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Kwasi Konadu

The Akan Diaspora in the A diáspora Akan nas Américas

Kwasi Konadu*

Resumo Este artigo objetiva discutir um conjunto de temas relacionados com as questões sobre como pequenos contingentes de homens e mulheres Akan, advindos da antiga Costa do Ouro (atual Gana) moldaram o curso de várias sociedades escravistas nas Américas. Os Akans trouxeram consigo experiências que foram postas em prática, desembocando em temas dias- póricos de maroonage, resistência e liberdade. A experiência Akan demon- stra, no entanto, que a liberdade não significava ausência de escravidão e resistência à escravização via maroonage, e isto não se traduziu em liber- dades sem restrições. Os Akans implicados nestes temas são também re- sponsáveis pela construção de sociedades que co-existiram em regimes escravistas, complexificando as questões em torno dos movimentos de re- sistência e liberdade que, às vezes, assumiram a forma de maroonage. Por outro lado, através de sociedades escravistas distantes e durante todo o final do século XVII e XVIII, alguns Akan foram mais longe do que os ma- roonage: eles previram a derrubada completa dessas sociedades draconi- anas de importação europeia com aqueles de sua própria criação e baseado em sua própria fundação cultural. Desta forma, os Akans contribuíram com uma perspectiva significativa sobre os significados múltiplos e incon- sistentes de liberdade. Palavras chave: Akans; Costa do Ouro; Maroonage; Diáspora; Escravidão.

Abstract This article examines how small contingents of Akan men and women from the (present-day ) shaped the course of multiple slave soci- eties in the Americas. Focusing on the diasporic themes of maroonage, resis- tance, and freedom, the Akan demonstrate that freedom was not the absence of , and resistance to enslavement or maroonage did not translate into unfettered freedoms. Across distant slave societies throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Akan also envisioned a complete overthrow of those slave societies with ones of their own making based on

* Professor da City University of New York. [email protected]

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core cultural understandings. This way, the Akan contribute a significant perspective on the manifold and inconsistent meanings of freedom shaped by African and diasporic exigencies. Keywords: Akans; Gold Coast; Maroonage; Diaspora; Slavery.

Elsewhere, I have written about the ings of freedom—the supposed converse of Akan diaspora in the Americas in much de- enslavement—in our ongoing study a com- tail (KONADU, 2010). Here, I will confine posite and variegated experience shaped by myself to a set of related themes through African and diasporic exigencies. These is- which relatively small contingents of Akan sues associated with matters of freedom, as persons shaped the course of multiple slave revealed by the Akan experience, will be the societies in the Americas and through one central part of this essay. of the significant ways their diasporic expe- rience is most intelligible. In so doing, these Part I: Setup Akan speakers and culture bearers brought into sharp relief the ubiquitous diasporic The term “Akan” is used in this essay to re- themes of maroonage, resistance, and free- fer to a composite culture forged by West dom—themes all made possible by the pro- African forest settlers over several millennia cess of and institutions that flowed from and between the Bandama and Volta Rivers transatlantic slaving. However, freedom in much of present-day Ghana, and which (and the pursuit of it) was not the absence came to be defined by a shared , of slavery, and resistance to enslavement ethos, calendrical system, spirituality, sed- via maroonage did not translate into unfet- entary agrarianism, and socio-political or- tered freedoms either. On the one hand, the der (KONADU, 2010). Though there is evi- Akan and their progeny complicated these dence of specific cultural contact and trans- themes, for co-existence within neo-Euro- formation and one could always argue this pean societies circumscribed the aforemen- point, the Akan have experienced broadly tioned human actions, and so , for significant cultural continuity amidst equal- instance, lived on the periphery of colonial ly significant technological and socio-polit- society yet depended on it for concessions ical change—as revealed by the documen- and provisions in ways other freedom seek- tary, linguistic, and archeological record— ers carved out contested socio-political between the fifteenth and twentieth cen- spaces within society’s laws and limits. On tury (DE CORSE, 2001; KONADU, 2010). the other hand, across distant slave soci- Through Akan speakers and culture bearers, eties and throughout the late seventeenth this continuity and its permutations would and eighteenth century, some Akan went reach the Americas, stubbornly informing further than maroonage: they envisioned notions of social practice, belonging and a complete overthrow of those draconian community, and identity. In matrilineal societies of European import with ones of Akan societies, one must born of an Akan their own making and based on founda- mother, speak kasa kronkron (“sacred” tional cultural understandings. This way, Twi [Akan] language), be well-grounded in they contribute a significant perspective the core self-understandings that structur- on the manifold and inconsistent mean- ated Akan thought and social practice to

44 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu be considered an kani ba (“a child of the Friday (Kofi, /Afua), Saturday (Kwame/ Akan”). These are indigenous criteria of Kwamena, Amma/Amba), and Sunday identity making, rather than reified notions (Kwasi, /Esi). Though Kwaku Takyi of being Akan or African, and, of course, al- was a notable among the enslaved, other terations to these criteria would be expect- Akan persons who left an historical foot- ed in the Americas due to the sheer terror print and of the lower orders of society also of forced relocation and the abnormality of confound the historians’ claim that individ- racialized captivity. uals such as Quashee (Kwasi) was a “Creole” One of the most fascinating parts of the and “[recruited] into the plot as a Creole,” Akan diasporic case, and why a formidable since he did not speak Akan nor was he born argument can be made on behalf of its cul- on the Gold Coast (GASPAR, 1985, p. 239). tural tenancy, is that the dislocating pow- The evidence of Quashee’s biography, in ers of transatlantic slavery was matched by that his mother was Akan, however, endors- a perseverance in use, so- es his claim that by virtue of having an Akan cio-political organization, naming patterns, mother, he or any other offspring was born spiritual practice, and in an Akan-based culturally Akan since Akan identity and be- identity. Take the case of captive individuals longing to a matrilineal (abusua) implicated in a supposedly planned revolt came only through the blood (mogya) of the against the slavocracy in early eighteenth mother (na).2 Quashee had made this ex- century . Historians and white act assertion. The implication is that Akan- planters in Antigua referred to the supposed based identity and ontology did not simply ringleader of this 1736 “slave conspiracy” factor into, but rather was central to the as “Court” and a “,” a - broader equation of diasporic experiences an slaving trademark through which Akan on one hand and the Akan’s African history and “Akanized” individuals were ascribed in and grounding on the other. British and Dutch America. In 1736 and in The Akan were also very much aware of affirming the slaving trademark, Governor who they were on the Gold Coast littoral and Mathew of Antigua wrote quite unambigu- to the forest fringe at 8 degrees north lati- ously, “those born on the Gold Coast [are] tude, and engaged the peoples and places whom we .”1 of the Americas through their foundational To his , the alleged ringleader and self-understandings. Though cultural au- his Akan-based community and even judges thentication as an Akan did not always fol- in the court case which followed, however, low the matrilineal principle in the Ameri- called him(self) Kwaku Takyi. Akan , cas—in that a key criterion of Akan person- such as Kwaku, follow the seven-day week hood presupposed birth through an Akan with male and female “soul day names” mother—it was more the case that Akan (kradin): Monday (, Adowa), Tues- (descended) fathers who married or fa- day (, ), Wednesday (Kwaku, thered children with non-Akan women gave ), Thursday (Yaw/Kwao, Yaa/Aba), their children . One example of this scenario involves Paul Cuffee, the well- 1 The National Archives at Kew (TNA): Public Re- cord Office (PRO), Colonial Office (CO) 152/22, known African-descended maritime entre- Report to Governor Mathew of an enquiry into preneur. Though Cuffee’s mother was born the negro conspiracy, Antigua, 30 December 1736, fol. 311. 2 TNA: PRO, CO 9/10, fol. 66.

