accused of being an Obeah-man, and persons notorious for the practice
of Obeah had been found concealed from justice in his house, who were
afterwards convicted and transported. He was strongly suspected of
having poisoned more than twelve negroes, men and women; and having been
displaced by my former trustee from being principal governor, in revenge
he put poison into his water jar. Luckily he was observed by one of the
house servants, who impeached him, and prevented the intended mischief.
For this offence he ought to have been given up to justice; but being
brother of the trustee’s mistress she found means to get him off, after
undergoing a long confinement in the stocks. I found him, on my arrival,
living in a state of utter excommunication; I tried what reasoning with
him could effect, reconciled him to his companions, treated him with
marked kindness, and he promised solemnly to behave well during my
absence. However, instead of attributing my lenity to a wish to reform
him, his pride and confidence in his own talents and powers of deception
made him attribute the indulgence shown him to his having obtained an
influence over my mind. This he determined to employ to his own purposes
upon my return; so he set about forming a conspiracy against Sully,
the present chief governor, and boasted on various estates in the
neighbourhood that on my arrival he would take care to get Sully broke,
and himself substituted in his place. In the meanwhile he quarrelled and
fought to the right and to the left; and on my arrival I found the whole
estate in an uproar about Adam. No less than three charges of assault,
with intent to kill, were preferred against him. In a fit of jealousy
he had endeavoured to strangle Marlborough with the thong of a whip, and
had nearly effected his purpose before he could be dragged away: he
had knocked Nato down in some trifling dispute, and while the man was
senseless had thrown him into the river to drown him; and having taken
offence at a poor weak creature called Old Rachael, on meeting her
by accident he struck her to the ground, beat her with a supplejack,
stamped upon her belly, and begged her to be assured of his intention
(as he eloquently worded it) “to kick her guts out.” The breeding
mothers also accused him of having been the cause of the poisoning a
particular spring, from which they were in the habit of fetching water
for their children, as Adam on that morning had been seen near the
spring without having any business there, and he had been heard to
caution his little daughter against drinking water from it that day,
although he stoutly denied both circumstances. Into the bargain, my head
blacksmith being perfectly well at five o’clock, was found by his son
dead in his bed at eight; and it was known that he had lately had a
dispute with Adam, who on that day had made it up with him, and had
invited him to drink, although it was not certain that his offer had
been accepted. He had, moreover, threatened the lives of many of the
best negroes. Two of the cooks declared, that he had severally directed
them to dress Sully’s food apart, and had given them powders to mix
with it. The first to whom he applied refused positively; the second
he treated with liquor, and when she had drunk, he gave her the poison,
with instructions how to use it. Being a timid creature, she did not
dare to object, so threw away the powder privately, and pretended that
it had been administered; but finding no effect produced by it, Adam
gave her a second powder, at the same time bidding her remember the
liquor which she had swallowed, and which he assured her would effect
her own destruction through the force of Obeah, unless she prevented
it by sacrificing his enemy in her stead. The poor creature still threw
away the powder, but the strength of imagination brought upon her
a serious malady, and it was not till after several weeks that she
recovered from the effects of her fears. The terror thus produced was
universal throughout the estate, and Sully and several other principal
negroes requested me to remove them to my property in St. Thomas’s,
as their lives were not safe while breathing the same air with Adam.
However, it appeared a more salutary measure to remove Adam himself; but
all the poisoning charges either went no further than strong suspicion,
or (any more than the assaults) were not liable by the laws of Jamaica
to be punished, except by flogging or temporary imprisonment, which
would only have returned him to the estate with increased resentment
against those to whom he should ascribe his sufferings, however
deserved.
However, on searching his house, a musket with a plentiful accompaniment
of powder and ball was found concealed, as also a considerable quantity
of materials for the practice of Obeah: the possession of either of the
above articles (if the musket is without the consent of the proprietor)
authorises the magistrates to pronounce a sentence of transportation. In
consequence of this discovery, Adam was immediately committed to gaol;
a slave court was summoned, and to-day a sentence of transportation from
the island was pronounced, after a trial of three hours. As to the man’s
guilt, of that the jury entertained no doubt after the first half
hour’s evidence; and the only difficulty was to restrain the verdict
to transportation. We produced nothing which could possibly affect
the man’s life; for although perhaps no offender ever better de served
hanging; yet I confess my being weak-minded enough to entertain doubts
whether hanging or other capital punishment ought to be inflicted for
any offence whatever: I am at least certain, that if offenders waited
till they were hanged by me, they would remain unhanged till they were
all so many old Parrs. However, although I did my best to prevent Adam
from being hanged, it was no easy matter to prevent his hanging himself.
