People who lived on the opposite side of the river in louisiana. This is structure was donated to us about ten years ago, by the descendants and the original founders of that congregation. They bought the land in 1870. Two parcels of land, for the express purpose of building a house of worship. In the seal document, which we have in the courthouse, they named their structure, their congregation the anti yoke baptist congregation. That message of being against the yoke or against slavery was something that is important to our story here. And this is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so its really important here in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. We like to start our tour of the whitney plantation here in this building so that we can kind of see what happens to people, some of the things that they cared about after freedom came. The whitney plantation is the only Plantation Museum in the state of louisiana that is exclusively dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved peoples this land that were on right now is historically known as habitation hideout, and our own are. Jon cummings purchased the property about 15 years ago. And stored the restore the regional structures here and also moving in buildings like this one. Like this church and so we had to kind of build in some things here. Restore existing buildings and bring in Historic Structures they all help us tell the story of slavery. When the jon cummings about the property, in 1989, we did not have an original slain sleeve coddles. They have been torn down for some 20 years. And so we have to move in those from elsewhere and louisiana. This structure, like i said, just kind of helps out round out that story of enslavement after the civil war. And we have some other buildings that were here at one time that were rebuilt. At the wind plantation, we have a collection of statues created by an ohio artist, woodrow nash. He built these statues for us to represent people who were enslaved at the end of slavery and then later gave their testimony to the Work Progress Administration in the 1930s. We use the narratives of slaves taken in the 1930s throughout our interpretation on this site. And so, these are to give life to who those people were. In the 1930s, when the works progressive ministration traveled across the south, taking the narratives of formerly enslaved people, they were talking to people who were in their eighties, nineties or even hundreds, who, when they were slaves, had been just children. At the highest end, maybe 15 when freedom came, but most of them were under the age of ten. And so this is to remind us who those voices are coming from. These people we were talking about their experience of slavery as children, oftentimes recalling the things that it happened to their parents and grandparents. This monte shun was initially founded in 1752 by a german immigrant who came in the company of john law, with his family from, they see it from the port of france and came here. In 1752, when he founded this plantation, it was much smaller. It was an 11 are pent tracked and he grew rice and indigo principally, as the main cash crops. Indigo was really the significant cash crop of this land in the 18th century. He and his children continued planting indigo until the late 18 century, beginning of the 19th century. In 1795, eight louisiana planter successfully granulated a crop of sugar in louisiana. Were in a strange climate zone. It couldnt really, nobody had been able to take it the full way before that. In 70 95, with the help of somebody from haiti, who had come over after the revolution, he granulated a crop. And all of the planters followed suit after that. Sugar could make a whole lot more money than indigo could, indigo had had crop failures and there was competition on the markets. And so right around the same time that that first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo is not really a viable crop anymore. So this plantation transitioned at some point after that by about 1805, it was planted in sugar, and it remains planted in sugar today. Sugar spillage iconic industry in louisiana, and all around us are historic cane fields that are sent to the dixie cain and domino sugar refineries. Three successive generations of hydell family ran the plantation, always with a labor of enslaved africans in african descent people. Over the course of the hundred plus years that the hydell on the slant there were many successful generations of people who are enslaved here. And so the population would have shifted over time but the highest number that we have ever counted of enslaved people in this years 101 but we think thats a little low we think there were perhaps as many as 200 enslaved at the highest point we have record of people that we have found, 357 over the course of that hundred plus years. But there are going to be a lot of people missing from that. Where we will start introducing that population, is on our first memorial where we are going to be seeing the people who were enslaved in the louisiana and slide on this land. This is the wall of honor. And on this memorial, we have recorded the names and some basic information of about 354 individuals that we have been able to find who were enslaved on this land. This memorial is, it moves through time roughly chronologically so in the earlier, on this side, we have people who were born in the 18th century, but we are missing the entire first generation of enslaved people here. We dont know anyone, we dont know anyones name whos a slave here from the very beginning in 1752. All of these people were born after the founding of this plantation. There is an example of some people who are already missing. This information comes mostly from steel documents. Peoples names were not always recorded when they were enslaved. So if you look at things like the census records, it would just include a tally of how many men and how many women, but it wont actually tell you any names. So we have to look for those names instead of documents, and the city of new orleans, there was a notary involved. And so we go to the note aerial archives to find sales and purchases of people. All of the information that we have here, this by graphic information is also related to selling. Where someone came