Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

Although enslaved northern men often enjoyed considerable autonomy because of their work, in some ways their conditions were becoming as onerous as those in the South, with additional problems. Newly imported Africans became ill and died at a disproportionate rate in cold northern climates. Northern blacks were no less ostracized by whites than in the South but were more likely to be isolated from other blacks. Northern owners also discouraged their slaves from forming family relationships. In this respect, their lives were far lonelier and more alienating that those of slaves in the South.

  3 The African American Family

  African American family life in the southern colonies took years to develop, for the same reasons as inhibited the growth of white southern family life in the seventeenth century. Like Europeans, African Americans had to undergo a seasoning process as they adjusted to their new environment. Almost without exception the slaves were debilitated by the rigors of their passage, which included not just the sea crossing but also the journey along the coast. They then had to face the perils of smallpox and respiratory diseases like pleurisy, so that about 25 percent of those who survived the passage perished in the first year. This high mortality would have cut short many potential relationships. Disease, poor diet, and the physical and psychological trauma of the passage also affected the fertility of many African women.

  Another inhibition to family life was the imbalance in gender ratios. Two out of every three arriving slaves were males. Also, most slaves imported before 1720 were scattered on isolated plantations and found themselves living either on their own or in predominantly male groups. This situation could change only if more women and girls were imported or if the existing population began to reproduce itself. In New England and the middle colonies the situation was even worse than in the South, because the number of African slaves was small and they were widely dispersed. For these reasons, the African American population failed to reproduce itself in the early decades. Just as in the British West Indies, deaths of Africans outnumbered births, and the population grew only because of the constant inflow of new slave imports.

  As the eighteenth century progressed, however, this pattern reversed itself in both the upper and lower South, to the extent that the second generation was surprisingly fertile. Several reasons account for this turnaround. The work regimen in the North American mainland colonies was not as harsh as in the West Indies, and enough slaves survived to bear children, creating a small Creole population. Children born in North America appear to have had a better chance of survival than new immigrants, since they received some environmental immunity from their mothers. Nature also ensured an equal number of male and female births, so that the sex ratio began to correct itself. As the number of enslaved people increased, so the opportunities for social intercourse improved. Also, the second generation had not experienced the trauma of the passage; they typically reached adulthood as members of intact communities, and were more ready to build lives for themselves with other people whom they loved.

  As a result, most North American-born African women formed relationships from early puberty, ensuring their high fertility through early first births. This fertility in turn had a dramatic effect on the sex ratio and the balance between imported and native-born slaves. In 1725, 60 percent of the slave population in the Chesapeake was still African-born. By 1750 this proportion had dropped to 30 percent, in spite of recent levels of importation. At the same time 40 percent of the slave population in many tidewater areas was now female. A similar process was also happening in the lower South. The population began to grow dramatically; much like the white settler population, women bore multiple children who had a good chance of surviving to adulthood and having children of their own. In the words of one historian, therefore, second-generation African Americans had proved a “prolifick people.”17

  Enslaved African Americans who tried to create stable family lives faced great obstacles. Among the most pernicious of these was the lack of legal recognition, since white slave codes did not recognize the slaves' marriages. Most African American children legally belonged to the master, rather than to their father as white children did. Families could be torn apart in a variety of circumstances. Owners might choose to sell some of their slaves to pay off a debt; they might die and their estates be broken up; they might purchase new lands in the interior and send part of their labor force to work there; or they might give their children plantations of their own, with slaves to work on them. In all these instances African American families could be split up in an instant with no redress. For some the pain was so great that suicide or insanity resulted. When Henry Laurens of South Carolina considered breaking up some of his slave families in the 1760s, he predicted “great distraction among the whole.”

  African American women were also extremely vulnerable to predatory white men, and sexual harassment and rape were a constant threat. Enslaved women had no legal protection from sexual assault, and enslaved men could do little to protect their wives, daughters, and sisters from being victimized by their masters or other white men on their plantations. Even if masters refrained from sexual coercion, they were not above exploiting their position for sexual favors. Black women were most vulnerable in South Carolina and Georgia, where there was a culture of tolerance towards interracial sex, stemming from planters' links with the West Indies, the absence of many owners' families in Charleston, and the fact that such liaisons were easier to conceal because the rice plantations were relatively self-contained and remote from the white population. By contrast, in the Chesapeake and northern colonies such liaisons were more difficult to hide and were usually condemned on both moral and social grounds. Occasionally an enslaved woman might accept a white man's advances as a way to improve her status and gain a little more control over her life. The mixed-race children of white men's slave mistresses were often allowed a privileged status and better working conditions than other slaves (though they were rarely freed). The number of mixed-race children is difficult to quantify, since they were rarely acknowledged by their fathers. Just under 10 percent of the slave population in the Chesapeake was identified as of mixed race by 1750, although the extent of racial mixing was probably higher.

