Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 26, 1990 TAG: 9004260434
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MOUNT VERNON LENGTH: Medium
Pogue said he sifted through bits of fine imported porcelain, swirled stemware and shards of wine bottles as well as more than 25,000 bones of opossums, sheep, cattle, geese and other animals.
The discovery, during a recently completed archaeological dig on George Washington's 500-acre Mount Vernon plantation, tends to dispel some myths about slave life, said Pogue, who works for the plantation.
The items, which are similar to many unearthed during a similar dig several years ago at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, suggest that all slaves may not have eaten only out of gourds and crude wooden bowls as originally thought. Some may have used china and porcelain handed down from the mansion. The wine bottles don't necessarily suggest the slaves drank wine, Pogue said. They may have held other liquids.
The range of animal bones discovered suggests that some slaves' diets were more diverse than originally thought, that they had time to hunt and had access to weapons, Pogue said. Lead shot also was found in the trash.
"We're very confident that the slaves had some weapons," Pogue said. "They had a wider diversity of foods . . . and most of them would have come from the slaves' own efforts."
The suggestion that slaves had time to hunt would quash the notion that every slave worked from dawn to dusk, Pogue said.
"We're trying to be very careful not to say more than the data suggest," Pogue continued. "We're not going to say they were living the life of Riley . . . but clearly they had time to do these things."
Other academics concurred in some of Pogue's conclusions that although slave life was harsh, materially it may have been somewhat better than historians previously believed.
"The daily life of slaves was very, very hard in comparison to the life of their owners and other whites," said Russell Adams, chairman of the department of Afro-American studies at Howard University. "The diet was borderline, enough to keep them producing, but not enough to make them very healthy. The seasonal work was arduous, especially when agricultural products were bringing high prices."
But Adams said that after harvest, on Saturday nights and on Sundays, slaves did have some leisure time and were encouraged to hunt to supplement their diets and keep busy. "But the impression should not be that we have an Uncle Remus sitting around," Adams said, referring to the fictional black servant whose chief occupation was storytelling.
Only a few trusted slaves on a plantation were given access to guns, but Adams said they rarely shot their masters. "That would be the same as committing suicide," he said.
Pogue said it isn't clear whether all of Washington's more than 300 slaves enjoyed fine china and hunting privileges or just the 70 blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, spinners, weavers and other people in the crafts who lived near the mansion.
Historians have documented a plantation hierarchy that awarded the highest status - and best living conditions - to slaves who worked in the mansion, followed by those in crafts and then field hands. Pogue said he hopes to dig at the site of Mount Vernon's field slaves' quarters this summer to compare living conditions.
by CNB