from, oh they were, whether they came with children, the jobs that they knew how to do, these are all things that would affect their price at sale. Louisiana had different laws than other states and territories in the United States. And louisiana, for a very long time, it was illegal to sell children away from parents before puberty. Later it was codified to actually before the age of ten. And so again we see things like agatha, being sold with these children, and these are all people who were in a lot, a lot being sold together. We have basic information here. And is really not a lot that this can tell us but we are able to tease out just a little bit. One thing that we notice here is that all of these people, most of them were born in africa. That is listed here. Their places of origin. And yet their names, like michelle, our european names. In this case, they are french. We also see in the early years a few spanish names as well. And so we know that these people who have these european derived names, were not born in africa with those names. That tells us something about that cultural annihilation, the way peoples cultures were taken from them when they were sold into slavery in the new world. Sleepshirts often renamed people. And its something that continues to happen throughout the course of slavery in the United States, over the course of the 19th century. When people were sold from one plantation to another, there are new orders could choose to rename them. And here in louisiana, we used the example of perez solomon northrup, was famously 12 years a slave they made a movie about it. The reason he was 12 years asleep in louisiana and lost under that time was because he was never sold under the name of solomon. The first person are sold and sold him under the name of plett. He was living as 12 years is a slave under the name of plot, which was not as given name. That is an experience that a lot of people had and you can see that written in various narratives. But even though there is this problem of peoples names mean take an eye from them, there are a few people who remain here who have african names. So here is a person named mingo, which is an african name. We also have someone named samba, and coacou. This is an islamic name, moussa, who was most likely a muslim. People who were traded into slavery in the americas, who came from north africa, were likely to have been exposed to islam through the treating of the arab world. There were longstanding trade networks. This is something that tells us a little bit about the religion and culture of people who came to the new world at slaves. People who came from widely disparate ethnic religious groups, people who came to the americas enslaved were in some cases muslim, in some cases catholic. The kingdom of congo was officially catholic already by the 15 hundreds. Some people wouldve been bringing their indigenous cause mola jeez. Especially in louisiana, there was a connection with the caribbean. A lot of the ships made stops off in the caribbean before coming into the mainland, of the United States, and so they are again, there was another chance for that kind of blending and synchronous im with west african and caribbean religions theyre coming into louisiana. Its also important to note that these people were selected by slave traders for specific skills and traits that they had. So most of the people enslaved in louisiana, about 60 , were gambian in origin. And people came to different parts of the u. S. As slaves for different reasons. A lot of that had to do with the crops that they were familiar with growing. The very first two slave ships that came to louisiana, in 1719, the captains of those ships were under orders to go find skilled indigo growers, because they were trying to establish an indigo economy here in louisiana, and the european traders did not have, the european planters did not have the skills to plant into grow. It wasnt one in europe. They had to go find people who already knew how to grow it, who already knew how to process indigo, which is a very complicated process and who already knew how to build those skills. Same thing with rice. There were skilled rice growers who were brought into louisiana and also into south carolina. So you find these very directed trading, going along the western coast of africa, going into specific markets in the United States to fill the plantations there and create that crop wealth. So, most of the people here in these early years that we can see, were coming, as we said from west and central africa, a few people born in the caribbean. Who had already been coming from long trading their. But most people are coming internationally. And so, something that is important to note about the Movement Across the atlantic during the time of the atlantic slave trade is that the vast majority of settlement of the new world was african compulsory settlement. Of all the people who crossed from the old world to the new world until 1807, four out of five came from africa. The vast majority of movement was enslaved africans being forced on ships and across the atlantic. And they are not really good estimates about the actual number. The best historian who has done that work is david altus, has come to the figure of about 12. 5 Million People, not including people who didnt make it, people who died en route to the boat. About 12. 5 Million People involved in the middle passage. And this is an enormous diaspora. Of that 12. 