  Unlike the parents of young people in European American families, enslaved African American parents had little control over the marriage decisions of their children. Most unions were decided by the couple themselves on the basis of mutual attraction. Both owners usually had to approve when the man and the woman lived on separate plantations. However, approval was not usually a problem since owners recognized that slave unions facilitated a more contented labor force, and would produce offspring that would enrich them directly. Slave marriages were usually simple affairs, held after the working day was over. The man began the proceedings by giving his bride a brass ring or other token of his attachment, after which friends and relatives gathered for a celebration. If the owners approved the match, they might contribute a hog and barrel of rum for the gathering. Unlike with European American marriages, there would be no dowry or gift of property to help the new couple get started. Since slaves had no legal right to own property, their families would not provide a mechanism for passing on property to children and helping them to achieve economic independence as white families did. Slavery would impose enforced poverty on African Americans for well over two centuries.

  Because enslaved African Americans had so little power to protect their children, families had to adapt. West African societies were mainly patrilineal, the children taking the name and status of their father. Enslaved couples were more likely than not during the eighteenth century to live together in nuclear family units. But in many cases, African American families became matrilineal because they had to. With marriage legally prohibited, enslaved fathers had no legal right to participate in the upbringing of their children. Small children were usually kept with the mother if a family was split up. Since female slaves might of necessity have several partners during their lives, the mother was the one who provided
the child's identity and place.18

  Another adaptation in African American families was their greater reliance on extended kin networks rather than the nuclear family to care for and nurture children. Infants were normally looked after by elderly relatives or other slaves who were too old to labor, since their mothers were sent back to work shortly after giving birth. Older children were usually left to play among themselves until the age of 8 or 9. They would then be rated as a quarter-hand and given small tasks until the age of 16 or so, when they would be sent into the fields or assigned such other work as they were considered best fitted for. It was these young adults who were most likely to be sent to another plantation or sold. Fortunately, the spreading patterns of kinship meant that they would usually be accompanied by an uncle, brother, half-brother, sister, half-sister, cousin, nephew, or niece. Thus while European American families in British North America were typically nuclear, African American families were often extended. It was this extended kinship network that protected African Americans from childhood through adulthood, to the extent it was possible to do so.

  4 African American Culture

  By the middle of the eighteenth century, a sense of community became possible on the larger plantations in South Carolina and in the more populated areas of the Chesapeake. The formation of a distinct communal identity among African Americans was most pronounced in the low country regions of South Carolina and Georgia, where slaves usually lived on large all-black or mostly-black plantations. Here, they had time to congregate without white interference, and were truly able to create a separate universe, apart from European American society and culture. In the Chesapeake, slaves tended to live on small or middling farms, surrounded by a majority white population with whom they had significant day-to-day interactions. Here, communal identity was forged out of a different kind of experience, which was more integrated with that of European Americans.

  While African American communities were forged through all kinds of shared experiences, they found their fullest expression when enslaved people had time to socialize. Sundays were generally allowed to be a day of rest. With the benefit of their master's absence either at church or visiting relatives, slaves would often invite the workforce from neighboring plantations. Although slaves were generally forbidden to travel, they came nonetheless, using back roads or paths to evade white police patrols. Indeed, such routes were well established by the middle of the eighteenth century. Most masters ignored these gatherings in the interests of harmony, unless they became too unruly or disrupted work the next day.

  Enslaved people mostly came together to eat, drink, talk, smoke tobacco, dance, and relax. The participants provided food from their own gardens and livestock and usually prepared drink from corn or wild fruit, perhaps assisted with sugar from the main house. They played music on drums, flutes, and banjos, sang, danced, told stories, and took part in athletic contests. Card-playing, gambling, and cock-fighting provided other popular forms of entertainment.

  Historians have spent considerable energy uncovering the extent to which African American forms of cultural expression retained elements of African cultures. Some African influences in eighteenth-century African American culture are readily apparent. West African styles of rhythm and movement had a powerful influence on the music and dancing styles of African Americans throughout the mainland colonies. African influences were also present in the ways that African Americans made banjos, drums, mats, baskets, and wood carvings. The African origins of a game like mancala, in which the participants captured each other's counters from shallow containers, are even clearer. The importation of plants like okra, black-eyed peas, yams, sorghum, and watermelons also allowed the continuation of African cooking, as did the importation of guinea fowl. Recently, archaeologists have added to the list of African cultural influences. In particular they have shown that African skills were widely implemented in the making of Colono earthenware, which African women apparently preferred to the iron pots supplied by their masters.19 African influences also persisted in hairstyles and items of personal decoration. Many female slaves continued to braid their hair and to wear African-style jewelry in the form of colored glass necklaces, beaded armbands, bracelets, and brass earrings. Cowry shells also remained popular as decorative charms to ward off disease and other misfortune. Materials used for decorative purposes did not always come from Africa, of course, but enslaved African people often injected their own meaning into many artifacts of North American or European origin.20