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in , his father was reported- their progeny envisioned an ongoing dia- ly an Akan captured on the Gold Coast and logue with and, at life’s terminus, a spiritu- later enslaved and remembered as Kofi—the al return to their homeland via the idea of source of the family name Cuffee. The Akan asamando (“where the ancestors dwell”). In used two names (i.e., a “day” and family the Akan homeland, all efforts were made name) and since a “day name” could be used to secure the body of a deceased cultural as a family name (e.g., Kwaku Kwao), Paul member within reasonable distance. Be- Cuffee’s naming takes on added significance yond this boundary of reason, of which the for the family name is usually given by the Americas marked a great temporal distance father and it is accordingly called agyadin, from home, the Akan conceded to its logic “father’s name.” and perhaps it was this idea that compelled The distinctly patterned naming system a “spiritual home-going” through appropri- of the Akan and the characteristics embod- ate ritual paraphernalia, spiritual adepts, ied in each name took root and flourished as and ceremonials. What was critical here was a resource for carving out contested space not necessarily a connection to (a foreign) for a culture and an identity of a non-Islamic land but to ancestors and spiritual agencies and Judeo-Christian origin. This identity, as that could facilitate entry to asamando, an it left its homeland, was largely unaffected ancestral world reached by crossing a body by Islam and up until the late of water. In asamando and through the abo- nineteenth century. One of the key reasons som (“spiritual agents”), cultural knowledge for this state of affairs is that Akan societies of historical, spiritual, and pragmatic val- were built on spiritual agencies (e.g., abo- ue was archived, retrieved, shaped, and re- som, nsamanfo [“ancestors”]), emblems used. In short, it should not all be surprising (e.g., , funerary/kente cloth, that the Akan interacted with Arab-Islamic political regalia linked to statecraft), and ob- and European-Christian forces for centuries jects (e.g., sacred swords, stools, ritual par- in , but never became Islamic or aphernalia). Those agencies functioned as Christian (until the twentieth century with facilitators of the social and natural , resistance) and remained so in the Ameri- and shaped the cultural self-understand- cas, especially in Maroon and some plan- ings, settlements, and the Akan polities as tation-based communities throughout the sources of identification and belonging on British, Danish, Dutch, and North American the Gold Coast and certainly across the sea. colonies. As with Islam, the Akan thwarted efforts at Christianization for their social orders Part II: Confrontations were facilitated by a spiritual culture atten- In 1675, Britain’s most populous and wealth- tive to the abosom and structured toward iest colony, , held its breath as the local and regional commerce. Where Euro- alleged Akan-led “grand conspiracy” to re- pean commerce and commodification and volt unfolded. An official account published Akan (spiritual) culture were at odds, the in 1676 claimed the conspiracy had been in apparent contradictions were, in fact, accu- the works for three years and was the work rate reflections of those encounters and the of “Cormantee or Gold-Cost [sic] Negro’s” Akan response to them in the Americas. As and its aim was to install a “King, one Cof- the cases to follow will show, the Akan and fee [Kofi] an Ancient Gold-Cost [sic] Negro,

46 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu who should have been Crowned the 12th of burnt alive and beheaded, and then 25 more June last past in a Chair of State exquisitely executed, perhaps including Coffee, though wrought and Carved after their Mode; with we know nothing about him. Many probably Bowes and Arrowes to be likewise carried in maintained their innocence, including the State before his Majesty.3 Trumpets were to five who hung themselves, and in one cou- be made of Elephants teeth, gourds sound- rageous moment where confessions were ed on several hills to announce their “gen- sought from “one of those that were burned eral rising,” followed by burning the sugar alive [while] being chained at the stake,” cane fields and the conspirators cutting the another chained “Cormantee” named Tony throats of their white captors. These activi- insisted, “are there not enough of our Coun- ties, the account continues, were to be pre- try-men killed already?”4 The former, who ceded by sacred oaths and a political plan of was not named, “would not speak one word action (the “grand design”) on how to man- more” thereafter. In the end, we gain some age the post-insurrection colony based upon insights into the Akan experience in the ear- the ideational (centralized politics), spiritu- ly Americas, but at the expense of the more al (oaths and rituals), and material (wood- than one hundred individuals implicated, en stool as symbol of leadership) culture of the close to fifty persons executed, and the Akan polities. We can be assured “Coroman- few that committed suicide on account of a tee” referred to a sizable Akan presence with conspiracy that might not have been. Though an average of 40 percent of the Africans im- suicide in this context would have been hon- ported to Barbados originating in the Gold orable in Akan eyes, this occasion, whether Coast between the 1650s and 1710s and an real or fictive, was an anomaly which per- historical aggregate of at least 136,000 Af- haps made white planters, numbering over ricans from the Gold Coast. Indeed, Afri- 20,000, pay more attention to safeguarding cans from the Gold Coast were seemingly against the scale or success of future revolts preferred, for “The negroes most in demand via a range of legal restrictions. In fact, after at Barbados, are the Gold Coast, or, as they the alleged plot of 1675, there were a few re- call them Cormantines,” wrote officials to volts in the history of Barbados with almost the Royal African Company in 1692 or 1693 all occurring the second half of the seven- (DONNAN, 1930, vol. 01, p. 391). teenth century (HANDLER, 1982). An actual plot, however, seems doubtful, Overall, Barbados did not “experience though not improbable, for the “conspiracy” any truly successful slave revolt, most likely and the false “Tryal at a Court” was based on because it was too small and lacked an in- the bold talk of a “Young Cormantee Negro” terior that would sustain a Maroon colony indirectly overheard and reported by anoth- and guerrilla warfare” (SUNDQUIST, 2005, er enslaved African, Anna, to her owner. Af- p. 293).5 To this, a locust plague, major ter that “Cormantee Negro” implicated sev- 4 Great Newes from the Barbadoes, 12. eral others (of what is uncertain), the hunt 5 One example of such few revolts was the alleged was as shift as the executions—17 initially conspiracy in 1692. Though sharing some struc- tural elements with the 1675 plot and some fan- 3 Anon., Great Newes from the Barbadoes or, A ciful details, see the very brief account in Nar- True and Faithful Account of the Grand Conspi- cissus Luttrell, A Brief, But Most True Relation racy of The Negroes against the English (Lon- of the Late Barbarous and Bloody Plot of the don: L. Curtis, 1676), 9. See also (HANDLER, Negro’s in the Island of Barbado’s… (London: 1982, p. 13-19). George Croom, 1692).

