Ten Hills Farm: The Forgotten History of Slavery in the North

10 Antigua

10 Antigua A bend of turquoise drew him. He must have stood on salty ground there, out by Beggars Point, chatting or standing with his back to the warm sea, pausing in the moment that always comes before a great decision, a furious sun pulsing overhead, one hand in his pocket as he pondered a sizable investment for a man of twenty-eight. He would have weighed the distance to the nearest harbor, four miles down a white sand road, slow by horse and cart, but close enough for trade. He would have considered the prevailing breezes, enough to blow the creaking, thumping sails of a stone windmill. He would have touched the thin Antiguan topsoil, good enough for cane, and wondered at the cost and availability of slaves, those “likely” men and women advertised for sale. He must have walked the land and let his mind envision it transformed: rum bubbling in his distillery, molasses stacked up by the barrel, slaves bustling with their orders, coachmen waiting for his call. In his mind’s eye, perhaps someone winsome stood nearby to fan him during dinner , while other men and women labored out of sight to cook for him, to clean his house, to nurse and tend his children. Perhaps he imagined a garden marked off by a line of waving palms, colorful blooms twining in a fragrant hideaway. Or maybe he thought only about ledger books and money and the risk of losing everything. Whatever the particulars, he had a plan when he stepped off the boat from Boston. Grandson of a 126 CHAPTER 10 simple immigrant, son of a poor carpenter, Isaac Royall wanted what the men before him did not have. He was hungry for a fortune and he wanted to be master. For forty years and more, he was. The “Colonel of Antigua,” he would call himself. It was a splendid game of reinvention. Acquaintances found him pompous, fancy, and thin-skinned, a dandy with a grand estate. But of course all that came later. First the island of Antigua (pronounced AnTEE -ga with a Spanish lilt) had to rise inside the circles of Atlantic trade, and Isaac Royall with it. Discovered and just as quickly abandoned by Christopher Columbus in 1493, Antigua was just a brown line in blue water to the famous explorer and his restless crew, something to be passed without much thought. Columbus dismissed it with a sneer, not even bothering to stop. Short scrub and twisted pine were not the spice and bounty he was seeking. He let the scraggly island shrink to nothing in his wake, just a disappearing bump in a hurricaneswept sea. As the ship sailed off, a sailor made an inkblot on a piece of parchment. Columbus named it after the miracle worker of Seville, Santa Maria la Antigua. Back on shore, Carib warriors dropped their spears into the sand. The danger passed. The giant ship had sailed away. But this was only a reprieve. English merchants unpacked with a commanding hold on the territory in 1632. A rudimentary administration loyal to King Charles took hold. These men would gradually remake the land—almost every inch of it—and take advantage of the weather and Europe’s growing taste for sugar to build an efficient engine of great wealth. What they needed, though, was just what Henry Winthrop had needed in Barbados several years before: workers to clear the fields, plant and cook, and serve these settlers in a hundred ways. To men with expansionist tastes in foggy enclaves back in London , rounding up the locals seemed a capital idea. A ready workforce was at hand. And so in their first weeks ashore, men with guns moved about the island with single-minded intent—to track ANTIGUA 127 down every man, woman, and child they could—and press them into service. Oh, but those honey-skinned Caribs were not so easily subdued. Flexible and fierce, they knew each cove and hiding place the island had to offer. Having taken the island by force themselves from the more peaceful Arawaks, they were proud warriors and savvy fighters who did not shrink from battle. With a violent push they drove the first men off. Then more English came, and more guns, too, and gradually the power tipped. For years the island was a dangerous place and full of lethal shock. Hundreds of Caribs were slaughtered. Others fled...