"A quantity of captured Africans having been brought hither from the islands of Grenada and Dominica, they were most imprudently induced to enlist in the 1st West India Regiment. True it is, we have been told they did this voluntarily; but it may be asked, if they had any will in the matter, how could they understand the duties to be imposed on them by becoming soldiers, or how comprehend the nature of an oath of allegiance, without which they could not, legally speaking, be considered soldiers? I attended the whole of the trials of these men, and well know how difficult it was to make them comprehend any idea which was at all new to them by means of the best interpreters procurable.
"To the African savage, while being drilled into the duties of a soldier, many things seem absolute tyranny which would appear to a civilised man a mere necessary restraint. To keep the restless body of an African negro in a position to which he has not been accustomed; to cramp his splay feet, with his great toes standing out, into European shoes made for feet of a different form; to place a collar round his neck, which is called a stock, and which to him is cruel torture; above all, to confine him every night to his barracks—are almost insupportable. One unacquainted with the habits of the negro cannot conceive with what abhorrence he looks on having his disposition to nocturnal rambles checked by barrack regulations.
"Formerly the 'King's man,' as the black soldier loved to call himself, looked (not without reason) contemptuously on the planter's slave, although he himself was after all but a slave to the State; but these recruits were enlisted shortly after a number of their recently imported countrymen were wandering freely over the country, working either as free labourers, or settling, to use an apt American phrase, as squatters; and to assert that the recruit, while under military probation, is better off than the free Trinidad labourer, who goes where he lists and earns as much in one day as will keep him for three days, is an absurdity. Accordingly, we find that Lieutenant-Colonel Bush, who commanded the 1st West India Regiment, thought that the mutiny was mainly owing to the ill-advice of their civil, or, we should rather say, unmilitary countrymen. This, to a certain degree, was the fact; but, by the declaration of Dâaga and many of his countrymen, it is evident that the seeds of the mutiny were sown on the passage from Africa.
"It has been asserted that the recruits were driven to mutiny by hard treatment of their commanding officers. There seems not the slightest truth in this assertion; they were treated with fully as much kindness as their situation would admit of, and their chief was peculiarly a favourite of Colonel Bush and the officers, notwithstanding Dâaga's violent and ferocious temper often caused complaints to be brought against him.
"On the night of the 17th of June, 1837, the people of San Josef were kept awake by the recruits, about 280 in number, singing the war-song of the Paupaus. This wild song consisted of a short air and chorus. The tone was, although wild, not inharmonious, and the words rather euphonious. As near as our alphabet can convey them, they ran thus:
"Dangkarrée
Au fey
Oluu werrei
Au lay.
which may be rendered almost literally by the following couplet:
"Air by the chief: 'Come to plunder, come to slay.'
"Chorus by followers: 'We are ready to obey.'
"About three o'clock in the morning, their war-song (highly characteristic of a predatory tribe) became very loud, and they commenced uttering their war-cry. This is different to what we conceive the Indian war-whoop to be; it seems to be a kind of imitation of the growl of wild beasts, and has a most thrilling effect.
"Fire was now set to a quantity of huts built for the accommodation of African soldiers to the northward of the barracks, as well as to the house of a poor black woman called Dalrymple. These burnt briskly, throwing a dismal glare over the barracks and picturesque town of San Josef, and overpowering the light of the full moon, which illumined a cloudless sky. The mutineers made a rush at the barrack-room and seized on the muskets and fusees in the racks. Their leader, Dâaga, and a daring Yarraba named Ogston, instantly charged their pieces—the former of these had a quantity of ball cartridges, loose powder, and ounce and pistol balls, in a kind of gray worsted cap. He must have provided himself with these before the mutiny. How he became possessed of them, especially the pistol balls, I never could learn; probably he was supplied by his unmilitary countrymen; pistol balls are never given to infantry. Previous to this Dâaga and three others made a rush at the regimental store-room, in which was deposited a quantity of powder. An old African soldier, named Charles Dixon, interfered to stop them, on which Maurice Ogston, the Yarraba chief, who had armed himself with a sergeant's sword, cut down the faithful African. When down, Dâaga said in English, 'Ah, you old soldier, you knock down.' Dixon was not Dâaga's countryman, hence he could not speak to him in his own language. The Paupau then levelled his musket and shot the fallen soldier, who groaned and died. The war-yells, or rather growls, of the Paupaus and Yarrabas now became awfully thrilling as they helped themselves to cartridges; most of them were fortunately blank, or without ball. Never was a premeditated mutiny so wild and ill-planned. Their chief, Dâaga, and Ogston, seem to have had little command of the subordinates, and the whole acted more like a set of wild beasts who had broken their cages, than men resolved on war.