|
|
Back
in 1949 my Uncle Austin Sweeney of Nederland,
TX who was born and reared in Grand Chenier, LA., told me the
story of a slaver captains inhumanity so bestial, that it is difficult
for the human mind to comprehend it. It was the story of 200 starving
African slaves abandoned on a marsh ridge on Mermentau River, where
they were left to die horrific deaths.
Recently I have been in email communication with Butch Guidry of Big
Lake, Cameron Parish, LA who told me the same stories had passed down
through his family. Among the rivers old-timers, the island name was
a racial slur, but Guidry noted that the location a century ago appeared
on the rivers maps as Negro Island. He added that the slave ship captain
had pondered going upriver to Lake Arthur, but fearing he might be
arrested there, he chose to dump his cargo ashore and return to the
gulf. For my own convenience, I have renamed the location as Skull
Island.
In 1964 I carried my mother and some of her Sweeney siblings back
to Grand Chenier for a visit. While there, I asked my Cousin Jim Bonsall,
who owned a small store, if he had ever heard of that island. He quickly
answered yes - that he could rent a boat and take me there if I so
chose. Guidry described Skull Island as being located at the north
end of Grand Lake, where the Mermentau enters the lake...
In
1968, while researching a graduate paper at Lamar University about
the African slave trade, I learned that the last known American slave
ship to leave the Congo River in Mar. 1865 was the Huntress,
a topsail hermaphrodite schooner with a capacity of 200 slaves. Hence
since the voyage from the Congo River of Africa to Louisiana would
require over 2 months, it has always intrigued me whether or not the
slave ship in the Mermentau might have been the Huntress.
Uncle Austin added that the slaver captain stopped at Grand Chenier
in May, 1865, and sought to buy rice or cattle from Dr. Millidge McCall
to feed to his African chattels. McCall told him that there were neither
rice nor cattle to be purchased at Grand Chenier; the residents of
the Chenier at that time, consisting of women, children and a few
old men, were only a notch above starvation themselves as the Civil
War had just ended. McCall told the slaver too that the North had
just won the war, and the slaves had been freed. {The Texas Juneteenth
did not apply in Louisiana.}
My
uncle also told me that in March, 1867, my great uncle, John W. Sweeney,
Jr., and my grandfather, James Hill Sweeney, had sailed a sloop up
the river in search of a high marsh ridge, where they might put in
a crop of cotton. When they anchored at Skull Island, they found scattered
among the marsh grass countless skulls, skeletons, and leg bones,
each of the latter still shackled by a rusting leg iron to the skeleton
lying beside it. Sensing the aura of death which permeated the marsh
ridge, the Sweeneys quickly hoisted their sail and returned to Grand
Chenier.
Dr. McCall also told the slaver captain that occasionally an offshore
Union blockader sailed up to Grand Chenier, seeking blockade-runners
that were hiding in the river. McCall and the slaver captain each
knew that if a slave ship were caught with Africans aboard, the slaver
captain would be tried for violating the 1820 African Slave Trade
Act, the penalty of which was a charge of piracy and death by hanging.
Without a doubt the shackled and starving Africans on Skull Island
died quickly, abetted by the countless mosquito bites, and perhaps
they were eaten by the numerous black panthers, which according to
Grandma Sweeney, frequented the sea cane marshes around Grand Chenier
during Civil War days.
For decades the site of Skull Island was avoided like the plague by
the sailors who plied Mermentau River on the schooners and steamboats.
And many superstitious people often repeated tales around the camp
fires, that during a full moon the slave ghosts danced under the live
oak trees on the marsh Chenier. And surely there is no greater tale
of bestiality "of mans inhumanity to man" than the story of those
unfortunate Africans who died on that island. |
|
|
HOME
