United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Snelgrave nevertheless had experience of three mutinies in his career; and Coromantees figured so prominently in these that he never felt secure when men of that stock were in his vessel, for, he said, "I knew many of these Cormantine negroes despised punishment and even death itself."
In March five men and five women were bought; and in October 25 men, 27 women, 16 boys, 16 girls and 6 children, all new Congoes; and in the next year 51 males and 30 females, part Congoes and part Coromantees and nearly all of them eighteen to twenty years old.
We were always great friends, but now I was so advanced in his favour that he promised to give me his daughter Mary for a wife when I took him back to Fowler's Bay. Mary was a very pretty little girl. But "I to wed with Coromantees? Thoughts like these would drive me mad.
The number in the gangs was not stated, but the expectation was expressed that in ordinary years from ten to twenty new negroes would have to be bought to keep the ranks full, and it was advised that Coromantees be preferred, since they had been found best for the work on these estates.
This was just what the bold Coromantees wished for; they grinned and shouted their delight at serving under so great a warrior, and then set to work most gallantly, getting through more in the day than any ten Indians, and indeed than any two Englishmen.
"Had we only island-born blacks to deal with, the case would be different; but there are a lot of Coromantees, the most savage of the African people, who are at the bottom of all this, and they will fight like tiger-cats as long as life remains in them. They won't be satisfied, if they can have their will, till they burn us and the house in a heap. They will try it again, or I am much mistaken."
They easily sank under fatigue, but might be employed with advantage in the distillery and the boiling house or as watchmen against fire and the depredations of cattle. The Coromantees of the Gold Coast stand salient in all accounts as hardy and stalwart of mind and body.
The kind-hearted seamen fully appreciating Archie's object were well pleased to let the poor trembling wretches escape, and led by the master, they pursued some others who had still retained their muskets, and who proved to be Coromantees, the most warlike and savage of the blacks engaged in the insurrection. Several of these attempting to make a stand were captured.
When these latter insurgents were routed by the whites, part of them, largely Coromantees it appears, fled to the nearby mountain fastnesses where, under the chieftainship of Cudjoe, they became securely established as a community of marooned freemen.
Word Of The Day