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hurricanes, and droughts in the 1660s with guns and hatchets and Cuffee (Kofi) and another hurricane in 1675 were addition- John set ablaze a building in the middle of al factors, along with only 3,200-recorded town, precisely their owner’s outhouse in Africans from the Gold Coast imported be- the East Ward of New York City.7 As the fire tween 1641 and 1670 and merely 1,400 for spread, Africans and white colonists engaged the years 1671-1675. Taken together, the in a confrontation that left at least 9 whites small number of imported Akan peoples, a dead and 6 wounded. The colonial militia series of natural disasters, the small num- responded and captured 27 Africans. About bers but fear of enslaved Amerindians, the 21 Africans were executed (e.g., hung, burnt large white settler population and the con- alive, beheaded and left as a deterrents), 6 solidation of valuable land by elite planters, committed suicide (e.g., shot themselves or a booming sugar industry until about 1720, cut their throats), and about 12 others were and a militia assembled to control the en- not indicted or acquitted, including Cuffee slaved all made an Akan-led plot unlikely. (Kofi) who was sentenced to be hung but Even if attempted, these factors would have pardoned by Governor Hunter on account greatly mitigated a successful revolt. Rare of insufficient evidence.8 Cuffee, who was a accounts from those exported through Gold key witness on behalf of city officials, shared Coast ports, as in the case of James Gron- a conversely different fate than his niosaw of Bornu, tell us very little about Akan defendants. Though Quashi (Kwasi) the Akan or Gold Coast experience in sev- and Amba (Amma) were part of the small enteenth or early eighteenth century Barba- cohort that received acquittals, the likes of dos where Gronniosaw arrived briefly on a Quasi (Kwasi) and Quacko (Kwaku) were Dutch slave vessel in the 1720s before being hung and Quaco (Kwaku) was “burnt with purchased and transshipped to New York.6 fire until his bo[dy] dead and consumed.”9 As Barbados lost its standing as the leading Interestingly enough, there is no evidence sugar-producing colony in the British Carib- in the trial records of any confessions made bean in the 1720s, New York City had just 7 One account of the revolt, which follows the ge- experienced an Akan-led revolt that, unlike neral course of events, is by Governor Robert Barbados in 1675, was real in its execution Hunter, who was royal governor of New York and New Jersey between 1710 and 1719. For and in the backlash that immediately fol- Hunter’s account, see E. B. O’Callaghan and lowed. Berthold Fernow, eds., Documents Relative to On 1 or 6 April 1712, about twenty-three the Colonial History of the State of New York (15 vols., Albany: Weed, Parsons and Company, armed Africans gathered at midnight with 1856-87), 5: 341-42. See also Court of General and Quarter Sessions of the Peace, 1691 – 1731, 6 James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, A Narra- and New York Supreme Court of Judicature Mi- tive of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the nute Book, 6 June 1710 – 5 June 1714 (engros- Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an sed), New York City County Clerk Archives, New African Prince, as Related by Himself (Bath: York. W. Gye, 1770), 10. In other accounts of likely 8 O’Callaghan and Fernow, Documents, 5: 342; Akan captives in Barbados, there is an impove- Court of General and Quarter Sessions of the rishment of useful information about their ex- Peace, 1691 – 1731, p. 221, 227r; Kenneth Scott, periences there or about their homeland. See, “The Slave Insurrection in New York in 1712,” for instance, The Royal African: or, Memoirs of New York Historical Society Quarterly 45 the Young Prince of Annamaboe… (London: W. (1961): 63; Foote, Black and White Manhattan, Reeve, 1750), a biography of Prince William An- 130-38. sah Sessarakoo who was enslaved in Barbados 9 Court of General and Quarter Sessions of the from 1744 to 1748. Peace, 1691 – 1731, pp. 213, 215-19, 221, 227.

48 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu by those accused and eventually executed. bi- and multilingual in African and Europe- We can be certain some were “Condemned an , skilled workers, and worked on Slender Evidence in the heat of Peoples or lived in close proximity to “freed” Afri- resentment,” as argued by an eyewitness, cans. The close to 200 Gold Coast Africans who heard one of the accused “declare his that arrived in New York between 1710 and Innocency [sic] with his dying breath” and 1712 and, in consideration of the role played “exhorted [another named Robin] to Con- by Cuffee and other Akan participants and fession” while handing for three days in Sharpe’s claim of a “Cormantee” plot, the chains.10 That eyewitness, the Rev. John Akan certainly did provide leadership to the Sharpe of the Society for the Propagation of 1712 revolt, in spite of their amazingly small the Gospel in Foreign Parts, saw some or all of numbers. the revolt and reported, “some Negro Slaves The 1712 revolt is less complicated since here of the Nations of Cormantee & Pappa it, according to the records, actually oc- [Popo] plotted to destroy all the White[s] in curred. But this is no certainly for there was order to obtain their freedom.”11 The “Cor- no “official report” produced, no evidence mantee & Pappa,” incorrectly called “sub- of trial records or questions put the accused division[s] of the Akan” by Thelma Foote, in the court transcripts, and very little evi- did not represent actual peoples but rath- dence—John Sharpe’s letter notwithstand- er European trademarks for a coastal town ing—actually exists to convincingly say there (Kormantin) and a polity (“Popo”), respec- was a revolt in 1712. Nonetheless, these is- tively, from which largely Akan and contig- sues raise more serious questions about uous peoples embarked for the Americas.12 the alleged 1741 New York conspiracy be- Sharpe claimed the group met on March 25 cause no revolt occurred and this conspir- and engaged in a secret blood oath by “Suck- acy shared much in common with the 1675 ing the blood of each Others hands, and to Barbados conspiracy, the alleged 1736 An- make them invulnerable as they believed a tigua conspiracy, the alleged 1759 St. Croix free negroe who pretends socery [sic] gave conspiracy, and even the well publicized them powder to rub on their cloths [sic],” 1822 Denmark (Vesey) conspiracy to revolt and with little Christianization among the in Charleston, South Carolina. We have al- enslaved he suspected no more than 10 per- ready discussed the “grand conspiracy” in 13 cent attended church school. Indeed, many Barbados, and we will address the same for enslaved Africans and Akan persons in and Antigua and St. Croix. As we will see further, around New York City were non-Christian, these cases and the Denmark conspiracy to 10 Roswell R. Hoes, “The Negro Plot of 1712,” New revolt in Charleston differed little, and, tak- York Genealogical and Biographical Record 21 (1890): 163; Court of General and Quarter Ses- en together, reveals much about the alleged sions of the Peace, 1691 – 1731, New York City 1741 New York conspiracy with Akan (de- County Clerk Archives, New York, p. 212. 11 Hoes, “Negro Plot,” 162. scended) persons implicated. In the Den- 12 Foote, Black and White Manhattan, 133, and mark case, Quash (Kwasi) Harleston, “a free esp. 134-39, for a perspective on the Akan role black man,” was among those imprisoned and aim in the 1712 revolt. See also Graham Rus- sell Hodges, Roots and Branch: African Ameri- but acquitted—unlike Denmark, who was cans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863 hung—“for their guilt not being fully proved” (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, while they maintained their innocence. Den- 1999), 65. 13 Hoes, “Negro Plot,” 162-63. mark also maintained his innocence, but he

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and others implicated on coerced testimony resulting in famine and starvation, contrib- were executed and some, including the “free uted to the St. John revolt of 1733. As more black man” Quash (Kwasi), were sent out of and more Africans marooned in the forest the country.14 Cuffy (Kofi), another Akan- interior to escape the famine and avoid cap- named individual, was also arrested for his ture, their presence created additional anx- involvement in the alleged Denmark-led iety and pains for planters, but not enough conspiracy, but he too was discharged be- to prepare the latter for what began around cause of insufficient testimony against 3 o’clock in the morning on 23 November him.15 The uneven fates of Cuffy, Quash, 1733. The first and most successful enslaved and Denmark points to the very problemat- revolt in the Danish colonies occurred on ic of discerning what and when is a conspir- the island of St. John. In 1733, “Amina” or acy a conspiracy to revolt and a re-thinking “Mina” (Akan) from the Gold Coast revolted of the nature of revolts and conspiracies and ruled St. John for several months be- thereof in the resistance to enslavement lit- fore French forces came to the aid of Dan- erature. This way, we can begin to discern ish planters. Whereas the Danish, Spanish, the courage of liberation seekers (however French, and Portuguese employed “Amina” they conceived freedom) and the likes of or “Mina” as slaving trademarks for Akan Denmark who protested their innocence (or Gold Coast peoples) destined for or re- without confession from the incrimination siding in the Americas, the kindred trade- of those who confessed and accused others mark of “Coromantee” was a British and as ways to escape execution or banishment Dutch brand name—shorthand for the Akan in the face of white hysteria. As was true well into the nineteenth century.16

