THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 15, 1994 TAG: 9408150216
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Charlise Lyles
LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
ON A RECENT SUNNY, sticky afternoon at Jamestown National Historical Park, tourists black and white gather to hear Silus Mullins, an African, tell the story of his life on the island that was the first English colony in the New World.
Freedom is heavy on his mind. ``I'm holding on to my indenture papers,'' says the tall, husky brown man in britches rough as burlap and a crude straw hat. ``I'm what they call an African. I came not by choice. Will my indenture turn into something worse, or will I be free? I want to own my own cooper shop someday. But I don't know that it will happen.''
He wipes the sweat beading on his brow and shakes his head at the merciless white heat of the sun.
Nobody really knows their the names , or what their or the worries were, of those first Africans brought up the James River nearly four centuries ago and sold to the governor of Virginia for who knows how much or how little.
Based on scant documents, historical hypothesis and imagination, Mullins is the attempt by living history interpreter Greg Minns to bring life to those unknown African men and women who landed her on an August day 375 years ago. They lived out the legacy of American chattel slavery, the brutal practice of human beings as property. And they were the harbingers of African culture to this continent, its backbone and soul, its deep rhythms and rhymes.
On Saturday, the Jamestown Settlement next door to the park will host a day of festivities commemorating the 375th anniversary of the arrival of America's reluctant immigrants. It will include a symbolic landing complete with a 17th century ship replica and self-proclaimed descendants on board.
The focus of ``The Arrival, Jamestown 1619: From African to African American'' is on the cultural contributions of blacks over the centuries, said Debby Padgett, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation spokeswoman. Drummers will drum. Dancers will dance. A gospel choir will sing. Storytellers will spin yarns. And vendors will vend ethnic-oriented fair.
Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder will speak and probably call once again for a national slavery museum to stand on the banks of the James River. The museum, says Wilder, would educate Americans about the ``peculiar institution.''
That's what Minns hopes to do through the Mullins character.
``In front of Master Yeardley, I'm Silus so happy. Behind his back, this is hell and I hate it,'' Mullins explains to the tourists. But he speaks not a word of lashings or other cruel treatment. He makes no mention of blacks who lived out their lives in bondage. There is no reference to what came later at the height of the slave trade, when millions of Africans were hauled to the Colonies in the agonizing Middle Passage.
Packed and shackled by the hundreds in the dark, airless hold of ships, feverish and writhing in their own feces, blood and mucous, the Africans' passage to America was a genuine sampling of the depths of a lower hell.
In despair, some threw their lives to the sharks rather than remain captive, wrote Olaudah Equiano, the son of an Ibo tribal elder, in his 18th century account of his enslavement. All feared that the white men with ``horrible looks, red faces and long hair'' would boil and eat them.
When Minns finishes the tour, a handful of tourists remains under a maple tree after others leave. Michael McLoughlin, a 10-year-old on vacation from Fanwood, N.J., wants to know more about Silus Mullins.
``I came here by force,'' Minns repeats as the boy peppers him with questions. ``I was treated differently.''
``They weren't very nice to you, were they?'' Michael concludes.
Afterward, Minns explains the rather sanitized version he has presented. ``I don't want to get too heavy into indentured servitude,'' Minns says. ``If they have questions, they can ask afterward. There is so much heated historical debate over the treatment of the first Africans, their status, that I only present the bare facts.''
The first reference to Africans and slavery in the colonial world seems rather understated.
In late 1619, John Rolfe, an official of the Virginia Company living in Jamestown, scripted a simple letter to London. It reported happenings in the new English colony.
``About the last of August came in a dutchman of warre that sold us twenty and odd'' Africans, John Smith wrote in ``The General History of Virginia'' in 1624.
Rolfe's letter is one of the few original extant documents recording the arrival, says Jamestown senior curator Thomas E. Davidson.
Other documents of the Virginia Company refer to the Dutch ship. At sea, its crewmen had plundered the slaves from a Spanish ship, according to one theory. Or the Africans were purloined from a Spanish colony, goes another theory.
In colonies to the south, Spaniards had practiced slavery for at least 100 years.
