Amistad rose and took possession of the ship, and ordered the crew to guide her back to Africa. Instead, the crew steered the vessel into a hospitable harbor, thus baffling its captors. The rising of the slaves of the Creole in somewhat the same manner was more romantic.
All these pin pricks in the South are now to be contrasted to the serious organized risings of slaves in Brazil, eruptions which at times threatened the political control or integrity of a whole district or province. In the United States the slave placidly submitted. In Brazil he was at periods actually class conscious.
In Pernambuco, the Brazilian government was actually challenged by slave rebels. It was during the chaotic days of 1630–1654, when the Dutch were in occupation of Pernambuco, and the Brazilians were at war with them, that hundreds of slaves fled to the interior, where they established an independent state, consisting of a cluster of fortified villages. Establishing a rude form of administration and a primitive adaptation of Christianity, they actually governed themselves. After the Dutch had been fairly well beaten, the whites turned to make war upon the villages. For fifty years the villages held out, until in 1697, Palmares, the last and most important of the fortresses, capitulated.[1]
Bahia lived in a perpetual fear of Negro uprising, and well were her fears grounded, for here the Negro was most assertive against his mistreatment. The population of Bahia in the first decade of the nineteenth century is estimated by Henderson as being in the neighborhood of 110,000, two thirds of which was slave. Once let the slave get a start and with such odds in his favor the masters had best beware. For this reason, slaves were prevented as much as possible from organizing. No bondman might go on the streets of Bahia after evening vespers, save with a pass from his master.[2] Yet the slaves did at times organize. In 1808, when John VI, the Portuguese king, arrived in Bahia, the slaves boldly communicated with him,
