Animal Husbandry

The adaptability of the slaveholding, Southern United States—in terms of geography and climate—to cultivation of crops of various kinds, meant that plantation owners placed much more emphasis on crop production as a market commodity than on animal husbandry. In some places cattle were raised as a profit-making enterprise but generally animal products did not provide the high profit margins as crops such as corn, tobacco, and cotton.

Solomon Northrup, referencing his experiences as a slave on a Louisiana plantation, gave some insight into the low market value of cows in Louisiana around the 1840s. He claimed that the best cows were worth only about five dollars each. In terms of milk as a by-product with possible market potential, he argued that it was "unusual" for a cow to yield as much as two quarts of milk at any one time. Additionally, he said that the small amount of tallow (fat used to make candles, soap, and lubricants) harvested from cows was of a "soft, inferior quality" (Bracey and Sinha 2004, vol. 1, p. 138). Northrup, well known as a writer of a narrative that told about his twelve-year experience as a slave, had been captured into slavery in 1841 after having lived as a free man for all of his life. Northrup contended that the planters in his area chose to purchase cheese and butter shipped to the New Orleans market form the Northern United States, as opposed to commercializing the cow and its by-products. Animal husbandry, in any case, not as labor intensive as crop cultivation, engaged less of the labor of enslaved people than crop production. Northrup measured the labor input expended on corn and cotton production on the plantation where he was enslaved, as opposed to other activities, including caring of hogs. He stated, "Ploughing [sic], planting, picking cotton, gathering the corn, and pulling and burning stalks, occupies the whole of the four seasons of the year. Drawing and cutting wood, pressing cotton, fattening and killing hogs, are but incidental labors" (Bracey and Sinha 2004, vol. 1, p. 138).

THE FEDERAL WRITERS' PROJECT

The information cited from ex-slaves in this essay was compiled through interviews conducted during the late 1930s, in order to record the memories of the ex-slaves who were then of advanced ages. The interviewers were sponsored by the Federal Writers' Project, which was established during the Great Depression in order to provide jobs for writers, editors, and researchers. The Federal Writers' Project was part of the United States Works Project Administration. The slave narratives were later collected in George Rawick's The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography.

SOURCE: Rawick, George, ed. American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. 41 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972–1979.

Among the animals minded by slaves on Southern plantations were hogs, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, and guinea fowls; however, the hog was decidedly the most popular animal on the plantation. Lizzie Farmer, who had been enslaved on a Texas plantation, remembered that her "Massa" had hundreds of beautiful hogs. Hogs were bred primarily to provide food for the inhabitants of the plantations, and became the staple meat in the diet of enslaved people. On plantations, hogs were generally penned, and slaves carried out the routine task of feeding them, sometimes referred to by ex-slaves as "fattening" or "slopping." Bert Mayfield, who had been enslaved in Garrard County, Kansas remembered pulling "pusley"—probably a plant or grass of some kind—from a garden to feed pigs. According to him, the "pigs loved it mighty well" (Born in Slavery, Kentucky Narratives, vol. 11, pt. 1).

Bull dogs were put into service to chase down hogs and drive them back into pens when they escaped as communicated by George Henderson from Versailles, Kentucky. Henderson said that his owner had a "very bad male hog" which sometimes broke out of a ten-foot high pen in which it was kept. Henderson quipped humorously, "it would take all the bulldogs in the country to get him back" (Born in Slavery, Kentucky Narratives, vol. 13, pt. 1).

It was "hog killin' time" when hogs were slaughtered on the plantations sometime during the fall to winter seasons. The meat was then preserved to be rationed among the occupants of the plantation during the following year. According to Northrup, the slaves began the preservation process by cutting each hog into six pieces, then slating and laying the pieces "one above the other" on tables in a smoke-house. After two weeks, they hung up and smoked the pieces of meat. They continued the smoking process periodically during the year to prevent infestation of the meat by worms (Bracey and Sinha 2004, vol. 1, p. 138).

Cattle, including cows, steers and oxen, were also bred in plentiful quantities on plantations. Sam Polite from a plantation on St. Helena Island in South Carolina (Gullah country) explained that slaves had to roll cords of mud into the pens where the cows were kept. Women, especially, raked leaves from wood into the cow pens. The mud and leaves, very likely, served as receptacles for the dung of the cows which was used as plant fertilizer.

Care of cattle by slaves also involved driving them to pastures for feeding. Sometimes cattle stampedes would occur as the cattle got out of control, and a "roping" process was used in order to restrain the cattle. Slaves also had to be versed in the technique of "yoking" oxen that were used to pull plows in the fields.