The company documents place the Africans' actual arrival at Point Comfort, modern day Hampton, rather than Jamestown. Point Comfort served as a fort against foreign invasion. Today Hamptonians still bristle at Jamestown for attempting to steal its historical fire.
A short trip up river on a smaller boat probably brought the blacks to Jamestown.
Where they went and what became of them is unknown. But they could have moved beyond Jamestown, for a 1625 census included ``9 Negroes'' in the population - at least 11 fewer who had arrived six years earlier.
No one knows the language they spoke, whether Spanish or a tribal tongue. An 18th century account of enslavement by Equiano spoke of the agony of being unable to communicate with his captors.
One thing was certain of those first Africans: They were not free men, and they did not come of their own accord. Yet, whether they were actually slaves is debatable. Some say from day one, they were lifetime chattel. Others disagree.
``Like most whites who came to the New World,'' contends Watson, ``the Africans were considered indentured servants, not slaves.'' They served a master for an agreed period of time, usually seven years or more, and were set free, in most cases.
There is evidence that some blacks worked their way free. On the Eastern Shore, Anthony Johnson and his offspring bought hundreds of acres of land, owned cattle and a slave, according to court records.
But a 1640 court case dealt an unequal fate to three runaway indentured servants. A Scot and Dutchman were granted freedom. ``A Negro named John Punch'' was given lifetime servitude.
``No white servant in America so far as is known ever received a like sentence,'' historian Winthrop Jordan has said.
Lifetime or ``perpetual servitude'' did not become the law of the Colonies until 1662, 43 years after the arrival. That law stated that children born into the colony would be held bound or free according to the status of the mother.
The colonists had struck gold: Slaves were free labor, critical to the wealth of the New World.
Free blacks and a few whites questioned the morality of slavery: ``If you are a Christian, would you enslave your brother?''
Watson said to justify inferior treatment of the Africans, the colonists began distorting Scriptures, such as the story of Ham in Genesis, interpreting it as God's curse on people of color.
Next, the Virginia Assembly voted that ``all servants not being Christians imported into this colony by shipping shall be slaves for their lives.''
And in 1682, it declared that ``the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedome.'' By then, the slave trade was in full operation.
In 1705, after early slave rebellions, laws totally stripped blacks of all freedom of mobility, the right to bear arms and other fundamental rights.
Three centuries later, a few historians speculate that one couple aboard that boat at Point Comfort was called Padro and Isabella, names given to them by their Spanish captors.
On a recent afternoon in Hampton, William Samuel Tucker, 87, of Hampton sat serenely on his lawn, declaring that he is the descendant of those first Africans.
A group of black youths in colorful shorts go by his house waving. They do not know that the retired produce salesman may be the descendant of the first Africans.
Tucker and his daughter, Carol Tucker Jones, 63, say research done by a cousin proves they are the descendants of William Tucker, the first African born and christened in the colony.
The cousin, Thelma Williams, says she is writing a book about the family lineage and cannot reveal too many details of the family tree.
But according to The Afro-American Almanac, published in 1976: ``William Tucker becomes the first child born in the American colonies. A native of Jamestown, Va., his birthright entails the same privileges of freedom and liberty enjoyed by the white children of the colony.''
William Samuel Tucker is praying that he will feel well enough to be on board for the symbolic shiplanding at Saturday's 375th anniversary festivities. When that boat sails up the James River, he will come ashore a free man. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photos by D. Kevin Elliott
Greg Minns, as indentured servant Silus Mullins, brings life to the
Africans who landed in Jamestown 375 years ago.
Minns gives a tour of Jamestown National Historical Park, telling
the story of Mullins' life.
Black/white photo by D. Kevin Elliott
A 1625 census included "nine Negroes in the population of 'James
Citty'" - at least 11 fewer who had arrived on American shores six
years earlier.
Color staff photo by Christopher Reddick
William Tucker, with his daughter Carol Jones, says he's descendant
of the first Jamestown Africans.
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"THE ARRIVAL, JAMESTOWN 1619: FROM AFRICAN TO AFRICAN AMERICAN"
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