The Baracoons of Gallinas

Discovery - The Story

Story Overview

Enslavement | The Baracoons of Gallinas | The Middle Passage

The Cuban Slave Market | The Revolt | The Black Schooner

The Africans in America | The Amistad Trials | Return to Africa

The Baracoons of Gallinas

From the interior, the Africans were marched to the delta at the mouth of the Gallinas River.

Here they came into Spanish hands. Several of the Amistad Africans would later name these new captors: "Laigo," "Peli," "Belewa" (meaning Great Whiskers), and most prominently, a merchant named "Luiz" (sometimes recorded as "Luis," or "Luisi"). Few of the captives had ever seen Europeans before.

The Spaniards kept them in baracoons -- crude structures, many of them little more than walled, open-air pens, with high, stout walls -- built on the marshy, low-lying islands along the river. The slaves were chained together in pairs by leg irons to discourage escape or revolt.

Meanwhile, beyond the baracoon walls, African and European traders palavered (meaning they bargained), trading the men, women and children waiting in the baracoons for rum, tobacco, muskets, gunpowder, cloth and other goods.

The African slave trade was technically illegal: European nations had all, at various times, signed treaties outlawing the traffic. But the profits from slaving were lucrative, and numerous European slavers flouted the ban. The only nation putting any teeth in the law was Great Britain, which had stationed a naval squadron at the nearby colony of Sierra Leone to try to intercept the numerous slave ships that put in at Gallinas, Sherbro, and other isolated points along the coast. In Gallinas, from watch towers built in the trees, lookouts scanned the coast for British cruisers.

And somewhere out there beyond the surf, the slave ship Tecora made her way towards the river mouth....

KEY DOCUMENTS: As with the Africans' enslavement, Barber's pamphlet is a key source for specific details about the Amistad Africans' passage through Gallinas.

A memoir written by a slave trader operating in the Gallinas region in the late 1830s, Theopholis Conneau, does not mention the Amistad Africans specifically, but does describe the business of slave trading in this place at this time.

James Hall, a Baltimore anti-slave trade activist and an important leader in the American Colonization Movement, filed several reports the state of the slave trade in the Gallinas region, one in 1850, and another in 1857. (Both reports described the trade over the 1820s and 1830s).

Exploring Amistad - DISCOVERY


		Story Overview Enslavement \| The Baracoons of Gallinas \| The Middle Passage The Cuban Slave Market \| The Revolt \| The Black Schooner The Africans in America \| The Amistad Trials \| Return to Africa The Baracoons of Gallinas From the interior, the Africans were marched to the delta at the mouth of the Gallinas River. Here they came into Spanish hands. Several of the Amistad Africans would later name these new captors: "Laigo," "Peli," "Belewa" (meaning Great Whiskers), and most prominently, a merchant named "Luiz" (sometimes recorded as "Luis," or "Luisi"). Few of the captives had ever seen Europeans before. The Spaniards kept them in baracoons -- crude structures, many of them little more than walled, open-air pens, with high, stout walls -- built on the marshy, low-lying islands along the river. The slaves were chained together in pairs by leg irons to discourage escape or revolt. Meanwhile, beyond the baracoon walls, African and European traders palavered (meaning they bargained), trading the men, women and children waiting in the baracoons for rum, tobacco, muskets, gunpowder, cloth and other goods. The African slave trade was technically illegal: European nations had all, at various times, signed treaties outlawing the traffic. But the profits from slaving were lucrative, and numerous European slavers flouted the ban. The only nation putting any teeth in the law was Great Britain, which had stationed a naval squadron at the nearby colony of Sierra Leone to try to intercept the numerous slave ships that put in at Gallinas, Sherbro, and other isolated points along the coast. In Gallinas, from watch towers built in the trees, lookouts scanned the coast for British cruisers. And somewhere out there beyond the surf, the slave ship Tecora made her way towards the river mouth.... KEY DOCUMENTS: As with the Africans' enslavement, Barber's pamphlet is a key source for specific details about the Amistad Africans' passage through Gallinas. A memoir written by a slave trader operating in the Gallinas region in the late 1830s, Theopholis Conneau, does not mention the Amistad Africans specifically, but does describe the business of slave trading in this place at this time. James Hall, a Baltimore anti-slave trade activist and an important leader in the American Colonization Movement, filed several reports the state of the slave trade in the Gallinas region, one in 1850, and another in 1857. (Both reports described the trade over the 1820s and 1830s).