Tonto, Creeks and Seminoles

Actor Johnny Depp has recently gained scrutiny for basing his depiction of Tonto, in the film The Lone Ranger, on a painting not derived from any particular Native American tradition.  The depiction includes a crow’s body perched on Tonto’s head. 

This depiction, coincidentally, is not entirely inconsistent with the practice of Creek Indians of the Southeast and their relations among the Seminoles. 

William Bartram remarked of the Creek Indians that “the junior priests or students…have a great owl skin cased and stuffed very ingeniously, so well executed, as almost to represent the living bird, having large sparkling glass beads, or buttons fixed in the head for eyes….”

Bartram remarked that priests-in-training sometimes wear “this insignia of wisdom and divination” “as a crest on the top of the head,” while “at other times the image sits on the arm, or is borne on the hand.”

Please consult William Bartram, William Bartram on the Southern Indians, ed. Gregory A. Waselkov and Kathryn L. Holland Braund (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), page 123.

Origins of Many Americans in the Southeast

A 1785 advertisement in a Charleston, South Carolina newspaper announced that 152 Africans from the Gambia River would go on sale June 7, 1785. The advert appealed to a preference for Gambians already well established in Carolina: “The Negroes from this part of the coast of Africa are well acquainted with the cultivation of Rice, and are naturally industrious.”

In a landmark 1969 book, Philip D. Curtin estimated that almost 30% of Africans brought to South Carolina came from Senegambia (the region around the Senegal & Gambia Rivers).  Please consult Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972 [1969]).

Jews Arabs and Blacks Together in Jacksonville

In the first few minutes of this video, US Air Force veteran and Civil Rights activist Alton Yates describes how Arab-Americans and Jewish-Americans were part of the African-American community in Jacksonville, Florida in the mid-1900s.

Georgia Workhouse

The August 31, 1768 issue of the Savannah newspaper announced three runaway slaves "Brought to the Work-House," describing one as, "A TALL STOUT ABLE NEGRO FELLOW, about five feet nine inches high, about 30 years of age, has his country marks thus lll on each side of his face, is of the Coromantee country...says his name is Michael, but cannot tell his master's name, was brought from the Creek nation, where it's said he had been about two years. August 7th 1768"   

In June, the Indians themselves returned runaway slave Sampson, who said "that he went to the Indian nation about seven years ago, but cannot tell his master's name."  Sampson had "country marks," traditional African markings, down both sides of his face and a scar on his left shoulder.  The third prisoner was a recently arrived African, who also "cannot tell him master's name" and apparently did not give his own.  That prisoner "has holes in his ears and beads of different sorts round his neck...."
   
     

Senegal, Gambia & Florida

From my opinion piece published by Folio Weekly (Jacksonville, Florida):

"The influence of the South Carolina slave market means many African Americans in Florida and Georgia probably have Senegambian heritage. A 1784 advertisement for 'Prime Healthy Gambia Negroes' in the South Carolina Gazette described Gambians as 'universally reckoned the best that can be imported, they being...well acquainted with the cultivation of rice, indigo and tobacco.' Rice was a major crop for coastal South Carolina and Georgia."

To read the rest of "Roots Rock: Recently discovered slave graves resurrect discussion on the origins of African Americans," Folio Weekly, 3 Jan. 2012, please visit http://bit.ly/yDDBzK.

Gambia

In 1817, pirates intercepted a Spanish slave ship bound for Brazil with 95 slaves from Gambia. On October 20, 1817, pirates brought the slave ship Jesus Nazareno to Amelia Island, East Florida.

The Jesus Nazareno (Mariano Ferrar, captain) spent 47 days in the arduous Middle Passage. Of the 95 Africans placed in the ship, all 95 were alive upon reaching Amelia Island. Elizabeth M. Halcrow wrote, "Slaves from Senegambia and Angola were usually healthiest as they came by short routes on which the winds were fairly predictable."

In contrast, the American ship Aquila left Rio Pongo, Guinea with 143 slaves, of whom 126 were alive upon reaching Florida in 1810. In 1806, Zephaniah Kingsley's ship Peje acquired 19 slaves in Zanzibar, East Africa, of whom 16 were still alive upon reaching East Florida.

For information on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, visit the web site http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces. For more on Zephaniah Kingsley's "Zinguibara" slaves, please consult, Daniel L. Schafer, Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Slaveowner (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003),139 note 3. Elizabeth M. Halcrow, Canes and Chains: A Study of Sugar and Slavery (Kingston, Jamaica: Heinemann, 1982), 30.

Slave Ship Mentor

Advertising the arrival of 152 "prime healthy young negroes" from the Gambia River on the ship Mentor, merchants Robert Hazlehurst & Co. appealed to a well-established preference in the South Carolina slave market: "The negroes from this part of the coast of Africa, are well acquianted with the cultivation of rice, and are naturally industrious." The Columbia Herald (Charleston), 30 May 1785.

What sugar was to the Caribbean, rice was to coastal South Carolina and Georgia.

For more on the preferences and sources of the South Carolina slave market, consult Daniel C. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991 [1981]) and Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969).