See also Middle Passage and the Love of Liberty: Texts and Sources
THE ORIGINAL "CAPTAIN TOMBA"
- Astley, Thomas (ed) A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels Vol II London 1745 Chap IV A voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies in the Swallow and Weymouth, Men of War, by John Atkins, Surgeon in the Royal Navy, 1721.
- 317 The Slaves when brought here have chains put on 3 or 4 linked together under care of their gromettos (negro servants) till opportunity for sale. These slaves are placed under lodges, near the owners house for air, cleanliness and customers better viewing them. Most of them were very dejected. He took notice of one who was of a tall strong make and bold stern aspect. This fellow seemed to disdain the other slaves for their readiness to be examined and scorned to look at the Buyers, refusing to rise or stretch out his limbs as his master commanded. This got him an unmerciful whipping, with a cutting manatea strap, from his masters own hand. Who had certainly killed him but for the loss he must have sustained by it. The Negro bore it all with magnanimity, shrinking very little, but shed a tear or two which he endeavoured to hide as though ashamed of. This person called Captain Tomba, was a leader of some country villages, which opposed them and their trade at the River Nunes, killing their friends there and firing their cottages. That the sufferers by help of the slavers men, having surprised him at night, brought him thither, but that he had killed 2 of them in his defence before he was caught and bound.
449 At . . . they met with the Robert of Bristol, Captain Harding, who sailed from Sierra Leone before them, having purchased 30 slaves, where Tomba, about a week before, had combined with 3 or 4 of the stoutest of his countrymen to mutiny being assisted by a woman slave, who telling him one night that there were only five white men on deck, and they asleep, brought him a hammer at the same time to execute his treachery. He could only engage one more besides the woman to follow him on deck, where finding three sailors on the forecastle, he presently despatched two with single strokes on the temples; the other rousing with the noise, his companions seized; and Tomba murdered him in the same manner. But the last 2 of the 5 taking the alarm stood upon their guard and their defence soon awakened the Master underneath who running up took a hand spike and felling Tomba with it secured them all in irons. Their punishment. Capt Harding weighing the stoutness and worth of the two slaves, did, as in other countries, they do by rogues of dignity, whip and scarify them only; while 3 other abettors (but not actors, nor of strength for it) he sentenced to cruel deaths making them first eat the heart and liver of one of them he killed. The woman he hoisted by the thumbs, whipped and slashed her with knives before the other slaves, till she died.
OTHER REFERENCES
Fyfe,Christopher, A History of Sierra Leone, OUP 1962
Fyfe,Christopher, A Short History of Sierra Leone Longmans New edition 1979
Grant,Douglas, The fortunate Slave 1968
Rodney,Walter A, History of the Upper Guinea Coast, OUP 1970
- Lamp, Frederick, Art of the Baga: A Drama of Cultural Reinvention New York. Museum of African Art & Prestel Verlag. 1996. 267 p.
- Chapter I
Introduction: Authority and the Creation of a Narrative on the Baga - Chapter II
The Coastal Matrix: Early Settlement before the French - Chapter III
Ethnohistory: The Legacy of the Fouta Diallon - Chapter IV
Masculine and Feminine Clans and Their Patron Spirits - Chapter V
The Welfare of the Clan and the Invention of God - Chapter VI
The Creation of Status: The Age Grades - Chapter VII
Spirits of the Composite Beast: The justification of Disparate Worlds - Chapter VIII
Foundations of a New Society: The Construction and Deconstruction of Beauty, and Goodness - Chapter IX
The Colonial Watershed: Social Conflict and Resolution under the French Order - Chapter X
Spirits of Defiance and Reinvention - Chapter XI
The Islamic Watershed: A Culture Held in Reserve, 1955-1985 - Chapter XII
The Present Dilemma: Age Grades and the Valuation of Heritage