5 Million People, less than 5 actually came to the territories that became the United States. The vast majority of movement into Slave Society in the new world was into the caribbean and into brazil. In the United States, we outlawed the International Slave trade in 1807, which did not fully cut it off, but it significantly lowered that movement. Because people were still being pirated and being smuggled into the United States. The last slave ship is estimated arrived in the United States around 1859 to 1860, that is really just right up to the end of the civil war, people were still being sneak in. But it did cut off the majority of that trade, and this is an interesting time around 18 with seven, that at the exact same time, the lands down here in the Mississippi River valley, and we are just beginning to be developed. So the louis at Louisiana Purchase happens, 1803, 1807. You cant get any more slaves into the United States. And so, at the same time the people are buying up large tracts of land and really increasing their needs and reliance upon compulsively laborer slave labor, they didnt have a supply of enslaved people coming from africa. And so we can see that this changes the culture here, and what happened is that a very robust and domestic slave trade developed in the wake of that. And so we can see this happening on our well here, where you can already see them trickling in, there are a few people born on what is called the east coast instead of in the old world or in the caribbean, and on the reverse side of the wall, you will see a large collection of them. , so here, all of a sudden, all of these people are listed east coast. East coast is probably virginia. And you can see that they came from an english owned plantation by their names. Ed when, perry, clean, jack, tom, sam, they no longer have french or spanish names. Youre not seeing as many african names. You see a lot of people coming from english owned plantations. The domestic slave trade was an enormous movement of people across this country. In total, from after the conclusion of the International Slave trade in 1807, 1 Million People were moved from the upper south, and the upper south is virginia, maryland, tennessee, north carolina, south carolina, a little bit but mostly centered in virginia and north carolina, and 1 Million People were moved down the river to louisiana, alabama, mississippi, where there was large scale plantations. So to give you an idea of the difference in labor, i can from north carolina, a lot of our plantations that we had in north carolina, tobacco plantations, tobacco is really awful for the soil. Fields have to lay fallow for a very long time to recover after growing tobacco. And so it really cuts down on the amount of land that they can work and also, they needed smaller scale labor. A lot of the plantations there, they had 25, 50 slaves. Here in louisiana, we had 101 of this plantation and thats actually on the smaller. And just very close by, there was a slave labor force of 750 enslaved people. You can see that there was a greater need here for large scale labor. And in the upper south, they had a Larger Population of women, they were it will to encourage family units and family growth, part of the value of an enslaved woman was her reproductive potential. And flavors talked about this by using the word increase. If a woman were to be let say, given to another Family Member, in the will, they would give sally and her increase. Sally and all of the potential children that she could have forever. And her childrens children. All of that reproductive potential belonged to the person who owns that woman. So there was great value in encouraging the growth of families because they can make exponentially more money on selling off those children. So the majority of people who came down from the upper south were in their late teens to early twenties, and the prime of their working life, they were born and raised on plantations in the upper south. And then most of them marched over lent. Most of that movement was overland. Some of it was on a river boat coming down the mississippi. Some of it was on boats coming down the atlantic seaboard and into the gulf of mexico from there. New orleans was the heart of that great. New orleans was tied to virginia, to alexandria, virginia. And there was a constant flow of people coming down to new orleans to be spread out to the territories from there. This is where you can see all of that happening. On this plantation, we have an oral history given to us by the descendants of one of the people enslaved here. The describes this process of being taken from the upper south and sold to the lower south. Anna is a girl who was born on the east, probably virginia. And the story about anna is that she was purchased for this plantation to be a gift for the lady of the house, who had no children of her own. Anna, as the family has related to us, lived inside the big house and would have had an interesting relationship with the family. People who lived in the big house who were slaves often had a strange kind of relationship that we cant really understand today. She was a slave and wouldve been treated as such, but also would have been very close to the family as well. And the reason why that is significant is because of her son Victor Haydel he was born about in the year 1835 when and it was a young woman. And his mistress, miss seidel had a brother and twang, who impregnated anna. We dont know, this was so long ago, we dont know if and it was raped, by antjuan, or if they had some kind of relationship, although for enslaved women, there was no such thing as consent, because they did not own their bodies. And so, victor was born of a final Family Member and an enslaved woman, as listed on her document was a mixed race woman. And so viktor would have been considered here in louisiana what they call a quad ruin one quarter african descendant and one quarter european descendant and enslaved by his own family this is one instance that we know of of that we know of an all of these 54 people over 100 years of ownership of the haydel family, we know there were many people more born here of enslaved mothers and White Fathers and this kind of thing was common throughout the south and those children born of those enslaved women belonged to their own family and would not necessarily be treated any better and in many cases, you can read the narratives of where those children would be treated just a little bit worse, because usually, there was a white wife somewhere in there who understood where the children were coming from. The separations between enslaved people and in slaverys were not really there. There was a lot of mixing in terms of sexual assault, in terms of actually ships. Certainly here in louisiana, a lot of free people of color existed here because of consensual relationships, where enslaved women would then be freed and given their own property. Louisiana has a different classes created here, free people of color and also people enslaved by their own families as well. This is called the gwendolyn l. A. , and in this memorial, we have transcribed the names of 107,000 people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana through the year 1820. This is based on a database that hall, a historian, put together and that history ends in 1820, there is talk of extending into 1865. 