Barracoon (14 page)

It is improbable that a weak king would have risked such a provoking message as related by Gelele.

[Editor's note: Although Hurston was mistaken in her conclusion that Takon was the name of Kossola's hometown and Akia'on was the name of its king, the town of Takon did exist and the circumstances surrounding Akia'on's fate as she reports them are accurate.

Having believed Akia'on to be the name of Kossola's
king, Hurston thought she had discovered the ultimate cause,
the
“insult,” that instigated Glèlè's raid. Whereas she had not questioned Kossola's narration of events of the Dahomian raid on his town, she had questioned his belief that the raid was the result of betrayal by a disgruntled townsman. Perhaps Hurston was also searching for the kind of provocative “reason” that would result in the kind of horrific massacre that Kossola described. Her commentary in note 6 suggests this may have been the case.

The mistake of identifying the circumstances relevant to Takon with those relevant to Bantè would be easy to make given the established modus operandi of the Dahomian king and his warriors.]

3
     
Note 3: “Industry and agriculture, are not encouraged.” The men are wanted for slave hunts.—Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
. [Editor's note: Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
, 21.]

4
     
Note 4: “The only other peculiarity in the Court was a row of three large calabashes, ranged on the ground before and a little to the left of royalty. They contain the calvariae of the three chief amongst forty kings, or petty headmen, said to have been destroyed by Gelele,” in the first two years of his reign (1858–60); “and they are rarely absent from the royal levees. A European would imagine these relics to be treated with mockery; whereas the contrary is the case. So the King Sinmenkpen (Adahoonzou II) . . . said to Mr. Norris, ‘If I should fall into hostile hands, I should wish to be treated with that decency of which I set the example.' The first skull was that of Akia'on, chief of Attako (Taccow) [Takkoi, a Nigerian tribe] near ‘Porto Novo,' which was destroyed about three years ago. Beautifully white and polished, it is mounted in a ship or galley of thin brass about a foot long, with two masts, and jibboom, rattlings, anchor, and four portholes on each side, one pair being in the raised quarter deck.” The destruction of Takkoi was justified by King Gelele on the ground that King Akia'on had insulted the memory of his father, the late King Gezo.—Burton,
Mis
sion to Gelele, King of Dahome
, pp. 225
–
26. [Editor's note: Burton,
Mission to Gelele,
156.]

CHAPTER VI: BARRACOON

1
     
[Editor's note: Charlotte Osgood Mason funded Hurston's second expedition in the South. Mason would periodically send money to Kossola and would become interested in his general welfare.]

2
     
Note 5: “The city (of Abomey) is about eight miles in circumference, surrounded by a ditch, about five feet deep, filled with prickly acacia.” There are six gates and two grinning skulls are mounted on the gate posts. Inside each gate is “a pile of skulls, human, and of all the beasts of the field, even to the elephant's.” The Dahoman standards, each of which was surmounted by a human skull, were much in evidence.—Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
. [Editor's note: Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
, 68–69, 73.]

“In the palace at Cannah the legs of the throne rest on the skulls of four conquered princes.”—Canot [Editor's note: Hurston may have used another edition of Canot's work in which the statement is a direct quote. In the edition which follows, a similar statement is made about the throne of the king of Dahomey: “Each of its legs rests on the skull of some native king or chief.” (Theodore Canot and Brantz Mayer,
Adventures of an African Slaver: Being a True Account of the Life of Captain Theodore Canot, Trader in Gold, Ivory and Slaves on the Coast of Guinea,
ed. Malcolm Cowley (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, [1854] 1928; Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Legacy Reprints, 2012), 260.)]

“The walls of the palace of Dange-lah-cordeh are surmounted, at a distance of twenty feet, with human skulls.” Forbes, p. 73. [Editor's note: Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
, 75.]

Author's note: The author has been informed by natives of Nigeria and Gold coast that it is the custom to carry
home the heads of all the people a warrior has killed in battle. He is not allowed to speak of any victory unless he has the heads to show. Mr. Effiom Duke, Calabar district, Nigeria, says that when he was last in Nigeria, less than fifteen years ago, there were skulls lying around so new that the hair was still upon them.

3
     
(1) There is a festival held in May and June in honor of trade “with music, dancing, singing.” (Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
, p. 16) [Editor's note: This footnote was typed at the bottom of page 55 in the original typescript. See Forbes,
Dahomey and the Dahomans
, 18.]

4
     
[Editor's note: Kossola's description here of the route he and his compatriots took to the barracoons at Ouidah differs from the route he illustrated for Roche (
Historic Sketches
, 88–89). The routes contradict each other and are otherwise problematic logistically. Diouf suggests two possible explanations: “People coming from different regions took different routes that somehow got conflated when they recounted their march to the sea several decades later; and fading recollections. Although Cudjo had an excellent memory, it is one thing to vividly remember indelible events such as the raid, the march, or the barracoon; it is another to recall the names of towns one had never seen before, especially under such circumstances” (
Dreams of Africa in Alabama
, 49).]

