J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur was born in Normandy, France to minor nobility in 1735. At age 19, Crevecoeur immigrated to England and then, one year later, to Canada. In Canada he worked as a cartographer and surveyor for the French militia, ultimately rising to the rank of lieutenant. After the British defeat of the French army in 1759, Crevecoeur began traveling the Great Lakes region and the Ohio valley. After ten years of traveling and working as a surveyor, trapper, and trader, he settled on a farm in Orange County, New York where he wrote Letters from an American Farmer in 1783.
Within the literature, Letters from an American Farmer, Crevecoeur’s protagonist James, reflects on his experiences with the American Slave Trade. On page 110 he smartly refers to the capturing of Africans as fraud when he states, “my sleep would be perpetually disturbed by a retrospect of the frauds committed in Africa, in order to entrap them; frauds surpassing in enormity everything which a common mind can possibly conceive. “ Fraud is an interesting yet accurate interpretation of the crimes committed during the African slave trade. Fraud is defined by the English dictionary as deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain advantage; this was precisely what was committed during the capturing of Africans in the 18th and 19th centaury’s. When the slave ships arrived from Europe, they were stocked with trade goods. Captains offered a wide variety of merchandise such as textiles, firearms, alcohol, beads, and cowries to local African peoples. The European captains would display their impressive and unfamiliar bounty and then invite the interested Africans aboard the ship. Once on deck the Africans were bound, thrown into storage chambers and taken across the Atlantic. Both Della Fountain, enslaved in Louisiana, interviewed in Oklahoma, and Martha King, enslaved in Virginia, interviewed in Oklahoma, narrate similar stories of the betrayal and fraud used to trick the Africans aboard the ships;
“A big boat was down at the edge of a bay an’ the people was all excited about it an’ some of the bravest went up purty close to look at it. The men on the boat told them to come on board and they could have the pretty red hand-kerchiefs, red and blue beads and big rings. A lot of them went on board and the ship sailed away with them. My grandmother never saw any of her folks again…”
European traders had a sophisticated network of deception used to collect groups of people together for capture.
|
|
|
"CAPTURE; SELECTIONS FROM THE NARRATIVES OF FORMER SLAVES." National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox. Web. 9 Sept. 2009.
Chaves, Joseph. "J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur". The Literary Encyclopedia. 1 October 2006.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1070, accessed 9 September 2009.]
"Fraud." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 09 Sep. 2009.
Although there have been many narratives and articles written about the tales of captured African Slaves, your article brings out a particular interesting aspect of the slave trade situation. I would’ve never thought to bring in the term “fraud” into a slave capture situation. From my reading experiences, I get the image of Africans being forced into slave ships, but you have done an excellent job in bringing forth the idea that not all slaves were physically forced into slave ships, but some were tricked and manipulated as well. I think in that case, it is even worse for those certain victims because they could’ve changed their situation if they weren’t so naïve or trusting.
ReplyDelete