ut I had never been able to muster sufficient courage. I had a shrinking dread of diminishing my child’s love

yet I could never go out to breathe God’s free air without trepidation at my heart.

There are wrongs which even the grave does not bur

nd I knew the father of my child was on the watch to buy me.

“I am thankful that I do not despise him,” I replied.

You are weak-minded, and have been easily persuaded by those who don’t care a straw for you.

“I have sinned against God and myself,” I replied; “but not against you.”

you shall feel the fires of hell.”

The mother of slaves is very watchful. She knows there is no security for her children. After they have entered their teens she lives in daily expectation of trouble.

Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.

Of a man who was not my master I could ask to have my children well supported; and in this case, I felt confident I should obtain the boon. I also felt quite sure that they would be made free. With all these thoughts revolving in my mind, and seeing no other way of escaping the doom I so much dreaded, I made a headlong plunge.

for human nature is the same in all

The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had on other young girls; they had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.

Their talk is of blighted cotton crops—not of the blight on their children’s souls.

curse to the whites as well as to the blacks.

In such cases the infant is smothered, or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny.

to her equals, nor even to her father’s more intelligent servants. She selected the most brutalized, over whom her authority could be exercised with less fear of exposure.

He also boasted the name and standing of a Christian, though Satan never had a truer follower.

He was a slave; and the feeling was that the master had a right to do what he pleased with his own property. And what did he care for the value of a slave? He had hundreds of them.

When he had been in the press four days and five night, the slave informed his master that the water had not been used for four mornings, and that horrible stench came from the gin house.

. A slave who had nursed her children, and had still a child in her care, watched her chance, and stole with it in her arms to the room where lay her dead mistress. She gazed a while on her, then raised her hand and dealt two blows on her face, saying, as she did so, “The devil is got you now!”

That poor, ignorant woman thought that America was governed by a Queen, to whom the President was subordinate. I wish the President was subordinate to Queen Justice.

ome believe that the abolitionists have already made them free, and that it is established by law, but that their masters prevent the law from going into effect.

libel

Even the slaves despise “a northern man with southern principles;” and that is the class they generally see. When northerners go to the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters.

They would know that liberty is more valuable than life.

He said he refused to take her, because he knew her master would not thank him for bringing such a miserable wretch to his house. He ended by saying to me, “This is the punishment she brought on herself for running away from a kind master.”

t “follow the condition of the mother.”

He thought to mortify me; to make me feel that I had disgraced myself by receiving the honorable addresses of a respectable colored man, in preference to the base proposals of a white man.

Reader, did you ever hate? I hope not. I never did but once; and I trust I never shall again. Somebody has called it “the atmosphere of hell;” and I believe it is so.

“Well, I’ll soon convince you whether I am your master, or the nigger fellow you honor so highly. If you must have a husband, you may take up with one of my slaves.”

. “I will have you peeled and pickled, my lady,” said she, “if I ever hear you mention that subject again. Do you suppose that I will have you tending my children with the children of that nigger?”

. “Did I not take you into the house, and make you the companion of my own children?” he would say. “Have I ever treated you like a negro? I have never allowed you to be punished, not even to please your mistress. And this is the recompense I get, you ungrateful girl!”

emarks that would have exposed him in the eyes of his children and grandchildren.

Sometimes I woke up, and found her bending over me. At other times she whispered in my ear, as though it was her husband who was speaking to me, and listened to hear what I would answer. If she startled me, on such occasions, she would glide stealthily away; and the next morning she would tell me I had been talking in my sleep, and ask who I was talking to.

The tears came to my eyes; but I was soon convinced that her emotions arose from anger and wounded pride.

I never wronged her, or wished to wrong her, and one word of kindness from her would have brought me to her feet.

Like many a poor, simple slave before me, I trusted that some threads of joy would yet be woven into my dark destiny.

he light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings.

I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it.

If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves.

The master’s age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months. He was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes.

“Ben, you are sick,” said he. “Why, you look like a ghost. I guess I gave you something of a start. Never mind, Ben, I am not going to touch you. You had a pretty tough time of it, and you may go on your way rejoicing for all me. But I would advise you to get out of this place plaguy quick, for there are several gentlemen here from our town.” He described the nearest and safest route to New York, and added, “I shall be glad to tell your mother I have seen you. Good by, Ben.”

