Human dignity and free choice were unimportant, especially when wealth could be amassed by dehumanizing and exploiting others. Slaves lived in separate shacks away from the big house or mansion where the owner lived. Their homes had dirt floors and possibly one thin blanket for a bed. Meals were plain, served from a pot, and eaten with hands. For example, slaves ate cornmeal porridge, fish, or “pot liquor,” the liquid left after vegetables are cooked. The stolen “discards” from slaughtered pigs and cows would supplement their rations. The discards consisted of heads, intestines, organs, feet, and tails, as would squirrels or other small animals that industrious, hungry black people would catch. If they became ill they had to nurse themselves back to health as no doctor would be summoned for them. Knowledge of herbal remedies from the African tradition or learned from Native People was indeed valuable.
Mothers might be able to have their children with them in the evenings, but even children were taken into the master’s house to assist or were hired out to work for others at the whim of their owner. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives could at any time be permanently separated from each other by being sold, and they often were. In fact, some owners felt that people of African descent had no feelings and did not care if their children were taken from them. Pro-slavery forces felt that enslaved Africans accepted and actually preferred to live their lives in bondage. There was little comfort for slaves except each other.
Work might slow down on Sundays as Christian owners and overseers would not work on their Sabbath day. Religion was given to the slaves only to reinforce their inferior position and justify their abuse. If a slave died, he or she could only be buried at night because the master’s needs for the labour of his slaves always came first, well above the emotional trauma felt by the slave community over losing a loved one. The images of freedom and movement in many of the hymns did help to provide images of a life that might be had possibly in the North or after death. Those hymns became codes for people who were willing to follow the call for freedom.
The Underground Railroad was born of the desperation and resolve of black people to be free, and the commitment and resources of free blacks and whites to end slavery. The Underground Railroad was the name of a means of escaping slavery through using various trails, safe houses, and vehicles. It was a system of people helping people to be free, but being connected to the Underground Railroad was dangerous. The Underground Railroad “carried” its human cargo from the late 1700s until slavery was abolished in the United States beginning in 1863. It was the busiest from 1850 on because of the passing of the second Fugitive Slave Act, which put all blacks, whether free-born, manumitted (granted their freedom in the Will of their owner), or runaway, at risk of recapture no matter where they were in the United States. By this time, many of these black peoples had been free for several generations and had acquired considerable property. If they resisted being re-enslaved they were beaten or killed. Some black families were even kidnapped in the middle of the night.
A “ride” on the Underground Railroad would not be comfortable. Your conductor would lead you north on foot by night through swamps, paths, river shores, and forests. If you were lucky, you would have part of your passage on a real train or a boat paid for or provided by abolitionists — but you might have to wear a disguise since you could end up sitting beside someone who could identify you. You might travel from one station to another in a secret compartment of a wagon or on a makeshift boat. Your food would consist of whatever you had been able to carry and whatever you could find during the six to nine weeks your trip could take. Your sleeping quarters might be a hollow tree, a culvert under a bridge, a cemetery, a root cellar, a barn, a cave, or the open terrain. Until you reached your final destination, you would be in constant fear of being recaptured.
Many died along the way or soon after reaching the land of freedom because of starvation, chronic fatigue, or exposure. Before 1850, you only needed to travel to places like Philadelphia in the northern United States, but after 1850 your trip would have to be longer, likely all the way to Canada, therefore the risk of recapture would be greater. You would “buy” your ticket with your commitment to be free at any cost, including leaving your family behind, and you would “claim” your luggage of liberty with your first steps into Canada.
There are two concepts that describe the large-scale capture and sale of millions of African people: the slave trade and Maafa. Maafa comes from the Swahili word for “disaster” and refers to the African Holocaust. For five hundred years Africans were captured, enslaved, and brought to areas controlled by Europeans and Arabs. This ongoing enslavement of Africans had an impact on African settlements and systems, African ways of knowing, African religions, African languages, and the whole gamut of further potential developments within Africa and within the African diaspora. Maafa had an impact on how Africans were perceived, where Africans were felt to be in relation to whites, and on the ways in which Africans were categorized according to the depths of their melanin, their skin colours, rather than on other factors. The slave trade is about how profit was made; Maafa is about the impact on African peoples.
Africans had made their way to North America independently prior to enslavement. Their remains have been found in the Olmec areas of Middle America and on some of the islands in the Caribbean dating back as early as 800 A.D. Africans travelled into the areas now known as Canada and the United States with the coureurs de bois, fur traders, in the 1400s. Black people helped to found Chicago and built Ontario’s first parliament building in the 1700s. Their presence in North America “before Columbus” is documented, but their routine inclusion in North American history does not usually begin until the transatlantic slave trade.
Africans were often hired as interpreters to work with Europeans doing business in Africa. It was not uncommon for an African to be able to speak French, Dutch, or Portuguese in addition to their native tongue. Canada’s first named African was Mathieu Da Costa, who arrived on Canada’s east coast by the early 1600s. A free black man, Da Costa was a translator and contract negotiator for Samuel de Champlain, a French trader and explorer who was on a voyage of discovery with Pierre Du Gua de Monts. Through Da Costa’s linguistic skills and possible previous visits to Canada, he was able to interact between the First Nations (the Mi’kmaq and Montagnais) and the Europeans, creating a relationship. Mathieu Da Costa has been commemorated in Canada by the Federal Government since 1996 for his efforts to establish a link between and among the various early arrivals to Canada.
The first known enslaved African to arrive in Canada was an eight-year-old boy captured from Madagascar and brought to Quebec by David Kirke, a British Commander, by 1628. Sold to a French clerk, Olivier Le Baillif, the child remained enslaved. In 1632, the French regained control of the area, and Le Baillif left, giving his enslaved child to Guilliame Couillard. Being sent to a religious school, the child was later baptized and given a formal name, Olivier Le Jeune.
While slavery was not officially legalized in New France/Quebec until 1709, the practice had been going on for years prior and was an almost international standard. If one was an African, a negro, then one was presumed to be a slave. The Underground Railroad was a clandestine, loosely organized anti-slavery system. Called the first freedom movement of the Americas, it supported the bravery of enslaved people to escape their bondage through the immediate departure from the plantation and supported them as they required hiding places, food, and clothing along the way. Some aspects of the UGRR have been well documented, and those figures, consequently, are well known. However, at the other end of the spectrum, there was much ad hoc assistance provided by any number of persons to fleeing fugitive slaves, so the real numbers will never be known. More than random acts of kindness, the providers of this help, whether it be a bit of food, correct directions, looking the other way, or actively escorting enslaved Africans, were all knowingly directly contravening the law. Assuming terms from the rail system, station masters were in charge of safe houses, conductors led people through parts of their journey, passengers were the escaping people, and stockholders were those who contributed or handled fundraising for the purchase of necessary supplies for runaways.
1
Harriet Tubman’s Beginnings