America Compared: The Brutal “Middle Passage”

Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano claimed to have been born in Igboland (present-day southern Nigeria). But Vincent Carretta of the University of Maryland has discovered strong evidence that Equiano was born in South Carolina. He suggests that Equiano drew on conversations with African-born slaves to create a fictitious account of his kidnapping at the age of eleven and a traumatic passage across the Atlantic. After being purchased by an English sea captain, Equiano bought his freedom in 1766. In London, he became an antislavery activist, and in 1789 he published the memoir from which the following selections are drawn.

My father, besides many slaves, had a numerous family. … I was trained up from my earliest years in the art of war, … and my mother adorned me with emblems after the manner of our greatest warriors. One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both. …

I was … sold and carried through a number of places till … at the end of six or seven months after I had been kidnapped I arrived at the sea coast.

… I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country. … I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness of the stench and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables, and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and … tied my feet while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced anything of this kind before, and … could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side. … One day, when we had a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together … , preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made it through the nettings and jumped into the sea. …

At last we came in sight of the island of Barbados; the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten but to work, and were soon to go on land where we should see many of our country people. This report eased us much; and sure enough soon after we were landed there came to us Africans of all languages.

Source: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (London, 1789), 15, 22–23, 28–29.

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS

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