Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America

1. “ In the Beginning”: The Transatlantic Tradein Children of African Descent

1 Charlotte one of my fellow prisoners . . . did comfort me when I was torn from my dear native land . . . Sarah Margru [Kinson] “Your image has been always riveted in my heart, from which neither time nor fortune have been able to remove it; so that, while the thought of your sufferings have damped my prosperity, they have mingled with adversity and increased its bitterness,” wrote Olaudah Equiano, also known as Gustavus Vassa, as he reflected upon the fate of his beloved sister. In 1756, a woman and two men raided Isseke, the children’s village in present-day Nigeria, while the adults were working in a common field nearly an hour away by foot. The raiders took the girl and her elevenyear -old brother, Olaudah, whose name means “the fortunate one.” The children, descendants of a slaveholding Ibo chief, were aware of a previous battle between the Ibos and “their enemy.” The warfare resulted in the victors taking prisoners who were either sold away or kept within the community. Fighting among different ethnic and language groups was not unusual in this part of West Africa, and it probably intensified with increased demands for black laborers by whites in the Americas.1 Olaudah Equiano’s lengthy The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Written by Himself, which was wildly popular during hislifetime,maybeawindowintothelivesofAfricanboysandgirlswho experienced an abduction, sale, and removal from Africa. It is possible that Equiano’s graphic description of the Middle Passage garnered sup1 “In the Beginning” The Transatlantic Trade in Children of African Descent 2 Stolen Childhood portfor the Britishmovement toabolishtheslavetrade,whichcoincides with the 1789 publication of his work. Doubts about the authenticity of The Interesting Narrative were raised soon after it was published, and questionsaboutwhereEquianowasbornlinger—itmayhavebeenWest Africa, the Danish West Indies, or South Carolina. Vincent Carretta, author of Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, claims that “the available evidence suggests that the author of The Interesting Narrative may have invented rather than reclaimed an African identity.” Baptismal and naval records place Equiano’s birth in South Carolina. A thorough interrogation of The Interesting Narrative leads Alexander X. Byrd to posit that Equiano’s use of Eboe as a geopolitical concept, culturalpractice,orethniclinktoAfricaisproblematic.Byrdwritesthat Equiano “was remarkably adept at putting himself in the mind of a boy from the Biafran interior.”2 Questions remain about The Interesting Narrative. Is it an unreliable autobiography? Or is it a well-crafted novel? If Africa is the author’s birthplace, his claims about his birth, early childhood, abduction and his experience of the Middle Passage are his own. If he was not born in Africa,Equianocreatedamasterfulcompositeofexperiencesrecounted by others. In either case, the details in The Interesting Narrative, regardless of whether it was produced by a South Carolinian, Gustavus Vassa, or an African, Olaudah Equiano, do not disagree with details from other narratives that describe abductions, sales, and forced migrations from Africa to the New World, and it is useful in that regard. This chapter seeks to reconstruct the experiences of girls and boys among the multitude of Africans who were abducted, sold, transported across the Atlantic, and enslaved in North America. Children, a significantentityinthetransatlantictrade ,wereeasiertoseize,moremalleable, and required less space aboard ships than adults. These features made youngsters attractive to slavers and serve as the basis for questions about the experiences of the most vulnerable of Africans in the trade. How did boys and girls respond to abductors who spirited them away from their families, friends, and communities? Although children were more tractable than adults, did that characteristic merit differences in their treatment once they were aboard the slavers? Were children, like adults, vulnerable to illness and death in the Middle Passage? What were the “In the Beginning” 3 psychologicalcostsofseeingshipmatessickenanddie?Inwhatwaysdid children differ from adults who revolted against their oppressors while on the high seas? Ultimately, answering these questions will provide a more nuanced view of the transatlantic trade and the girls and boys who were affected by it.3 The presence of children in the commercialization of human life is noted in official records, ship manifests, and logs as well as journals kept by medical doctors and slavers. Historian Paul Lovejoy estimates that girls and boys constituted over 12 percent of the Africans transported to the Americas during the period 1663 to 1700. Their number increased significantly in the period 1701 to 1809, when the proportion of children reached nearly 23 percent. In her...