Caribbean (33 page)

Obviously, the fifty-odd blacks never convened as a group, for from the earliest days of slavery, island rules had forbidden meetings of slaves from different plantations; there was to be no midnight plotting in Barbados. The message was spread in the English of the slave fields, since his followers had come from widely varied parts of Africa with different languages: “Three nights from now, sun goes down, wait two hours, then each man kills all the white men in three different houses close by. Then we spread out, all the island.” It was not a tidy plan, but if the slaves could immobilize the principal white families of Bridgetown, they would stand a good chance of taking over the island. And because of the subtle skill with which Hamilcar had maneuvered the exchange of information and strategies, three nights from the terrible rebellion no white men were aware of the danger.

On the first night after having set the timetable, Hamilcar could not sleep, for he could visualize a wide scatter of things that might go wrong, but on the second night, tired from hurried meetings with his major lieutenants, he slept easily, assured that his plan would work, and next morning he rose prepared to execute the massacre.

On the eastern edge of Bridgetown, well in from the sea, stood a small cottage occupied by the two sons of Thomas Oldmixon’s former servant, John Tatum. The father had died young, having worked himself to death clearing Oldmixon’s many fields, and then his own, but he did leave his widow this cottage and ten acres—five he had been given as his right at the end of his indenture, and five on which he had spent his first savings, for he loved land and taught his sons to do the same. His widow had died soon thereafter, and so the boys,
cautious Isaac and free-spirited Will, inherited the small holding. The former had a wife who reminded him repeatedly: “This cottage is too small for three. Your brother should find work elsewhere,” but Will showed no sign of wanting to leave.

Their plantation was small, big enough to provide work for only three slaves, but Isaac was so furiously ambitious that he did not propose to remain a minor planter long. “Soon,” Isaac told his wife, Clarissa, and his brother, “the Tatum name will be of some importance on this island,” and he confided that the only route to the eminence for which he thirsted was “more land each year, more slaves each half-year, and this family will scrimp and save until those goals are reached.”

Will was an undisciplined lad of fourteen, whose nature was already unpredictable and whose ready, beguiling smile betrayed the fact that he could well develop into a scoundrel. The two Tatums differed greatly in appearance. Isaac was almost unnaturally short, a disability he tried to overcome with manly posturing, wedges in his shoes and a cultivated rumble to make his voice deeper. He had pale, sandy hair and shifty eyes, as if always calculating the main chance, and to spur himself into manhood as quickly as possible he had married early, locating a young woman two years older than himself and twice as ambitious. As a pair, he and Clarissa were formidable.

The two brothers, so different in appearance and character, worked well together, with Will aiding his brother’s ambitions in an original way: he treated the three Tatum slaves so generously that they did the work of six. When there was a muddy task to be completed in a hurry, he leaped in beside them and helped, something his more austere brother would never do. “Gentlemen have their place,” Isaac pontificated, “slaves theirs, and the distances must be preserved.”

The two black men worked in the fields, while the woman, Naomi, served as maid and general household assistant to Clarissa. When she was growing up along the Volta River of the Gold Coast, Naomi had enjoyed a carefree existence before her capture by Portuguese slavers; she had rebelled furiously when first dumped onto the shore of Barbados, and was so cruelly abused by her first master, she had come close to killing herself in despair. Sold off, she fell into the hands of the Tatums, who treated her justly. She had adopted the younger brother as her own, giving him kitchen lectures on how to
behave as a young man should and receiving from him instruction in the alphabet, which may have been contributory to the tragedy about to engulf Barbados.

From the first days of slavery, the rulers of the island had foreseen that if they educated their slaves, sooner or later there would have to be insubordination or worse, so they forbade the learning of the alphabet and absolutely outlawed any instruction in Christianity; blacks were never allowed in churches. Naomi knew this, and she delighted in the forbidden lessons Will gave her. Early on she recognized that he was like her; Will, too, was a rebel. She felt responsible for him, and as he grew older she took pride in his manly developments and his willingness to oppose anyone who trespassed on his right. “That Will,” she told the two men slaves, “he worth six of his brother.”

