if he would be able to medicate it correctly with minkisi, power objects that conveyed access to a particular other-than-human person. Or he might have scanned what he could see of the coastline to get a first sense of the local forces that inhabited particular spaces, whom he was about to encounter and need to invoke for assistance.32
Once established in Bermuda, the pearl divers quickly discovered that the reefs surrounding the islands did not host rich oyster beds. Labor was at a premium in the young colony, and, rather than allow them to stay idle, the governor probably reassigned the men to planting sugarcane and tobacco. This land-based work was perhaps dangerous in more predictable ways than pearl diving—rollers that pressed cane stalks, boiling coppers of cane juice, or sharp-edged weeds among tobacco plants were not as agile as marine predators—but required their own sets of demanding skills.33 Some of the earliest people of color in Bermuda were familiar with the many tasks required for the successful planting, harvesting, and curing of tobacco, given that it had been cultivated for nearly a century not only in much of the Spanish Americas, but also in Angola and other parts of West Central Africa. A man named Francisco certainly was well versed in tobacco production, as the planter Robert Rich valued his “judgement in the cureing of tobackoe” highly enough to pay the extraordinarily large sum of one hundred pounds to obtain his service.34 To the two divers, however, this work would have been unfamiliar.35
Although the reefs were barren of pearls, the men did have some occasion to exercise their diving abilities when shipwrecks created other kinds of riches for them to retrieve. In 1621, the divers provided essential knowledge when Governor Nathaniel Butler directed them to recover cargo after the San Antonio ran aground on Bermuda’s treacherous reefs. Although some of the wreck lay above the water line, the most prized cargo of “Silver barrs and chest of Rialls” was not so easily located by people in the small boats that retrieved other goods, and Butler would have needed the divers’ assistance in searching for it.36 Bermuda had not yet offered much occasion to practice diving skills, in contrast to the opportunities it afforded for tobacco cultivation and curing, so there had been little reason for others to learn from the divers. The men themselves, not only their knowledge, were necessary for a successful operation.
“Make their present repayre unto the Craule Point”
One of the most easily observable contributions of the other people of color who joined the pearl divers in Bermuda can still be seen in the indentations called “crawls” that punctuate its coastlines and remain in its place-names, but this physical imprint and inherited nomenclature carried parallel influences in the world of the unseen. Crawls were natural or human-made ponds set up to hold previously caught fish, which, by the eighteenth century, existed in locations a fair distance inland. Bermudians still refer to Crawl Point and Crawl Hill, among others. Indians and Africans introduced this technique of maintaining a readily available supply of fish without having to salt it on a daily basis. By 1623 in Bermuda the practice was established enough that salt pans to facilitate the preservation and stockpiling of fish “in this tyme of scarcitye,”37 were built near the crawl for which “Craule Point” was named. The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean built corrals with varied materials, including branches and cane stalks. Some functioned more as weirs to trap fish as they swam in or as the tide went out, whereas others kept alive fish caught through other means, such as cast nets.38 The word crawl itself has West African roots, via the sixteenth-century Dutch approximation kraal.39
The presence and actions of Indians and Africans fishing from Bermuda populated the realms of the other-than-human as well as the tables of their English masters. Fishing went beyond feeding the physical body. In the Taínoan cultures, it had associations with the origins of the universe and was as much about maintaining the spiritual vitality of the community as it was about satisfying fleshly hunger.40 Fishing was thus an occasion to interact with the forces of the water, of the weather, and in the fish themselves through rituals designed to coax those other-than-human persons and ancestors into providing abundance. Fish motifs figured prominently on stone collars worn by Taínoan caciques during ritual performances of their leadership such as areíto dances and feasts. Lucayans made effigy vessels in the shape of the poisonous porcupinefish, denoting their interest in the fish as more than just food to feed the physical body. One such vessel was recovered in a location where the main activity was to make ritually significant beads from a shell that displayed the highly sought-after quality of brilliance, or guanín, which indicated a concentration of power and energy. This thorny jewelbox shell, Chana sarda, retained its bright scarlet color for centuries, making it particularly valued.41 Small offshore islands, or cays, in the Bahamas were often located in the middle of productive fishing grounds. Nearly every cay in that archipelago contains an archaeological site with evidence of ritual activities. Other Taínoans besides Lucayans also saw places with a rich fish supply as containing spiritual power because of that abundance. Ile à Rat, a cay off western Hispaniola, has a similar mixture of a high concentration of fish bones and ritual objects, indicating the multiple ways its former inhabitants worked to ensure the health of all.42
Figure 1.3. Manioc processing with a black woman (“Negresse”) performing most steps. This engraving is based on one that appeared in Jean Baptiste Du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les Francois (Paris, 1667), 2:419. Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouveau voyage aux isles de l’America, vol. 1 (The Hague, 1724), plate before p. 127. (Courtesy of the Huntington Library)
Fishing held an important place among coastal peoples in West Central and West Africa. In West Central Africa, ritual fishing expeditions were part of the accession of a new ruler, in part because of the association with water and the connotation of beginnings and rebirth. The first fish was sent to the leader’s wife, who prepared it with her own hands and then gave of her labor back to the community, to the fishermen, who ate the fish. Dancing and ritual chants marked this ceremonial meal and harnessed the power inherent in water, directing it in ways to benefit the community. Some Kongo initiation rites also included ritual fishing after the rebirth of the initiates into their new roles. The Italian mathematician Filippo Pigafetta reported the Portuguese explorer Duarte Lopes’s descriptions of proscriptions around types of fish, so that some “Fishes Royall” were reserved for leaders. In Guinea, fishermen honored their ancestors by decorating their canoes with spiritually powerful grains and colors of paint.43 Even though Indian and African fishermen in Bermuda were no longer fishing entirely for themselves, perhaps they persisted in approaching the other-than-human persons associated with water and others essential to a good catch—more than ever, they were in need of an abundance of fish, since they were not able to control the disposition of the fruits of their labor. And in the place shaped like a fishhook, hundreds of miles from any other land, the resident forces seemed to have been appeased enough to continue to provide the creatures that filled the belly and connected to the beginning of time.
“Sundrye things . . . for the Plantacion, as Cattle Cassadoe Sugar Canes”
The same instructions that directed Governor Daniel Tucker to procure pearl divers also specified a search for “cassadoe,” or cassava, a tuber already recognized as essential to the success of European colonizing ventures in the Americas and tied to the growth of the transatlantic slave trade.44 Also called bitter manioc, cassava contains high levels of a poisonous alkaloid that, when ingested, turns into cyanide. Leaching out the toxin was a time-consuming process, and it would have taken up a significant proportion of bonded laborers’—especially women’s—time. The tuber had to be peeled before grating or shredding it. The resulting pulp was pressed in some way, either in a tube basket or through a cloth, to remove as much of the poisonous juice as possible. The paste was then dried, further ground as necessary to break up the larger pieces, and toasted or baked over a fire. The juice was boiled to neutralize the poison and then used as the basis for pepper pot, a dish with chili peppers and other vegetables, as well as animal protein of meat or fish. Jean-Baptiste Labat’s
