Latin History

wife and each of the children of the caciques, also be allotted to the cacique himself, as if the article re- ferred to reads as follows: The caciques will receiue, for themselues, for their wife, and for each of their children, and so on.

By order of His Excellency, I have the honor of communicating this to you so that it shall be brought

Slavery in Brazil, 1856

to the attention of the Council of Government for its proper fulfillment.

I am, Minister, your most attentive and obedient servant.

Felipe Santiago Estends

To the Minister of State of the Department of Covernment

STUDY OUESTIONS

1. How does Bolivar present the condition of indigenous people in the 1820s? Which groups does he see as especially responsible for the challenges facing indigenous people?

2. How do Bolivar's decrees change the legal rights and responsibilities of indigenous people? 3. How are indigenous lands to be redistributed, and why?

THOMAS EWBANK

4.2 SLAVERY IN BRAZIL, 1856

Thomas Ewbank was an Englishman who emigrated to the United States and made his fortune in lead, copper and tin manufacturing before devoting himself to the study of mechanics. He traveled to Brazil in 1845- I846 and wrote an account of his experiences that became widely read in England the United States. L/e in Brazil reflected extensively on the topic of slavery. Ewbank's writings at- tracted the interest of international abolitionists and became a factor in campaigns to end Brazilian slavery In this except he describes some ofthe technologies used to punish slaves, and reflects on the prevalence ofslave suicides.

Among lithographic scenes of life in Rio, designed and published by native artists, those relating to the slaves are not the least conspicuous. There is no more fastidiousness, that I observed, about portraying them in shackles than in their labors and their pastimes.

Common punishments [observed include] a negra in a mask, and a negro wearing the usual pronged collar, with a shackle round one ankle, and secured to a chain suspended from his waist.

Source: Thomas Ewbank, Life in Brazil, Or, A lournal of a Visit to the Land of Cocoa and the Palm (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1856), pp. 436-441

70 souRCFs IjoR LATIN AMF.RICA IN TItE MoDERN woRLD

It is said slaves in masks are not so often encoun- tered in the streets as formerly, because of a growing public feeling against them. I met but three or four, and in each case the sufferer was a female. The mask is the reputed ordinary punishment and preventa- tive of drunkenness. As the baril is often chained to the slave that bears it, to prevent him from selling it for rum, so the mask is to hinder him or her from conveying the liquor to the mouth, below which the metal is continued, and opposite to which there is no opening.

Observing one day masks hanging out for sale at a tin and sheet iron store, I stopped to examine them, and subsequently borrowed one. Except for a prolecting piece for the nose, the metal is simply bent cylinder-wise. Minute holes are punched to admit air to the nostrils, and similar ones in front of the eyes. A iointed strap (of metal) on each side goes round below the ears (sometimes two), and meets one that passes over the crown of the head. A staple unites and a padlock secures them.

At most of the smith's shops collars are exposed, as horseshoes are with our blacksmiths, with gyves, chains, etc. Most of the collars were of five-eights- inch round iron, some with one prong, others with two, and some with none except a short upright tub- ular lock.

Here, too, were the heaviest and cruelest instru- ments of torture-shackles for binding the ankles and wrists close together, and consequently doubling the bodies of the victims into the most painful and un- natural positions. Had I not seen them, I could hardly have thought such things were. While making a mem- orandum of their form and dimensions, the propri- etor or his adjutant, a black man, in his shirt sleeves, came from the reat and handling them, spoke by way of recommending them, supposing I was a customer. They were made of bar iron, three inches wide and three eights of an inch thich! Each consisted of three pieces, bent, jointed, and fastened as shown in the margin. The large openings were for the legs, the smaller for the wrists. A screw-bolt drew the straight parts close together. The distance from loint to ioint was two feet.

