Outalissi; a Tale of Dutch Guiana

[p. 181]

Chapter XII. The Revenge.

‘Patience itself is meanness in a slave.
* * * *
O could I worship aught beneath the skies,
That earth has seen or fancy can devise,
Thine altar, sacred liberty, should stand,
Built by no vulgar mercenary hand,
With fragrant turf, and flowers, as wild and fair,
As ever dress'd a bank, or scented summer air.
* * * *
Then would I say, and as I spake bid fly
A captive bird into the boundless sky,
This triple realm adores Thee.’
     Cowper.

When Outalissi was able to leave the hospital he found the Christian slaves ^* in a state of great fermentation, from the barbarity and impunity of the director in his conduct towards poor Charlotte, and his interruption of their instruction by Mr. Schwartz.

* The slaves who are not Christians care just as much about marriage, baptism, or any other moral ordinance or practice as a dog, or goat, or bull, and no more. - Editor.

[p. 182]

‘Will you join us,’ said they to Outalissi, ‘in exacting justice? We are threatened by one with God's eternal vengeance, if we do not reverence His Son, and we are refused the means of doing so by the other; every obstacle is interposed to our marrying, and the rite of baptism is generally denied to our children; we are taunted, sneered at, spited, cursed; ourselves subjected to murder, and our wives and daughters to worse than murder - to satiate the lusts of every brutal manager whom they choose to appoint over us; and they take effectual care to make redress impossible, let them pass what other laws they will to deceive the people in their own countries, by that which rejects slave evidence against themselves; and if, by some extraordinary coincidence of testimony, any outrage, or even murder, by a white man, is detected, they are sure either to let him off upon some pretence or other, or, if convicted, to commute his punishment, in kind, for a fine of a few thousand guilders in money. We are resolved, therefore, to make them acknowledge our claim, to be treated as fellow-creatures, and to begin by inflicting summary justice on this murderer here.’

‘If you will do entirely as I bid you,’ said Outalissi, ‘I will engage, at all events, to lead you to glorious vengeance before death, although,

[p. 183]

by want of energy in our efforts, or a thousand accidents, we may be ultimately disappointed of success; but surely death itself, even without vengeance, is preferable to such a life as this. Shall I command you?’

‘We earnestly wish to avoid shedding the white men's blood,’ said they, ‘perhaps, if we are unanimous and peremptory, they may think it prudent to listen to our just complaints, without driving us to desperation.’

‘Then be content that the white men should shed yours,’ said Outalissi; ‘revolutions cannot be made with rose-water, by black men any more than white.’

‘But all unnecessary bloodshed is contrary to the religion Mr. Schwartz has taught to us,’ said they. ‘We cannot give life,^* and therefore will not take it, except in avenging or repelling murder.’

‘Unnecessary bloodshed!’ exclaimed Outalissi. ‘I abhor the man who wantonly would set his foot upon a worm, and am not capable of the cruelty of these lamb-skinned wolves - these Christians, who have wallowed in the blood of Africa for centuries; and their only necessity was avarice -

* See Trial of Missionary Smith. Evidence of Rev. Mr. Austin. - Editor.

[p. 184]

ours freedom and revenge for wrongs, compared with which the whole mass of crime and outrage committed by man against man in the unchristian world sinks into nothing.’

‘But Mr. Schwartz says, that the authors of these wrongs were not Christians, but merely pretenders to the name,’ replied his black disciples.

‘Well, be it so,’ said Outalissi. ‘If Christianity teaches you that it is not your duty to the dignity of your own rational nature, to your children, your country, and your God to wipe off from your colour the foul brand which your infamous cowardice has too long affixed to it, of being created only for use or abuse by the whites, to be chained and tasked, and have your sweat exacted

“With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast;”

Christianity is falser than the sand of the desert, when it assumes to the parched lip and burning sight the semblance of water.’

‘Well, lead and we will follow,’ cried the animated slaves.

‘Swear then,’ said Outalissi.

‘So help us God,’ they all exclaimed together, throwing up their right hands and eyes to Heaven.

‘Then, by my father's blood,’ said Outalissi ‘I will succeed or die with you.’

[p. 185]

From this moment Outalissi calmly resigned himself to death, he saw that the resolution of the Christian slaves was much too equivocal to justify any reasonable confidence, but he determined to expend such a purchase as he had upon them in making the utmost atonement in his power to the spirits of his ancestors, for the indignities under which he had already too long borne to live.

Outalissi soon arranged his plans with great sagacity; but in order to secure the simultaneous movement of the different bodies of insurgents, a good deal of previous instruction and communication with them was indispensable, which would most probably have awakened suspicion from the frequency of his absence, if the ferocity of the director had not very opportunely given another cause for it.

They have in Surinam a barbarous punishment, called the Spanso boeko, or Spanish buck, to which, whenever an owner, administrator, or director wishes to subject any of his slaves, he has nothing to do but to send them to the fortress at Paramaribo, with a short note to the public executioner, who is obliged, for a trifling fee, without any judicial inquiry whatever to inflict it.

I will describe the punishment to the reader,

[p. 186]

which is exceedingly severe, and when I tell him, that this punishment is constantly executed upon women in Surinam, even to this day, he will, I think, agree with me, that the moral ingredients of the Dutch character, in the West Indies, whatever they may be elsewhere, form by no means an exception to the uniformly debasing influence of slavery upon the moral sensibility and dignity of all who have the misfortune to come for any time within its contaminating contact.