In many places, plantation owners used an unsophisticated method of allowing pigs and cattle to literally raise themselves by roaming around—"free range"—in nearby swamps and woods. Hogs fed on "mast"—the fruit of beech, oak, chestnut, and other forest trees.

As previously indicated, bulldogs played an essential role in hog raising. Northrup explained that around September or October of each year, probably in anticipation of the approaching winter, slaves on the plantation where he was held used the dogs to chase hogs out of the swamps and confine them to pens on the plantation.

With regard to the "free range" cattle, Northrup commented that plantation owners in his area simply marked the ears or branded their initials on the sides of their cattle—a Spanish breed, small and spiked horned—and let them loose into the swamps, "to roam unrestricted within their almost limitless confines" (Bracey and Sinha 2004, vol. 1, p. 138). Northrup speculated that the name Bayou Boeuf, meaning, "the creek or river of the wild ox" most likely originated among the Louisiana French because of the large number of tame and untamed cattle that "swarm [ed] the woods and swamps of Bayou Boeuf" (p. 138). Bayou Boeuf was very likely located close to the plantation where Northrup was enslaved.

Horses were crucial to plantation management because they served as the major mode of transportation, pulling carts, carriages, wagons, and buggies. Evoking a feminist sentiment, Harriett Robinson of Bastrop, Texas boasted that women, perhaps including herself, broke in mules: "thrower 'em down and roped 'em. They'd do it better'n men (Baker and Baker 1997, p. 83).

Horses, sheep, and goats were driven by slaves in herds for "watering" and grazing. Especially in Texas, sheep were raised in large quantities. Andy J. Anderson (formerly Andy Haley), indicated that there were about a thousand sheep on the plantation where he had been enslaved in Williamson County, Texas. Sheep minding was assigned to specific slaves, as were all other jobs on that plantation. Wool was sheared off the sheep twice per year by the slave assigned to that job (Waters 2003, p. 117). Lu Lee, born on a plantation somewhere along the Louisiana/Texas state line, remembered that she and her sister herded sheep in the prairies, and took large shepherd dogs along for protection for wolves, panther and wild cattle (p. 11). Carey Davenport, also a Texas ex-slave, commented jestfully that as a sheep minder, the wolves never "tackled" him because, "They like sheep meat better'n man meat" (Rawick 1972–1979, vol. 4, p. 282). Slaves also provided themselves with additional food supplies by hunting wild chickens and turkeys; and wild game including rabbits, opossums, deer, and cows.

Additionally, slaves were involved in processing byproducts from various animals. Alfred Farrell, enslaved in Monticello, Florida, said that the fat of oxen and sheep was melted to make candles, and the leftover grease was put into a large box to be used later for soap-making. The feathers from geese and chickens were used to make mattresses (Rawick 1972–1979, vol. 17, pp. 48-49). Willis Williams from Jacksonville, Florida (born in Tallahassee), remembered that on one occasion he skinned a cow and sold the hide to a man named Pierce who used to buy hides and cure them (p. 5).

In their text The Sounds of Slavery (2005), Shane and Graham White emphasize the attention paid by enslaved people to various sounds on the plantation—sounds made by animals, sound coming from spinning rooms, sounds of plantation bells, and the sound made by slave children as they beat clothes with batten sticks on wash-day, for example. White and White also underscore the fact that the enslaved people themselves contributed their own sounds to the cacophony of plantation noises. Indeed, their duties relating to tending animals elicited from the slaves sounds that heralded the traditions of orality of their African heritage. John Davenport told his interviewer that he and other slaves on the plantation yelled, "co-winch, co-winch" to call cows; "co, co" to call mules; and "pig-oo, pig-oo" to call hogs and pigs (White and White 2005, p. 2).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, Lindsay T., and Julie P. Baker, eds. Till Freedom Cried Out: Memories of Texas Slave Life. College Station, TX: A & M University Press, 1997.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938. Online collection of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress. Available from http://memory.loc.gov.

Bracey, John H., Jr., and Manisha Sinha, eds. African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twenty-First Century, Vol. 1: To 1877. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004.

Hine, Darlene Clarke, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. African Americans: A Concise History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004.

Rawick, George P., ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Vols. 1-19. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972–1979.

Waters, Andrew, ed. I Was Born in Slavery. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2003.

White, Shane, and Graham White. The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History through Songs, Sermons and Speech. Boston: Beacon Press, 2005.

                                 Marguerite P. Garvey