Caption, Negres au Travail (blacks at work). Shows men and women with long-handled hoes, guarded by overseers with whips. The slaves are called to work by the plantation bell at 6 in the morning, each person takes his hoe to the field under the supervision of overseers, either European or Creole; in a single line, they work in unison while chanting some African work song; the overseers occasionally use the whip to increase the work pace; at 11 the bell sounds, they take a meal, then resume their work until 6 in the evening (p. 26).

Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny, Voyage pittoresque dans les deux Amèriques...(Paris, 1836), facing p. 22, fig. 4. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library)

French

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

NW0313

Caribbean--Martinique

"Field Gang at Work, Martinique, 1826", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed January 18, 2021, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1148