In his Two Jamaicas, Philip Curtin observes that “In many ways Negro culture was more truly native to Jamaica than European culture, although both were alien. Unlike the whites, the blacks’ voyage from their homeland was strictly a one-way affair.”’ It is the one-way component of their sojourn and the compulsive nature of the journey that made for the peculiar historical process of the blacks in Jamaica as elsewhere in the New World and for the development of communities in the area with strong cultural attachment t o Africa. Specifically, the raison d’etre of the Europeans in Jamaica was to increase their wealth and return home. To this end the enslaved blacks were used as both capital and labor, but they stoutly refused t o be a willing or acquiescent partner and resisted in myriad ways even when all the odds were against them. African resistance began not o n the plantation, but rather o n the coffle line in the interior of West Africa, when some refused t o be a part of the human caravan, ate dirt and died; they resisted on reaching the forts or castles or barracoons of European construction on the coast; from here some ran away, some poisoned themselves, some refused t o eat; they resisted before entering the ships, throwing themselves on the sands rather than boarding ( t o prevent this the European slavers hired Krumen-former fishermen of the coast-as “Captains of the Sand” t o whip, push, drag or carry them on t o the vessels); on the ships they resisted by jumping overboard, refusing t o eat, refusing t o take medicine, and by suicide or attempted suicide.2 Suicide and suicidal attempts were persistent through every point of the enslavement process, and t o some tribes like the Ebos suicide became a fine art.3 Mutiny on the ships took place on many occasions, and there are examples of a few successful mutinies where the captain, held as hostage, had t o return to the African coast. Fear of slave mutiny among ship owners and captains was so prevalent that slaves were chained on board, and marine insurance was introduced t o indemnify owners for losses of slaves arising from mutiny, which was legally listed as one of the “perils a t sea.”s On the plantations in the New World the Africans built u p a considerable arsenal of retaliation ranging, hierarchically, from the more subtle and passive resistance of various types to violent activities. Passive resistance o n the New World plantations was a combination of the slaves’ strategy of acting out the slave master’s stereotype of him as a slave-an “instrument” or a “living possession” ( to borrow a phrase from Aristotle) and as a “Negro” with all t h e pejorative connotations-and of the slave’s perception of himself as a human being. In other words, the slave’s view of reality was a dualism of his own and his master’s and