Sengbe
Pieh
Mende, captive, leader
The central figure in the Amistad drama -- the man known as Cinque -- comes into sharp historical focus only during the ordeal of his enslavement and struggle for freedom. On either side of the three years from 1839-1842, we have little to work with to reconstruct his biography.
His Mende name (translated into English spelling) was Sengbe Pieh, which his Spanish enslavers translated as "Cinque" and which American journalists rendered as "Jinqua," "Cinquez," and a host of other spellings.
What we know of his background, youth and young adulthood we get from his testimony in America -- to court officers, to abolitionists, to crowds of gawking onlookers. He revealed he came from Mani, a town in Mende country, about ten days' march from the coast. In his mid-twenties in January 1839 when he was captured, he identified himself as the son of a local chief, married, father of three children. He said he had been a rice farmer. Many Mende were rice farmers. Cinque also showed that he could be a warrior as well.
Perhaps he had been a warrior in Africa. His testimony about who he was and where he came from was being screened, it bears noting. Cinque was fighting to win his freedom, and abolitionists were closely managing the Africans' presentation of themselves and their story. Still, Cinque's version of his past must have weight: it is the man himself, giving an account only he can provide.
In any event, biographical details start to become clearer after he was kidnapped by slavers and marched to the coast to be sold to Europeans. From that point through the next three years, Cinque's story becomes that of the Amistad Revolt itself. By all accounts, it was he who first freed the Africans in the hold of the Amistad, who led the revolt that captured the schooner, and who led the Africans on their subsequent voyage to the U.S. Virtually everyone who met him agreed he carried himself like a natural leader, with a charismatic magnetism, a forceful intensity. Somehow, even in chains in an American prison, he managed to hold center stage and to fix himself in the American imagination as a man not to be reckoned, but to be reckoned with.
Upon returning to Africa with the American Mende Mission, Cinque learned that his wife and family had been wiped out by slaving wars. Reportedly he procured a small stock of goods and set off to do some trading along the coast. Then he fell out of contact with the mission. Various legends and rumors had him becoming a slaver, or a tobacco merchant, or a chief, or an interpreter at another mission. One story claimed that as an old man decades later, he returned to the abolitionist mission to die. None of these versions of his life back in Africa can be conclusively confirmed.
That's one incarnation of this figure: a biography of facts and guesses at facts, describing a figure of flesh and blood. Cinque was more than flesh and blood, though, by the time he left the United States. He had become an icon, a figure embodying powerful, sometimes contadictory symbols and meanings. Americans were fascinated with this man. They lionized him, demonized him, soaked up images and accounts of what he looked like, what he sounded like, how he carried himself, what he said and did. In American eyes, "Cinque" became a bloody bogeyman, a jungle animal, a noble savage, a natural prince, a towering symbol of freedom
The library is filled with these images, these paper Cinques. Some examples include:
a first impression recorded by the New London Gazette: "On board the brig we also saw Cinques..."
a racist summation, both dismissive and fearful, by the New York Herald: "a sullen, dumpish negro..."
an abolitionist celebration originally published in the Herald of Freedom, and picked up by the Colored American: "The head has the towering front of Webster ... though some shades darker..."
This image is from a scientific investigation, or at least a psuedo-scientific one, via the antebellum concept of phrenology, which analyzed individuals and created racial categories by probing the contours of skulls. This image is from the phrenological evaluation of Cinque.
Within the free African American abolitionist community in particular, Cinque became a hero and an inspiring rallying point -- what historian James Horton identifies as a symbol of black manhood:
The Colored American, a black abolitionist newspaper, reported extensively on the revolt and its leader. Like its white counterparts, the paper advertized lithographed and engraved portraits to raise money and to elevate him as a powerful image of freedom.
African American poet James Monroe Whitfield celebrated his legacy in an ode "To Cinque."
Radical black abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet also held up Cinque as a symbol of freedom in a speech he gave repeatedly on speaking tours and published a decade later.
