear without
repining; every method hitherto practiced to deprive them of
their liberty, has been ineffectual.
But it is not so with the negroes. In their own country, or
abroad, if they have ever discovered a desire to emerge from
slavery this flame as resembled a meteor which appears only for a
moment. And even, the scenes, which have been witnessed in the
French colonies, and, particularly, the island of Saint
Domingo,[229] serve to corroborate and support my theory. It is
undeniable that the negroes of that colony have never ceased to
be slaves. Before their insurrection they were the slaves of the
legitimate masters; in the early part of the revolution they were
slaves to the French commissioners and mulattoes; and afterwards
they became subject to the nod of negroes like themselves. We do
not alter the substance of a thing by changing the name.
Nature may be modified but cannot be essentially changed. It is
not possible to impart to the dog the habits of the wolf, nor to
the ape those of the sheep. This position cannot be refuted.
Sophistry may for a while delude, but the mind reposes upon the
stability of truth.
From this digression let us return to the examination of the
negro slave of Louisiana. He has the faults of a slave. He is
lazy, libertine, and given to lying, but not incorrigibly wicked.
His labour is not severe, unless it be at the rolling of sugars,
an interval of from two to three months, when the number of
labourers is not proportionate to the labour; then he works both
by day and night. It must be allowed that forty negroes rolling a
hundred and twenty thousand weight of sugar, and as many
hogsheads of syrup, in the short space of two cold, foggy, rainy
months (November and December) under all the difficulties and
embarrassments resulting from the season, the shortness of the
days, and the length of the nights, cannot but labour severely;
abridged of their sleep, they scarce retire to rest during the
whole period. It is true they are then fed more plentifully, but
their toils are nevertheless excessive. [230] In the country
where there are not those resources that distinguished the
Antilles, nor its spontaneous supplies, such as bananas, yams,
sweet potatoes, &c. the food of the negroes is less abundant.
The fixed ration of each negro a month is a barrel of maize not
pounded; indian corn being the only grain of the colony which can
assure an unfailing subsistence to the slaves. The rice, beans
and potatoes cultivated here, would not supply a quarter of them
with food. Some masters, more humane than others, add to the
ration a little salt.
The negro, during his hours of respite from labour, is busied in
pounding his corn; he has afterwards to bake it with what wood he
can procure himself. Both in summer and winter, he must be in the
fields at the first dawn of day. He carries his sorry pittance of
a breakfast with him, which he eats on the spot; he is, however,
scarce allowed time to digest it. His labour is suspended from
noon till two, when he dines, or rather makes a supplement to his
former meal. At two his labour re-commences, and he prosecutes it
till dark, sometimes visited by his master, but always exposed
to the menaces, blows and scourges either of a white overseer, or
a black driver.
The good negro, during the hours of respite allowed him, is not
idle. He is busy cultivating the little lot of ground granted
him, while his wife (if he has one) is preparing food for him and
their children. For it is observable that in this colony, the
children of the slaves are not nourished by their masters, as
they are at the Antilles; their parents are charged with them,
and allowed half a ration more for every child, commencing from
the epoch when it is weaned.
Retired at night to their huts, after having made a frugal meal,
they forget their labors in the arms of their mistresses. But
those who cannot obtain women (for there is a great disproportion
between the numbers of the two sexes) traverse the woods in
search of adventures, and often encounter those of an unpleasant
nature. They frequently meet a patrole of the whites, who tie
them up and flog them, and then send them home.
They are very fond of tobacco; they both smoke and chew it with
great relish.
Nothing can be more simple than the burial of a slave; he is put
into the plainest coffin, knocked together by a carpenter of his
own colour, and carried unattended by mourners to the
neighbouring grave-field. The most absolute democracy, however,
reigns there; the planter and slave, confounded with one another,
rot in conjunction. _Under ground precedency is all a jest!_
"Imperial Caesar dead, and turned to clay,
"May stop some hole to keep the wind away!"--Pope.
