Thier Masada, Mass Suicides by Slaves In the America's...

[5fish]

I have found two stories of slaves resisting their slavery during the "Middle Passage" but ended in Mass suicides'. They chose death over bondage...

The first was the British ship New Britannia in 1773.... the story...

Link:https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1009/p16s01-bogn.html

In January 1773, aboard the New Britannia, enslaved African children managed to slip tools to the men chained in the ship's cramped middle deck. The men used them to break out of their chains, cut through the wall of their wooden prison, and take possession of the gun room and the weapons inside.

For more than an hour they fought a pitched battle with the ship's crew, with many killed on both sides. When it became clear that defeat was inevitable, they set fire to the gunpowder magazine, triggering an explosion that destroyed the ship, killing almost everyone onboard. Death, they had decided, was preferable to what they had seen on the slave ship.

There are even documented cases of enslaved Africans blowing themselves up along with their captors, as occurred after an uprising aboard the New Britannia in 1773. This remains one of the most dramatic forms of mass suicide witnessed during the transatlantic slave trade.

The next mass suicide happen on the coast of Georgia in 1803... Igbo Landing is a historic site at Dunbar Creek on St. Simons Island, Glynn County.

From wiki...

In May 1803 a shipload of captive West Africans, upon surviving the middle passage, were landed by U.S.-paid captors in Savannah by slave ship, to be auctioned off at one of the local slave markets. The ship's enslaved passengers included a number of Igbo people from what is now Nigeria. The Igbo were known by planters and slavers of the American South for being fiercely independent and resistant to chattel slavery.[3][4] The group of 75 Igbo slaves were bought by agents of John Couper and Thomas Spalding for forced labor on their plantations in St. Simons Island for $100 each.[5]

The chained slaves were packed under the deck of a small vessel named The Schooner York[1][2] to be shipped to the island (other sources say the voyage took place aboard The Morovia[6]). During this voyage the Igbo slaves rose up in rebellion, taking control of the ship and drowning their captors, in the process causing the grounding of the Morovia in Dunbar Creek at the site now locally known as Igbo Landing.[7]

The following sequence of events is unclear, as there are several versions of the revolt's development, some of which are considered mythological. Apparently the Africans went ashore and subsequently, under the direction of a high Igbo chief among them, walked in unison into the creek singing in the Igbo language "The Water Spirit brought us, the Water Spirit will take us home". They thereby accepted the protection of their god Chukwu and death over the alternative of slavery.[7] Roswell King, a white overseer on the nearby Pierce Butler plantation, wrote one of the few contemporary accounts of the incident, which states that as soon as the Igbo landed on St. Simons Island they took to the swamp, committing suicide by walking into Dunbar Creek.[4] A 19th-century account of the event identifies the captain by the surname Patterson and names Roswell King as the person who recovered the bodies of the drowned.[8] A letter describing the event written by Savannah slave dealer William Mein states that the Igbo walked into the marsh, where 10 to 12 drowned, while some were "salvaged" by bounty hunters who received $10 a head from Spalding and Couper.[5] According to some sources, survivors of the Igbo rebellion were taken to Cannon's Point on St. Simons Island and Sapelo Island.[7][9]

Another version ... the event is clouded in slave mythology...

link: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/igbo-landing-mass-suicide-1803/

The sequence of events that occurred next remains unclear. It is known only that the Igbo marched ashore, singing, led by their high chief. Then at his direction, they walked into the marshy waters of Dunbar Creek, committing mass suicide. Roswell King, a white overseer on the nearby Pierce Butler plantation, wrote the first account of the incident. He and another man identified only as Captain Patterson recovered many of the drowned bodies. Apparently only a subset of the 75 Igbo rebels drowned. Thirteen bodies were recovered, but others remained missing, and some may have survived the suicide episode, making the actual numbers of deaths uncertain.

Regardless of the numbers, the deaths signaled a powerful story of resistance as these captives overwhelmed their captors in a strange land, and many took their own lives rather than remain enslaved in the New World. The Igbo Landing gradually took on enormous symbolic importance in local African American folklore. The mutiny and subsequent suicide by the Igbo people was called by many locals the first freedom march in the history of the United States. Local people claimed that the Landing and surrounding marshes in Dunbar Creek where the Igbo people committed suicide in 1803 were haunted by the souls of the dead Igbo slaves. The story of Igbo, who chose death over slavery which had long been part of Gullah folklore, was finally recorded from various oral sources in the 1930s by members of the Federal Writers Project.