Fred Dalzell
Documents: The Journal of Commerce's report of Cinque's testimony in the courtroom January 1840 gave his version of his African origins, enslavement, middle passage, revolt and recapture.
Cinque wrote a letter to the President of the Mendi Mission in October 1841. At this point still very much dependent on the abolitionists to ferry him back home, he predicted great things for the missionary project.
Further Reading: Arthur Abraham provides a Sierra Leonian perspective on Cinque in several short biographical essays: "Sengbe Pieh: A Neglected Hero?" Journal of the Historical Society of Sierra Leone, vol. 2, 22-30; and "Senbe Pieh," Dictionary of African Biography, (Algonac, Michigan: Reference Publications, Inc.) vol. 2, 141-144.
Eleanor Alexander's "A Portrait of Cinque," Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin vol. 49 (Winter 1984), pp. 30-51, surveys the American imagery representing Cinque and the Revolt he embodied.
James and Lois Horton briefly discuss the importance of Cinque as icon within the free African-American community in In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
The Enslaved African revolt on the Amistad
Sengbe Pieh - leader of the revolt.
Sengbe Pieh , hero of the Amistad revolt Sengbe Pieh, of the Mende tribe in Sierra Leone, was born in 1813. At the age of 26 he was captured and sold to a Spanish slave master, who took him and 48 others to Cuba where he was sold to a Spanish sugar farmer, Jose Ruiz. Along with other slaves, he was chained and put on board the Amistad ship bound for Ruiz's plantation. On the third day at sea, Sengbe managed to break free of his chains, release his companions and arm them with cane knives. They killed the captain, forced the crew overboard and demanded that the Spanish slave master sail the Amistad back to Sierra Leone.
The cunning master tried to deceive them by directing the boat to Cuba, but a storm drove the ship north-eastward along the coast of the United States, where Sengbe and his men were captured by the US navy and charged with murder and piracy. A group of American abolitionists came to the rescue, forming an Amistad Committee and hiring well-known lawyers to defend the slaves and secure their release. James Cinque, as Sengbe Pieh became known in America, campaigned publicly against the evils of slavery before returning to Sierra Leone at the age of 29, accompanied by American missionaries.
The Amistad Committee continued its fight to end slavery, and after emancipation they set up schools and colleges for newly freed slaves. Sengbe's picture hangs in many public buildings and black colleges in the United States. An account of his gallant deeds appears in many history books. His portrait features on the five-thousand-leones bank note in Sierra Leone.
Amistad, a Floating Exhibit
You've seen the movie, now see the recreation of the slave ship La Amistad. In 1839, the sight of this 129-foot sailing vessel with its band of armed African men was, indeed, a troublesome sight for a country steeped in the trade and enslavement of Black men, women and children — cruising just beyond the U.S. coast.
The mysterious schooner floated nearly two months outside of the U.S., but caused alarm when it came within a mile of the Long Island coast. A U.S. naval commander ordered the ship to be seized and searched and officials soon learned that the vessel had been the site of a bloody slave revolt led by a Mende rice farmer named Sengbe Pieh, who became widely known as Cinque.
Cinque was among 39 African men and four children, and two Spanish slavers who survived the bloody fight for freedom on board a sailing vessel whose name means friendship in Spanish. Cinque and the others apparently spared the lives of Pedro Montes and Jose Ruiz in hopes that the men would steer the ship to Africa.
The Spanish government immediately claimed ownership of the slaves and urged that they be returned to Havana, Cuba, for a murder trial. But, some U.S. officials argued Spain's claim was invalid because slave trading had been outlawed in Spain and its colonies 22 years earlier. The Africans were detained in U.S. jails for nearly two years while their fates were determined.
The case threatened U.S. relations with Spain and pitted former U.S. president John Quincy Adams against sitting U.S. President James Van Buren. Adams, who was serving as congressman from Massachusetts, argued the Africans' case before the high court and was especially critical of Van Buren's effort to assume unconstitutional powers in the case to placate the Spanish.