Death is not so terrible in aspect to these negroes as to the
whites. In fact death itself is not so formidable to any man as
the pageantry with which it is set forth. It is not death that is
so terrible, but the cries of mothers, wives and children, the
visits of astonished and afflicted friends, pale and blubbering
servants, a dark room set round with burning tapers, our beds
surrounded with physicians and divines. These, and not death
itself, affright the minds of the beholders, and make that appear
so dreadful with which armies, who have an opportunity of being
thoroughly acquainted and often seeing him without any of these
black and dismal disguises, converse familiarly, and meet with
mirth and gaiety.
The only cloathing of a slave is a simple woollen garment; it is
given to them at the beginning of winter. And will it be
believed, that the master, to indemnify himself for this
expense, retrenches half an hour from his negro's hours of
respite, during the short days of the rigorous season!
Their ordinary food is indian corn, or rice and beans, boiled in
water, without fat or salt. To them nothing comes amiss. They
will devour greedily racoon, opossum, squirrels, wood-rats, and
even the crocodile; leaving to the white people the roebuck and
rabbit, which they sell them when they kill those animals.
They raise poultry and hogs, but seldom eat either. They prefer
selling them, and purchasing from their profits, cloathing and
brandy. They love brandy to excess. Promise a negro a dram, and
he will go through fire and water to serve you.
Their smoaky huts admit both wind and rain. An anecdote offers
itself to my pen on this subject, which will exhibit the frigid
indifference of the colonists of Louisiana towards every thing
that interests humanity. Being on a visit at a plantation on the
Mississippi, I walked out one fine evening in winter, with some
ladies and gentlemen, who had accompanied me from the town, and
the planters at whose house we were entertained. We approached
the quarter where the huts of the negroes stood. "Let us visit
the negroes," said one of the party; and we advanced towards the
door of a miserable hut, where an old negro woman came to the
threshold in order to receive us, but so decrepit as well as old,
that it was painful for her to move.
Notwithstanding the winter was advanced, she was partly naked;
her only covering being some old thrown away rags. Her fire was a
few chips, and she was parching a little corn for supper. Thus
she lived abandoned and forlorn; incapable from old age to work
any longer, she was no longer noticed.
But independently of her long services, this negro woman had
formerly suckled and brought up two brothers of her master, who
made one of our party. She perceived him, and accosting him,
said, "My master, when will you send one of your carpenters to
repair the roof of my hut? Whenever it rains, it pours down upon
my head." The master lifting his eyes, directed them to the roof
of the hut, which was within the reach of his hand. "I will think
of it," said he.--"You will think of it," said the poor creature.
"You always say so, but never do it."--"Have you not," rejoined
the master, "two grandsons who can mend it for you?"--"But are
they mine," said the old woman, "do they not work for you, and
are you not my son yourself? who suckled and raised your two
brothers? who was it but Irrouba? Take pity then on me, in my old
age. Mend at least the roof of my hut, and God will reward you
for it."
I was sensibly affected; it was _le cri de la bonne nature_. And
what repairs did the poor creature's roof require? What was
wanting to shelter her from the wind and rain of heaven? A few
shingles!--"I will think of it," repeated her master, and
departed.
The ordinary punishment inflicted on the negroes of the colony is
a whipping. What in Europe would condemn a man to the galleys or
the gallows incurs here only the chastisement of the whip. But
then a king having many subjects does not miss them after their
exit from this life, but a planter could not lose a negro without
feeling the privation.
I do not consider slavery either as contrary to the order of a
well regulated society, or an infringement of the social laws.
Under a different name it exists in every country. Soften then
the word which so mightily offends the ear; call it dependence.
The most common maladies of the negroes are slight fevers in the
spring, more violent ones in the summer, dysenteries in autumn,
and fluxions of the breast in winter. Their bill of mortality,
however, is not very considerable. The births exceed the deaths.
The language of the negro slaves, as well as of a great number of
the free mulattoes, is a patois derived from the French, and
spoken according to rules of corruption. There are some
house-slaves, however, who speak French with not less purity than
their masters: their language, it may be presumed, is depraved
with many words not to be found in a Voltaire, a Thomas or a
Rousseau.--_Travels in Louisiana and The Floridas, in the Year,
1802_, by Berquin Duvallon, pp. 79-94. Trans. by Davis.