Igbo Landing

America’s First Freedom March

If it had been the plot of a Hollywood movie, it would have been dismissed as unbelievable. A group of Igbo slaves overpower their slave ship captors and free themselves, only to commit mass suicide by marching into the sea, singing songs of their lost homeland. But this stranger-than-fiction tale was all too real. 

The inhumane slave trade under which members of the indigenous population were carried off into slavery, began prior to the arrival of Europeans in Africa. The Moors had been coming down from North Africa to take away human captives in their caravans for centuries. But in the fifteenth century, the Portuguese who were engaged in a conflict with the Moors, conquered the Moorish stronghold of Cueta, and set their sights on the interior of Africa.  They undertook the conversion of the indigenous population to Christianity, and diverted the inland trade of the Moors in West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean.

The groundwork for this European slave trade was laid as early as 1441 when the Portuguese explorer Goncalves, landed on the West African coast, and took back to Lisbon samples of gold dust, and a number of black slaves. These local were converted to Christianity in Portugal, and trained as interpreters for future ventures.  Slave hunting eventually became so lucrative, that Portuguese navigators, originally sent out for purposes of exploration of the Coast of Guinea, preferred to defer exploratory activity in favour of the capture of West African natives. These captives were first held for ransom payable in gold or ivory. But those whose kinsfolk could not come up with the merchandise were taken off to Europe, and sold as slaves. These early explorers deceived the Europeans back home with the elaborate pretense that slavery was a means of converting the indigenous population of west Africa into Christianity. 

In 1471 Pablo Escabor, and John Santarem discovered the Niger delta and realized that the Guinea coast was not the southernmost point of the peninsula, but merely a gulf. By 1472, they had explored and mapped the islands of Fernando Po in the Bight of Biafra. This Niger delta was populated by a number of ethnic groups, of which the most populous were the Igbo.  They were a warlike people who had pushed the area’s original inhabitants, the Ibibio, southward to the coastal region of the Niger delta.  The earliest Igbo settlements were at Awka and Orlu, from where they spread to other areas like Isuama, Aba,Nri and Afikpo to the east as well as across the Niger delta into Kwale, Ogwashi Uku,  Asaba, and Ashaka to the west. A number of Igbos settled in Onitsha, where they mixed with the Umunri folk who came from Idah.

Before the 14th century, the Igbo lived in isolated communities. However, after they invaded Arochukuw,  their influence spread throughout the Niger delta. They became powerful enough to expel the Ibibio aborigines, and took possession of the Long Juju, a famous Ebinopkabi oracle. Ownership of this oracle elevated Igbo influence over the following years, and well into the 17th century.  This influence was facilitated by the local respect throughout the Niger delta for the perceived supernatural powers of the oracle. It thus became a symbol of Igbo unity. 

The warlike Igbo had formed standing armies drawn from professional warriors in Ohafia,  Abriba, and Aba. They became collectively known as Abams. Experienced blacksmiths of Abriba and Awka in the northwest of Igboland used smelted iron from Okpbobo and Abakaliki mines to produce cutlasses, axes, and swords. 

The slave trade was the main initial interaction between the Europeans and Igbo.  Prior to the 18th century, contact with Europeans had been indirect, as their slave dealers remained on the coast, and did not venture into the Igbo hinterland.  But from the end of 17th century, and into the 18th century, contact between Igbo and Europeans increased so much that by 1790,  the Igbo slave market supplied an estimated 16,000 slaves annually to European traders. 

The warlike Igbo people did not themselves make easy captives.  Even in chains, they remained defiant. While individual cases of resistance were numerous, one epic of collective resistance, and mass suicide shall live long in history, and its location on Saint Simon’s island in Glynn county Georgia in the United States is named the Igbo Landing in commemoration of their heroism. 

The year was 1803 in the month of May. West African slaves, including a number of Igbo arrived in the New World. They were transported in a slave ship,  appropriately named The Wanderer. The vessel’s human cargo had been bought and paid for by slave merchants John Cooper and Thomas Spalding. The captives cost them about 100 dollars per head. The duo planned to resell them to plantations on nearby St Simon’s Island. 

The Wanderer, an ocean sailing ship, was too large to navigate the shallow waters off the island, so the Africans were transferred onto a coastal vessel, The York, and packed together in chains beneath its deck. The actual sequence of events remains unclear, but during this final leg of their ordeal at sea, the captured Igbo set themselves free. After drowning their captors, they grounded the ship in Dunbar Creek.  Led by a high chief, the liberated Igbo marched, singing loudly, into Dunbar Creek, committing mass suicide. 

Roswell King, a white overseer on a nearby plantation belonging to Pierce Butler wrote a first-hand account of the incident. Of the 75 Igbo captives on the ship, King, and a certain Captain Patterson recovered only 13 bodies. 

This mutiny and collective suicide in a foreign land,  is a magnificent tale of resistance by a proud group of people who would rather die than live as slaves.  It gained monumental significance among the African-American population of the New World.  Their heroism has been called the first freedom march in the United States. To this day,  locals claim that the Landing and surrounding marshes of Dunbar Creek are haunted by the souls of the Igbo brave. 

The saga of the Igbo who chose death over slavery ,has been verified by research in the 1980s and in September 2002, the African-American community of Saint  Simon’s put together a two day celebration of Igbo culture in commemoration of the event at the location of the rebellion and heroic suicide.  Schools in the area now all teach the historical event as part of their curriculum.