These Waters
It is thought that these waters once covered a much broader expanse. In man’s never slaked thirst for servitude he strips nature first of adornment, then removes her own need for motion by tearing and cutting at her swaying trees. Gone is the flickering shade. Next he burdens and yokes her with crops and scars her with roads. Finally he buries her in buildings made of her own flesh. But we are not there yet, and that is only a fraction of the story. At the time this photo was taken the waters had just begun to be drained and diverted into the nearby fields, and the swamp provided a cloak for conspiracy. Yes, it seemed nature was taking sides.
Morality is a flexible and supple creature. Born and raised by man, morality serves his needs and tends to his whims. Nature has no such child, but the children soon to be born of her waters are known as Hero and Monster, depending on need or whim. One thing for certain is that these children were quick. They moved in the fashion and manner of a storm.
Land Use
Prevailing white culture saw a need to end the native’s status of existing on reservations, which were receiving state funds. The full force of a one-sided legal infrastructure forced the natives into agreeing to subdivide their reservations into private property. Suffering the destruction of collectivity, individual property owners succumbed to the nearly inescapable cycle of poverty. Most sold their parcels to the white landowners, who were waiting in the wings. Furthermore, laws were passed restricting the rights of natives to travel, to appear in court, or to inherit land, making it nearly impossible for those who would want to retain their land to do so. It is upon these lands the story remains imprinted.
As for the African Diaspora, they were categorized as livestock, as animals to work the land, and were often appraised at the same value as a nice sofa.
A palpable fear of loosing not only all that had been acquired by tyranny, but of punishment for profiting off this cruel construction resided in the hearts of masters. This fear was quiet at times, and at others flooded the heart. One white landowner was in the habit of gathering his slaves around him during lightning storms, having a superstition that God did not strike blacks with these heavenly bolts.
A contemporary described the weather;
Scarcely a breath of air stirred, and clouds of an inky blackness began to rise from the distant uplands.
Collective Amnesia
Through such mechanisms as eradicating a native language through repression, forbidding the worship of ancestral gods, holding and using the power to not only separate family or community, outlawing literacy, always having the specter and threat of violence as a feature of everyday life, the oppressor creates a state of collective amnesia for everyone, the ruling class included. No one could remember a time of freedom. By institutionalizing a profound injustice and normalizing atrocity even political perspectives are hard to come by. Like water or air this was one thread in the fabric of life. Evil (which is not of nature) might possibly live best in such places where horror is normalized.
By this time generations of humans had been born into slavery. Absent were most of the customs, the mother tongue, the perspective on life and living that their ancestors held. As for the race of “masters”, a kind hearted man or woman might find barbaric the treatment by some to their slaves, while they themselves would own slaves, propping up their own paper thin feeling of righteousness by their alleged good treatment of their own property. Whims and needs, whips and deeds.
From an early age the young boy had been told by his elders that he would be of no use to anyone as a slave, and that great things were destined for him. There was something special about him. His manners and disposition set him apart. It is said he could describe events that happened prior to his birth. He was told by spirits of the elements and spheres. Having been discovered to be great, he must appear so. And so he prayed to understand, to see, to know.
Inventory
Negroes
Joe $100.00
Matilda $80.00
Hannah $120.00
Rose $150.00
Innis $300.00
Sarah $50.00
Lucinda $250.00
Nelly $275.00
Sam $75.00
Low $50.00
Hannah $300.00
Stocks
7 sows $7.00
1 Bour $1.50
9 hogs $27.00
1 pr Bay Horses $240.00
1 bay mare $60.00
21 geese @.25 $5.25
1 fascio Beef(?) $15.00
1 Black Ox $12.00
1 Yoke Oxen $20.00
1 light Brindle ox $10.00
1 Buffaloe cow $6.00
1 do do cow $5.00
6 calves $4.00
The Bridge
A bridge is potent as symbol and strategic as material. Mythologies stress its value and decorate it with epic tales, while commerce maintains its upkeep. Suspended above space and water, it is said bridges provide safe passage between shores. They often provide a platform for falling. A bridge is as crucial for the living as the dead, and a fear of them is not uncommon. They are among the first structures destroyed in war. To control a bridge is to wield power. If a bridge can be said to connect ideas, thoughts and images, then to dismantle them is madness. A bridge signifies nature, tamed.
"I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven….and then I found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens…..and as the leaves on the trees bore the impression of the figures I had seen in the heavens, it was plain to me that the Savior was about to lay down the yoke he had borne for the sins of man, and the great day of judgment was at hand."
Not long after this vision, and fatigued with lack of sleep, the band of rebels headed towards the bridge that lead to Jerusalem, where they were turned back. The number of the rebels may have equaled the number of the dead. Could this have been an exchange of souls, similar to a hostage exchange between heaven and hell before the bridge was destroyed and the town of Jerusalem renamed?
COUP DAMAGE
Damage to the brain at the point of impact.
The report noted injuries to the neck and extensive hemorrhaging and injuries to the extremities, including abrasions to the left knee cap, left arm, left shoulder, right arm and right hand.
The autopsy noted extensive blunt force trauma to the head with multiple facial fractures, and soft tissue injury extending to the neck and upper chest with significant intracranial hemorrhaging.
The extremities demonstrated multiple superficial abrasions, and additional areas of hemorrhaging on the arms were noted.
The Trees did not bear witness, nor the hare that sat motionless in the dark of the night. The doe, the fox, the owl remained mute until well after dawn. Nature was taking sides.
Black Head Sign Post
In the days and weeks following the Insurrection hundreds of Black people, free and enslaved, were killed and tortured. Sixteen of them alone had been part of the rebellion. The cross road pictured is the intersection of Barrow Road and the Jerusalem-Cross Keys Highway, once locally known as Black Head Sign Post, named such because of the impaled head placed there in late august, 1831.
An Interesting Plea
Though he signed a confession detailing the motives, planning and activities of the insurrection, Nat Turner entered a plea of Not Guilty, saying he did not feel so. Hanging from this tree killed him.
Photos are from The Southhampton Slave Revolt of 1831
By Henry Irving Tragle 
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