Such are the tortures which slaves privately endure in the cellars, garrets, and out-houses of their mas- ters. T-, a native merchant, says another common punishment is to inclose the legs in wooden shackles

or stocks. Some owners fasten their hands in simi- lar devices, and some, again, retain relics of the old thumb-screws to lock these members together. In the northern provinces, he says, the slaves are much worse used than in Rio; that it is no uncommon thing to tie their hands and feet together, hoist them off the ground, and then "beat them as near to death as pos- sible." A healy log fastened by a chain to the neck or leg of a slave who has absconded, or who is supposed to be inclined to run away, is a usual punishment and precaution. He is compelled to labor with it, laying it on the ground when at work, and bearing it under his arm or on his shoulder when he moves.

I observed one day a slave wearing a collar, the largest and roughest of hundreds I have seen. Of inch round iron, with a hinge in the middle, made by bending the metal of its full size into loops, the open ends flattened and connected by a half-inch rivet. The upright bar terminated in a death's head, which reached above that of the wearer, and to it an- other piece, in the form of the letter S, was welded. The joint galled him, for he kept gathering portions ofhis canvas shirt under it. Rest or sleep would seem impossible.

A Bahian planter, the brother of an ex-councilor, dined with us one day, and spoke with much free- dom on slavery. With most men, he thinks the land can never be cultivated in the northern provinces by whites. The city slaves of Bahia, he said, are princi- pally Minas. Shrewd and intelligent, they preserve their own language, and by that means organize clubs and mature schemes of revolution which their brethren of Pernambuco have repeatedly attempted to carry out. Some write Arabic fluently, and are vastly superior to most of their masters. In the in- terior, he remarked, the slaves are badly fed, worse clothed, and worked so hard that the average dura- tion of their lives does not exceed six years. In some districts it reaches to eight, while the number that see ten years after leaving Africa is small indeed. Deceptions are played off on foreign agents of the Slavery Commissions. These visit the Engenhos once or twice a year. The planters, informed when they set out, have their slaves decently garbed and well oiled, to make them look supple and in good condi- tion. On a late visit, the examiners were so highly Bratified that one left, and wrote home a flattering

account of the treatment of the helots. The other continued his inquiries, came to a fazenda where he was not looked for, and there beheld what he did not expect-a negro about to be boiled to death for some act of insubordination. [{is owner had invited, according to custom in such cases, neighboring pro- prietors to witness the tragedy.

From the little I have seen, I should suppose the country slaves are the worst off. Every morning, while nature was enshrouded in blackness of dark- ness, did I hear them driving wagons through the thick mist, and as late as ten at night were they shout- ing at the oxen as the jolting and groaning wheels rolled by. (This was, however, the busiest season.) I often wondered how they found their way over the horrid roads, how their naked feet and limbs escaped unharmed, and how they then worked in the fields, unless their pupils had the expansile and contractile powers of night animals.

On large estates, a few days' rest are given them every three or four weeks during the sugar season, but on smaller ones, where owners commonly have difficulty to keep out of debt, they fare badly, and are worked to death. Staggering into their huts, or dropping where their labors close, hardly do their aching bones allow the Angel of Sleep to drive away the memory of their sorrows, than two demons, iurking in the bell and lash, awaken them to fresh tortures. To say these poor creatures are better off than when ranging their native lands is an assertion that language lacks the power iustly to describe. It may be true, if the life of an omnibus hack is better ihan that of a wild horse of Texas. I would rather, a thousand times, be a sheep, pig, or ox, have free- dom, food, and rest for a season, then be knocked cn the head, than be a serf on some plantations. I say

-.orne, because there are in Brazil, as in other lands, :rumane planters.

Suicides continually occur, and owners wonder. The high-souled Minas, both men and women, are Eiven to self-destruction. Rather than endure life on -.he terms it is offered, many of them end it. Then :hey that bought them grind their teeth and curse tem, hurl imprecations after their flying spirits, and .\ecrate the saints that let them go. If individuals are :'r'er justified in using the power Heaven has placed -r their hands to terminate at once their earthly

Slavery in Brazil, 1856 7'l

existence, it must be these. Those who blame them for putting the only barrier between them and op- pression could not endure half their woes. And how characteristic of human frailties! Here are slave- dealers who weep over the legendary sufferings of a saint, and laugh at worse tortures they themselves inflict; who shudder at the names of old persecutors, and dream not of the armies of martyrs they make yearly; who cry over Protestants as sinners doomed to perdition, and smile in anticipation of their own re- ception in the realms above by Anthony and Loyala, Benedict and Becket.