107,000 people are inscribed here. We have just their first names. These are mostly coming from seal documents. Weve also done, we recorded a little snippets from the works Progress Administration slave narratives. In this area, we allow people to walk through on their own, and just take a few minutes to reflect. And read those names and those testimonials. This is the last memorial that we visit before we move into the historic grounds of the plantation. This is called the field of angels. And we put this memorial here for 2200 children who died enslaved in saintjean the baftas parish, the parish that we are in here at the whitney plantation. It is centered by a sculpture by Brad Moorehead is from mississippi, and this is called coming home. We have along the walls here, the names, did of death, ages and names of the mothers of all of these children who died. And these are recorded in the church records. So our historian did the research and pulling those records out of the church and recording them here. Heres a large collection of people that are not listed with any name whatsoever. These are all people that are just listed as little sleeve, nick roe slave girl, knee grow slave boy. Some of these people who have no names were perhaps too young, they died too young to be named, but sometimes we see this notation when people were two years old or three years old, people who definitely had names, but even in death, or just when they were born, they were born into a lower class of course, as unsafe people. And it was not seen is important enough to record the names that they had were to look into it to find out what the name was in. Life so, the way the plantation was for the longest amount of time, a sugar plantation. Today, our sugar fields come right up to the edge of where we interpret. Historically, the land had a sugar mill on its site as well. So the people who were enslaved on this land worked in the fields, and probably the majority of them would have been occupied in sugar. So they worked in the fields, they also worked as domestics, as herdsman. This is kind of like a little village, all of the jobs that needed to sustain this group of 100 plus people, they were done here. They made all the food, they grew the food, and also worked on textiles and things like that, carpenters and the like. Sugar processing happens in the end of the year. The growing season here, currently it is early october. Sugar is still very much growing and it is going to continue to grow until late october, or early november. The goal with sugar is to have everything processed and done by christmas time. Christmas day, they want the entire field done and granulated. These candles were used in the granulation of sugar. We brought these catalyst in from other places, but historically, and our sugar mill, there wouldve been eight candles like this, and they would go from large down to small. You can see that this has a lip on it. So these it would be sitting in a brick structure and then open on the bottom, where there would be a fire underneath. So the goal with these candles is to take a ground down sugar stocks, they would grinds all of the cane using animal power and then using a steam engine later on, they have steam engine, they would take the juice that comes out of that sugar cane and boil it in these giant coddles. These would have to be tended, 24 hour day process for about one month, and the people who worked in making sugar would be standing next to catalytic this using long handled ladles and physically scooping the juice from one kettle to the next, to the next, to the next, and then putting it in cooling pans where it would granulated. This, as you can imagine, would be very hot and dangerous process. They were boiling sugar sap, its sticky. So not only would it get crusty and attached to the bottom and burn, which made an inferior product, it could also bring the people who are making the sugar. It was dangerous in that way. And they worked in shifts, 24 hours a day. The thing that makes trigger difficult and unique in the cash crops are in the new world is that it had to be processed as soon as it was cut. You couldnt, in other words, just cut it in and sit on it for a little while, and then process it later. As soon as it is cut, it starts to die, and it is not going to make good sugar. So that is why that harvesting season, were grinding season, was extremely grueling. And all of the physical labor done outside was also done in a very, very cold time of year. Louisiana does get bitterly cold in november, humid cold, in november in december, and enslaved workers will be working outside constantly in that. The whitney plantation does not have original slave cabins, as i mentioned. All of them were torn down by the 1970s. By the end of the civil war, there were 22 slave cabins on this site, and they looked about like this. So this is pretty typical. And its essentially a duplex. It would be a family on each side, or, if not a real family, a fictive family. Which was common in slavery, for people to form these kind of fictive kinship bonds. The slave cabins that were on this site were arranged the way that we have brought these in. So there would be two rows facing each other with a central courtyard in the center. And so you can imagine that that wouldve created a kind of community there. And these were also set back from the plantation big house by about about a half a mile. And so there was some physical distance between where the haydel family lived and where the enslaved workers lift. And that distance is important in creating some kind of a sense of autonomy, although their movements were still controlled. People could not leave the plantation without a pass. An overseer would be monitoring them at all times at all stages of the day, to make sure that they got up at the right time, they were at work at the right time, and they were back at the cabins at the right time. Thats it, especially because of the distance and there is so much space here, there are a lot of plantations out here on the river wrote, something that was very common