for challenges to hegemony in colonial New 16 On “Mina” and “Coromantee,” and their prove- York in 1712 and 1741, the same kinds of ac- nance, see A. Teixeira da Mota and P.E.H. Hair, tors and plot appeared in the Danish colo- East of Mina: Afro-European Relations on the Gold Coast in the 1550s and 1560s, an Essay nies in 1733 and 1759. with supporting documents (Madison: African The population in the Danish colonies Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Ma- included newly arrived Africans, those born dison, 1988); Robin Law, “Ethnicities of Ensla- ved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings or with long residence in the colony, those of “Mina” (Again),” History in Africa 32 (2005): in maroon communities, “free” but landless 251, 264; P.E.H. Hair, “Black African Slaves at individuals from outside the colony, and Valencia, 1482-1516: An Onomastic Inquiry,” History in Africa, 7 (1980): 119-131; Alonso de those manumitted. This social configuration Sandoval, Un Tratado sobre la Esclavitud, ed. was a key source of white anxiety given the Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, imbalance between the number of enslaved 1987), 65; John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400- Africans and the number of freed persons of 1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, African descent. The ruthless “slave code” of 1998), 184-93; P.E.H. Hair et al., eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on 1733 promulgated by Governor Philip Gar- West Africa, 1678-1712 (2 vols.: London: The delin sought to address that imbalance, but Hakluyt Society, 1992), 2: 382, 789-90; Manuel it, including a series of natural calamities Moreno Fraginals, “Africa in Cuba: A Quantita- tive Analysis of the African Populations in the 14 Lionel H. Kennedy and Thomas Parker, An Of- Island of Cuba,” Annals of the New York Aca- ficial Report on the Trials of Sundry Negroes, demy of Sciences 292, 1 (1977): 187-201; Kent Charged with an Attempt to Raise an Insurrec- Russel Lohse, Africans and their Descendants tion in the State of South-Carolina (Charleston: in Colonial , 1600-1750 (PhD Diss., James R. Schenck, 1822), 186. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005), 53, 58, 15 Kennedy and Parker, An Official Report, 187. 62, 64-65, 84; Elizabeth Donnan, Documents

50 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu

Between November 1733 and June 1734, of the royal court, and commander largely Akan insurgents originally from Ak- in the Akwamu army. Jama (Gyamma) was wamu, an Akan polity, in addition to Gã- a servant of Akwamuhene Ansa Kwao and Adangme participants, sought to overthrow had his own account with the Danish at fort the white planter regime and establish a Christiansborg. He, along with others, prob- polity of their own with the Akan as perhaps ably arrived in the Danish on the new planters.17 In the wake Akwamu’s board the Laarurg Galley, which embarked collapse in 1730, a pool of enslavable peo- with 443 captives, including 82 from Chris- ples became available, and the uprisings by tiansborg, and disembarked with 242 or 250 oppositional forces and allied neighboring in May 1733.18 The 82 from Christiansborg polities led to the capture and exportation would have included a tightly knit group, of Akwamu citizens. A large number of the and Jama, as the leader of the revolt and the insurrectionists were newly arrived from architect of an impending Akan-based poli- the Gold Coast and specifically Akwamu, ty, would have been well-positioned with an and these Akan persons were skilled in fire- appropriate set of skills to lead. arm use and Akan statecraft, remembered The goal held by these insurrectionists, the structure and the fall of their polity in however, was to replace the existing slave the Akan homeland, and likely sought to society with one of their own in which the recreate it. One of the principal leaders was sugar-cotton economy of the former was to Jama or Gyamma—birmpn, member remain intact, and with the killing or driving out of the white planters. The revolt extend- Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (4 vols.: Washington, D.C.: Carne- ed to other Danish colonies through a net- gie Institution of Washington, 1930), 1: 301-02, work of “Amina” forces on those islands and 391; Manuel Nunes Pereira, A Casa das Minas: the political outcome, if successful, would Contribuição ao estudo das sobrevivéncias do culto dos Voduns, do Pante„o daomeano, no Es- have mirrored the Akan confederation tado do Maranhão, Brasil (Petrópolis: Vozes, structure of allied polities.19 An ambitious 1979); Sérgio Ferretti, Querebentam de Zoma- plan indeed! However, not even that vision donu: Etnografia da Casa das Minas(São Luis: Universidade Federal do Maranhão, 1986). and an “Amina” network, or their defeat of 17 Pierre J. Pannet, Report on the Execrable Cons- Danish and British forces, would forestall piracy Carried Out by the Amina Negroes on the Danish Island of St. Jan in America, 1733, their lack of firearms, ammunition, and the trans. and eds. Aimery P. Caron and Arnold surprising absence of support from diverse R. Highfield (Christiansted, St. Croix: Antilles segments of the enslaved and “free” commu- Press, 1984), 17; C.G.A. Oldendorp, A Caribbean Mission, ed., Johann Jakob Bossard, trans., Ar- nity. Almost none of the formerly enslaved nold R. Highfield and Vladimir Barac (Ann Ar- population and few Maroons joined the in- bor, MI: Karoma Publishers, 1987), 235-36; surrection, and only 10 to 30 percent of the Westergaard, Danish , 166-78; John P. Knox, A Historical Account of St. Thomas enslaved population actually participated in (New York: Charles Scribner, 1852), 71-77; Ray the revolt.20 French forces soon came to the A. Kea, “‘When I die, I Shall Return to My Own Land’: An ‘Amina’ in the Danish 18 On Jama and the Laarurg Galley, see Ole Juste- West Indies, 1733-1734,” in The Cloth of Many sen, ed., Danish Sources for the History of Gha- Colored Silks: Papers on History and Society, na, 1657-1754 (2 vols.: Copenhagen: The Royal Ghanaian and Islamic in Honor of Ivor Wilks, Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2005), eds., John Hunwicks and Nancy Lawler (Evans- 1: 338, 424, 444, 470. ton: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 160; 19 Pannet, Conspiracy, 17; Oldendorp, Caribbean John L. Anderson’s Night of the Silent Drums Mission, 235. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975). 20 Kea, “When I die,” 171-72; Leif Svalesen, The

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aid of Danish planters and restored planter The 1733 insurrection was not only the rule in June 1734. Almost all the leaders and first revolt in the Danish Caribbean but a number of other insurrectionists commit- also the first successful revolt—albeit lim- ted suicide and, in their mind and spirit, re- ited to six months—by captives African turned to asamando (“where the ancestors against white colonists, and that historical dwell”), with the appropriate cultural ex- moment predated the North American and pression, “when I die, I shall return to my the —both of which based own land.”21 For members of the counter-he- their revolts on principles similar to the St. gemonic group, this expression of defiance John’s insurrection. Unlike the Haitian re- cemented their power over temporal life and volt or the late eighteenth century revolts simultaneously disempowered the planters in Grenada and St. Vincent, the Akan of St. who would have tortured and slowly killed, John sought to preserve the mechanisms of infringing on the transmigration of the spir- production rather than destroy the sugar it/soul headed to asamando. It may seem an estates in order economically suffocate en- odd notion of victory and defiance in death, slavement and those who held the Africans suicide in Akan culture was not an act of under captivity. But like newly independent cowardice but rather an acceptable act hav- Haiti, where its revolutionary leaders debat- ing fought valiantly in war or having to re- ed the re-enslavement of some of the new- move dishonor and ridicule; otherwise, the ly emancipated, the Akan insurrectionists, spirit of that person was debarred from asa- like all counter-hegemonic movements, had mando. A small group marooned for several to grapple with the pragmatics of ruling a months until they surrendered to authori- post-colonial society and the divisions that ties based on a promise of pardon. Most of existed prior and during the 1733 revolt. In these returnees were tortured, burnt at the the wake of the St. John revolt, planter re- stake, or sawed in half; their leader, Aquash- pression followed as it did elsewhere in the ie (), was decapitated.22 In the midst Americas, but the ownership of the colonies of disbelief and revenge, the whites on St. was transferred to the Danish monarchy in John and the other islands remained ambig- 1755. Deep anxieties among the planters re- uous but fearful of the “Amina,” who were, mained, and no doubt still inflamed by the in their minds, the “most unruly and bar- 1733 St. John revolt, and these fears led to baric,” “unfaithful and warlike,” “so wicked the sheer brutality employed by planters in and lazy,” and yet the “strongest of all the alleged 1759 Akan uprising based on rumors Negroes” with “witch doctors among them and “confessions” gathered through torture. who are so powerful.”23 Of the 89 Africans accused of conspiracy to revolt, 58 were acquitted, 10 were sent out Slave Ship Fredensborg (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 199. of the colonies, 7 escaped and remained at- 21 Kea, “When I die,” 189. large, and the rest were hung, strangled, 22 Ibid., 187. 23 Johan Lorentz Carstens, St. Thomas slaveholder burnt alive, and gibbeted. Indeed, large who left the island in 1739 and wrote En Almin- numbers of Akan persons were implicated delig Beskrivelse om Alle de Danske, in The Ka- in the successful St. John uprising in 1733 as mina Folk: Slavery and Slave Life in the , eds. George F. Tyson and Arnold well as the so-called 1759 conspiracy, where R. Highfield (U.S. Virgin Islands: Virgin Islands groes,” the source of the term “Amina,” were Humanities Council, 1994), 7. Waldermar Wes- “liable to grow violently mutinous.” See Wester- tergaard was also convinced, “the El Mina ne- gaard, Danish West Indies, 44.

