View the H-Africa Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Africa's February 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Africa's February 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Africa home page.
X-Posted from H-NET List for the History of Slavery <H-SLAVERY@H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Steven Mintz <smintz@UH.EDU> ---------------------------- From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell@compuserve.com> Elizabeth Kuebler-Wolf wrote: <<is this trope typically limited to the male gender (I haven't seen any mention of queens in this discussion)?>> This question reminded me of an example I'd forgotten, which both mentions a woman and pushes the "enslaved royalty" trope in British America into the early 17th century. According to an English traveler named Josselyn writing in 1639, Samuel Maverick of Noddle's Island in Boston harbor held captive an African woman who was "a Queen in her own Countrey." She was treated as noble by another African woman: "a very humble and dutiful garb used towards her by another Negro who was her maid. Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed of Negroes, and therefore seeing she would not yield by persuasions to company with a Negro young man he had in his house, he commanded him, will'd she nill'd she, to go to bed with her." [quoted from Lorenzo Johnston Greene, THE NEGRO IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND, 1620-1776 (NY: Columbia UP, 1942), 215] J. L. Bell JnoLBell@compuserve.com
|