The Amistad Rebellion Read Free Page B

continued Fuli, “and honest people live in cities. If they come to the cities, the magistrate say you bad man, you go away.” Some “honest people” took more direct action: they shot the man-stealers as they would other beasts of prey, “lions and tigers.” Fuli and others sought to protect themselves against the slave traders, but they did not always succeed, as his own presence in Philadelphia attested. Fuli then demonstrated his knowledge of the Bible to the audience, interpreting his own experience and that of his comrades on the
Amistad
: “The man stealer, he walk crooked, he no walk straight, he get out of the high road. He walk by night, too, he no walk in the day time.” He referred, in a single answer, to the books of Deuteronomy (24:7), Psalms (82:5), and Isaiah (59:8). He himself had been stolen around two and half years earlier by those who walked—and enslaved—in darkness. 1
    Until that fateful moment, Fuli, whose name meant “sun,” had livedin Mano with his parents and five brothers, humble people who farmed rice and manufactured cloth. A portrait drawn by a young American artist, William H. Townsend, depicted him with a mustache, a broad face, prominent cheekbones, a full forehead with a slightly receding hairline, and distinctive, almond-shaped eyes. He was five feet three inches tall, apparently unmarried, and said to be “in middle life,” which probably meant his late twenties. According to one who knew him, Fuli was a “noble-spirited” man and decidedly not someone who could be enslaved without resistance. 2

    Fuli
    One night, in darkness, a group of King Siaka’s soldiers surrounded Mano and set it aflame. Fuli said that “some were killed, and he with the rest were taken prisoners.” Apparently separated from his family (their fate is unknown), he began a monthlong march through Vai country and ended up at Fort Lomboko on the coast, where he was purchased by the notorious Pedro Blanco. He was a victim of “grand pillage,” a brutal, plundering kind of warfare that had long helped to fill Atlantic slave ships with bodies. 3
    Margru, one of four children aboard the
Amistad
, took a different route to the slave ship. Born in Mendeland, she was about nine years old, a mere four feet three inches tall. Her name reflected parental love and affection. Townsend sketched her with a large, high forehead,curly hair platted above each ear, and a slight smile at the corners of her mouth. Her manner was pleasant, quiet, reserved, and rather shy. She lived with her parents, four sisters, and two brothers. Her father was a trader, whose practices of credit and debt entangled him in some way with the slave trade. He pawned Margru, meaning that he left her in the possession of another trader for an agreed-upon period of time as a surety against commodities he had been advanced on credit—a practice common to many parts of West Africa. When he did not return in time to pay off his creditor—literally to redeem Margru—she was enslaved to satisfy the debt. 4

    Margru
    Moru was a Gbandi man, born in Sanka. His life took a hard turn when, as a child, both of his parents died. Surviving evidence does not suggest how he grew up, or with whom, but it appears that at some point he became a warrior, and eventually a slave; perhaps he was captured in battle. His master, Margona, a member of what would become the ruling house of Barri Chiefdom in the Pujehun District of Gola, was a man of wealth with “ten wives and many houses.” At some point, for reasons unknown, Margona sold Moru to a slave trader, who marched him twenty days (probably a couple of hundred miles) to Lomboko, where he was sold to Belewa, or “Great Whiskers,” a Spaniard. Moru was described as “middle age, 5 ft. 8 1 ⁄ 2 in. with fullnegro features,” and drawn by Townsend to have small eyes, full lips, high cheekbones, and a somewhat suspicious look. 5

    Moru
    The webs of Atlantic slavery were broad and intricate, and many of