Legacy of two Rebel heroes

Feb 28, 2016 Countryman, Features / Columnists

By Dennis Nichols
Five days ago as we celebrated another Republic anniversary, there were many who felt and expressed

Dennis Nichols

renewed national pride as the outsize Golden Arrowhead was raised at Durban Park. Others felt it was a misplaced sentiment, sensing that our people are still a long way from real national unity.
Well, the same thing is said about the great ‘United’ States. And one of the biggest obstacles to this ideal in both nations is the continual treatment of Black people and other so-called minorities by an enigmatic thing called The System – for about 300 years.
Now as American Black History month draws to a close, the stories of two African slaves separated by half a century and over two thousand miles of ocean, force themselves upon my consciousness, and compel me to make commentary on their brief, ‘failed’ consequential rebellions against injustice. Maybe this will help some of us to reflect on the terrible price some people pay for change, and the legacy of hope, sometimes tinged with futility, handed down to their descendants. I’ll leave East Indian indentureship for another story.
Ever heard of a man named Cuffy, and the Berbice Slave Rebellion? Sure we all have. What about Nathaniel Turner? Well maybe, some of us have. Obviously we weren’t alive in 1763 or 1831 when these men, in British Guiana and in the United States, rose up against slavery. So we must rely on our gut, and also accept the historian’s and the archivist’s records of what a slave society was really like hundreds of years ago.

A BRIEF INSIGHT
Here’s a brief insight into the slave uprisings led by Cuffy and the American slave, Nat Turner.
With the Berbice Slave insurrection, fragments of records about the state of affairs in that colony have come from the Dutch slave trading company, Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie (MCC) Zeeland archives in The Netherlands, the European nation which had control over the ancient county at that time before it joined with Demerara and Essequibo to become British Guiana.
Cuffy and his men, Accabre, Akara and Atta, (often referred to as his lieutenants) all Berbice River slaves, led one of the first and largest uprisings against White plantation owners in the West Indies. Beginning in February 1763 on

An artist’s impression of Nat Turner

Plantation Magdalenenburg, Canje, with the murder of a carpenter, rebel slaves led by Cuffy/Kofi, attacked plantation after plantation, driving back their owners, killing, plundering and burning. This uprising was triggered by what Cuffy diplomatically referred to as ‘mistreatment’ by some plantation owners.
In fact, slaves were often the victims of severe and cruel punishment, either unjustified, or for minor infractions. Food was in short supply, diseases like dysentery were raging, and at least one colonial doctor was accused of poisoning sick slaves. Just seven months earlier there had been a smaller uprising at Plantation Good Land & Good Fortune, in which about 30 African slaves died. So Cuffy’s diplomatic phrasing of the slaves’ treatment could be understood more as part of a compromise package subsequently offered to Berbice governor, Wolfert Van Hoogenheim, than as an attempt to downplay plantation atrocities.
As the rebellion progressed and more Berbice slaves joined in, plantation owners, Dutch inhabitants, and colonial officials were put to flight. They eventually gathered at the capital, Fort Nassau, but later fled the fort, after burning it, and headed downriver to Plantation Daybreak, then on to Fort St. Andries. (Opposite Crab Island) It was from these locations that the Dutch really began to fight back, and by the end of October 1763, with the arrival of troops from St. Eustatius, Suriname and Holland, and with the help of native ‘Indians’ the rebels were being driven back.
By then, Cuffy had already negotiated with Van Hoogenheim to divide Berbice between Whites and slaves, after declaring himself governor. Later, it was reported that there were disagreements between Cuffy and Atta, that Cuffy had been overthrown, Atta had declared himself governor, and Cuffy had committed suicide. Evidently spurred by these reports, the colonists, with even more military support, intensified their attacks, and by January 1764, the revolution was all but over after coordinated assaults by two forces – one sailing up the Berbice River; the other up the Demerara River, and then on foot through the jungle in a rear attack.
In the final battle of the uprising, on March 23rd 1764, Accabre, who had purportedly quarreled with Atta, held out with about 200 men before he was captured, after defending his reinforced camp against attacks on three sides. Then on April 15th, Atta was captured and brought in chains before Van Hoogenheim. The revolution was over. Over 1,000 slaves had been killed as well as dozens of plantation owners. (There were originally about 4,000 Blacks and 350 Whites in Berbice)
Many felt that Cuffy and his men, though well-organized and self-governed, were outsmarted and out-maneuvered by the cunning Dutch, and that the so-called negotiations were mere delaying tactics on the colonists’ part as they awaited reinforcements.
In the aftermath of the uprising, captured slaves were tried, and sentenced to death. Between February and June 1764, more than 100 slaves were either hung by the neck, burned alive, or broken on the wheel. The last of these was particularly cruel; the victim died slowly and painfully after having his limbs/bones broken while latched to a wagon wheel that slowly revolved.

NATHANIEL TURNER
Nathaniel Turner was a Virginian slave from Southampton County who led maybe the only ‘real’ slave revolt in the United States, in 1831. Viewed as a prophetic hero by some and a psychotic murderer by others, he stands out as a brutal reminder of the kind of backlash than can explode from what I call physical and psychological enslavement and atrophy.
As a youth I read his controversial biography ‘The Confessions of Nat Turner’ and am still saddened and enraged by what happened nearly 200 years ago.
Said to be deeply religious, intuitive and literate, Turner experienced visions and believed divine voices, in 1825, were foretelling a bloody war between Black and White spirits, revealing that “the Serpent was loosened … and that I should take it on and fight …” He became a preacher who, like biblical Moses, claimed he’d been chosen by God to lead slaves out of bondage, and reportedly took a solar eclipse in February 1831 as a sign that the time had come to rise up.
On August 21st he gathered some slaves together and began a massacre of over 50 White men, women and children, starting with the Travis family which had owned him. From there he travelled house to house, killing Whites, freeing slaves and securing arms, farm tools, and horses before continuing his onslaught. He eventually ‘enlisted’ about 70 slaves and free Blacks. Knives, hatchets, axes and farm implements were the tools of execution. It was reported that he spared a few homes where poor Whites lived because ‘they thought no better of themselves than they did of negros.’
Turner and his men hoped to reach the county seat, Jerusalem, and take over the armory there, but the revolt ended two days later when they were intercepted by a group of armed Whites and Turner fled into the woods. He stayed there several weeks, until his capture on November 30th. Turner allegedly confessed to the crime of ‘conspiring to rebel and make insurrection’. He was convicted, sentenced to death, and hanged one week later. His body was then flayed, beheaded and quartered.
The state executed 56 Blacks suspected of involvement in the uprising. Another 100 to 200 were killed by enraged mobs and militias in the aftermath of the revolt. Many of them had nothing to do with the uprising. The incident struck fear into the hearts of Southerners and short-circuited the emancipation movement in that region. It however galvanized the movement in the North. On January 1st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation abolishing slavery, 30 years after it had happened in British Guiana.
Reflect on these events my countrymen and women. And when that massive Golden Arrowhead is raised again at midnight on May 25th spare a thought for Cuffy, Nat Turner, and the 12 million Africans uprooted from their motherland and dehumanized in a ‘New World’ of whips and chains, while dreaming of a truly new world of freedom and justice.