Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
to act otherwise than they did; * * *—that the third clerk, Hermenegildo Gandix,
who before had been forced to live among the seamen, wearing a seaman’s habit,
and in all respects appearing to be one for the time; he, Gandix, was killed by a
musket ball red through mistake from the boats before boarding; having in his
fright run up the mizzen-rigging, calling to the boats—”don’t board,” lest upon their
boarding the negroes should kill him; that this inducing the Americans to believe
he some way favored the cause of the negroes, they red two balls at him, so that he
fell wounded from the rigging, and was drowned in the sea; * * *—that the young
Don Joaquin, Marques de Aramboalaza, like Hermenegildo Gandix, the third
clerk, was degraded to the oce and appearance of a common seaman; that upon
one occasion when Don Joaquin shrank, the negro Babo commanded the Ashantee
Lecbe to take tar and heat it, and pour it upon Don Joaquin’s hands; * * *—that Don
Joaquin was killed owing to another mistake of the Americans, but one impossible
to be avoided, as upon the approach of the boats, Don Joaquin, with a hatchet
tied edge out and upright to his hand, was made by the negroes to appear on the
bulwarks; whereupon, seen with arms in his hands and in a questionable altitude,
he was shot for a renegade seaman; * * *—that on the person of Don Joaquin was
found secreted a jewel, which, by papers that were discovered, proved to have been
meant for the shrine of our Lady of Mercy in Lima; a votive oering, beforehand
prepared and guarded, to attest his gratitude, when he should have landed in Peru,
his last destination, for the safe conclusion of his entire voyage from Spain; * * *—
that the jewel, with the other eects of the late Don Joaquin, is in the custody of the
brethren of the Hospital de Sacerdotes, awaiting the disposition of the honorable
court; * * *—that, owing to the condition of the deponent, as well as the haste
in which the boats departed for the attack, the Americans were not forewarned
that there were, among the apparent crew, a passenger and one of the clerks
disguised by the negro Babo; * * *—that, beside the negroes killed in the action,
some were killed after the capture and re-anchoring at night, when shackled to the
ring-bolts on deck; that these deaths were committed by the sailors, ere they could
be prevented. That so soon as informed of it, Captain Amasa Delano used all his
authority, and, in particular with his own hand, struck down Martinez Gola, who,
having found a razor in the pocket of an old jacket of his, which one of the shackled
negroes had on, was aiming it at the negro’s throat; that the noble Captain Amasa
Delano also wrenched from the hand of Bartholomew Barlo a dagger, secreted at
the time of the massacre of the whites, with which he was in the act of stabbing a
shackled negro, who, the same day, with another negro, had thrown him down and
jumped upon him; * * *—that, for all the events, befalling through so long a time,
during which the ship was in the hands of the negro Babo, he cannot here give
account; but that, what he has said is the most substantial of what occurs to him at
present, and is the truth under the oath which he has taken; which declaration he
armed and ratied, after hearing it read to him.
He said that he is twenty-nine years of age, and broken in body and mind; that
when nally dismissed by the court, he shall not return home to Chili, but betake
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