“How did they live, Jim? If they wouldn’t work, I don’t see what they had to live on.”
“Well, the trufe is, sah, dey stole eberyting dey could lay deir han’s on.”
It ought to be added that the negroes all complained that “Jim” was a hard task-master, and that he was “harder on them than white folks.” His old master, Mr. Payne, on the other hand, pronounced him invaluable; said he was one of the most intelligent and skillful slaves he ever saw, and declared his determination, if he ever went to planting again, to hunt “Jim” up and hire him.
There were not more than half-a-dozen negro families on the plantation at the time of our visit. The agent of the new proprietor had been attempting, through the past week, to hire them, but they had refused to enter into any contract which he thought admissible. They all wanted special privileges of one sort or another. Many wanted considerable tracts of land set off to them on the plantation, which they could cultivate on their own account. Some thought they ought to have two or three acres to plant in cotton. Nearly all wanted to grow corn. “Let ’em have an acre of either,” said the agent (and the Creole overseer fully agreed with him), “and they would pick more than you would get from any half-dozen acres you’ve got. Give them the slightest opening for growing the same crops you grow, and you’ve opened the flood-gates of unlimited stealing. You have no sort of check on them.”
One fellow wanted permission to keep on the plantation two horses, a mule, and a cow, besides hogs, chickens, and goats innumerable. “How could he feed them?” innocently asked the proprietor. “Feed them? Out of your corn-crib, of course. You couldn’t put a lock on it he wouldn’t pick the first dark night. He would steal the corn you fed your mules with at dinner, out of the very trough from which the mules were eating it. Haven’t I caught them at such tricks, again and again?”
The agent had accordingly set his face as a flint against all these special claims preferred by the negroes. He would give them the wages then customary along the Coast (ten dollars a month, with clothing, lodging, food and medical attendance), would give them Saturday afternoons and Sundays for themselves, would give plenty of land for gardens, and mules and plows to cultivate it; and that was all he would give. The negroes might enter into contract on these terms or leave. They didn’t want to do either. They wouldn’t contract, but they made themselves comfortable in the houses and evidently considered themselves at home, contract or no contract. Thereupon the agent brought matters to a crisis by telling them that he gave them till Saturday morning to contract, if by that time they had made no engagement they must shift for themselves. Saturday morning came; and not more than half-a-dozen besides the two drivers had signed the contract.
“They thought, by standing out, they could force me to terms about their mules and cotton. But I soon undeceived them. I rigged up the carts, packed their traps into them, and sent them bag and baggage off the place. They went down to a sort of free-nigger settlement a few miles below. Now they’re sneaking back every day and asking leave to enter into contract.”[[67]]
The Creole thought they worked so badly last year that it didn’t make much difference whether they returned or not.
“But dey’ll do better, sah, wid you. Dey wants a white man to gib orders. Dey wouldn’t min’ me las’ yeah, ’cause I’s nigger like demselves. I tink dey do better dis yeah.” Such was “Jim’s” view of the case.
“Jim” spoke English—such as it was. This he owed to his Virginia birth. All the rest of the negroes spoke French exclusively. They had been quite as successful in forming an unintelligible patois from that, as other plantation negroes have been with their English. Some of our party spoke French fluently, but they could make nothing out of the talk of the negroes. The Creole overseer gave his laughing explanation. “It’s nigger French, zey speak, sare; of course you can not it understand.” And with that he broke into a volley of gibberish, the words coming like chain-shot, in couples, to which the negroes at once responded. “Jim,” in addressing them, made use of the same mongrel French; he had learned it from his long residence among them. Now and then one could catch a pure French word; and the general sound was similar to the French; but it had been so distorted, the overseer told us, as to constitute a distinct dialect, which must be learned by all who undertake the control of the Coast negroes.