Lived on the opposite side of the river in paulina, louisiana. This structure was donated to us about 10 years ago by the descendants of 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 sale document, which we have from the courthouse, they named their structure the anti they named their congregation the antiyoke baptist congregation. That message, being against the yoke or against slavery, is something thats important to our story here. And this is a Significant Church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it is really important here in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom after the end of the civil war. So we like to start our tour of the whitney plantation here in this building so we could kind of see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after the freedom came. Whitney plantation is the only Plantation Museum in the state of louisiana that is exclusively dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people. And so this land that were on right now is historically known as habitation high dell, and our owner John Cummings purchased the property about 15 years ago and began restoring the original structures here and moving in buildings like this one, like the antiyoke church. So we had to build in build some things here, restore existing buildings and bring in historic structures. All of these things help us tell the story of slavery. So when John Cummings bought the property in 1999, we didnt have any original slave cabins. They been torn down for some 20 years, and so we had to move in those from elsewhere in louisiana. This structure, like i said, just helps us round out that story of enslavement until after the civil war. And then we have some other buildings that were here at one time and weve rebuilt. At the whitney plantation, we have a collection of statues created by an ohio artist, woodrow nash, and he built these statues for us to represent people who were enslaved at the end of slavery and then later gave their testimony to Works Progress administration in 1930s. We use the narratives of slaves taken in the 1930s throughout our interpretation on this site. And so these are to kind of give life to who these people were. In the 1930s, when the Works Projects Administration moved across the south taking the narratives of formerly enslaved people, they were talking to people in their 80s, 90s or even 100s, who when they were slaves had been just children. At highest end, maybe 15 when freedom came, but most were under the age of ten. And so this is to kind of remind us who those voices are coming from. Those people were talking about their experiences in slavery as children and oftentimes recalling the things that happened to their parents and grandparents. But this plantation was founded in 1752. It was founded by ambrose hidel, a german immigrant came in the company of john law with his family from they sailed from the port of laurient in france and came here. In 1752 when he founded this plantation, it was much smaller. It was an 11 track and he grew rice and indigo as the main cash crops. And indigo was the significant cash crop of this land in the 18th century. He and his children continued planting in indigo until the late 18th century, beginning of the 19th century. In 1795, de bora was the first louisiana planter to successfully granlate a crop of sugar in louisiana. Were in a strange climate zone so it couldnt really nobody had been able to take it the full way before that. So in 1795 with the help of somebody from haiti, who had come over after the revolution, he granulated a crop and all of the planters kind of followed suit after that. Sugar could make more money than indigo. Indigo had crop failures and there was competition in the market. So right around the same time that the first sugar crop was being granulated, indigo was not a viable crop any more. So this plantation transitioned at some point after that by about 1805, it was planted in sugar. And it remains planted in sugar to today. Sugar is still a gigantic industry in south louisiana. And all around us are historic cane fields still planted in cane that are now sent off to the dixie crystals and domino sugar refineries. So ambrose hidel, who started this plantation in 1752, three successef generations were in the plantation always with the labor of enslaved africans and african descendant people. Over the course of the 100 plus years that the hidels owned this land, there were many generations of people who were enslaved here. And so the population would have shifted over time with Market Forces. The highest number that we ever have recorded at one single time of enslaved people on this land is 101. But we believe that is a little low. We think there were perhaps as many as 200 people enslaved at the highest point. We have records of people that weve found 357 over the course of the 100 plus years but there are a lot of people missing from that. So where we will start introducing that population is on our first memorial where were going to begin in memorials we built to people enslaved in the state of louisiana and on this land. This is the wall of honor. And on this memorial, we have recorded the names and some basic information 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 on this side, we have people who were born in the 18th century. But were missing the entire first generation of enslaved people here. We dont know anybody anyones name who was enslaved here from the very beginning in 1752. All of these people were born after the founding of this plantation. So there is an example of people already missing. This information comes mostly from sale documents. Peoples names were not always recorded when they were enslaved. So if you look at things like the census records, it will just include a tally of how many men and how many women. But it wont tell you any names. So we have to look for those names in sale documents and in the city of new orleans there was a notary involved, and so we go to the notarial archives to find sales and purchases of people. And all of the information that we have here, this biographic information, is also related to selling. So where someone came from, how old 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. So in louisiana for a very long time, it was illegal to sell children away from parents under the code. Before puberty, later on it was codified and it was before the age of 10. So you see things like this, this is agatha and sold with children and these are all people who are in a lot a lot being sold together. So we have basic information here. And there is really not a lot that this information could tell us but were able to tease out just a little bit. So one thing that we notice here is that all of the people, we could see that most of them were born in africa and that is listed here. Their places of origin. And yet their name,s like michelle, are european names. In this case theyre french. And in the early years we see 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, so that tells us something about that cultural annihilation, the way peoples culures were taken from them when they were sold in slavery in the new world. Slave traders often renamed people. And it is something that continued 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. Their new owner could choose to rename them. And here in louisiana, we use the example of solomon northrup, who is the famous man sold as a slave for 12 years, 12 years a slave, and the movie made about it. The reason he was 12 years a slave in louisiana and lost is because he was never sold under the name of solomon. The first slave trader who locked him up in a pen called him plat. So he was living for 12 years as a slave in louisiana under the name of plat, and that was not his given name. An that is