52 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu it seemed, in this instance and in others was hung in its aftermath because of his throughout the Americas, perceptions of the testimony—in order to save his own life. Of Akan were reified in the minds of planters those executed, a few confessed but most did and colonial officials that made them false not while being hung, strangled, burnt alive, targets for real or imagined agency.24 or gibbeted.26 William Davis confessed but The alleged plot of 1759 to burn the plan- “cut his own throat” before execution, Cud- tations and kill the whites during the Christ- jo also confessed and was “burned alive,” mas holiday unraveled from an argument “Prince Qvakoe” (Kwaku) was broken on the between Cudjo (Kwadwo) of Søren Bagger’s wheel, and Qvau or Quaco “confessed noth- sugar plantation in Prince’s Quarter and two ing” and lived for 42 hours in “a gibbet or white men, Benjamin Bear and Peter Hyde, iron cage.” Qvau, “Prince Qvakoe” (Kwaku), wherein Cudjo threatened to kill Peter Hyde. and Cudjo were implicated as the principal Bear and Hyde inform Merrik Turnbul, the leaders of the suspected, though not im- Burgher Lieutenant and a planter in King’s probable, revolt. Since Qvau or Quaco was Quarter, who told the captain of the town, banished from Antigua—probably traveling Major de Nully, who in turn informed the with planters who relocated to St. Croix af- governor. The “conspirators” were swiftly ter the alleged 1736 Antigua conspiracy—it rounded up, testimony of several enslaved is more likely he would have designed the Africans who heard Cudjo’s remarks, and uprising, if there was one, based on the kind the voluntary testimony of Cudjo’s broth- of Akan statecraft, oaths, and culture prac- er, (Kwamena), sealed Cudjo’s tices disclosed through the alleged Antigua fate.25 According to Quamina’s testimony, conspiracy.27 Cudjo planned the uprising; Cudjo, how- In ways similar to the alleged Barbados ever, named William Davis, a “free negro,” plot of 1675 and associated conspiracies as the one who proposed the idea. The “tri- and insurrections in the Danish colonies, al” judge Engelbret Hesselberg, however, the supposed 1736 conspiracy to revolt in thought the real leader was Qvau (Kwao) or Antigua and its aftermath provides another Quaco (Kwaku), whom had witnessed the instance where Akan persons exposed the 1736 Antigua conspiracy and whose father limits of freedom seeking and the historians

24 Neville A. T. Hall, Slave Society in the Danish who have built their careers on what Philip West Indies: St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix, Morgan calls “conspiracy scares.”28 The con- ed., B. W. Higman (Kingston: The University spiracy to revolt of 1736 also reveal much of the West Indies Press, 1994), 70-71; see also Isidor Paiewonsky, Eyewitness Accounts of Sla- about strategies of forging operational uni- very in the Danish West Indies (New York: For- dham University Press, 1989). 26 Westergaard, “Account of the Negro Rebellion,” 25 These events are based on the written account 58-61. of one of the “trial” judges, Engelbret Hessel- 27 According to Hesselberg’s account, “Prince berg, and translated by Waldemar Westergaard Qvakoe” witnessed an oath wherein two of the in “Account of the Negro Rebellion on St. Croix, key actors “cut themselves in the finger in his Danish West Indies, 1759,” Journal of Negro presence, mixed the blood with earth and water, History 11, no. 1 (1926): 53-56. See also Wal- and drank it with the assurance [to each other] demar Westergaard, “A St. Croix Map of 1766: that they would not confess to the conspiracy no With a Note on its Significance in West Indian matter what pain they were subjected to.” See Plantation Economy,” Journal of Negro History Westergaard, “Account of the Negro Rebellion,” 23, no. 2 (1938): 225-27 for names and proper- 57. ties of principal white officials involved in the 28 Philip D. Morgan, “Conspiracy Scares,” William alleged 1759 conspiracy. and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2002): 159-66.

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ty using African cultural ideas and against made “king” and which Antiguan officials the lack of broad support among distinct and several other historians interpreted as segments of the enslaved and freed popu- a declaration of war was actually an enno- lation. The locus of this conspiracy was the bling ceremony disguised as a coronation.32 capital of St. John’s, an urban setting where Philip Morgan, who relies on Thornton’s in- those segments interacted with a greater terpretation, is also convinced the Antigua cross-section of individuals via their profes- judges misinterpreted the “shield dance.”33 sion.29 A number of Akan persons—Secundi David Gaspar claims there was an actual (Sekondi), Cuffy (Kofi), (Kwadwo), plot, arguing the “ikem dance” was “in fact and Quashee Cumma (Kwasi Kuma)—were Akan ceremonial that prepared participants 34 mobile and had access to arms and other for war against the whites.” Gaspar’s ac- resources, a few had some wealth given the count demonstrates, however, the Barbados magnitude of their feasts and celebrations, and Antigua cases are too similar in their or- and, from one colonist’s perspective, were igin and outcomes to simply say there would “intelligent negroes, most of them trades- have been a revolt by the supposed “conspir- men, as carpenters, coopers, and masons.”30 ators” in question. Much like the 1733 Akan-led revolt in In the Antigua trial records, there are only the Danish colony of St. John, the alleged a few omnipresent and key witnesses, the plot of 1736 germinated as the brainchild of testimony of the accused and those trying to an Akan-led community that enstooled as avoid torture or execution are inconsistent, “king” an individual named Court (Kwaku and there were disputes about confessing to the magistrates and spies in the prisons Takyi). This community of a few hundred where the accused were held.35 For Thorn- was implicated in planning to blow up a ton and Morgan, an ennobling ceremony ballroom where a coronation ceremony for might be one interpretation resting square- the British crown was to be held and with ly on the so-called “shield dance,” but there much of the slavocracy in attendance.31 This is another view. Thornton relied on Dutch plot, like the alleged Barbados conspiracy merchant Willem Bosman’s account of a of 1675, is both questionable in its existence and the extent of its design, yet not implau- 32 John Thornton, “War, the State, and Religious Norms in “Coromantee” Thought: The Ideolo- sible for the very same reasons. Historians gy of an African American Nation,” in Possible like John Thornton argue the so-called ikem Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America, ed. or “shield ceremony” in which Court was Robert Blair St. George (Ithaca: Cornell Univer- sity Press, 2000), 195. 29 TNA: PRO, CO 9/10, Antigua Council Minutes, 33 Philip D. Morgan, “Conspiracy Scares,” William “Negro’s Conspiracy,” fols. 40-91; Narrative of and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 1. (2002): 165. the Intended Conspiracy of the Negroes at An- 34 Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebel, 9, 249; see also tigua (Dulbin: R. Reilly, 1737), 20-23; David David Barry Gaspar, “The Antigua Slave Cons- Barry Gaspar, Bondmen and Rebel: A Study of piracy of 1736: A Case Study of the Origins of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua with Impli- Collective Resistance,” Wiliam and Mary Quar- cations for Colonial British America (Baltimo- terly 35, no. 2 (1978): 308-23. re: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 35 TNA: PRO, CO 9/10, fols. 65-66; Narrative of 30-35. See also the correspondences in TNA: the Intended Conspiracy, 5. On the 1712 New PRO, CO 152/22-23. York revolt, see Kenneth Scott, “The Slave Insur- 30 Anon., Antigua and the Antiguans… (London: rection in New York in 1712,” New York Histori- Saunders and Otley, 1844), 2: 25. cal Society Quarterly 45 (1961): 53; New York 31 TNA: PRO, CO 9/10, fols. 75-76; Narrative of Supreme Court of Judicature Minute Book, 6 the Intended Conspiracy, 8; Gaspar, Bondmen June 1710 – 5 June 1714 (engrossed), New York and Rebel, 22. City County Clerk Archives, New York.