The master had been blind to his own interest. Long confinement had made his face too pale, his form too thin; moreover, the trader had heard something of his character, and it did not strike him as suitable for a slave. He said he would give any price if the handsome lad was a girl. We thanked God that he was not. Could you have seen that mother clinging to her child, when they fastened the irons upon his wrists; could you have heard her heart-rending groans, and seen her bloodshot eyes wander wildly from face to face, vainly pleading for mercy; could you have witnessed that scene as I saw it, you would exclaim, Slavery is damnable!

She told him she had not always been so; once, she was like him; but when sore troubles came upon her, and she had no arm to lean upon, she learned to call on God, and he lightened her burdens. She besought him to do likewise.

She asked if he did not also think of God. I fancied I saw his face grow fierce in the moonlight. He answered, “No, I did not think of him. When a man is hunted like a wild beast he forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets every thing in his struggle to get beyond the reach of the bloodhounds. ”

We don’t die but once. ” He was right; but it was hard to give him up. “Go,” said I, “and break your mother’s heart.” I repented of my words ere they were out. “Linda,” said he, speaking as I had not heard him speak that evening, “how could you say that? Poor mother! be kind to her, Linda; and you, too, cousin Fanny.”

I reminded him of the poverty and hardships he must encounter among strangers. I told him he might be caught and brought back; and that was terrible to think of.

I once heard her father allude to her attachment to me; and his wife promptly replied that it proceeded from fear.

The war of my life had begun; and though one of God’s most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered. Alas, for me!

I was not unconscious of the beam in my own eye.

but he did not like the idea of being whipped.

and with a spirit too bold and daring for a slave.

hey are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them from you.

O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year’s day with that of the poor bond-woman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of the day is blessed. Friendly wishes meet you every where, and gifts are showered upon you. Even hearts that have been estranged from you soften at this season, and lips that have been silent echo back, “I wish you a happy New Year.” Children bring their little offerings, and raise their rosy lips for a caress. They are your own, and no hand but that of death can take them from you.

“Please, massa, hire me this year. I will work very hard, massa.”

greater bitterness of life.

The girl’s mother said, “The baby is dead, thank God; and I hope my poor child will soon be in heaven, too.” “Heaven!” retorted the mistress. “There is no such place for the like of her and her bastard.”

To which he replied, “You have let your tongue run too far; damn you!” She had forgotten that it was a crime for a slave to tell who was the father of her child.

“Who knows the ways of God?” said she. “Perhaps they have been kindly taken from the evil days to come.”

“You are my child,” replied our father, “and when I call you, you should come immediately, if you have to pass through fire and water.”

. Notwithstanding my grandmother’s long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

But, alas! we all know that the memory of a faithful slave does not avail much to save her children from the auction block [IMAGE of auction block].

I could not help having some hopes that she had left me free.

I never dreamed I was a piece of merchandise, trusted to them for safe keeping, and liable to be demanded of them at any moment.

Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations.

oathsome den of corruption and cruelty.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

I go with the team also.

They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them, They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch, They do not think whom they souse with spray.

Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, I peeringly view them from the top. The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom, I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol has fallen.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded, I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no, And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas’d the moment life appear’d. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

And that a kelson of the creation is love,

And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.

I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

These come to me days and nights and go from me again, But they are not the Me myself.

That they turn from gazing after and down the road,

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean, Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen, Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Urge and urge and urge, Always the procreant urge of the world. Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex, Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now,

filter them

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

undisguised

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

abeyance,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

nd yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity to me, in word or action. T

for thy Work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the Land of the Enemy

In my travels an Indian came to me and told me, if I were willing, he and his squaw would run away, and go home along with me. I told him no: I was not willing to run away, but desired to wait God’s time, that I might go home quietly, and without fear

Help Lord, or we perish.” When the Lord had brought His people to this, that they saw no help in anything but Himself; then He takes the quarrel into His own hand; and though they had made a pit, in their own imaginations, as deep as hell for the Christians that summer, yet the Lord hurled themselves into it. And the Lord had not so many ways before to preserve them, but now He hath as many to destroy them.

Agag-like,

They mourned (with their black faces) for their own losses, yet triumphed and rejoiced in their inhumane, and many times devilish cruelty to the English.

I should soon have subdued their Enemies, and turned my hand against their Adversaries” (Psalm 81.13-14). But now our perverse and evil carriages in the sight of the Lord, have so offended Him, that instead of turning His hand against them, the Lord feeds and nourishes them up to be a scourge to the whole land.

I can but stand in admiration to see the wonderful power of God in providing for such a vast number of our enemies in the wilderness

yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to His people.

our poor country.

