Strange True Stories of Louisiana
Page 26
IV.
SOLD INTO BONDAGE.
They were fever-struck and famine-wasted. But February was near its end,and they were in the Gulf of Mexico. At that time of year its storms havelulled and its airs are the perfection of spring; March is a kind of May.And March came.
They saw other ships now every day; many of them going their way. Thesight cheered them; the passage had been lonely as well as stormy. Theirown vessels, of course,--the other two,--they had not expected to see, andhad not seen. They did not know whether they were on the sea or under it.
At length pilot-boats began to appear. One came to them and put a pilot onboard. Then the blue water turned green, and by and by yellow. A fringe oflow land was almost right ahead. Other vessels were making for the samelighthouse towards which they were headed, and so drew constantly nearerto one another. The emigrants line the bulwarks, watching the nearestsails. One ship is so close that some can see the play of waters about herbows. And now it is plain that her bulwarks, too, are lined with emigrantswho gaze across at them. She glides nearer, and just as the cry ofrecognition bursts from this whole company the other one yonder suddenlywaves caps and kerchiefs and sends up a cheer. Their ship is the_Johanna_.
Do we dare draw upon fancy? We must not. The companies did meet on thewater, near the Mississippi's mouth, though whether first inside oroutside the stream I do not certainly gather. But they met; not the twovessels only, but the three. They were towed up the river side by side,the _Johanna_ here, the _Captain Grone_ there, and the other ship betweenthem. Wagner, who had sailed on the galiot, was still alive. Many yearsafterwards he testified:
"We all arrived at the Balize [the river's mouth] the same day. The shipswere so close we could speak to each other from on board our respectiveships. We inquired of one another of those who had died and of those whostill remained."
Madame Fleikener said the same:
"We hailed each other from the ships and asked who lived and who had died.The father and mother of Madame Schuber [Kropp and his wife] told meDaniel Mueller and family were on board."
But they had suffered loss. Of the _Johanna's_ 700 souls only 430 wereleft alive. Henry Mueller's wife was dead. Daniel Mueller's wife, Dorothea,had been sick almost from the start; she was gone, with the babe at herbosom. Henry was left with his two boys, and Daniel with his one and hislittle Dorothea and Salome. Grandsteiner, the supercargo, had lived; butof 1800 homeless poor whom the Dutch king's gilders had paid him to bringto America, foul ships and lack of food and water had buried 1200 in thesea.
The vessels reached port and the passengers prepared to step ashore, whento their amazement and dismay Grandsteiner laid the hand of the law uponthem and told them they were "redemptioners." A redemptioner was anemigrant whose services for a certain period were liable to be sold to thehighest bidder for the payment of his passage to America. It seems that infact a large number of those on board the _Johanna_ had in some way reallybecome so liable; but it is equally certain that of others, the Kropps,the Schultzheimers, the Koelhoffers, the Muellers, and so on, thetransportation had been paid for in advance, once by themselves and againby the Government of Holland. Yet Daniel Mueller and his children wereamong those held for their passage money.
Some influential German residents heard of these troubles and came to therescue. Suits were brought against Grandsteiner, the emigrants remainingmeanwhile on the ships. Mr. Grymes was secured as counsel in their cause;but on some account not now remembered by survivors scarce a week hadpassed before they were being sold as redemptioners. At least many were,including Daniel Mueller and his children.
Then the dispersion began. The people were bound out before notaries andjustices of the peace, singly and in groups, some to one, some to twoyears' service, according to age. "They were scattered,"--so testifiedFrank Schuber twenty-five years afterwards,--"scattered about like youngbirds leaving a nest, without knowing anything of each other." They were"taken from the ships," says, the jungfrau Hemin, "and went here andthere so that one scarcely knew where the other went."
Many went no farther than New Orleans or its suburbs, but settled, some inand about the old rue Chartres--the Thomas family, for example; others inthe then new faubourg Marigny, where Eva Kropp's daughter, Salome's youngcousin Eva, for one, seems to have gone into domestic service. Others,again, were taken out to plantations near the city; Madame Fleikener tothe well-known estate of Maunsell White, Madame Schultzheimer to thelocally famous Hopkins plantation, and so on.
But others were carried far away; some, it is said, even to Alabama.Madame Hemin was taken a hundred miles up the river, to Baton Rouge, andHenry Mueller and his two little boys went on to Bayou Sara, and so upbeyond the State's border and a short way into Mississippi.
When all his relatives were gone Daniel Mueller was still in the ship withhis little son and daughters. Certainly he was not a very salableredemptioner with his three little motherless children about his knees.But at length, some fifteen days after the arrival of the ships, FrankSchuber met him on the old customhouse wharf with his little ones and wastold by him that he, Mueller, was going to Attakapas. About the same time,or a little later, Mueller came to the house where young Eva Kropp,afterwards Schuber's wife, dwelt, to tell her good-bye. She begged to beallowed to keep Salome. During the sickness of the little one's motherand after the mother's death she had taken constant maternal care of thepretty, black-eyed, olive-skinned godchild. But Mueller would not leave herbehind.