The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie: An African-American's Spiritual Journey to Uncover a Sunken Slave Ship's Past - Rilegato

Michael H. Cottman is a political writer at the Washington Post. He was part of a Pulitzer prize-winning team in 1992 while at New York Newsday. He is the author of Million Man March and The Family of Black America. He lives with his wife and daughter in Washington, D.C.

Chapter One

The talking drums echo through the village of stalks and thickets as fireflies sprinkle the darkness shortly before sunrise.

On the swampy banks along the West African coast, where the shoreline is often swollen by heavy rains, young women, in the early-morning sun, wade through a marsh thick with mosquitoes to bathe their babies.

Teenagers with bare feet walk slowly down dirt roads with stacks of firewood on their heads as old women with wrinkled hands sit in the shade weaving mats from large palm leaves.

The men, mostly fishermen with heavy silver bracelets adorning their upper arms, walk across soggy soil to the coast, where they climb into slender wooden canoes to fish the waters of West Africa. Some of the villagers are also farmers, working the land to harvest corn and cotton.

Life was the same in most of the coastal villages throughout West Africa in the early decades of the fifteenth century. There, quiet settlements of African families prospered among the rows of thin bamboo shoots that towered over low thatched-roofed houses. Then, as now, children tossed twigs onto hot stones to hear the crackling of wood.

The villages of West Africa were peaceful, structured societies of tightly knit, stable families who all worked to provide for the village where they lived. This was a hardworking, resourceful civilization, and it remains so today.

There are communities of craftsmen and artists, masters of gold, copper, and bronze, painters and sculptors of detailed hand carvings; educators and thinkers; fishermen and blacksmiths; weavers and potters; priests who perform religious services, including weddings and funerals; dancers and musicians who pluck the soothing strings of the kora; poets who sit on log benches and tell mesmerizing stories; and men who heal the sick with pouches fat with herbs and words of faith.

Elegant women wear hand-dyed robes of vivid reds and vibrant oranges. Everyone helps to educate and raise all of the children. This is a society where the senior members share their wisdom and are revered and cherished like royalty until their last breath.

There are systems of government, hierarchies of power; village elders and community councils preside over meetings and help to settle differences. There are judges and senators and chiefs, each marked with a distinguishing scar of leadership above his eyebrows. Such scars are the result of a hot knife cutting into the flesh. It is these leaders who help prepare the boys for their rites of passage, help them to become men, and, in some cases, warriors. The boys are taught to shoot bow and arrows, to fight with double-edged swords, and to master the art of throwing a javelin.

The wise men assemble the people of the village for weekly religious services and preach to them of decency to neighbors, cleanliness in the village, and honor among men and women. This is a community built on trust.

*********

For as long as anyone could remember, life in the villages along the shores of West Africa was simple and safe. Then one day, without warning, the wind brought violence to the villages, and no one slept in peace anymore.

In 1441, according to historians, two Portuguese ships sailed the coastline of West Africa looking for opportunities to exploit the fishing banks and to steal gold from the African people.

When the ships dropped anchor, the African villagers, their curiosity aroused, approached the pale men with stringy hair who had rowed ashore. The seamen quickly overpowered at least a dozen people, loaded them into longboats, and sailed away.

These strong-arm raids didn't last long. They ultimately evolved into the more routine capturing and trading for Africans, as Europeans were fast to establish a formal system by persuading some African kings and chiefs to capture their own people and sell them into slavery.

For long periods after the abductions, some of the children from the villages would climb the tallest trees to watch for the return of the great Portuguese ships that had snaked their way along the Rio Real--ships with long guns aimed at the shore; ships with tall sails that snapped in the breeze; dark ships that creaked in the tide; ships that brought chaos and fear and always left death in their wake.

Calm would become only a memory for the people of the West African villages. Lives would be lost in this steady state of terror called slavery.

A life of peace had been stolen from these African families. Those taken were stripped of their titles and even their names, snatched away from everything familiar. No one was safe from slavery--not the smallest child, not the mightiest warrior.

And so, the people of these villages along the west coast of Africa could only embrace their children, comfort each other, pray, and wait for the ships to come.