Free The Amistad Rebellion by Marcus Rediker

activities. 71
    Each factory along the coast “consisted of a business room, with warehouse attached, filled with merchandize and provisions, and a barracoon for the slaves.” The buildings were constructed in the common regional style: workers drove stakes into the ground and wattled them together with tough, willowy vines and topped them with thatch. According to Frederick Forbes, a naval officer who had visited the factories of the Gallinas region in the 1840s, the barracoon was “a shed made of heavy piles, driven deep into the earth, and lashed together with bamboos, thatched with palm leaves,” equipped with chains, neck-rings, and padlocks. The walls of the structure were “four to six feet high, and between them and the roof is an opening about four feet, for the circulation of air.” The floor had planks, “not from any regard to comfort to the slave, but because a small insect, being in the soil, might deteriorate the merchandise, by causing a cutaneous disease.” Connected to each barracoon was a yard, where the enslaved were required to exercise daily. Dr. Hall noted that most enclosures contained “from 100 to 500 slaves,” the largest “near 1,000.” The
Amistad
Africans were held here for several weeks awaitingtransit to a slaver. Sessi noted that he was incarcerated at Lomboko for a month, Cinqué for two months. Burna stayed at the fortress for “three and a half moons,” during which time he did something to earn a flogging from no less a person than Pedro Blanco himself. His future as a rebel aboard the
Amistad
was foretold. 72

    Barracoon
    Two to four white men, usually Spanish or Portuguese, tended each barracoon. “A more pitiable looking set of men we never met with,” reported Dr. Hall. Blanco employed seventeen fellow European adventurers, who were variously feverish, suffering from malaria, emaciated, swollen, and dirty. They had dared to come to the “White Man’s Grave,” where, survivors said darkly, premature death was “
la fortuna de guerra.
” Many died under ignominious circumstances, far from home, chasing the wealth that could be accumulated rapidly in the slave trade on the Gallinas Coast. 73
    During the 1830s the barracoons of Lomboko were often filled with children. Dr. Hall recalled visiting an enclosure that contained “some 300 boys, all apparently between ten and fifteen years of age, linked together in squads of twenty or thirty.” Children, he thought, were popular among traders because larger numbers of them could be jammed aboard the slave ships and, once there, more easily controlled. Hall was haunted by the thought of “these bright-eyed little fellows”who were “doomed to the horrors of a middle latitude passage, probably in a three and a half feet between decks.” Grabeau recalled that there were about two hundred children on board the
Teçora
during their voyage, which commenced in April 1839. 74
    The condition of the enslaved held in the barracoons varied over time. Blanco was known for what some considered “humane” treatment—reasonable amounts of food, and limited violence on the part of the barracoon overseers. The regional system for the delivery of provisions did not always work well, and famine-like conditions could arise, whereupon, under extreme circumstances, “whole barracoons of slaves have been let loose for want of food.” Those who escaped of their own initiative would be hunted down by overseers using dogs, and sometimes killed. 75
    The social routine at Lomboko was similar to what the enslaved would encounter at sea; indeed, it was in many ways a preparation for it. Forbes noted that “night and day these barracoons are guarded by armed men: the slightest insubordination is immediately punished.” Those who resisted their enslavement would not be allowed out of the barracoon for meals, washing, and dancing. Overseers fed captives fish and rice twice a day. Grabeau recalled that men were “chained together by the legs.”