Rich people who lose a slave by suicide or flight scarcely feel the loss, but to many families the loss is ruinous. There are not a few that live on the earnings of one or two helots. The papers are constantly notic- ing the flight of slaves who have manumitted them- selves by escaping across a river their oppressors dare not attempt/ since they there become denizens of a country in which Brazilian process can not be served. They unsheathe their spirits, and leave the scab- bards for their masters. It is only suicides reported by the police that become publicly known. Were all recorded, every issue of the daily press would, I am told, contain more or less. Instances that have oc- curred within the last few weeks are here taken from the Diario.

Iune 22-24. "ln the parish of Sta. Anna, an in- quest was held on the body of the black, Iusto, who killed himself by hanging. He was the slave of Maior Josd de Paiva e Silva. Also on the body of slave, Rita, who destroyed herself by drowning. The body of a black, in a state of putrefaction, was found, thrown ashore by the tide, on the beach near the Public Garden."

/uly 1. The body of onewas found nearthe Carioco Fountain; another, a female, in another parish, had released her spirit with a rope-"suicidou-se com barago." Iuly 5. Another, in a fit of despair, precipi- tated himself from an upper window upon a mass of granite. 23d. The slave Luiz Pharoux killed himself with a rope. 24th. The slaves Pedro and Camillo by strangulation . August 1. Another drowned himself on the Praya Manoel. On the 4th, my last day in Brazil, one was lying on the rocks at the city end of the Gloria Beach, washed up by the tide. He was apparently under thirty years of age. As I stood looking down on

72 soltRCI:s t:i)R L\f tN ,\[1 ti Rtr]A IN -f nt !l()i)r:RN \\,()Rri)

him, a Mozambique girl came along, put her basket on the low wall near me, dropped a tear on the corpse, and passed on.

When the means of strspension are not at hand, it is no unusual thing for the high-minded Africar.rs, of both

sexes, to expire under circumstances surpassing aught that history records. Some draw ligatures tight around their throats, lie down, and delibera.rtely die. Others, I an-r tolcl, have the art of folding back their tongues so as to prevent respiration, and thus resolutely perish.

STUDY OUESTIONS

1 . Why are the masks, shackles, and chains Ewbank describes such a prominent feature of Brazilian slavery? What do these technologies tell us about the nature of relationships between enslaved workers and slave-owners?

2. What tlpes of working conditior.rs does flwbank describe on the plantations he visited? Are there significant differences in the experience ofthe enslaved on different types ofestate?

3. FIow does Ewbank interpret slave suicides? How might his observations be used by abolitionists seeking to end slavery?

4.3 NEWSPAPER FOR BLACK

BRAZIL,

In nir-reteenth-century Brazil, the use of enslaved wet nurses (amas de leite) lr'as a common practice.

Eiite and middle-class white women would frequentll'rent or purchase enslaved African women to breast-feed their babies. Sometimes this was a result of illness or insufficient milk production, but it also reflected racial ideas that held that white women were too "rveak" to breast-feed effectively, in contrast to black women, rvhose perceived "robustness" and adaptation to tropical climates meant

that they could produce large quantities of nutritious milk. In the first half of the nineteenth century

in particular, the employment of an enslaved wet nurse became a mark of social prestige. Wet nurses

were usually young women, teenagers or in lheir early twenties, and most were without their own babies. l'his reflected in part the high infant mortality rates among babies born into slavery but it was also common practice lor slave-owners to remove enslaved babies from their mothers or to force them to srop breast-feeding their orvn child early in order to maximize profits from the rental of the mother as a wet nurse. '['he following excerpts present selections of advertisements for wet nurses that appeared in nineteenth-century Brazilian newspapers.

Source: Roben Edgar Cor-rrad, Chiklren oJ God's Fire: A Doctunentary 11ktot1,o.f Blrck Slaueq'in Brrrzll (Llniversity Park: Pennsylvania

State Llniversity Press, 1994), pp. 13-3-134.

ADVERTISE M E NTS WET NURSES, 1821 -1 854