FEBRUARY 25.
A negro, named Adam, has long been the terror of my whole
estate. He was accused of being an Obeah-man ; and persons
notorious for the practice of Obeah, and who were afterwards
convicted and transported, had been found concealed in his house.
He was strongly suspected of having poisoned more than twelve
negroes, men and women; and, having been displaced by my
former trustee from being principal governor, in revenge be put
poison into his water-jar. Luckily he was observed by one of
the house-servants, who impeached him, and prevented the intended
mischief. For this offence
he ought to have been given
up to justice ; but being brother of the trustee's mistress, she
found means to get him off, after undergoing a long confinement
in the stocks. I found him, at my first visit, living in a state of
utter excommunication : I tried what reasoning with him could
effect, reconciled him to his companions, treated him with marked
kindness, and he promised solemnly to behave well during my
absence. However, instead in attributing my lenity to a wish
to reform him, his pride and confidence in his own talents and
powers of deception made him attribute the indulgence shown
him to his having obtained an influence over my mind. This he
determined to employ to his own purposes upon my return ; so
he set about forming a conspiracy against Sully, the present
chief governor, and boasted, on various estates in the neighbourhood, that
on my arrival he would take care to get Sully broke,
and himself substituted in his place. In the meanwhile he
quarrelled and fought right and left ; and I now found the whole
estate in an uproar about him. no less than three charges of
assault, with intent to kill, were preferred against him. In a fit
of jealousy he had endeavoured to strangle Marlborough with
the thong of whip, and had nearly affected his purpose before
he could be dragged away; he had knocked down Nato in some
trifling dispute, and while the man was senseless had thrown him
into the river to drown him ; and having taken offence at a poor
weak creature called Old Rachael, on meeting her by accident
he struck her to the ground, beat her with a supplejack, stamped
upon her belly, and begged her to be assured of his intention
( as he eloquently worded it) " to kick her guts out." The breeding mothers
also accused him of having been the cause of the
poisoning a particular spring, from which they were in the habit
of fetching water for their children, as Adam on that morning
had been seen near the spring without having any business there,
and he had been heard to caution his little daughter against
drinking water from it that day, although be stoutly denied both
circumstances. Into the bargain, my head blacksmith, being
perfectly well at five o'clock, was found by his son dead in his
bed at eight; and it was known that he had lately had a dispute
with Adam, who on that day had made it up with him, and had
invited him to drink, although it was not certain that his offer
had been accepted. He had, moreover, threatened the lives of
many of the best negroes. Two of the cooks declared that he
severally directed them to dress Sully's food apart, and had
given them powders to mix with it. The first to whom he aplied refused
positively ; the second he
treated with liquor, and
when she had drunk he gave her the poison, with instructions
how to use it: being a timid creature, she did not dare to object,
so threw away the powder privately, and pretended that it had
been administered : but, finding no effect produced by it, Adam
gave her a second powder, at the same time bidding her remember the
liquor which she had
swallowed, and which he assured
her would effect her own destruction, through the force of Obeah,
unless she prevented it by sacrificing his enemy in her stead.
The poor creature still threw away the powder, but the strength
of imagination brought upon her a serious malady, and it was
not till several weeks that she recovered from the effects of
her fears.
The terror thus produced was universal throughout the estate,
abd Sully and several other principal negroes requested me to
remove them to my property in St. Thomas', as their lives were
not safe while breathing the same air with Adam. However, it
appeared a more salutary measure to remove Adam himself ; but
all the poisoning charges either went no further than strong
suspicion, or (any more than the assaults) were not liable by the
laws of Jamaica to be punished, except by flogging or temporary
imprisonment, which would only have returned him to the estate
with increased resentment against those to whom he should
ascribe his sufferings, however deserved. However, on searching his
house, a musket, with a
plentiful accompaniment of powder and ball, was found concealed, as also
a considerable
quantity
of materials for the practice of Obeah: the possession of either
of the above articles (if the musket is without the consent of the
proprietor) authorizes the magistrates to pronounce a sentence
of transportation. In consequence of this discovery, Adam was
immediately committed to gaol ; a slave court was summoned
and to-day a sentence of transportation from the island was pronounced,
after a trial of three
hours. As to the man's guilt, the
jury entertained no doubt, but the difficulty was to restrain the
verdict to transportation. We produced nothing which could
possibly affect his life; for although perhaps no offender ever
better deserved hanging, yet I confess my being weak-minded
enough to entertain doubts whether hanging or other capital
punishment ought to be inflicted for any offence whatever.