Trial evidence revealed that Cinque and about 52 Africans were among hundreds who had been forced from their homelands in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The captives were stripped naked and held in the shallow deck of slave ship Tecora until they landed in Havana, Cuba, where they boarded La Amistad after being groomed and fed for trade in Puerto Principe.
Freedom Schooner Amistad, the replica of the original L'Amistad involved in The Amistad Incident of 1839, was launched at Mystic Seaport in 2000. It is owned and operated by AMISTAD America, Inc. Amistad travels from port to port nationally and internationally. The Freedom Schooner is an icon for leadership, justice, and freedom, and a catalyst for opening conversations about race and reconciliation. For a ship's schedule and for comprehensive information about the Amistad Incident, please visit amistadamerica.org .
The Transatlantic Slave Trade
By: H. Kamali
The West African coast was once a source of income in slave trading for the Portuguese and other Europeans across the Atlantic Ocean. The export of human beings became increasingly attractive to traders, particularly after the Spaniards explored the Americas, where the planters badly needed the hard working slaves to work in their plantations. The Gulf of Guinea, the forts of St. Jago near Elmina, and the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana and Sierra Leone coasts, were the trade bases where hundreds of thousands of innocent Africans were packed and set on sailing ships over the Atlantic heading to strange destinations.
The Cape Coast and Elmina Castles built by the Portuguese, were the first slave trading bases in Africa. For the construction of Elmina Castle built in 1482, the Portuguese brought slaves from Niger by trading them from their chiefs. Perhaps one reason was because the Ghanaians were found stubborn and difficult to control.
The export of human beings after the seventeenth century gradually became so profitable that the Portuguese introduced some kind of permit to authorize the traders engaged in slave transactions. Some of these slave traders, in addition to possessing shipment facilities such as slave vessels, employed middlemen to help bring slaves from the interior and hand them over for shipment overseas. Slavery operation was carried out though launching raids, capturing and kidnapping of innocent Africans from their village or farm by Europeans slave traders. Also, some slaves, who could be war prisoners traded by their local chiefs in exchange for needed goods and commodities such as clothing and arm fires. The captives were then taken away from their homeland in tide security and transported overseas.
Though no exact figures are available as to how many hundreds of thousands slaves from the coasts of West Africa were transported overseas. It is believed that the largest numbers were loaded on slave vessels and shipped from the Gold Coast across the Atlantic.
The African captives were usually first kept in slave dungeons in Cape Coast and Elmina Castles chained up together awaiting exportation across the Atlantic to the new world. In Sierra Leone, many captives were kept first in barracons1. Outside the barracons, slave traders set up market places for slave transactions and then took the captives away to their unknown destinations.
Many of the Africans got killed in the slave raids, or when transported lost their lives in transit during long journey overseas while packed in to cargo holds of the slave vessels. Some of them, who were captured, tried to escape during the raids or even drown themselves in the rivers or the ocean while being transported. Some traders branded their slaves so that they can be identified when necessary and in slave auctions overseas, qualification of each slave was given as advertise.
The raids generated by slave trading not only caused bloodshed and local depopulation, but also resulted in the destruction of villages and the infrastructure. The survivors captured in the raids or kidnapped from their villages who were young and healthy, were separated and taken away to the specific venue with tight security measure so that they could not flee while handed over for shipment across the Atlantic. At the final destination, months after horrified journeys, the captives were resold, often in slave auctions, and forced to labor in the sugar and cotton plantations in Americas which at the time were the most profitable and demanding business.
In addition, the negative impact of slave trade was the drain of native people, separation of members of families and abandonment of their culture and heritage, disgracing human values, and above all, spreading local conflicts. Some historians believe, however, that despite its negative impact, the slave trade indirectly resulted in some development in education, introducing administrative systems and above all the spread of Christianity.