  In other areas, such as language, the influence of African culture was more complex. Even though most slaves came from West Africa, they still spoke a variety of languages that were not mutually comprehensible. It is calculated that there were several hundred languages at the beginning of the African diaspora. Hence newly enslaved captives were often unable to communicate with one another, unless they were fortunate enough to be lodged with members of their own people. The most famous African American of the colonial period, Olaudah Equiano, an Igbo prince, commented on his arrival at age 12 in Virginia in 1757, “I was now exceedingly miserable, for … I had no person I could speak to that I could understand.” Slaves adapted by creating a variety of different Creole languages in different parts of the British colonies, incorporating English vocabulary along with West African words and elements of West African syntax. In North America the most distinctive of these was the Gullah dialect spoken in the islands off the coast of South Carolina. Although built around a base of English, Gullah contained some 250 words from Angola, Senegambia, and Sierra Leone, and retained African speech patterns, grammar, and syntax. It was incomprehensible to whites, and therefore enabled its African American speakers to communicate without interference from their masters.21 Slaves in the Chesapeake, on the other hand, spoke English, reflecting their greater exposure to Anglo-American settlers.

  Another area where African culture was partially preserved was in naming patterns, though here too assimilation into British colonial culture took place as children were increasingly given the name of one of their master's family. Some owners like Robert Carter of Virginia deliberately imposed English names on new slaves to undermine their African background and make them easier to control. However, English homonyms often allowed the semblance of an African name to be preserved, as in Joe for Cudjo; and many children continued to be called, albeit in English, after the day, month, season, or festival on which they were born, as was the custom in many parts of Africa. In any case slaves typically used their own names when not in the presence of their master or overseer.

  A last critical aspect of African culture which survived for a time was religion, especially on southern plantations. Before 1750 slave-owners in British North America made only cursory attempts at converting their slaves to Christianity, fearing, among other things that conversion might lead to a demand for emancipation, even though most colonies had passed laws precluding this possibility. Thus when the South Carolina brothers Hugh and Jonathan Bryan attempted to convert their slaves after a visit by George Whitefield, they were quickly told to desist by neighboring planters. In addition, there was a clear reluctance among planters to share their religion, since their racial prejudice made them unwilling to accept that they might go to the same heaven as their slaves.

  For most of the colonial period, therefore, the slaves were allowed considerable autonomy in spiritual matters, especially on the large rice plantations of the lower South where contact with the white population was minimal. Some Africans from Senegambia and the Gold Coast were clearly practicing Muslims, judging by the advertisements for runaway slaves with Islamic names. Even more continued to observe traditional African religious practices. Most West Africans believed in a supreme Creator under whom there were various lesser gods, usually associated with natural phenomena like thunder, lightning, rain, earth, fertility, spring, summer, and fall. All had the power to do good or ill, and it was considered important to propitiate them by invoking various forms of Obeah or magic through the use
of charms and talismans called minkisi supplied by a person knowledgeable about magic. Since African religion and medicine were closely intertwined, minkisi often took the form of amulets or medicine bags into which various herbs and charms were placed, depending on the effect to be achieved, for minkisi could be used for good or harmful purposes. Most objects were worn as decoration for personal protection. However, if someone was to be punished, the charm would be placed near that person's house.

  Equally important to African religious practice was ancestor worship. All Africans believed that their ancestors' spirits could protect the living, and for this reason they commonly tossed a small amount of food and drink on one side before starting a meal in memory of departed relatives. Even more important, proper offerings had to be made at funerals to propitiate the departed member of the family, for example, placing broken crockery on the grave to free the deceased person's spirit. It was also customary for Africans to be especially demonstrative when accompanying the body to the grave, celebrating the return of the dead person's soul to their ancestral spirits in Africa. This behavior contrasted vividly with the silence maintained by mourners at white funerals.

  Even in the area of religion, however, acculturation began to take place as the native-born increased in number. Creoles spoke English and were therefore easier to convert, as well as more willing to accept Christianity. Certain similarities with African religions may have made Christianity appealing, notably the idea of one supreme being, the presence of lesser spirits, the concept of reincarnation, the belief in miracles, the importance of water baptism, and the need for blood sacrifice. In addition, Christianity dealt with suffering, exile, the promise of freedom, and the punishment of evil at the day of judgment. Of course, some enslaved people probably also hoped that baptism might lead to emancipation as a reward for being good and faithful servants. Christianity also gave Creole slaves the opportunity to differentiate themselves from those recently arrived from Africa; and in the last resort a Christian slave was less likely to be sold than a heathen one.