The Obeah ceremonies always commence with what is called, by the
negroes, “the Myal dance.” This is intended to remove any doubt of
the chief Obeah-man’s supernatural powers; and in the course of it, he
undertakes to show his art by killing one of the persons present, whom
he pitches upon for that purpose. He sprinkles various powders over the
devoted victim, blows upon him, and dances round him, obliges him to
drink a liquor prepared for the occasion, and finally the sorcerer and
his assistants seize him and whirl him rapidly round and round till the
man loses his senses, and falls on the ground to all appearance and
the belief of the spectators a perfect corpse. The chief Myal-man then
utters loud shrieks, rushes out of the house with wild and frantic
gestures, and conceals himself in some neighbouring wood. At the end of
two or three hours he returns with a large bundle of herbs, from some
of which he squeezes the juice into the mouth of the dead person;
with others he anoints his eyes and stains the tips of his fingers,
accompanying the ceremony with a great variety of grotesque actions, and
chanting all the while something between a song and a howl, while the
assistants hand in hand dance slowly round them in a circle, stamping
the ground loudly with their feet to keep time with his chant. A
considerable time elapses before the desired effect is produced, but at
length the corpse gradually recovers animation, rises from the ground
perfectly recovered, and the Myal dance concludes. After this proof of
his power, those who wish to be revenged upon their enemies apply to the
sorcerer for some of the same powder, which produced apparent death
upon their companion, and as they never employ the means used for his
recovery, of course the powder once administered never fails to be
lastingly fatal. It must be superfluous to mention that the Myal-man
on this second occasion substitutes a poison for a narcotic. Now, among
other suspicious articles found in Adam’s hut, there was a string of
beads of various sizes, shapes, and colours, arranged in a form peculiar
to the performance of the Obeah-man in the Myal dance. Their use was
so well known, that Adam on his trial did not even attempt to deny
that they could serve for no purpose but the practice of Obeah; but he
endeavoured to refute their being his own property, and with this view
he began to narrate the means by which he had become possessed of them.
He said that they belonged to Fox (a negro who was lately transported),
from whom he had taken them at a Myal dance held on the estate of
Dean’s Valley; but as the assistants at one of these dances are by law
condemned to death equally with the principal performer, the court had
the humanity to interrupt his confession of having been present on such
an occasion, and thus saved him from criminating himself so deeply as to
render a capital punishment inevitable. I understand that he was quite
unabashed and at his ease the whole time; upon hearing his sentence, he
only said very coolly, “Well! I ca’n’t help it!” turned himself round,
and walked out of court. That nothing might be wanting, this fellow had
even a decided talent for hypocrisy. When on my arrival he gave me a
letter filled with the grossest lies respecting the trustee, and every
creditable negro on the estate, he took care to sign it by the name
which he had lately received in baptism; and in his defence at the bar
to prove his probity of character and purity of manners, he informed the
court that for some time past he had been learning to read, for the sole
purpose of learning the Lord’s Prayer. The nick-name by which he was
generally known among the negroes in this part of the country, was
Buonaparte, and he always appeared to exult in the appellation. Once
condemned, the marshal is bound under a heavy penalty to see him shipped
from off the island before the expiration of six weeks, and probably he
will be sent to Cuba. He is a fine-looking man between thirty and forty,
square built, and of great bodily strength, and his countenance equally
expresses intelligence and malignity. The sum allowed me for him is one
hundred pounds currency, which is scarcely a third of his worth as a
labourer, but which is the highest value which a jury is permitted to
mention.
MARCH 1. (Sunday.)
Last night the negroes of Friendship took it into their ingenious
heads to pay me a compliment of an extremely inconvenient nature. They
thought, that it would be highly proper to treat me with a nightly
serenade just by way of showing their _enjoyment_ on my return; and
accordingly a large body of them arrived at my doors about midnight,
dressed out in their best clothes, and accompanied with drums, rattles,
and their whole orchestra of abominable instruments, determined to pass
the whole night in singing and dancing under my windows. Luckily, my
negro-governors heard what was going forwards, and knowing my taste a
little better than my visiters, they hastened to assure them of my being
in bed and asleep, and with much difficulty persuaded them to remove
into my village. Here they contented themselves with making a noise for
the greatest part of the night; and the next morning, after coming up to
see me at breakfast, they went away quietly. One of them only remained
to enquire particularly after Lady H-------, as her mother had been her
nurse, and she was very particular in her enquiries as to her health,
her children, their ages and names. When she went away, I gave her a
plentiful provision of bread, butter, plantains, and cold ham from the
breakfast table; part of which she sat down to eat, intending, as she
said, to carry the rest to her piccaninny at home. But in half an hour
after she made her appearance again, saying she was come to take leave
of me, and hoped I would give her a _bit_ to buy tobacco. I gave her a
maccaroni, which occasioned a great squall of delight. Oh! since I had
given her so much, she would not buy tobacco but a fowl; and then, when
I returned, she would bring me a chicken from it for my dinner; that is,
if she could keep the other negroes from stealing it from her, a piece
of extraordinary good luck of which she seemed to entertain but slender
hopes. At length off she set; but she had scarcely gone above ten yards
from the house, when she turned back, and was soon at my writing-table
once more, with a “Well! here me come to massa again!” So then she said,
that she had meant to eat part of the provisions which I had given her,
and carry home the rest to her boy; but that really it was so good, she
could not help going on eating and eating, till she had eaten the whole,
and now she wanted another bit of cold ham to carry home to her child,
and then she should go away perfectly contented. I ordered Cubina
to give her a great hunch of it, and Mrs. Phillis at length took her
departure for good and all.
MARCH 4. (Wednesday.)