in particular in this region, was something that they called running away just a little bit. Becoming a maroon for just tonight. Especially since families tended to be separated, and that wasnt even necessarily a Long Distance, if a husband and wife or a neighboring plantations, they might be away from each other for maybe two miles or three miles. And so running away for just that two miles to go see a loved one and then come back before don, is something that was extremely common. But that was all done with a certain degree of risk. Because if they left and were caught, even if the intended to come back, they would be considered a runaway and could be punished for that. Enslaved people would be in the cabins mostly at night. Their workdays stretch from what they said was cant see to cant see. So in other words, from dawn until dusk. They would be out of their jobs and then come back to the cabins at night time. Nighttime back at the cabins would be a time for communion with people who were there, the families, the fictive families, and also food preparation. Enslaved people were given russians by the plantation owner. Typically, the most common thing that you can read about in slave narratives are corn meal and bacon, bacon would be essentially five back. Pork belly, lots of fat, not a nutritious cut and not considered really the high cut, the good cut that the family would be eating. They would also receive things like intestines, peak feet. These are all things that have of course been sustained for a very long time in southern cooking, but have their roots in the those kind of lower cuts that were given to enslaved people during slavery. Also, very common in terms of the food ways of enslaved people, are things that originated in africa, black eyed peas, watermelon these are things that the things that came to the new world within safe people, oprah, which is important here in new easy enter for making gumbo. And so people brought with them their african food waves and supplemented at the best way they could with the ingredients that they had here. People cooked in their cabins. There were usually fireplaces in the cabins where they could prepare meals but in a place like southern louisiana where its very very hot, a lot of the time we imagine that they were preparing almost a campfire outside. And they didnt have that smoke and heat inside that cabin. The furnishings and cabins were across time and space. And all of these things are going to be different on different plantations. The way people were treated, was different from plantation to plantation, and also different regionally as well. What we have represented here are a few things that you can read about in slave narratives, where people talk about the types of furnishings that they have. So a rope bed like this, something thats common. And this is basically just planks with ropes attached and then what we have here is weve shown so that you can see, we have this rough kind of fabric with hay in the middle, so you can see how thats constructed. And louisiana, it was also common to use moss, spanish moss for stuffing for a bit. Another thing that people didnt have a bed, people talked about just making appellate on the floor. And that is something that a lot of people experienced under from plantations again, solomon northrup never described sleeping on a bed for 12 years. He described sleeping on the floor. People would be treated differently in different places. Thats like this, that are about the size of a a full bed today, this would be a bed for an entire family, children, mom, dad, theyre all there together and all sharing a space. You can see that there is not a lot of space in these cabins. There wouldnt be much of a sense of privacy, what we would think of as being appropriate in a family and being private. All of that living was done in just a couple of rooms with everybody together. Look this is an 1868 jail, that we brought in from gonzales, louisiana. This is not a slave jail, built in 1868, it is one of the few years after the conclusion of slavery. But we brought it in as a learning tool so that we can see the types of typical spaces where enslaved people were confined, especially leading up to sales. This is a very typical design of the era. You can see, there are a few extant photographs of pens that were at the back of auction houses, that are very similar designed to. This typically, in an auction house in something that you would say in the city of new orleans, there would be a front room where the auction would take place, and then in the back, a small courtyard, with a row of cells and closed in a courtyard, so people can come out during the day. And then sleep in the sales at night. In addition to pens that were used in the marketing of enslaved people, there were also slave jails. In the city of new orleans, and the Central Business district, there were two dozen slave jails at one time. Additionally, enslaved people were locked up at the state penitentiary as well. So all of the same rules applied to enslaved people, if they were convicted of murder or theft, or any of those other infractions, they could be locked up just the way that every person would, but of course, a lot of the punishment was done in a sort of extra legal fashion on a plantation. Plantations did also have jail like structures, sometimes, where people could be confined as punishments. But typically, they were not iron structures like this, they might be made of wood or out of break, or people might be confined say in a barn, or extra room somewhere. That kind of thing confinement was very typical. A lot of people who were enslaved in the state of louisiana would at one time or another experience being sold at an auction, especially since so many people who were enslaved in the lower stuff had come from the upper south. So they had been sold off of a plantation and then purchased by a slave trader and brought down to new orleans to be sold at auction. This whole transaction of moving people from one part of the country to the other was to sell them, its something that kind of elucidates the Market Forces behind enslavement. This is not just a southern situation, of course the rug goods that we are producing in the south supplied the northern and southern factories but the slave trade itself involved