54 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu ceremony that conveyed “nobility” among order to integrate “strangers” into relative- “commoners,” but Bosman does not provide ly sovereign communities and this was cer- an Akan name for this “ennobling” ceremo- tainly the case for Akan persons who formed ny, though the judges in Antigua recorded a or joined Maroon societies in , specific ceremony called the “ikem” dance. , and . Thus, the oath Thornton argued Court or Kwaku Takyi was ceremony preceding Court’s enstoolment ennobled because of his riches, but if Bos- and him sitting in state would appear to be man concluded those who possessed “the a diasporic version of the annual odwira greatest Riches receive[d] also the greatest festival that marked the harvest season, the Honour without Nobility being mixed in it start of the indigenous Akan New Year, and to the least,” then why an ennobling cere- a time to install or enstool a new community mony for one of the richest enslaved persons leader for some Gold Coast polities. in Antigua?36 Certainly, one could become In those polities, potential leaders were wealthy and wield some political power in chosen from a matrilineal group of “king Antigua or the Akan homeland, however, makers” of whose clan the person was a wonya wo ho a, wonydehye! (“if you part. Upon approval the candidate had to become rich, you will not be a ‘royal’”). make a sacred oath to his community, the Certainly, the alleged Akan conspirators, ancestors (of whose land he became cus- women and men, were involved in oaths and todian), and the abosom with attendant in rituals held at gravesites and by silk cotton ritual sacrifices before assuming office for trees. Similar rites that connected impera- several days. Court was chosen by a com- tives of the temporal world with resources munity of Akan peoples and he consulted of the spiritual one were also present in the Quawcoo (Kwaku) the “Old Oby [] supposed Akan-led plot on St. Croix in 1759, Man” on the finer points of these process but there was no revolt or real conspiracy. and wherein Quawcoo made sacrifices for The oath ceremony performed in Antigua Court, showed him how to use the “Ikem”  involved “drinking the abosom” (y nnom (kym, “shield”), a ceremonial sword abosom, “we should drink abosom”), that is, made of a wooden cutlass, and an “Oben” oath was a process of initiation and solidarity (abn, “horn”) made of ivory.37 Indeed, before witnesses that included spiritual en- when it came to Court’s installation, the tities such as the abosom and to whom one “Language and Ceremonies used at it [was] would be accountable. However, such oaths all [in] Coramantine [read: Akan]” among a were used in non-militarized contexts in large, diverse crowd of (diasporic) Africans 36 Narrative of the Intended Conspiracy, 4; and whites.38 This was relatively no differ- Willem Bosman, Naauwkeurige Beschryving ent from the odwira that Thomas Bowdich van de Guinese Goud-, Tand- en Slave-Kust (1704), translated as A New and Accurate witnessed in 1817 among the Asante where- Description of the Coast of Guinea (London: in the Asante sought to “unite the various J. Knapton, 1705), 132, 135. Bosman focus on Axim was explicit: “I shall content myself with nations by a common festival” that hosted describing that [i.e., Axim] only.” See also Ray Akan and non-Akan peoples from tributary Kea, Settlements, Trade, and Polities in the Se- and visiting polities, but the “Language and venteenth-Century Gold Coast (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 101-05; Ceremonies” were in Akan in spite of the di- Albert van Dantzig, “English Bosman and Dutch Bosman: A Comparison of the Texts, II,” His- 37 TNA: PRO, CO 9/10, fol. 91. tory in Africa 3 (1976): 118. 38 Narrative of the Intended Conspiracy, 6, 9.

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verse audience.39 Court’s consultations with treatment of the enslaved were not enough Quawcoo, his spiritual and political advisor, for Governor Wolfert Hoogenheim, his rel- and the design and timing of the so-called atively new administration was welcomed “coronation,” including the rituals and by the gravity of a revolt that erupted on the preparations in material culture, could not Magdalenburg plantation on 23 February have better matched an odwira-like event. 1763 at the end of the short rainy season.41 One undeniable implication of the Antigua The plantation was on the western part of case is quite clear. When we read (diasporic) the Canje River and soon others followed in African peoples experiences against their revolt, including plantations on the upper culture history and core self-understand- part of the River with close to 4,000 ings and against the incomplete documen- individuals wielding 600 guns under the tary evidence, we are better able to discern leadership of an Africa-born cooper named conspiracy from ceremony, plot from panic, (Kofi). and real agency from white anxiety. In so During the first week of March, the free- doing, we rightly memorialize the real de- dom seekers killed 60 or more whites at the fiance and challenges to hegemony and the Peereboom company plantation and con- nuances of freedom seeking, as was the case tinued on that path, while Dutch officials in in late eighteenth century Berbice. Essequibo and Demerara (south of Berbice) Between 1763 and 1764, one of the larg- mustered large contingents of Amerindian est enslaved revolts in the Americas seized forces to prevent the revolt from extending the sugar colony of Berbice wherein almost into their respective colonies rather than as- the entire enslaved population took control sist their colonial counterparts in Berbice.42 of the colony under the leadership of Cof- As some reinforcements from St. Eustatius fy (Kofi) in ways very similar to the 1733 came between March and May (part of the Akan-led revolt in the Danish colony of St. long rainy season), reports of internal con- John. In 1762, the Dutch colony had approx- flict among the freedom seekers circulated: imately 125 plantations and a population of alleged disagreements between the Afri- about 5,000—3,833 enslaved Africans, 346 ca-born and Berbice-born captives about Europeans, 244 enslaved Amerindian, and tactics and leadership. Coffy and his leader- reminder were enslaved persons, workers, ship core sought to create a sovereign polity and officials of the Berbice Company.40 If based upon Akan statecraft and demanded a disease epidemic, food shortage, and ru- or attempted to negotiate a cession from the mors of revolt based on the intensely brutal entire colony with Governor Hoogenheim. 39 T.E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Cast- le to Ashantee (London: J. Murray, 1819), 256. 41 Governor W. S. van Hoogenheim’s journal of See also T. C. McCaskie, “Time and Calendar in “the revolution of the Negro slaves” began on Nineteenth-Century Asante: An Exploratory Es- February 28, but his alarm was no different than say,” History in Africa 7 (1980): 179-200; idem, a colony full of frightened and powerless whites State and Society in pre-colonial Asante (Cam- of a few days earlier. See the Journal of W. S. bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 145; van Hoogenheim, 28 Feb. 1763 – 31 December Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century 1764, trans. Barbara L. Blair, unpublished ma- (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), nuscript, University of Library, 1973, 112. pp. 1-11. I am grateful to Hetty London and Glo- 40 Barbara L. Blair, “Wolfert Simon van Hooge- ria Cummings for a copy of this document. nheim in the Berbice Slave Revolt of 1763-1764,” 42 Blair, “Slave Revolt,” 63-64; James Rodway, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde Guiana: British, Dutch, and French (New York: 140, no. 1 (1984): 60-61. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 96-97.