On the night before the slaughter of whites was to begin, Naomi felt pangs of regret, for she could not bear to think of her fine young man with his throat cut, so she sought Will out and whispered: “Tomorrow doan’ go to de field,” and when he asked why, she said: “And doan’ stay in de house.” Then, in some confusion as to what she was saying, she added: “Blood promise me, doan’ tell no one.”

Will Tatum was a bright lad, and when he went to bed he tried to sort out what Naomi’s cryptic messages had really signified, and when the ugly possibilities became clear, he wakened his brother and they rapidly deduced what Naomi had known but had been afraid to spell out, and in a rush they alerted the neighboring white families, then galloped off to surrounding plantations.

When the two Tatums rushed to the outskirts of Bridgetown to spread the alarm, Isaac first headed east for the plantation of Henry Saltonstall, a respected planter but not one of the richest, while Will started north to alert Thomas Oldmixon, the most powerful planter on one of the largest plantations. But the two young riders were hardly out of the gate when Isaac shouted: “Halloo, Will! I’ll ride to Oldmixon’s,” and without stopping, they switched directions, for Isaac, as always calculating the advantage, believed he might gain some if he were the one to save the big man’s life.

When he reached the impressive Oldmixon estate in the northern part of the island, a pillared mansion at the end of a lane edged by tall trees, he started shouting: “Sir! Sir!” and was gratified to see how quickly a light appeared.

“Who are you?” old Oldmixon asked as he opened the door in his nightclothes, complete with tasseled cap, and when Isaac revealed his last name, the florid-faced master growled: “So you’re John Tatum’s boy. Never liked your father. Skimped on the work he owed me.” He was about to turn the young man away when his essential decency manifested itself: “I respect the way you’ve taken hold after your father’s death, Tatum, picking up new land whenever you can. That’s the way I started.” Then he noticed Isaac’s extreme nervousness: “Why did you gallop up here from Bridgetown? Fire or somethin’?”

“Worse,” and seeking to make the most of this opportunity to assist the great man, he whispered: “Better inside,” and when he had Oldmixon’s attention, Isaac gave the dreadful news: “Slave uprising, sir.” Now Oldmixon, though in his early sixties but still capable of quick action when required, first grabbed for his two pistols, then shouted in stumbling words: “By gad, Tatum, we must be off and movin’, off and movin’ I say,” and he actually started for the door in his nightclothes, when he stopped suddenly to utter a loud cry: “Rebecca! Don’t let me make a fool of meself!” and to Tatum he said apologetically: “Man mustn’t ride to hounds in his nightcap.” While Isaac waited, the big man, with his wife’s help, drew on his cotton britches, his leather boots with their wide turned-down tops, his undershirt and brocaded weskit, and then donned his badge of position and honor, a big, broad-brimmed bonnet with the left side tucked up and displaying a bright turkey feather. His uniform in place, he ran to his horse, leaped easily astride and dashed down the lane, shouting back over his shoulder: “Off to the wars, Tatum, off to the wars!”

Will Tatum rode the much shorter distance due east of Bridgetown to the substantial plantation of Henry Saltonstall, a slim, straight, beardless man of forty-two, who was still in his working clothes, for he had been reading by candlelight: “What is it, young man?”

“I’m Will Tatum, from the edge of town.”

“Ah yes, and what could bring you here so late?”

“We’d better step inside, sir,” and when the two had done so, Will said quietly: “Slave uprising, sir.”

At the mention of these terrible words, ones that every white man in the Caribbean feared more than any others, Saltonstall leaned against a corner of his desk, steadied himself, and asked: “How can you be sure?” and when Will explained, the tall gentleman reached for his long gun, handed Will two more to carry, and said quietly: “I
must inform my wife. Wait for me outside.” Within minutes he was back, and as he mounted his horse, he cried: “We must alert the western planters,” and off they rode to spread the dreadful news.

As happened so often before in history, when masters were alerted by some loving slave, black rebels were frustrated. In this case, eighteen of the leaders, including Hamilcar and the other Tatum male slave, were hanged. The accounts penned at the time and later endlessly reprinted said only: “The Tatum slave Hamilcar and seventeen of his criminal accomplices were hanged.” These brave men, some of whom had held positions of power in Africa, died without even their names being recorded, but their dark bodies were left swaying in the wind as warning.

