The Amistad Mutiny

On July 1, 1839, the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship, was taken over by African captives about 20 miles off the coast of Cuba. The legal battle that ensued was a remarkable chapter in the history of slavery and abolitionism in the Americas.

Sengbe Pieh was a rice farmer from Sierra Leone, the son of a local chief. In 1839 he was a married man in his mid-twenties, with three young children. Some time in the early part of the year, Sengbe Pieh was captured by slave traders and taken on a grueling ten-day march along the Gallinas River to the western coast of Africa. On the island of Lomboko, hundreds of prisoners were held until slave ships arrived to transport them across the Atlantic. In April, Sengbe Pieh and about six hundred other West Africans were crammed into the cargo hold of a Portuguese slave ship, Tecoro, and chained down for a perilous, filthy journey which would kill one third of the prisoners.

One midsummer night, the Tecoro slipped quietly into Havana harbor. Treaties between England and Cuba prohibited importation of Africans for slavery, although slave-owning itself was still legal in Cuba. Such importation was a capital crime, but once the prisoners were ashore, the slave traders would sell them at auction. Fifty-three of the West Africans from the Tecoro were purchased by two Spaniards, Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes. Forty-nine were adult men, and the other four were children, three girls and a boy. The captives were loaded onto a small schooner named the Amistad (Spanish for "Friendship"), bound for plantations near Puerto Principe, about 300 miles away.

None of the Africans spoke Spanish, and because previously kidnapped countrymen had never returned home to tell what lay in store for them across the ocean, they had no idea what to expect from their foreign captors. They were members of various West African tribes, and not all of them could even communicate with each other. On the first or second day of the journey, the Amistad's mulatto cook, Celestino, ignited the prisoners' fears when he cruelly joked to Sengbe Pieh, now referred to as Cinque, that Cinque and the others were destined to be eaten at the end of the voyage: first indicating the chained men, he then drew his finger across his throat and pointed to barrels of preserved meat stored in the hold as provisions. The captives were alarmed and dismayed, and in the middle of night those that spoke Mende talked among themselves. Cinque, the chief's son, proposed drawing up a plan to escape, saying, "If we do nothing we will be killed. We may as well die trying to be free as to be killed and eaten."

On this short voyage, the prisoners were brought occasionally to the upper deck, still chained, but when Cinque's turn came, he was able to find a nail and hide it under his arm. Back in the cargo hold, he worked to disconnect his neck chain from the wall, and on the third night he and another captive, called Grabeau, broke free. They freed the others and searched for weapons, finding a crate of machetes intended to be used for cutting sugar cane. Cinque found the cook, Celestino, and killed him first. The Africans crept quietly to the upper deck, with their machetes, and a short battle ensued, in which the captain of the Amistad and one of the captives were killed. Ruiz and Montes were wounded, but their lives were spared, as the Africans realized that their skills would be needed to pilot the ship. The schooner's two crewmen commandeered a small boat and escaped; their fate is unknown. A slave cabin boy acted as translator, and Cinque instructed the Spaniards to sail the Amistad to the western coast of Africa.

They obtained a supply of water in the Bahamas, and according to his instructions, Montes sailed the Amistad east, toward the rising sun, during the day. When the sun set, however, he turned the ship around, at first trying to return to Havana, then eventually started steering it northeast at night, hoping to reach the eastern coast of the United States. The Africans suspected him and threatened him with death, but they were still dependent upon him to navigate the ship. This zig-zagging continued for sixty-three days. Reports in American newspapers described a long, low, black schooner seen off the Atlantic coast, manned by dozens of armed Black men with a "savage appearance." Ship captains speculated that it might be a pirate ship, as it flew no flag. By late August, supplies had run out, and nine more men had died from exposure or disease.

Still, it was lucky for the mutineers that by this time, they had come far enough north to have bypassed the southern slave-holding states, or the ending of the story might have been quite different. The Amistad anchored near Long Island, New York, on August 26, and some of the men went ashore to see if they could obtain any food. The captain of a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, the USS Washington, saw the schooner and boarded it. His reports described the shocking conditions aboard the Amistad--the occupants were barely clothed in rags and appeared to be starving, while two wounded, captive Spaniards in the hold claimed everyone else on the ship as their property, and recounted to the Americans a tale of murder and mutiny.

On July 1, 1839, the Amistad, a Spanish slave ship, was taken over by African captives about 20 miles off the coast of Cuba. The legal battle that ensued was a remarkable chapter in the history of slavery and abolitionism in the Americas.

Susan Robinson
Republished 10.10.05

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