insurance agents, mortgage brokers, bankers there is a lot of industry northern and southern, involved in that. To give you an example, if a slave trader working out of virginia and new orleans, and here that would be, the biggest one was isaac franklin, if he purchased an enslaved person off of a plantation in the upper south, he would sometimes pay full cash value for them, but it would be a wholesale rate. You can see how people work modified, they were paid a wholesale rate in the upper south, if he did not have the full cash amount, he could put a mortgage on that person. They would be insured for the time that they would being transit it down to the lower south. Then brought, he would cover all the expenses of moving them down to the lower south, and then sell them here at a retail. Right. At about 100 percent more than what he bought them for. In the upper south. If he had a note, a mortgage, on the person he would pay off the mortgage and prop pocket the profit. And so the same way that we can modify houses, and cars and livestock, these are the exact same Market Forces that were in the car modification of human beings during the time of enslavement. And all of that is being transacted in this kind of calculated way, but on the ground floor, on the actual human side of it, with that story is is of course separation from loved ones. When people were being locked up in pence, similar to this, they might be with their family and about to be sold away from their family. Or they had just traveled a Long Distance away from everything that theyve ever known. And all of that is being done at the price to. People who are locked up and slave pence also sometimes had to wait for long periods of time for the market to be an appropriate value to sell them at the highest return. So if people made to an auction house in new orleans in the price of slave was low, sometimes, they would just have to wait. They would keep them locked up in a jail, or keep them locked up in about the had come on, and just wait for those markets to improve so that they could make a higher return on their investment. As far as the actual dollar amount where people were being sold for here, in louisiana, a good rate that you see pretty commonly is about 900,000 dollars. For somebody who was skilled, that might go up to 1500 dollars. And there is another sort of see the underbelly of the slave trade which is called the fancy trait. Fancy women and fancy girls who were considered beautiful and who might be used as concubines or sex slaves, they could be sold at that higher rate, that 1500 or even 2000 dollars. And we are talking about the 19th century money. So when you translate to today, its an enormous amount of money that people were spending on those individuals. This area that were standing in right now is the whitney plantation historic district. And this is where we have the highest concentration of original structures, all centered around the 17 nineties big house. Over here, we have the original site of the kitchen. And there was a kitchen here from, as far as we can tell, the earliest time, the construction of this big house. This structure is a little bit later. It was hereby about 1830. And it wasnt very Poor Condition when our owner, jon cummings, but the land in 1999. It was just about fallen over so he had to write to the building and rebuild the hearth entirely. A lot of these structures were really just falling into the ground. Haydel emigrated from germany, and found this plantation in 1752. His son built this big house and later it was occupied by his grandson. They operated it in a partnership until 1839, at which point the widow took over. The widow ran the plantation from 1840 to 1860. So really, the longest period of ownership was a woman, and those were also during the most profitable years. And also during the time of the greatest, the largest slave operation, was under the ownership of a woman. The kitchen, where we are right now, is where the enslaved cook would prepare meals for the huddle family. And we have record of a couple of cooks that were listed on different inventories. Murray and murray joseph. Cooks would be assisted by domestics, people who lived either inside the big house or close to the big house and assisted the family. They would do things from cleaning inside the big house, to helping out the cook and moving food, serving it in the big house for meals. The cook stay in a kitchen like this would start very early in the morning, because all of the preparing of food, all of the cooking was actually done on the hearth. This is called hearth cooking. She would build a fire in the center here and most of her cooking is again, not done on those flames but done on the embers that are built up by that fire. So the reason that she would have to start so early is that she would have to get a large supply of coal, by burning lots and lots of wood, and then raking the coal out onto the hearth to prepare food. We have a couple of examples of ways the people prepared food on the coal. This works almost like an i. You put a flat bottom pot there. But we also have something called a spider pot that its built with lakes. The colts go underneath and then there would be a top here to retain that heat. And the coal would go on top of the pot as well. You can see a good example of this right here, where this is constructed with almost like fingers coming up to retain all of the coal on top. A lot of the cooks day and preparing all of the various food that the family wanted to eat, would be spent bent over pots like this, or crouching down, trying to get close to what she was preparing. Anything that we prepare today say in an oven, or a slow cooker could be prepared in putts like this overall hearth. It basically creates like a dutch oven. And so we know that the food that they were eating here would be a cultural mix. The family was german descended but this was french louisiana. There were native american ingredients, african ingredients. And if you think about the food ways of south louisiana, there is kind of an african center. There is Something Like gumbo, for instance, is an african food but it has this kind of european and native american vocabulary as well. But they would also be preparing any types of foods at the family has specifically