This is the punishment: - The prisoner's wrists being lashed together, he is laid down on the ground, on one side, with his knees thrust sufficiently forward, through his arms, as to drive a perpendicular stake into the ground behind them, to confine them within the arms, in such a way that he can scarcely move, any more than if he were dead. In this locked position, trussed like a fowl, he is beaten on one side of his breech by a strong negro, with a handful of knotty tamarind branches, till the very flesh is cut away; he is then turned over on the other side, where the same dreadful flagellation is inflicted, till not a bit of skin is left, and the place of execution is dyed with blood. After which the raw lacerated wound is immediately washed with lemon-juice and gun-

[p. 187]

powder (the pain of which must be inconceivable), to prevent mortification, and then he is sent home to recover as well as he can.^*

Outalissi had been sent by Mr. Hogshead, with several more of Mr. Cotton's slaves to undergo this punishment. Edward Bentinck, from curiosity, was accidentally present that morning at the disgusting spectacle.

‘I am sorry to see you here, Outalissi, for such a purpose,’ said Edward Bentinck.

‘Sir,’ said Outalissi, ‘do you think I will undergo that punishment?’

‘Why, what can you do?’ said Edward, ‘resistance will only increase its severity.’

‘The severity, sir,’ said Outalissi, ‘is a matter to me almost of indifference. No bodily pain should give these white demons the triumph of extracting a single groan from the soul of Outalissi; but it is the brutality and degradation of it that I resent so, and I will never suffer it alive. I can at the worst dash my brains out of my head against the wall; but I have some reasons for wishing to defer that for a few weeks longer, if it is possible.’

Outalissi had, in the mean time, by an imperceptible movement of his powerful arms, been rubbing or rather cutting in two the cords by

* See Note K.

[p. 188]

which his wrists were bound, against the sharp edge of some pallisades, upon which he seemed only to be resting them, and when they called upon him to put himself into the customary position, he overthrew half a dozen of them, dashed through the rest; wrenched, in half a second, by a sudden twist with both his hands, the musket and bayonet from the sentry at the gate of the fortress, plunged into the river, which laves its walls, and in spite of sharks and alligators, of which it is always full, safely reached the opposite bank with his prize.

The fiscal put himself, and scouts, and soldiers into a great deal of perspiration in the pursuit of him, which he might as well have spared, as he would have had much more chance of retaking a lion, because here was actually a lion's strength, with a man's intelligence. They saw no more of him, till they saw him exulting in a vengeance worthy of a king.

Outalissi's plans were sound, simple, bold, and likely, and he did not fail to make good use of the facility of constant night-intercourse with his countrymen, which his escape, from over-sight and controul, gave him, to complete them. Several slaves, who had been brought up on Mr. Cotton's plantation happened to be living as domestic ser-

[p. 189]

vants in some of the houses at the windward extremity of Paramaribo. In that latitude the wind is so uniform, that if there is any, you may almost certainly depend upon its direction; by the help of those servants, who were easily prevailed on to join the conspiracy, it was arranged that a great quantity of strong combustible matter should be gradually collected and secreted in different parts of these windward houses, and co-instantaneously fired on a signal from Outalissi, who was to command the operations in town, on Sunday, the twenty-first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one.

Different parties of the confederates (for where is the Englishman, in the present day, out of the West Indies, after such goading to madness as has been described, who would be sycophant enough to call them rebels?) in the country had engaged to fire several of the most outlying plantations on the preceding Friday, in order to draw the troops too far from Paramaribo to return in time to interrupt the destruction of the capital; during the confusion of which, the governor and all the chief colonial officers were to be seized and secured by Outalissi's party in town, and compelled to guarantee them freedom of worship and the equal protection of law with the whites, by the equal ad-

[p. 190]

mission of their testimonial competency; but not a hair of a white man's head was to be injured, if they would accede to these demands, unless the soldiers should attempt their rescue; and except where actual murder had been committed by a white man and remained unpunished, as at Anne's Grove, where the business was to begin by the just execution of Mr. Hogshead.

There was at that time no naval force at Paramaribo, so the military were all that Outalissi had to guard against. The intense anxiety, therefore, with which he watched their departure from the town, during Friday and Saturday, may be easily conceived; but when Sunday came, and the troops remained quiet in the fortress, he saw immediately that something must have deranged or defeated the concerted movements of his plantation auxiliaries, and that therefore he must abandon the chief part of the plan, of which he had undertaken the execution in Paramaribo; but still he did not see why he should forego that (and indeed the vengeance was pretty ample) which yet remained in his power. He, therefore, told his friends, who were awaiting his signal in small parties about the town, that with such a force to contend with, all thoughts of personal struggle must for the present be laid aside; that the wanton waste of either

[p. 191]

their blood, or that of the white soldiers (who with the least guilt would be the greatest sufferers) was a thought at which his unchristian heart had ever sickened; that they must, therefore, confine their present proceeding to the destruction of property alone, by firing the trains which they had prepared, upon the signal which he would presently give them; after which they must take care of themselves, - that as he could not swim across the sea, it was probable he should not himself long escape apprehension; but he assured them that no racks or torture should extract from him the name of a single individual that had taken part with him in this partly abortive conspiracy.

‘Now then,’ said he, ‘to your posts, and farewell! If we meet no more in this world, we shall in that, where no fiends torment - no Christians thirst for gold!’

After giving time to the matchmen to return to their several trains, and the others to disperse and consult their own security in the best way they could, Outalissi gave the signal agreed upon, and at two o'clock P.M. on Sunday, the twenty-first of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one, the house at the extreme windward corner of Paramaribo was in a blaze - nobody knew how!