Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

Hurston returns the following day bearing a basket of Georgia peaches. Kossola shares them with his two young great-granddaughters. That day, Kossola gives Hurston a tour of his garden but doesn’t continue telling his life story. The next day, Hurston returns again, bringing insect powder as a gift this time. That day, Kossola is eager to resume talking. His grandfather was an officer of the king and went with the king everywhere. Kossola starts explaining how if a man killed a leopard, he was required to take it to the king to keep part of it and to have the poisonous whiskers removed. For the safety of the people, anyone who kept even one whisker before turning in the carcass was put to death. At the execution, the people sang and danced until the offender was beheaded. The man’s head was then set aside for sacrifice.

Kossola explains that the chief held court every day, dealing with all kinds of local issues. When anyone was tried, the whole village was involved in the judgment. For a lower crime, like theft, the chief decided. However, for murder, the body was preserved while the village waited for the king to come and judge. The king’s coming was always preceded by drums. When he arrived, the murderer was questioned. In one particular case, a man claimed he killed another because that man was working juju against him. However, this explanation didn’t save him from guilt. After some deliberation, he was found guilty. As usual, a drum was played, and the executioner danced, touching the man with various weapons. When he was touched with the knife, it was a sign that the murderer was from then on considered dead. Men from the village tied the murderer tightly to the corpse, face-to-face. Restrained like that with the decomposing body, he was abandoned to die.

Kossola continues where he left off in the previous chapter. Around the same time that the murderer was punished, Kossola’s grandfather became ill. Kossola was just a young boy then. Soon, the grandfather died, and he was to be buried under the ground in his own house. People brought gifts to place in the coffin, while the wives sat by and cried together. When Kossola arrived with his father, the wives removed their veils and lamented their husband’s death. All the wives’ heads were shaven. The men came too, bearing gifts and singing together in mourning. Each time someone new entered the room, they all wept and sang about how good the chief was in life and how sad they were about his death. When no one entered, they remained quiet. The wives had to remain unmarried for two years, and they could wash their faces with nothing but tears. Kossola explains that this is customary back home in Africa.

Kossola’s storytelling trails off, and Hurston takes this as her sign to leave for the day. He reminds her that she’s always welcome to return. Before she goes, he helps her pick some peaches from his tree. He tells her to wait until next week to come back, as he must cut the grass.

Nervous that Kossola might grow tired of her, Hurston shows up six days later with two Virginia hams for him and a watermelon for them to share. This pleases him very much. They then walk to the nearby church, where he serves as the sexton. Afterward, he continues telling his story.

Kossola’s father was named Ololue/Oluale (no standard spelling). He wasn’t a rich man and had three wives, the second of whom was Kossola’s mother, Nefondlulu. Kossola had siblings, some of whom were half-siblings. Kossola explains that when women married, they tried to have as many children as possible. Any barren women turned to the elders, who would prepare a tea for them that usually enabled them to conceive. Growing up in his father’s compound, Kossola wrestled, raced, and played with his siblings. Sometimes, the adults gathered the children to tell them tales about when animals could talk like humans. Kossola promises to tell Hurston some of these tales; the stories he later relays to her are recorded in Barracoon’s appendix.

One day, his father (also a chief) gathered all his sons who were at least 14 years of age. Included among them, young Kossola thought excitedly that it was his turn to join the army. Young boys were trained to walk and hide in the bush. To teach them, the elders took them hunting, sometimes for days at a time, and taught the boys how to find a good site to set up camp and mark the spot. The boys hunted with bows and arrows and with spears. In addition, they were taught a war song to sing while they walked through the bush. A drum would be played along with it. King Akia’on wanted the young men to be well-trained so that no one even threatened them with war. Kossola pauses the story, and he and Hurston eat away at their watermelon. When they’re full, they sit together in silence. Kossola then tells Hurston about juju. Each year the men went to the mountain, possibly to control the weather. Because he was taken from Africa while still a teenager, he doesn’t know all the details.

One day, Kossola saw a pretty girl in the marketplace and followed her. Seeing this and realizing that Kossola was nearing manhood, his father and the other men put together a banquet for him. They put him in the initiation house and then played a bull-roarer off in the distance, telling him it was an animal that he must go hunt. Of course, there was no animal, so he found nothing. At the banquet, the men taught him their secrets and gave him a peacock feather to wear.