requested. And we have archeological remains of cow, apparently an extraordinary the amount of beef. And county found on the site. This tells us that the koch was doing everything from butchering all the way to preparing. Food we also found remains of turkey, freshwater drum, turtle, pork. The freshwater drummond the trailer particularly interesting because again those are expressing this food ways of south louisiana. This is a raised creole cottage style of architecture. Built in 1790, it seems to have been built into campaigns, or perhaps race at a later time, but it was complete to this configuration by 1805 and then just briefly had a quick renovation in the 18 thirties to add storminess. Other than that, it remains pretty much unchanged. So the house was lived in by three generations or excuse me, two generations of haydel, and after slavery, a number of different families lived here when it was operated as a wage labor farm. Free labor from. So, we are going to enter into the ground floor and any domestic slaves that worked on this plantation would come into this house through the back. So we have made a choice to enter the house for the back, as enslaved people would enter it the, front of the house is really where you get the kind of grant vista. But the back is really more of the labor center. There is a path that cut all the way from the kitchen to the back and enslaved people would go into a pantry over here, to prepare the food for plating and service and then take it into the dining room. So we are in the dining room. Of the whitney plantation big house. The dining room is on the ground floor, and the floor has spanish tile, which we had recreate it, we did find fragments of the style here. When we were doing the restoration. And this kind of speaks to the role of the Mississippi River in these peoples lives. And slaved people built the levees along the mississippi where we are set back from the Mississippi River and not terribly far. All of the people who were enslaved on the particular plantations along the river wrote, were responsible for building the levee and maintaining the levee right in front of that place. But there was a lot of kind of give and take and there was a lot of flooding, so some of these big houses and this may have been one of them but we dont know, some of them were originally open air on the ground floor to allow for flooding. And later enclosed as the levees improved. This is the dining area where enslaved people would serve meals. We have furnished this big house using not any original pieces from this family, because they stopped living here in 1867. But we have inventories, taken a two points in the 19th century and we have used those are guide. Basically, like an insurance adjuster, they are preparing for sale, they would just walk room to room and record everything down to each individual fork. Over to the side, we also have another pantry that would be used for service. And around the corner, on the floor, there is an interesting feature which is a olive jar, sunk into the floor for refrigeration. This is original. So the enslaved domestics who worked here, could use this to cool down food or wine or things like that that they wanted to serve, preparing a chill to desert, that would be a good place to help a child before service. The oaks in the front of the house are actually not original. They are only about 50 years old, added much later. And the best thing we know is that in a photograph in the 1920s, there was a fence coming up kind of close to the house and there were gardens coming right up against the front of the house. Which is really kind of an oldfashioned configuration for landscape design. So that would be sometimes food crops, sometimes flowers. Just a real mishmash of things grown right up against the house. This house, the way its constructed is typical of french and caribbean design, something that is a little bit unusual for people who live in areas settled by the english. Its that it does not have interior hallways or staircases. However, the porch here would function almost like a hallway. Each room comes out onto the porch, and so you could walk from one room on the end to one room on the other, coming just on the porch. Shotgun houses are also its important to note, african in origin. And the people who built these houses were of course, african and african descended slaves, building things that were familiar to them. Something that is really significant about the whitney big house is the original murals. Which are here. This is the only part that we have had reconstructed. Our conservator had to redo this pattern because it was so deteriorated. However, we do have the original on the posts here. These are from the 18 forties, this is from a time of great sugar wealth. And so that is why this is really significant. Some people in the 18 forties and 18 fifties built enormous mansions, and most of our visitors here are expecting to see Something Like tara, something that they have read about our senior movies. And by comparison, these are really pretty modest houses, but they were able to make enough money, using the forced labor of african descended slaves, to pay someone to come out and handpaint for marble on their baseboards, on their fireplaces, on the outside walls, on these posts. And all of this attention to detail, all of that cost a lot of money. And that money came from that forced labor, in the fields. So we are walking into one of the large bedrooms. And this has typical furnishing of the era. Mid 19th century. And also again has more of this decorative mural work on. The fireplace and you can see the pineapple motif here, and also the marbling paint on the fireplace as well. This is the familys home, the haydel family home, but enslaved people were in every one of this house, performing labor. In the bedroom like this, the haydel Family Members might have personal servants, people who sometimes in some houses, slept on pilots on the floor next to the beds of their owners. They would perform labor in this room like cleaning, of course, dusting, getting all of the clothing ready for people to wear, lighting the fire, and we have a bed warmer on the bed as well. In the wintertime, enslaved domestics would fill a bit warmer like that and coals and then run it underneath the sheets