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By Root 1424 0

in churches, or even from wearing the same kind of fabrics in their clothes. In the meantime, said the fiddler, both whites and “coloreds” would take out their bitterness toward each other on Haiti’s half-million black slaves. Kunta said he had overheard talk in town among laughing whites that made it sound as if Haitian slaves were suffering worse than here. He said he’d heard that blacks getting beaten to death or buried alive as punishment was commonplace, and that pregnant black women were often driven at work until they miscarried. Since he felt it wouldn’t have served any purpose other than to terrify them, he didn’t tell them that he had heard about even more inhuman bestialities, such as a black man’s hands being nailed to a wall until he was forced to eat his own cut-off ears; a toubob woman having all her slaves’ tongues cut out; another gagging a black child’s mouth until he starved.

In the wake of such horror stories over the past nine or ten months, it didn’t surprise Kunta, on one of his trips to town during this summer of 1791, to learn that Haiti’s black slaves had risen in a wild, bloody revolt. Thousands of them had swept forth slaughtering, clubbing, and beheading white men, gutting children, raping women, and burning every plantation building until northern Haiti lay in smoking ruins and the terrorized escaped white population was fighting to stay alive and lashing back—torturing, killing, even skinning every black they could catch. But they had been only a handful of survivors steadily dwindling before the wildly spreading black revolt, until by the end of August the few remaining thousands of whites still alive were in hiding places or trying to flee the island.

Kunta said he had never seen Spotsylvania County’s toubob so angry and afraid. “Seem like dey’s even scairder dan de las’ uprisin’ right here in Virginia,” said the fiddler. “Was maybe two, three years after you come, but you still weren’t hardly talkin’ to nobody, so don’ reckon you even knowed it. Was right over yonder in New Wales, in Hanover County, during one Christmastime. A oberseer beat some young nigger to de groun’, an’ dat nigger sprung up an’ went at him wid a ax. But he missed ’im, an’ de other niggers jumped de oberseer an’ beat ’im so bad dat de first nigger come an’ saved his life. Dat oberseer went runnin’ for help, all bloody, an’ meanwhile dem mad niggers caught two more white mens an’ tied ’em up and was beatin’ on ’em when a great big bunch a’ whites come a-runnin’ wid guns. Dem niggers took cover in a barn, an’ de white folks tried to sweet-talk’em to come on out, but dem niggers come a-rushin’ wid barrel staves an’ clubs, an’ it woun’ up wid two niggers shot dead an’ a lot of both white mens an’ niggers hurt. Dey put out militia patrols, an’ some mo’ laws was passed, an’ sich as dat, till it simmered down. Dis here Haiti thing done freshened white folks’ minds, ’cause dey knows jes’ good as me it’s a whole heap o’ niggers right under dey noses wouldn’t need nothin’ but de right spark to rise up right now, an’ once dat ever get to spreadin’, yessuh, it be de same as Haiti right here in Virginia.” The fiddler clearly relished the thought.

Kunta was soon to see the whites’ fright for himself wherever he drove in the towns, or near the crossroads stores, taverns, church meetinghouses, or wherever else they gathered in small, agitated clusters, their faces red and scowling whenever he or any other black passed nearby. Even the massa, who rarely spoke to Kunta other than to tell him where he wanted to be driven, made even those words noticeably colder and more clipped. Within a week, the Spotsylvania County militia was patrolling the roads, demanding to know the destination and to inspect the traveling permit of any passing blacks, and beating and jailing any they thought acted or even looked suspicious. At a meeting of the area’s massas, the soon approaching big annual harvest frolic for slaves was canceled, along with all other black gatherings beyond home plantations; and even any home slave-row dancing or prayer meetings