Cudjo's own story of the last African slaver

Zora Neale Hurston
The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History 1927
Originally Published in The Journal of Negro History , Oct., 1927, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct., 1927), pp. 648-663.
About four miles above Mobile, at the mouth of the Chickasabogue Creek (now called Three Mile Creek), on red clay bluffs, on the Old Telegraph Road, but now reached by the new Bay Bridge Road and Craft Highway, is African Town. The site was once and still is to a large extent the possession of the Meaher Brothers, Tim, Lim and Burns; these men had a mill and shipyard at the mouth of the creek and built vessels for blockade running, river trade and filibustering expeditions.
The three Meaher brothers were natives of Maine. They had associated with them in business one Captain Foster, born of English parentage in Nova Scotia. He was the actual owner of the Clotilde . She was selected because of her fleetness to make the voyage for a cargo of slaves.
Once on the African Coast, there was little trouble in procuring a cargo of slaves; for it had long been a part of the trader’s policy to instigate the tribes against each other and in this manner keep the markets stocked. News of the trade was often published in the papers. An excerpt from The Mobile Register of Nov. 9, 1858, said: “From the West Coast of Africa we have advice dated Sept. 21st. The quarreling of the tribes on Sierra Leone River rendered the aspect of things very unsatisfactory. The King of Dahomey was driving a brisk trade in slaves at from fifty to sixty dollars apiece at Whydah. Immense numbers of Negroes were collected along the Coast for export.” Foster, with a crew of Northern men, sailed directly for Whydah.
The slaves who made up the cargo of the Clotilde were captured by Dahomey’s warriors and women warriors (perhaps Amazons), Cudjo, or more accurately, Kujjo Lewis says in this manner. In the early part of the nineteenth century one of the Dahomey kings organized a battalion of women warriors.