to get the bit warm before the family got in. Of course, also, enslaved people would would be tending to personal hygiene other honors as well. There were chamber pots in here that insulates domestic side to empty. Everything we start to finish was done by enslaved workers, including, of course, raising children. Any children who were raised in this house, any haydel children, would be physically nursed and cared for by enslaved wet nurses. Enslaved nurses usually slept in the same room as the children and formed a real bond with those children. This again, is a really interesting kind of relationship. One person is enslaved, and one person is the enslaver and yet there is an intimate bond there, that has this division right in the middle. The center salon also retains a lot of that original mural work and the most elaborate is on the ceiling. We believe that madam hideout had this work commissioned, she was the owner from 1840 to 1860. Her husband had died in 1839, so we believe that this may have been a commemorative piece. This room, its really difficult when we come in here not to just sort of gawk at how beautiful it is and theres a lot of really remarkable furniture the decor is really quite lovely and most visitors imagine himself as the people who would be relaxing they think it would be nice to relax like this but its important to think about the ways that this it would be a side relaxation for the height family but it would again be a sight of labor for the enslaved people. So one thing again, that we draw from solomon or thoughts narrative that we know is common is that if there were enslaved people who were skilled musicians, or a skilled in any form of entertainment, they might be called upon after their work in the field was concluded, 20 retain the family. Solomon north up was a very skilled fiddle player. And after performing hours upon hours of work, picking cotton in the sun and all you wanted to do is relax in his own cabin, he had to come into the house where he rented out to other plantations to perform fiddle for dances and balls all night long. He was able to make a little bit of money there, but you can understand that being forced or compelled to entertain when all you want to do is relax and be by yourself, would be another form of psychological torment for enslaved people. In the last big bedroom here, we have statutes that represent anna the little girl who was brought from the upper south and just as a reminder that these people lived inside the big house as well. And so we will go out from here on to the back porch, here you can see the and of those historic murals. These patterns, by the way, come from a standard french pattern book. A french pattern book, so this is a motif that was copied from the pattern book and applied to the wall by this painter, his name is canova. Our conservator came out here and uncovered all of this painting, you can see the condition it was in right over here, there are a couple of spots that she left that are dark. So that you can see how deteriorated it had been. And one thing thats interesting that she found that when she uncovered this, is something that is expressed a little bit of life after the civil war, you can see all of these scruples. These are children who lived in this house after slavery and it. Some of them are dated, these are heights, so here we have it says 14th of july, 1894. Lili into sent at ten years old, right here. The toussaint family lived here for many years after slavery and. It its interesting about learning the culture here. After slavery ended, this plantation continued operating as a cain and rice plantation. For many, many years. In the front of the house, close to the river wrote, we have the original plantation store. From about the 1890s. And Plantation Stores were another method of what, you could see them as a method of oppression certainly in these types of labor forms. These plantations would build stores, its kind of like a company store. You hear about that in the north. They would have the workers would have to shop there for all of their goods, but they could charge whatever price they wanted. And they reject that up. And then they would deduct that from the money that they would make working the fields. Sharecroppers are actually not common in sugar. Because you cant really show cropped sugar. You need a whole crop to make anything. You cant just throw this amount and get anything from it. So they had wage laborers. And the wage laborers on this plantation would live in the same slave cabins. Many of them would be the former slaves themselves, or their descendants. People were living in the slave cabins on the plantation into the 1960s. And working the same fields. We have a lot of records from the plantation store and we are currently beginning on a project to start processing those records and start doing oral histories with people who worked here in the 20th century. We had a whole different experience but some things stayed very much the same as they had been during slavery times. Oftentimes, the story of slavery and the history of African Americans in particular in this country, is kind of consigned to a special Little Corner of history, where is African American history, and it doesnt apply to anyone else. And i think in particular, the story of slavery is integral to the history of the United States. You cant understand the United States without understanding slavery, certainly not today, not in 1960, not an 1800. None of these things make sense unless you understand the forest migration of africans to into this country. And thats in terms of culture, in terms of economy as well. I think that this place is important because we dont talk enough about the realities of slavery. We dont talk enough about the inequality of African Americans and what they have faced in this country. And we dont talk enough about our role today in perpetuating that inequality. So its really, really significant, i think, and also, a lot of Historic Sites kind of address it in fits and starts. I think its important for people to come here and get a more complete understanding of slavery. Thomas jefferson interpreter bill barker, and brendan dillard of monticello, discussed adaptations of slavery has changed their
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