Here is a link to the monument at Igbo Landing with Photos.... more details of the story...

Link: https://face2faceafrica.com/article...-committed-mass-suicide-off-u-s-coast-in-1803

 

[5fish]

Here are the myths from Gullah folklore:

https://placeandsee.com/wiki/igbo-landing

Mythology and folklore
The story of the Igbo slaves who chose death over a life of slavery is a recurring story that has taken deep roots in African American and Gullah folklore. As is typical of oral histories, the facts have evolved over time, in many cases taking on mythological aspects.

Myth of the water-walking Africans
Floyd White, an elderly African American interviewed by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s is recorded as saying:

A typical Gullah telling of the events, incorporating many of the recurrent themes that are common to most myths related to the Igbo Landing, is recorded by Linda S. Watts:

Myth of the flying Africans
Another popular legend associated with Igbo Landing is known as the myth of the flying Africans. It was recorded from various oral sources in the 1930s by members of the Federal Writers Project.ref name=McDaniel>In these cases, the Africans are reputed to have grown wings, or turned into vultures, before flying back home to freedom in Africa. Wallace Quarterman, an African American born in 1844,who was interviewed in 1930, when asked if he had heard about the Igbo landing states:

As Professor Terri L. Snyder notes:

Reported haunting
Local people claim that the Igbo Landing and surrounding marshes in Dunbar Creek are haunted by the souls of the dead Igbo slaves.ref name="glynncounty" />

Legacy
In September 2002 the St. Simons African-American Heritage Coalition organized a two-day commemoration with events related to Igbo history and a procession to the site. The 75 attendees came from other states, as well as Nigeria, and Belize and Haiti, where similar resistance had taken place. They gathered to designate the site as holy ground and give the souls rest. The account of the Igbo is now part of the curriculum for coastal Georgia schools.

 

[5fish]

Myth of the flying Africans:

An older African American man by the name of Wallace Quarterman was asked if he had heard the story of Ebos landing. Quarterman replied: “Ain’t you heard about them? Well, at that time Mr. Blue he was the overseer and . . . Mr. Blue he go down one morning with a long whip for to whip them good. . . . Anyway, he whipped them good and they got together and stuck that hoe in the field and then . . . rose up in the sky and turned themselves into buzzards and flew right back to Africa. . . . Everybody knows about them.”

Myth of the water-walking Africans:

There are myths of “the water walking Africans”: “Heard about the Ibo’s Landing? That’s the place where they bring the Ibos over in a slave ship and when they get here, they ain’t like it and so they all start singing and they march right down in the river to march back to Africa, but they ain’t able to get there. They gets drown,” one Floyd White, an elderly African-American interviewed by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, said.

 

[5fish]

One of Turner's most celebrated works, Slave Ship is a striking example of the artist's fascination with violence, both human and elemental. The painting was based on a poem that described a slave ship caught in a typhoon, and on the true story of the slave ship Zong whose captain, in 1781, had thrown overboard sick and dying slaves so that he could collect insurance money available only for slaves "lost at sea." Turner captures the horror of the event and terrifying grandeur of nature through hot, churning color and light that merge sea and sky. The critic John Ruskin, the first owner of Slave Ship, wrote, "If I were reduced to rest Turner's immortality upon any single work, I should choose this."

Here is a link to the whole story: The insurance companies would not pay up...
Zong massacre - Wikipedia

LINK: https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/zong-massacre-1781/

 

[5fish]

Here is an article about how slaves on the Trans-Atlantic journey tried to commit suicided...

Dying on their own terms: suicides aboard slave ships

On International Slavery Remembrance Day, our curator, Aaron Jaffer, remembers those forced to take their own lives during the horrific Middle Passage

www.rmg.co.uk

Enslaved men and women killed themselves for a number of different reasons. Many were unable to cope with the long and traumatic journey, which regularly involved beatings, murder and rape. Some hoped that death would take them back home to Africa. William Snelgrave, an unapologetic English slave trader, claimed that Africans believed ‘if they are put to death […] they shall return again to their own Country’.