Although a growing campaign against the slavery practice began and slave trade, was abolished by the British in 1807 followed by other slaving nations including the United States and Spain, nevertheless, the European colonies continued to import West African slaves or ship them to the new world. Finally, the British who signed an agreement with Spain in 1817 abolishing slave trade, stationed a naval force along the coasts of Sierra Leone and The Gambia, and managed to intercept some of the slave ships, which ignored the illegality of slave trade and set their captives free.
Due to my keen interest in further understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, I conducted some research on certain aspects of the subject. To this end, in addition to visiting the historical slave trade centres in West Africa, I traveled to the State of Connecticut to study the incident of the West African captives, namely the "Amistad", occurred on the other side of the Atlantic. Here are some of my findings.
Amistad Revolt
An important event in the history of the Atlantic slave trade known as Amistad Revolt, dates back to 1839 when a group of former slaves originating from West Africa, were kidnapped from Gallians," in the interior and transported across the Atlantic Ocean.The Gallians, where these people were kidnapped, was a major base for slave supply mainly to Cuba. The slavers here established a network of hunting slaves, where the captured slaves were traded, while the slave vessels waiting at the Gallians River on the coast to transport them overseas across the Atlantic.
Following a series of challenging incidents which occurred during their long journey across the Atlantic and then in Cuba and the United States, the survivors of the Amistad group originating from this area were finally freed and shipped from the United States back to their homeland Sierra Leone in 1842.
A brief history of the Amistad Revolt will demonstrate as to the significance of this event not only for Sierra Leone and Africa as a whole but also for the United States in particular.
It happened in January 1839 when a young Mende farmer by the name of "Sengbe Pieh" was captured in a rice farm in the Gallinas region, northern part of Sierra Leone and later sold to a Spanish slave trader. At the time, Havana was a potential and busy market for African slaves and Cuba, a major exporter of sugar in whose plantations the slaves were set to work. Many of slaves were seized from their villages in Sierra Leone and along the coast of Guinea, Gold Coast, or bought from their chiefs in exchange for money and needed commodities. None of the captives was aware as what was happening to them when were taken away from the interior until they found themselves aboard the slaving vessels for a long journey across the Atlantic Ocean to an unknown destination.
It appears, however, that in this process, the European slavers have been somehow assisted by native agents or guided by the local people in order to conduct such risky business.
Sengbe Pieh was among a group of Mende captives who were transported by canoes from the interior to Lomboko on the coast through Gillians River and then shipped to Havana, Cuba aboard a Portuguese schooner Tecora. The schooner Tecora was a narrow slave vessel sailed under the Portuguese flag with hundreds of captives, many of whom were terrified of being eventually killed and eaten by the slave traders.
The schooner reached Cuba after 2-3 months sailing during which nearly one-third of the captives either died or got sick on this long journey. Sengbe Pieh together with other survived captives from West Africa were sold at a slave auction in Havana to a Spanish sugar plantations owner2 in a Cuban province.
In the slave auctions, usually they made announcement of the arrival of imported slaves from Africa with given their qualifications. In the United States before abolishing of slavery, in some states the health conditions of imported slaves were also examined for the marketing purpose prior to the auction.
In June 1839, the Spaniard placed his 53 slaves, including Sengbe Pieh, chained up together aboard a ship called El Amistad and proceeded to sail from Havana to a port near his sugar plantation farm within the Cuban territories. After three days in the rough sea, Sengbe Pieh managed to break his chains and those of his fellow captives. Then he armed his fellow men with the sugar cane knives he discovered in a cargo hold, killed the captain and the cook and seized control of the slave ship.
The Spaniard was then ordered by the captives' leader, Sengbe Pieh to sail the vessel towards sunrise back to Africa. But at nights the Spaniard tried a trick to return the ship back to Cuba instead. Meanwhile, a sudden storm forced the vessel to sail towards northwest along the east coast of the United States. After nearly two months sailing, the ship reached Long Island Sound, New York, where, was taken by the US navy to Long Wharf in New Haven. Sengbe Pieh and his fellows were captured and taken in custody and charged with murder and piracy.
Soon after, while the captives were in jail in New Haven and Hartford, a group of Americans came to their defense. This group formed the Amistad Committee in New York and started recruiting lawyers for their release. Sengbe Pieh and his fellows were finally freed as a result of anti-slavery campaign and the efforts made by former US President John Quincy Adams and Attorney Roger Baldwin, who argued their case before the US Supreme Court3.
The captive case, particularly Pieh's character, drew attention of the public in New Haven. People gathered in front of the New Haven Jail where the captives were kept. Even the Yale University students became anxious to hear the court case and joined other supporters.
At the court, Sengbe Pieh explained his case in Mendi language through an interpreter and told the jury what had happened to him since his capture from his farm and that they are innocent and want to return home. Then, he shouted; "Give us Free","Give us Free" "Give Us Free". This phrase is carved as the title of Amistad story, on the three-sided monument in front of former New Haven Jail, a photo of which is shown under "monuments".
Sengbe Pieh( Joseph Cinque), His Portrait painted by Nathaniel Joceln, now stands at the New Haven Memorial Society Posters and post cards of Sengbe Pieh are available on sale at the Gift Shop of the Museum.
Following the court decision to free and repatriate the Africans on 9 March 1841, the Amistad Committee raised funds for their return voyage to Africa. Sengbe Pieh was repatriated to Sierra Leone together with his surviving fellow men who reached Freetown in January 1842. After return to his homeland, Sengbe Pieh regretfully could not find his wife and the family left behind, and he himself desperately started trading.
Singbe pieh is known as "Joseph Sinque" in the United States. Many recognized him as a fascinating man in the American abolitionist community. Libraries and museums in the United States, keep images of Sengbe Pieh as symbols of a powerful and natural leader and a symbol of freedom. In Sierra Leone, he is remembered as the Amistad Revolt hero.
The Amistad Committee, after the Pieh's case, continued to fight against slavery in the United States, which greatly contributed to the American Civil Right movement leading to the abolition of slavery. In this respect the name of Sengbe Pieh remains alive as a popular figure in the history of American culture particularly within the African-American community.
The Amistad memorial sites
In 1992, the150th Anniversary of the Amistad Revolt was simultaneously commemorated both in Freetown, Sierra Leone and New Haven in the United States. On this occasion, I enjoyed an exciting entertainment programme in Freetown by a group of African-American who traveled all the way from Connecticut to jointly celebrate the event while the Sierra Leone National Dance Troupe for Amistad Festival, were in New Haven performing a similar programme to mark the same occasion.
The state of Connecticut and especially New Haven is known for its historic Sites related to Amistad incident and the civil rights movements. In fact, New Haven and Hartford were the venues, where, the African captives were captured upon arrival by the US navy and locked up in jails.
Following the completion of mission in Africa, I made a special trip to New Haven, Connecticut to further study the story of the West African captives and the Amistad event. So I traveled to New York, and then took the bus from JFK Airport to New Haven.
After visiting the Amistad related sites in New Haven, I spent a few days visiting Hartford, Long Island Sound and Farmington where the African captives were jailed and put on trial or lived from the time of their arrival and arrest until return to their homeland sierra Leone. Here, I would like to share my observations while visiting these related historical sites. The Amistad Monuments
To commemorate the Amistad Africans and those who shared in their struggle for freedom, the Amistad Committee commissioned a sculpture of Sengbe Pieh by Ed Hamilton in 1989. It is a three-sided monument, which stands next to the New Haven City Hall on the former site of the New Haven Jail where the African captives were held. The unveiling ceremony of the monument, sculpted by Ed Hamilton, was attended among others, by a delegation from Sierra Leone and the Dance Troupe for Amistad Festival in 1992, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Amistad Revolt. The following is the statement carved on the "three sided monument":
"Make us Free"
" The monument shown on the Home page is a memorial to the 1839 Amistad Revolt and its leader, Sengbe Pieh, also known as "Joseph Cinque." Sengbe Pieh was one of the millions of Africans kidnapped from their homes and transported in bondage to the Americas. Sold into slavery in Cuba, he, and forty-eight other men and four children were bound aboard the schooner La Amistad. During a storm, Sengbe Pieh successfully freed himself and his fellows.
The Africans seized the ship, but their orders to steer La Amistad homeland were thwarted after futile weeks at sea, they were captured off Long Island by the U.S.S, Washington.
The Amistad Africans were jailed awaiting trial for piracy and murder. To aid their struggle for freedom, the Amistad Committee formed, counting in its number ministers Simeon Jocelyn, Joshua Leavit, James Pennington, merchant Lewis Tappan, professor Josiah Gibbs, and lawyer Roger Baldwin. The Africans were tried twice prior to their ultimate triumph before the United States Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams courageously defended them. Sengbe Pieh and his fellows were declared Free Persons.
"The Africans sought to return home. To raise funds for their voyage and to further the anti-slavery cause, they engaged in a series of speaking tours. In 1941, after a sojourn that profoundly abolitionist movement, they set sail free at last."
Near this monument, on Whitney Avenue where the Yale University buildings can be seen in every corner, you will easily find the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Its Museum exhibits important events in the New Haven history including Amistad Revolt. In the main hall there is a portrait of Sengbe Pieh, leading to an exhibition room, which says "Cinque Lives Here." The exhibition room displays a collection of paintings, books, abstracts of related documents, a model of Amistad vessel and a map showing the routes of Amistad voyages and its captives. A framed Sierra Leone bank note of Le 5000 with Sengbe Pieh portrait, a gift from the special Olympic delegation who visited New Haven in 1995, is also among the displayed items at the exhibition. Visitors may also find brochures, posters and post cards with the image of Sengbe Pieh (Cinque) on sale at the Museum Gift shop.
In 1989-1990, the New Haven Colony Historical Society and Connecticut Historical Society co-sponsored an exhibition on the Amistad incident as part of the 150th anniversary of the event. The exhibition included a model of Amistad vessel, which now remains on permanent display. The Society also initiated a series of lectures on Amistad Revolt.
On March 27, 1998 sponsored by Amistad Committee and some institutions such as the Yale New Haven Hospital, which organized a dinner reception under the Title "Freetown-New Haven Sister Cities" at which the Director of African Studies from University of Sierra Leone was the guest speaker.
1) Barracons were temporary shelters set up in the interior with wooden roofs and fences around, where the captives were kept inside, before being taken away to the coast and shipped overseas. The captives were often fastened together with tight security to prevent them from escaping.
2) Sugar plantations needed strong men. For this reason, slave traders' efforts was to select young and healthy slaves including children, especially when they wanted to accommodate more captives in their slave vessels for shipment across the Atlantic.
3) John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts and former US President, was 74 when, he jointly with Roger Baldwin as defense attorney, defended the Amistad captives' case before the Supreme Court. He was a law graduate from Harvard at the age of nineteen who developed his political career as an experienced and exceptional diplomat. John Quincy Adams was appointed as the Secretary of State by President James Monroe, and then became US President from 1824-1828. John Quincy Adams was the only son of a US President to reach the highest office in the nation.
George W. Bush, the current US President is the second in US history, whose father was also a former US President. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut and grew up in Texas where he served as governor before his presidency.
After his presidency, John Quincy Adams was elected to the House of Representative where he stood up against slavery and segregation in the south until he succeeded in the abolishment of slave trade.
The opening remarks by Roger Baldwin, the New Haven Chief Lawyer and Attorney who defended the African captives' case, took nearly four hours before the US Supreme Court.
LINKS:
http://www.westafricasudan.com/slavetrade.htm
www.swagga.com/amistad.htm
www.sun.ac.za/internet/academic/arts/forlang/bergman/real/amistad/history/msp/bio_cinque.htm
www.learningfamily.net/reiser/2kf/places/024amistad
www.westafricasudan.com/slavetrade.htm
www.sierra-leone.org/heroes4.html
www.gibbsfoundation.org/Amistad%20part%201.htm