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Though similar in its ultimate aim, this act Coffy committed suicide—thus allowing him was unlike the strategy pursued in the St. to return home or to asamando—and the John case and it, consequently, proved fa- Dutch military forces overwhelmed the oth- tal as Coffy was now faced with internal dis- er leaders and participants. The fractured sent and strife and inventive excuses used group led by Atta was less cohesive than by Governor Hoogenheim to stall the re- under Coffy’s leadership and though Coffy’s volt via a chain of correspondences.43 Like group had stored enough food through an a confluence of the St. John revolt and the effective division of labor, this was not the alleged plots by Denmark of South Carolina case for Atta and others who faced a long and Kwaku Takyi (Court) of Antigua, Coffy rainy season, food scarcity, and an ongoing proposed a division of the colony into an in- disease epidemic. As further Dutch rein- dependent African confederation of distinct forcements arrived in November, a number cultural groups in the south—consistent of the insurrectionists had already surren- with the phenomenon of Akan confedera- dered because of colonial appeals of fair tions on the Gold Coast—and a colony of en- treatment, illness, and starvation. By Febru- slaved peoples ruled by Dutch planters po- ary 1764, the end of the short rainy season, 44 sitioned in the north. Thus, on one hand, over a thousand voluntarily ended their re- there was the quest for a polity based upon sistance and approximately 2,600 were re- operational unity among distinct groups and captured and kept alive. A total of 124 were interests who shared, at least, the common hung, broken on the rack, burnt at the stake, value for freedom and self-rule and, on the and put to death by slow fire, and most of other hand, support for freedom for some these were suspected ringleaders which the and un-freedom and exploitation for oth- “famous Captain Boobie and another (Qua- ers in contiguous yet smaller colonies. To be co [Kwaku])” had helped to retrieve.46 Atta, sure, this vision turns conventional notions the “chief captain” of the fractured group, of freedom on their heads. was put to death by slow fire and after being What happened next is murky. Some ac- pinched with “red hot pinchers,” he “owned counts note a split in the leadership between his crimes and often prayed to God and two Africa-born groups: the “Delmina” the Governor… He gave terrible cries and (Akan) led by Coffy and the “Angola-Congo” seemed more sensitive of pain than all the led by Atta disposed Coffy and his follow- others, but in general they showed so little ers. Others note that a rival “Coromantee” concern, were so little moved.”47 leader under Coffy, Akra or Akara, pushed In the end, Atta blamed some of the for all-out war and without compromise in response to Coffy’s proposal. In either case, Press, 1988), 76-77; Sundquist, Strangers in the treachery and internal strife took its course Land, 294; Cornelis Goslinga, A Short History and the rebellion fell apart from within or of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam (Bos- ton: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 117. shortly after a year of the revolt, which al- 46 Koninklijk Huisarchief (Dutch Royal House Ar- lowed for Dutch military reinforcements.45 chives), The Hague, no. G2/54/Ib, Letter of Ro- bert Douglas to Earl Bentinck 25 May 1764, fol. 43 Journal of van Hoogenheim, 48-49. 3. I am grateful archivist L. J. A. Pennings for a 44 Journal of van Hoogenheim, 47. copy of this letter. 45 , Narrative of a Five 47 Robert Douglas to Earl Bentinck, fol. 2. Douglas Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes named “Acabre” as “the Chief of the Congo Ne- of Surinam (1790), eds. Richard Price and Sally groes (Cannibals),” but his fate, as of Douglas’s Price (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University writing, was yet to be decided.

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planters for their “cruelty and inhumane sixty whites and engaged in a “reign of terror” treatment” as the cause of the revolt. Akara during a rebellion that reportedly employed and Gousari, two former leaders under Cof- “obi” (obeah) through elder “Coromantee” fy, were part of the group which surrendered in the Jamaican parish of St. Mary.49 Tacky’s and they offered their services as scouts and revolt was part of an island-wide phenome- “rebel” catchers, eventually earning par- non with similar uprisings in other parish- dons each and serving in the colonial army es. Yet, as irony and history would have it, of Suriname to fight against the Maroons. the Maroons of Scotts Hall were the ones For those many thousands who participat- who hunted and killed the freedom-seeking ed in the Coffy-led revolt and now found Tacky—some of these Maroons were Akan themselves returned to captivity, and left as well—and thus ended the revolt. Though, with the incomplete memory of a potentially here, the Maroons were also joined by en- and fully successful overthrow of the Berbi- slaved “Coromantee” such as Cuafee (Kofi) ce plantocracy, life must have been tense, and Quaco (Kwaku), both of whom were “set painful, and bitter in the late eighteenth and free paid £5 and £5 a year hereafter for be- early nineteenth century. This may not have ing loyal in [the] slave rebellion” of 1760.50 been the case for new and incoming Africans Thus, Akan or “Coromantee” persons inhab- into to the colony, but “new negroe” or not iting a world regulated by the rhythm of a Akan men and women continued to appear plantation or a Maroon society were reward- in newspaper advertisements for runaways ed for their loyalty to whites and the plan- in the first decade of the nineteenth centu- tocracy. What might appear as a surprising ry when Berbice, Essequibo, and Demerara act of betrayal was, in fact, the outcome of a formed British Guiana.48 The inhumane treaty between the Maroons and the colonial treatment that Atta held responsible for authorities and one of its clauses included the Coffy-led revolt of 1763 did not end af- the return of all Africans who attempted to ter Coffy’s suicide nor after the above wom- become maroons themselves or threaten the en and men seized their opportunities and state via revolt. These clauses were largely pursued a course, though on a smaller scale, upheld since the Maroons feared deporta- fitting to Coffy’s memory. Though we do not tion.51 What is not surprising was that many

know with any certainty the role of Maroons 49 Bryan Edwards, Jamaican planter and historian, and maroonage in the 1763 Coffy-led revolt, wrote that Gold Coast Africans were known as we do know of their participation or absence “Koromantees” in the British Caribbean and claimed Tacky was a “Chief in Guiney” and had in the case of the St. John revolt and revolts used “obeah” by an elder “Koromantee in his re- in Jamaica, among other places. bellion. See Edwards, History, 2: 59, 113. Three years before the revolt in Berbice, 50 Cuafee and Quaco were 2 of 17 emancipated by an act of the Jamaica Assembly for their loyalty. a thousand or more enslaved “Coromantee” See TNA: PRO, CO 139/21, no. 25, 18 Decem- under the leadership of Tacky or Takyi killed ber 1760. Douglass Hall notes that another re- bellion in St. Mary led by enslaved “Coroman- 48 Essequebo and Demerary Gazette 2, no. 216, tee” in 1765 was planned by quelled. In 1767, 14 February 1807; Essequebo and Demerary another Cuafee betrayed a conspiracy or “slave Royal Gazette 2, nos. 61, 63-66, 28 February – rebellion.” See TNA: PRO, CO 139/23, no. 113, 4 April 1807; Essequebo and Demerary Royal “Act to free two Negro men slaves and compen- Gazette 2, nos. 65, 28 March 1807; Essequebo sate their owner…” 21 December 1767. and Demerary Royal Gazette 2, nos. 53-54, 56- 51 Among other benefits of the treaty, the Maroons 58, 60-61, 89, 3 - 31 January, 28 February, 12 of Trelawny Town were granted about 1,500 September 1807. acres of land in 1739 in the Parish of St. James.