the experience that a lot of people had and you could see that in various narratives. Even though there is a problem of peoples names being taken away from them, there are a few people who remain here who have ampkan names. So here is a person named mingo which is an african name. And we have someone named somba and we have coacou. That means a male born on wednesday. So these are names from west africa that tell us something about the circumstances of peoples birth. And also interestingly enough, here is someone named moesa, moussa. This is an islamic name. So this person was a muslim. People traded into slavery in the americas who came from north africa were likely to have been exposed to islam through the trading with the arab world. There were long standing trade networks. So this is something that tells us a little about the religion and culture of people who came to the new world as slaves. People came from widely disparate linguistic groups. So people who came to the americas enslaved were in some cases muslim, like moussa. In some cases catholic. The kingdom of congo was officially catholic by the 1500s. And some people would bring indigenous cosmologies. Before coming into the mainland of the United States, so there was, there again, another chance for that kind of blending and synchronization with west african and caribbean religion there coming into louisiana. And it is 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 sinoganian in origin. And theyve were here for different reasons. A lot of that had to do with the crops they were familiar with growing. So the very first two slave ships that came to louisiana in 1719, the captain 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 skills in planting indigo. It wasnt grown in europe. So they have to find people who already knew how to grow it and how to process it which have a complicated process and build the fields. And the same thing with rice. Skilled rice growers were brought into louisiana and 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 could ,from west and central africa, a few people born in the caribbean who had already been coming from long trading there. But most of the 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. So of all of the people who crossed from the old world to the new world until 1807, four out of five came from africa. So the vast majority of movement was enslaved africans being forced on ships and across the atlantic. You and there are not really good estimates about the actual number. The best historian who has done that work is david altas and hes come at 12. 5 Million People and thats not including people who didnt make it to the coast, people who were being driven from the interior and died en route and were not able to get on the boat and come across. So that 12. 5 Million People involved in the middle passage. This is an enormous difficunore. Now of that 12. 5 Million People, less than 5 came to the territory of United States. The vast majority into movement of 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, smuggled into the United States. The last slave ship it is estimated arrived in the United States in 1859 or 1860. So that is just right up into the end of the civil war, people were still being snuck in. But it did cut off the majority of that trade. This is an interesting time around 1807, that at the exact same time the lands down here in the Mississippi River valley were just beginning to be developed. So the Louisiana Purchase happens 1803. 1807 you cant get any more slaves into the United States and so at the same time that people are buying up large tracks of land and really increasing their need and reliance upon the compulsory slave labor. They didnt have a supply of enslaved people coming from africa. And so we could see this changes the culture here. And what happened is that a very robust domestic slave trade developed in the wake of that. And so we could see this happening on our wall here where you could already see them sort of trickling in. Theres a few people born on whats called the east coast, instead of in the old world or in the caribbean. And on the reverse side of the wall, youll 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 could see that they came from an english owned planation by their names. Edwin, perry, claim, jack, tom, sam. These are all english names. So they no longer have french or spanish names, not seeing as many african names. You see a lot of people coming from englishowned plantations. So the domestic slave trade was an enormous movement of people across this country. So 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 there, i come from north carolina, a lot of our plantations that we had in north carolina, tobacco plantations, tobacco is really awful for the soil. And the fields have to lay fallow for a very long time to recover after growing tobacco. So it cuts down on the amount of land that they could work. And also they needed smaller scale labor. So they didnt a lot of the plantations there, they had 25, 50 slaves. Here in louisiana, we had 101 on this plantation and that is on the smaller end. Just very close by. In a nearby house there was a slave labor force of 750 enslaved people. So there was a greater need here for largescale labor. And in the upper south, they had a Larger Population of women. They were encouraging family units and family growth. Part of the value of an enslaved woman was her reproductive potential. And enslavers talked about this by using the word increase. So if a woman were to be given to another Family Member, say in a will, they would give sally and her increase, sally and all of the potential children that she could have for ever, and her childrens children, all of that reproductive potential belonged to that person who owned that woman. And so there was a great value in encouraging the growth of families because they could 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 20s, in the prime of their working life and they would be born and raised on plantations in the upper south and most marched over land. Most of that movement was over lan. Some of it was on a riverboat coming down the mississippi. Some of it was on boats coming down the atlantic seaboard and into the gulf of mexico from there. But new orleans was the heart of that trade. So new orleans was tied to virginia and to alexandria, virginia, and there was this constant flow of people coming down to new orleans to be spread out to the territories from there. So this is where you could 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 that described this process of being taken from the upper south and sold in the lower south. Anna is a girl who was born on the east coast, 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, maria heidel, who had no children of her own. Anna, as the family has related to us, lived inside of the big house. And so would have had a interesting kind of 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 would have 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 heidel. Victor heidel was born in about the year 1835 when anna was a young woman. So annas mistress had a brother antoine, who impregnated anna. We dont know this is so long ago. We dont know if anna was raped by antwaan or if they had a relationship but for enslaved women there was no such thing as consent because they didnt own their bodies. So victor was born of a heidel Family Member and enslaved woman listed on her documents an american, mixed race woman. And so victor would have been considered here in louisiana what they call a quadroon. One quarter african descendant and three quarters european descendant and enslaved by his own family. This is one instance that we know of for certain of all of the 354 people, over 100 years of ownership of the heidel famil