However, although I did my best to prevent Adam from being
hanged, it was no easy matter to prevent his hanging himself.
The Obeah ceremonies always commenced with what is called
by the negroes the " Myal dance." This is intended to remove
any doubt of the chief Obeah-man's supernatural powers; and,
in the course of it, he undertakes to show his art by killing one
of the persons present, whom he pitches upon for that purpose.
He sprinkles various powders over the devoted victim, blows
upon him, and dances round him, obliges him to drink a liquor
prepared for the occasion ; and, finally, the sorcerer and his
assistants seize him and whirl him rapidly round and round till
the man loses his senses, and falls on the ground, to all appearance and the
belief of the
spectators, a perfect corpse. The chief
Myal-man then utters loud shrieks, rushes out of the house with
wild and frantic gestures, and conceals himself in some neighbouring
wood. At the end of two or
three hours he returns
with a large bundle of herbs, from some of which he squeezes
the juice into the mouth of the dead person ; with others he
anoints his eyes.and stains the tips of his fingers; accompanying
the ceremony with a great variety of grotesque actions, and
chanting all the while something between a song and a howl,
while the assistants, hand-in-hand, dance slowly round them in a
circle, stamping the ground loudly with their feet to keep time
with his chant. A considerable time elapses before the desired
effect is produced, but at length the corpse gradually recovers
animation, rises from the ground perfectly recovered, and the
Myal dance concludes. After this proof of his power, those who
wish to be revenged upon their enemies apply to the sorcerer for
some of the same powder which produced apparent death upon
their companion; and, as they never employ the means used for
his recovery, of course the powder once administered never fails
to be lastingly fatal. It must be superfluous to mention that
the Myal-man on these.occasions substitutes a poison for a
narcotic.
Now, among other suspicious articles found in Adam's hut,
there was a string of beads, of various sizes, shapes, and colours
arranged in a form peculiar to the performance of the Obeahman in the
Myal dance. Their use was so well known, that
Adam on his trial sis not even attempt to deny that they could
serve for no purpose nut the practice of Obeah ; but he endeavoured to
refure their being his own property, and with this
view he began to narrate the means by which he had become
possessed of them. He said that they belonged to Fox ( a negro
who was lately transported ), from whom he had taken them at a
Myal dance held on the estate of Dean's Valley ; but as the
assistants at one of these dances are by law condemned to death
equally with the principal performer, the court had the humanity
to interrupt his confession of having been present on such an
occasionm and thus saved him from criminating himself so deeply
as to render a capital punishment inevitable. I understand that
he was quite unabashed and at his ease the whole time ; upon
hearing his sentence he only said very coolly, " Well ! I can't
help it !" turned himself round and walked out of the court.
This fellow was a great hypocrite. When on my arrival he
gave me a letter, filled with the grossest lies respecting the
trustee, and every creditable negro on the estate, he took care to
sign it by the name which he had lately received in baptism: and,
in his defence at the bar, to prove his probity of character and
purity of manners, he informed the court that for some time past
he had been learning to read, for the sole purpose of learning
the Lord's Prayer. The nick-name by which he was generally
known among the negroes in this part of the country was Buonaparte, and
he always appeared to
exult in the appellation. Once
condemned, the marshal is bound, under a heavy penalty, to see
him shipped from off the island before the expiration of six
weeks; and probably he will be sent to Cuba. He is a finelooking man,
between thirty and forty,
square built, and of great
bodily strength ; and his countenance equally expresses intelligence and malignity. The sum
allowed me for him is one hundred pounds currency, which is scarcely a
third of his worth as a labourer, but is the highest value which a jary is permitted to
award.