58 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu of the leaders of the Tacky rebellion were Queen of England, but Bogle’s ambivalence obeah practitioners and this confluence of toward the British authorities in Jamai- spiritualists and political strategy was also ca and in Britain and his attempt to enlist the case in the alleged Akan-led plot of An- the support of the Maroons became a large tigua in 1736 (e.g., Coromantee Quawcoo, part of the uprising’s failure.54 Like Tacky’s Caesar, and John “Obiah”), revolts in Guy- revolt, it too was brutally suppressed by the ana, and elsewhere.52 Indeed, Jamaica hard- colonial army with significant Maroon assis- ly went a decade without a serious revolt tance.55 that threatened the slave society throughout One can argue that the Maroons, since much of its history—for instance, Cuffee’s signing treaties with the British colonial au- yearlong rebellion in 1685-86 and anoth- thorities in 1738-39, were more traitors than er Cuffee-led Maroon attack against slav- liberators for their complicity with the claus- ery in the 1720s. (Spiritual traditions such es of those treaties, and that their memory as obeah and Kumina played integral roles or legacy as freedom fighters is questionable in the planning and execution of many in- in light of all the revolts and runaways they surrections, though obeah is distinct from a helped to suppress. This is not to suggest Kumina that was introduced to nineteenth Maroon history, accumulated knowledge, century Jamaica by “liberated” Central Af- and sovereignty (for them) is insignificant, ricans).53 Decades of after the British legally but rather that the well-known January terminated slavery in its colonies, the 1865 sixth celebration that commem- Morant Bay rebellion led by Paul Bogle in orates Cudjoe’s (Kwadwo) birthday and the the sugar-producing parish of St. Thomas treaty of 1738-39 is ironic for the very treaty erupted. The highly organized Morant Bay that Maroons ascribed a key role in the con- uprising sought to redress to social injus- solidation of their identity as Maroons also tices of the Jamaican authorities and not the marked the social death of many would-be Maroons and sovereign-seekers reduced to For the text of the treaty, see Mavis C. Campbell, residues of the memory and many of whose The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796: A History of Resistance, Collaboration & Betrayal (Tren- names might have been etched among the ton: Africa World Press, 1990), 126-28. national heroes of Jamaica. Maroons in Ac- 52 On obeah from the perspective of a Jamaican planter, see Matthew Lewis, Journal of a West compong and elsewhere, including Nanny, India Proprietor, ed. Judith Terry (New York: did not view the 1738-39 treaty with rever- Oxford University Press, 1999), 190-94. ence and the strategic and ideological issue 53 On obeah, Myalism, Kumina, and other Afri- can-centered spiritual traditions in Jamaica, see this caused during the 1740s must have been Dianne M. Stewart, Three Eyes for the Journey: substantial for Cudjoe had some Maroons African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious and a number of enslaved “Coromantees” Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 56 2005), and Lewis, West India Proprietor, 84-93, executed for their attempted coup. The 220, 222-23, 286. On Kumina and its Bakôngo ideological fallout between Cudjoe and oth- roots in Jamaica, see Maureen Warner Lewis, The Nkuyu: Spirit Messengers of the Kumina er Maroons over the signing of the treaty in (Mona, Kingston: Savacou Publications, 1977); 1738-39 had important cultural and institu- Kenneth Bilby and Fu-Kiau Bunseki, Kumina: A Kongo-Based Tradition in the 54 Gad Heuman, “The Killing Time”: The Morant (Brussels: Centre d’etude et de Documentation Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (Knoxville: The Univer- Africaines, 1983); Myrna Dolores Bain, Kumi- sity of Tennessee Press, 1994), 19, 21, 87, 91, 184. na: A Field Study of Cultural Resistance in Ja- 55 See Lewis, West India Proprietor, 143-44. maica (New York: Author, 1985). 56 Campbell, The Maroons, 252.

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tional consequences into the late eighteenth war against the British plantocracy the Tre- and early nineteenth century. lawny Maroon’s closest allies sided with the Among the Accompong Maroons, and colonial authorities and the enslaved. The perhaps elsewhere, the signing of its 1738- support in supplies and human resources 39 treaty with the British stymied culture received by the Maroons in earlier times was transmission, for subsequent Westerniza- no more.59 Thus, the Maroon plea for devel- tion, missionary activity, dependency, and a opment aid (e.g., paved roads, medical aid) British resident monitoring on-site Maroon from the British is telling for that memo- behavior became the order of the day. This randum ended, ironically, with the idea that arrangement for Accompong was not un- “the Maroons are… good citizens,” a puz- like the Maroons of Suriname, but the crit- zling contrast to their continuous and ada- ical difference is that the latter signed their mant claims of a separate and “free” identity treaties in the 1760s and had at least anoth- outside of the then colony and the current er generation or two to institutionalize and Jamaican nation-state. protect its composite culture. The evidence for this argument can be found in the sharp Part III: Resolution erosion of African-based Maroon culture, A reading of Akan-based politics and culture institutions, and spirituality in places like Accompong on one hand, and the contested in the Americas reveal the Akan were Ma- but continued vibrancy of the same in Suri- roons delimited by an uneasy co-existence name, on the other.57 The Accompany Ma- with European colonists and enslaved or roons, in a memorandum of 1938, provided emancipated peoples alike, insurrectionists a précis of its history in their request for de- who overthrew the plantocracy in partial velopment aid from the British government, success, runaways, real and fictive conspira- a request rooted in a dependency and but- tors, skilled laborers, and individuals situat- tressed by their acknowledged service to the ed between levels of emancipation and bru- British colonists “in time of rebellion” and tal enslavement. The Akan case shows that for putting down “the Morant Bay rebellion emancipation—partial, varied, and contest- by capturing Paul Bogle.”58 Such efforts in ed—did not end, but rather reorganized the service of the British did not help the Ma- unequal power and labor relations within roons for, as Mavis Campbell argues, by the spheres of enslavement, and that resistance 1790s a significant amount of enslaved Af- and revolts did not necessarily (seek to) end rican had grave misgivings about these and enslavement but exposed its bankruptcy others Maroons, and in the Trelawny Town and inability to control uncontrollable peo- ple. The thematic identities for the Akan in 57 See Konadu, Akan Diaspora, esp. chaps. 4 and 5. Danish and Dutch America were also true 58 TNA: PRO, CO 950/167, Memorandum of Evi- dence from Accompong Maroons to [West In- for the British America where Akan-based dia] Royal Commission, 1938. H. A. Rowe was maroonage, culture, kinship, spiritual-heal- removed in the 1940s from the position of “Co- ing practices, and their counter-hegemonic lonel” followed by a crisis in leadership. The signatories and apparent political order in Ac- movements left indelible marks on colo- compong were the Colonel, Captain, Major, and nial and post-colonial societies. The ability Lieutenant, and this order reflect changes in the official heads of these Maroons for the original of the Akan to influence the course of their group leader was the Captain, which changed to Colonel and then to Chief in recent years. 59 Campbell, The Maroons, 251.

60 Revista África(s), v. 02, n. 04, p. 43-61, jul./dez. 2015 Kwasi Konadu lives and neo-European colonial societies DONNAN, Elizabeth. William Hardringe and has made some of them national symbols of Nicholas Prideoux to the Royal African Com- pany, 11 February 1692/93. In: Documents leadership. Undoubtedly, the Akan consis- Illustrative of the History of the Slave tently and in far reaching ways contributed, Trade to America. 4 vols: Washington, D.C.: well beyond their sheers numbers, to a full- Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930. er understanding of maroonage, resistance, GASPAR, David Barry. Bondsmen and Re- freedom, and the forging of polities based on bels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations indigenous sets of African knowledge and in Antigua with Implications for Colonial the exigencies of diaspora. In fact, the sus- British America. Baltimore: The Johns Ho- pkins University Press, 1985. tained and variegated force of Akan defiance and challenge to hegemony extended the HANDLER, Jerome. Slave Revolts and Conspi- racies in Seventeenth-century Barbados. New cumulative cost of transatlantic slaving and West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indis- led to its termination and permutations, and che Gids 56, no. 1-2 13-19, 1982. the prevention of at least another million Af- 60 KONADU, Kwasi. The Akan Diaspora in the ricans from exportation. Americas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Bibliographic references SUNDQUIST, Eric J. Strangers in the Land. Cambridge. MA: The Belknap Press of Har- DE CORSE, Christopher R. An Archaeology vard University Press, 2005. of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900. Washington, Recebido em: 14/05/2015 DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Aprovado em: 21/06/2015

60 Stephen D. Behrendt, David Eltis, and David Richardson, “The Costs of Coercion: African Agency in the Pre-Modern Atlantic World,” Eco- nomic History Review 54, no. 3 (2001): 464-67, 472-73.

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