5
     
Note 6: The native term of derision for the Kroos. They are despised by the other tribes because they are usually the porters for the white men. They are called Many-costs because it is said that many Kroos may be hired for the cost of one decent worker. Some white trader went inland with a number of Kroo porters. While he was doing business with the native king, the porters wandered about the village and arrived at the market place. The girls, as is customary, wore nothing above the waist. The Kroo men amused themselves by pinching the busts of the young women. When the men heard of this desecration they hurried to the headman with the information. He told the white trader to move along with his Kroo por
ters instantly or they would be killed. The white man replied that the local men could not dispose of his porters because they were so numerous that the local men were in danger of being chastised themselves. The king replied by asking him, “How many costs?” Meaning, “How much did they cost you?” This was not a question but a sneer, meaning, “They are just as cheap for us to kill as they are for you to hire.” Let just one more of your Many-costs pinch titty of our girls and all shall die. The white trader changed his mind and restrained his boys. The story spread and the name stuck to the Kroos.

6
     
Note 7: Canot, a notorious slave trader, says that the slaves were stripped for cleanliness and health in the middle passage. [Editor's note: Canot and Mayer,
Adventures of an African Slaver
, 108.]

7
     
[Editor's note: Ibid., 109.]

8
     
[Editor's note: According to Henry Romeyn's account, in “Little Africa,” “One hundred and seventy-five slaves were contracted for. . . . One hundred and sixty-four slaves had been taken on board. Of these but two died on the passage” (15).]

CHAPTER IX: MARRIAGE

1
     
Note 8: Neither from Kossula nor from the community have I been able to get a clear account of what led up to the killing. One fact is established however: That the community in general feared the Lewis boys.

According to one informant there had been several fights between the Lewis boys and some others, extending over a long period of time. There were numerous grudges to be paid off. The Lewis boys felt as if their backs were against the wall and fought desperately in every encounter.

There was a bloody battle on July 28, 1902, in which one man was shot to death and one seriously wounded with a knife.

Young Cudjo was said to have done both the cutting and the shooting when set upon by some of his enemies. The
Negro deputy sheriff is said to have been afraid to attempt an arrest. He tried for three weeks to catch the young man off his guard. Failing in that, he finally approached him concealed in the butcher's wagon and shot young Cudjo to death.

[Editor's note: Note 8 was misnumbered as note 7 in the original manuscript. Hurston's note 7 is a handwritten insertion on the reverse of an early typed manuscript draft, page 28. As Hurston pointed out, the details were not clear. According to Sylviane Diouf and Natalie Robertson, in January 1900, Cudjo Lewis Jr. was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree in the death of Gilbert Thomas, who may have been young Lewis's brother-in-law. Lewis Jr. was condemned to five years in the Jefferson County state penitentiary, but was transferred into the state's convict-lease system. He was pardoned in August 1900.]

CHAPTER XI

1
     
[Editor's note: Hurston took photographs of Kossola as well as film footage, which can be viewed in Kristy Andersen's PBS American Master's Series production of
Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at de Sun
, 2008.]

APPENDIX

1
     
[Editor's Note: In “Appendix 3” of
Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States
, is a listing of stories Hurston collected from Kossola.]

AFTERWORD

1
     
Zora Neale Hurston,
Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, [1942] 1984), 198.

2
     
Robert E. Hemenway,
Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980)
, 95.

3
     
See Hurston's preface, in the present volume.

4
     
See Hurston's introduction, in the present volume.

5
     
Zora Neale Hurston to Carter G. Woodson, July/August 1927, in
Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters
, ed. Carla Kaplan (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 103; Zora Neale Hurston to Thomas E. Jones, 12 October 1934, in Ibid., 315; Hurston,
Dust Tracks
, 198.

6
     
A version of this article was published in
The American Mercury
in 1944, and then in a condensed version in
Negro Digest
, also in 1944.

7
     
Zora Neale Hurston, “Cudjo's Own Story of the Last Slaver,”
Journal of Negro History
, October 1927, 648, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2714041.

8
     
Hemenway,
Zora Neale Hurston
, 96–97, 103 n23.

9
     
Ibid., 98.

10
    
Zora Neale Hurston to Thomas E. Jones, 12 October 1934, in Kaplan,
Letters
, 315.

11
    
Audre Lorde,
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
(New York: The Crossing Press, 1984), 112.

12
    
Zora Neale Hurston to Thomas E. Jones, 12 October 1934, in Kaplan,
Letters
, 315.

13
    
Hemenway,
Zora Neale Hurston
, 96.

14
    
Ibid., 99.

15
    
Ibid., 98.

16
    
Valerie Boyd,
Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston
(New York: Scribner, 2003), 154.

17
    
Ibid., 153.

18
    
Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, spring-summer 1927, in Kaplan,
Letters
, 99.

19
    
Boyd,
Wrapped in Rainbows
, 154.

20
    
Ibid., 153.

21
    
Hemenway,
Zora Neale Hurston
, 89.

22
    
Lynda Marion Hill,
Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale Hurston
(Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1996), 64.

23
    
Hurston,
Dust Tracks
, 204.

24
    
Ibid., 200.

25
    
Ibid.

26
    
Ibid.

27
    
Hill,
Social Rituals
, 64.

28
    
Hemenway,
Zora Neale Hurston
, 100–101.

29
    
See Hurston's preface in the present volume.

30
    
See Hurston's introduction in the present volume.

31
    
Diouf,
Dreams of Africa in Alabama
, 246.

32
    
Ibid., 246, 3.

33
    
See Hurston's introduction, in the present volume.

34
    
Paul E. Lovejoy,
Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa
, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 19.

35
    
Toni Morrison,
Beloved
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), i, 275.