When it became known through the loose-lipped talk of the white leaders who ordered and supervised the hangings that it had been the Tatum slave girl Naomi who had betrayed the plot, no surviving slaves would tolerate her, and one night when the Tatum brothers came home from work, they saw suspicious signs in the little slave hut, and when they looked inside they found Naomi with her throat cut. The authorities preferred to ask no questions, and in this quick, harsh way the first major slave insurrection on Barbados was extinguished, and the principle was established that slaves were chattels with no rights other than those a benevolent master elected to give them. As a result of the hangings and murder, the Tatums were left with no field hands, and Isaac’s dream of acquiring more fields until he became a big planter evaporated. The fact that it was he who had alerted the island to the tragedy that was about to overwhelm it did not impress his wealthy neighbors, for on Barbados there were only three classes of people: white men who owned big plantations, white men who owned small or none, and black slaves, and the first group did not encourage any members of the second to climb upward.

With no slaves, the Tatum brothers had to do the work on their plantation themselves, and it was remarkable to watch Clarissa pitch in as if she were a third man. Never complaining, she kept the Tatum house cleaned and her two men fed and neatly clothed, and if occasion demanded, she volunteered to help in the tobacco and cotton fields, but she did not allow her husband to think that she intended continuing that pattern. “When is a new ship coming in?” she demanded day after day. “We’ve saved enough to buy us three or four good slaves, and we must do so.”

“When the ship arrives,” her husband promised, “I’ll be first to
greet the slave master,” and in her prayers, which she said night and morning, he heard her whispering: “Please, God, bring us a ship,” but England knew trouble in those years, with the result that ships from London or Bristol to Barbados were not common, and no new slaves arrived.

Many now prayed for the good old days when everything the islanders needed, from needles to medicines, reached Barbados in these ships, which in exchange carried back to England bales of cotton, tobacco, indigo and in recent years casks of a new experimental crop, sugar. But loyal as the islanders were to their mother country, they were also attentive to their own commercial interests, and when no English ships came, even vocal patriots like Thomas Oldmixon evaded the laws which forbade trade with ships of any nation other than Britain. They were especially bold in welcoming the well-known Captain Brongersma and his
Stadhouder
.

“Hmmm,” Oldmixon had grumbled when told that he ought to wait for legal English ships. “We wait for those tardies, we’d starve,” and then he added the more pertinent comment: “And we’d get none of the slaves we need. I say, ‘God bless the Dutchmen.’ ”

On a crisp morning in early March 1649, Will Tatum, up at five and staring out to sea, saw the dim outline of a sailing ship whose silhouette he thought he knew, and as day brightened and the ship moved close to shore, he leaped in the air, let out a yell, and sped through the streets, shouting “
Stadhouder
coming!” And every merchant who hoped to have his stock replenished hurried to the shore.

When Will carried the exciting news home, Clarissa stopped preparing breakfast, wiped her hands on her apron, and raised her face in prayer: “God, let there be on that ship the things we need!” but her husband, always eager to curry favor with Thomas Oldmixon, called for his horse and galloped north to inform the important planter that the Dutch ship was in, almost surely with a fresh supply of slaves.

He found Oldmixon already out of bed, supervising his slaves in the care of the sugar crop he had experimented with that year. Tatum hurried toward him, bursting to tell him the good news, but Oldmixon spoke first: “Glad to see you, Isaac. Been wantin’ to talk with you,” and although Tatum tried to interrupt him, the big fellow barged ahead: “If you’re the smart feller I take you for, and I believe you are, you’ll quit your present crops and switch to sugar. Sure to be a bright future for it. A bright future, I say.”

Isaac, not listening and eager to deliver his news, cried: “Sir!
Tremendous! Brother Will spotted the
Stadhouder
in the bay. Bringing slaves.”

As soon as he heard this, Oldmixon became a different man, for slaves had played a major role in his life. He had been one of the first planters to use them in goodly number, and his reputation as one of the leaders on the island stemmed from an ingenious solution he had crafted for an irritating problem. A clergyman reported the affair in a letter to his brother in England: