Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest Agricultural Barbara J

69 Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries: Session Two: Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest Agricultural Barbara J. Heath Lifeways and Technologies n the spring of 1798, Thomas The consideration of a variety of evidence— Jefferson’s son-in-law informed him archaeological traces of houses and yards, pre- that several slaves had planted tobac- served fragments of seeds, artifacts, slave census- I es, runaway advertisements, store accounts, and co on his Albemarle County property letters—-is essential in reconstructing how one without his permission. Randolph’s group of enslaved African Americans shaped the refusal to let them raise it, and insis- landscapes they inhabited. tence that they grow something sanc- By the time Thomas Jefferson was 31 years old, tioned by Jefferson in its place indicates he held 187 men, women, and children in bondage. that this tobacco was being cultivated Although the population fluctuated over time with on their allotted grounds, in their own births, deaths, sales, and purchases, he remained time, and for their own profit. one of the largest slave owners in central Virginia Jefferson’s response to this entrepre- throughout his life. The number of individuals living at his Poplar Forest plantation ranged from a low of neurial spirit was unambiguous. 27 in 1774 to a high of 94 in 1819. During this time, …I thank you for putting an end to the cultiva- they created a community of extended, multi-gener- tion of tobacco as the peculium of the negroes. ational families, tied by bonds of blood and friend- I have ever found it necessary to confine them ship to the Monticello enslaved community and to a to such articles as are not raised on the farm. broader community spread across the region.(2) There is no other way of drawing a line between African Americans living at Poplar Forest were, what is theirs & mine….(1) for the most part, two or more generations removed This exchange hints at the “after hours” activities of from the Old World. Clearly the social upheaval of enslaved people living on plantations throughout the Middle Passage, institutionalized slavery, and Virginia and the limits placed upon them by slave- the Anglo-American culture of the slaveholding holders. While assigned tasks were often explicitly class were important factors in the development of described in the historic record, activities that a creole culture. Equally important was the physical slaves organized and undertook for their own reality of the place. As Americans, they experienced benefit and in their own time are often difficult to climate, topography, and environmental factors trace. Nevertheless hunting and gathering attest to quite different from those of their African ancestors. an intimate understanding of the natural landscape, Together, these cultural and natural factors influ- while through gardening people consciously shaped enced the ways in which people reacted to and the land for ends that stood outside of an owner’s shaped the landscape around them. control. Market gardening and poultry raising, per- Here, the term landscape is used in two ways. haps more directly tied to the dominant plantation First, it refers to the physical result of the continuing regimen, reveal how slaves used agriculture for interaction between people and nature. Second, their own purposes, and how they organized their landscape describes the real and perceived bound- labor to do so. Together, these economic actions, aries that limited one’s experience of the world. coupled with kinship networks and the mandatory Institutionalized slavery provided the overarching requirements of servitude, combined to extend their framework for these boundaries, but the network of world far beyond the plantation boundaries. Places of Cultural Memory: 70 African Reflections on the American Landscape social and economic connections that origins in the slave censuses Jefferson three to six years, employing a variety of individuals created could stretch or tight- kept. Many men and women had names strategies to stretch fertility and yield. en these limits. suggestive of origins in the Spanish or They planted multiple crops within the Portuguese-speaking world.(5) Further same plot, a strategy that served the West Africans analysis of family connections and nam- dual function of discouraging weed in Virginia ing practices is needed to determine the growth and erosion and protecting their In discussing the identity of Poplar extent to which West African or harvest if one crop should fail. Where Forest slaves, it is important to outline Caribbean naming practices persisted rainfall allowed, farmers planted crops in the assumptions used concerning the within families through time. succession to ensure a constant supply origins of Africans brought to Virginia as of food. Finally, they rotated plantings Agricultural Traditions slaves. The fragmentary and inexact within each plot to slow down the deple- nature of the source material has led Enslaved West Africans and their tion of nutrients in the soil. After several scholars to disagree about the ethnici- descendants formed the backbone of years of heavy cultivation, land was ties and absolute numbers of individuals the tobacco and wheat-based plantation allowed to lie fallow and regenerate for transported. However, most scholars economies of colonial and antebellum four to ten years before planting believe that the majority of slaves Virginia. They came from regions with resumed. In some areas, farmers plant- imported into Virginia during the colonial economies based on the cultivation of ed fallow fields with carefully selected period came from West Africa, with the grains like millet and sorghum, root cover crops; in others they allowed fields largest numbers dominated by the Igbo crops of yams and cocoyams, and to regenerate naturally, only intervening cultural group from the region surround- starchy fruits like bananas and plantains. to prevent the regrowth of trees.(9) ing the Bight of Biafra. Akan-speakers Agriculturists from Senegal to the Bight Rotational bush fallow shared some from the Gold Coast made up the next also commonly grew legumes, fruits, important characteristics with Virginia largest proportion of transported and bulbs. Maize, cassava, and tobacco land-use patterns of the late eighteenth Africans, followed by Senegambians.(3) from the New World reached West Africa and early nineteenth centuries. Cycles Clues about the origins of Jefferson’s beginning in the late fifteenth century of land clearance, use, and abandon- slaves survive in legal documents and in and became important crops throughout ment characterized tobacco cultivation naming practices carried out within their the region.(6) Farmers made crop choic- for much of the Chesapeake, with Indian community. Jefferson inherited the es based primarily on the amount and corn or wheat often replacing tobacco majority of his bondspeople from his dependability of rainfall. Grains that before fields were completely exhaust- father-in-law John Wayles, a large could be planted and harvested in fairly ed.(10) By the late eighteenth century, planter and entrepreneur who engaged dry conditions predominated in the Jefferson and many of his contempo- in the transatlantic slave trade. The northern interior regions, while root raries used strategies such as crop rota- extent of Wayles’s participation is crops were the staple foodstuffs of the tion, selected cover crops for soil regen- unclear; however debts he incurred con- south. Although some groups engaged eration, and intercropping to boost tinued to plague his son-in-law nearly 25 in irrigated farming for rice, tree farming, yields.(11) While the context of these years after his death.(4) It is possible and shifting cultivation in the region, practices may have differed between that some of the men and women he West African farmers principally prac- landowners and enslaved workers, the held in bondage, and who Jefferson ticed rotational bush fallow in both the practices themselves would certainly subsequently inherited, were transported savanna and forest.(7) have been familiar to West African by Wayles. In some societies, the care of individ- farmers. Slaves from 11 quarter farms, includ- ual crops was divided along gender West Africans and Virginians also ing “Guinea” and “Angola,” made up the lines, while in others work was divided shared elements of farming technology. Wayles’ legacy. Oral histories, the by task rather than product, with men Hoes were an important tool on both recorded ages of a few individuals and involved in clearing and tilling virgin sides of the Atlantic, and Africans most naming practices suggest direct ties to land, and women employed in planting, likely found the transition from digging Africa. Akan day names survive along- tending and harvesting.(8) Farmers sticks and machetes to dibbles and cut- side others suggestive of Fanti or Igbo planted fields for periods ranging from toes an easy one.(12) Thus, while enslaved farmers in Virginia did not nec- Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries: Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest 71 essarily introduce new agricultural meth- Hill. Such features are rectangular com- Hill. These included seven fruits, eight ods to North America, their familiarity partments set beneath cabin floors that vegetables and grains, two to three nuts, with the technology, crops, and land use slaves used for storing foodstuffs and nine edible herbs, four weeds, three patterns current in colonial Virginia other belongings. Artifacts found in the grasses, one ornamental and one condi- made the transition from Old World to fill of the pit indicate that this dwelling ment.(18) Of these, nearly three-quar- New an efficient one from the perspec- was abandoned sometime before the ters represent domesticates. These may tive of their owners.(13) mid-1780s. An erosion gully cut across have arrived at the quarter in the form of the hillside southwest of the cabin, and provisions, or slaves may have raised The Poplar Forest residents filled it with trash in the final them in kitchen gardens or allotted plots.

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