Thus did they scoff at us, as if the English would be a quarter of a year getting ready.

? God seemed to leave his People to themselves, and order all things for His own holy ends. Shall there be evil in the City and the Lord hath not done it? They are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph, therefore shall they go captive, with the first that go captive. It is the Lord’s doing, and it should be marvelous in our eyes.

the enemy in such distress for food that our men might track them by their rooting in the earth for ground nuts, whilst they were flying for their lives.

Thus the Lord made that pleasant refreshing, which another time would have been an abomination.

So like were these barbarous creatures to him who was a liar from the beginning.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” And also that [in] Psalm 37.5: “Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”

But I knew that He laid upon me less than I deserved.

So easy a thing it is with God to dry up the streams of Scripture comfort from us.

About this time I began to think that all my hopes of restoration would come to nothing.

I recovered my sight again. Yet upon this, and the like occasions, I hope it is not too much to say with Job, “Have pity upon me, O ye my Friends, for the Hand of the Lord has touched me.”

that himself did eat a piece of him, as big as his two fingers, and that he was very good meat

Here one asked me to make a shirt for her papoose, for which she gave me a mess of broth, which was thickened with meal made of the bark of a tree, and to make it the better, she had put into it about a handful of peas, and a few roasted ground nuts.

Friend Indian, and several others of the like cut.

Then one of the company drew his sword, and told me he would run me through if I did not go presently. Then was I fain to stoop to this rude fellow, and to go out in the night, I knew not whither.

Which stilled my spirit for the present. But a sore time of trial, I concluded, I had to go through, my master being gone, who seemed to me the best friend that I had of an Indian, both in cold and hunger, and quickly so it proved.

Then they packed up their things to be gone, and gave me my load. I complained it was too heavy, whereupon she gave me a slap in the face, and bade me go; I lifted up my heart to God, hoping the redemption was not far off; and the rather because their insolency grew worse and worse.

He answered me “Nux,” which did much rejoice my spirit.

The intentional omission of colonist wrongdoing makes it easy for white America to disproportionately distribute empathy and judgement when reading such narratives.

The problem, rather, is that she—and society as a whole—deemed the context of her captivity unimportant.

. It seems to be a bait the devil lays to make men lose their precious time

I observed they asked one another questions, and laughed, and rejoiced over their gains and victories. Then my heart began to fail: and I fell aweeping, which was the first time to my remembrance, that I wept before them.

On the morrow morning we must go over the river, i.e. Connecticut, to meet with King Philip.

I then remembered how careless I had been of God’s holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how evilly I had walked in God’s sight; which lay so close unto my spirit, that it was easy for me to see how righteous it was with God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me out of His presence forever. Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me, and upheld me; and as He wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other.

Oh, I may see the wonderful power of God, that my Spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction: still the Lord upheld me with His gracious and merciful spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning.

But the Lord renewed my strength still, and carried me along, that I might see more of His power; yea, so much that I could never have thought of, had I not experienced it.

it

Little do many think what is the savageness and brutishness of this barbarous enemy

nd some boiling to feed our merciless enemies;

This anthology tries to unpack that by combining multiple famous texts with a wide range of ideas by each individual in the classroom.

This anthology is unique because it was made by students, for students.

critically, it moves beyond the voices of old white men talking about even older white men.

revisited

Those tears no longer moved the hand of the Generous Giver. They were selfish tears. The Great Spirit does not heed them ever.

Iktomi, in the warm sunshine, had no need of his blanket, and it had been very easy to part with a thing which he could not mis

From the tree Iktomi watched the hungry wolves eat up his nicely browned fat ducks. His foot pained him more and more. He heard them crack the small round bones with their strong long teeth and eat out the oily marrow. Now severe pains shot up from his foot through his whole body. "Hin-hin-hin!" sobbed Iktomi. Real tears washed brown streaks across his red-painted cheeks. Smacking their lips, the wolves began to leave the place, when Iktomi cried out like a pouting child, "At least you have left my baking under the ashes!" "Ho! Po!" shouted the mischievous wolves; "he says more ducks are to be found under the ashes! Come! Let us have our fill this once!"

conceit leads him hard against the common sense of simpler people.

He prefers to spread a snare rather than to earn the smallest thing with honest hunting.

The old legends of America belong quite as much to the blue-eyed little patriot as to the black-haired aborigine.

since America in the last few centuries has acquired a second tongue.