Regarding the actual narrative, I have read the original typescript in relation to earlier typed and handwritten drafts to produce a definitive text. Minor edits to the text were made in relation to the mechanics of typography, for purposes of clarity, or in the correction of apparent typos. Otherwise, the text remains as Hurston left it. I have made notations in the endnotes to present explanations or to provide full bibliographic data for sources Hurston used in her own notes. Such explanatory entries are labeled “Editor’s note” and are bracketed. All other notes are original to the manuscript. Hurston’s citations and footnotes have likewise been edited to align with conventional documentation style.
D.G.P.
The “Door of No Return” at La Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) at Gorée Island in Senegal, West Africa. Above the entryway: “Lord, give my people, who have suffered so much, the strength to be great” (Joseph Ndiaye).
To
Charlotte Mason
My Godmother, and the one Mother of all the primitives, who with the Gods in Space is concerned about the hearts of the untaught
This is the life story of Cudjo Lewis, as told by himself. It makes no attempt to be a scientific document, but on the whole he is rather accurate. If he is a little hazy as to detail after sixty-seven years, he is certainly to be pardoned. The quotations from the works of travelers in Dahomey are set down, not to make this appear a thoroughly documented biography, but to emphasize his remarkable memory.
Three spellings of his nation are found: Attako, Taccou, and Taccow. But Lewis’s pronunciation is probably correct. Therefore, I have used Takkoi throughout the work.
I was sent by a woman of tremendous understanding of primitive peoples to get this story. The thought back of the act was to set down essential truth rather than fact of detail, which is so often misleading. Therefore, he has been permitted to tell his story in his own way without the intrusion of interpretation.
For historical data, I am indebted to the Journal of Negro History, and to the records of the Mobile Historical Society.
Zora Neale Hurston
April 17, 1931
The African slave trade is the most dramatic chapter in the story of human existence. Therefore a great literature has grown up about it. Innumerable books and papers have been written. These are supplemented by the vast lore that has been blown by the breath of inarticulate ones across the seas and lands of the world.
Those who justified slaving on various grounds have had their say. Among these are several slave runners who have boasted of their exploits in the contraband flesh. Those who stood aloof in loathing have cried out against it in lengthy volumes.
All the talk, printed and spoken, has had to do with ships and rations; with sail and weather; with ruses and piracy and balls between wind and water; with native kings and bargains sharp and sinful on both sides; with tribal wars and slave factories and red massacres and all the machinations necessary to stock a barracoon with African youth on the first leg of their journey from humanity to cattle; with storing and feeding and starvation and suffocation and pestilence and death; with slave ship stenches and mutinies of crew and cargo; with the jettying of cargoes before the guns of British cruisers; with auction blocks and sales and profits and losses.
All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold. The Kings and Captains whose words moved ships. But not one word from the cargo. The thoughts of the “black ivory,” the “coin of Africa,” had no market value. Africa’s ambassadors to the New World have come and worked and died, and left their spoor, but no recorded thought.
Of all the millions transported from Africa to the Americas, only one man is left. He is called Cudjo Lewis and is living at present at Plateau, Alabama, a suburb of Mobile. This is the story of this Cudjo.
I had met Cudjo Lewis for the first time in July 1927. I was sent by Dr. Franz Boas to get a firsthand report of the raid that had brought him to America and bondage, for Dr. Carter G. Woodson of the Journal of Negro History. I had talked with him in December of that same year and again in 1928. Thus, from Cudjo and from the records of the Mobile Historical Society, I had the story of the last load of slaves brought into the United States.
The four men responsible for this last deal in human flesh, before the surrender of Lee at Appomattox should end the 364 years of Western slave trading, were the three Meaher brothers and one Captain [William “Bill”] Foster. Jim, Tim, and Burns Meaher were natives of Maine. They had a mill and shipyard on the Alabama River at the mouth of Chickasabogue Creek (now called Three-Mile Creek) where they built swift vessels for blockade running, filibustering expeditions, and river trade. Captain Foster was associated with the Meahers in business. He was “born in Nova Scotia of English parents.”1
There are various reasons given for this trip to the African coast in 1859, with the muttering thunder of secession heard from one end of the United States to the other. Some say that it was done as a prank to win a bet. That is doubtful. Perhaps they believed with many others that the abolitionists would never achieve their ends. Perhaps they merely thought of the probable profits of the voyage and so undertook it.
The Clotilda was the fastest boat in their possession, and she was the one selected to make the trip. Captain Foster seems to have been the actual owner of the vessel.2 Perhaps that is the reason he sailed in command. The clearance papers state that she was sailing for the west coast for a cargo of red palm oil. Foster had a crew of Yankee sailors and sailed directly for Whydah [Ouidah], the slave port of Dahomey.
The Clotilda slipped away from Mobile as secretly as possible so as not to arouse the curiosity of the Government. It had a good voyage to within a short distance of the Cape Verde Islands. Then a hurricane struck and Captain Foster had to put in there for repairs.
While he was on dry-dock, his crew mutinied. They demanded more pay under the threat of informing a British man-of-war that was at hand.
Foster hurriedly promised the increase the sailors demanded. But his wife often told how he laughingly broke this promise when it was safe to do so. After the repairs had been made, he made presents to the Portuguese officials of shawls and other trinkets and sailed away unmolested.3
Soon he was safely anchored in the Gulf of Guinea, before Whydah. There being no harbor, ships must stand in open roadstead and the communications with shore are carried on by Kroo men in their surf boats.
Soon Captain Foster and his kegs of specie and trading goods were landed. “Six stalwart blacks” were delegated to meet him and conduct him into