The Book of Negroes

Clarkson is likely in his twenties when we first meet him. He is “earnest,” with “a boy’s face,” “small nose,” and “pursed lips” (355). He is a Lieutenant in the British Royal Navy and goes to Birchtown in Nova Scotia to recruit free blacks and help start a colony in Africa. Aminata feels that he speaks with warmth and is humble about his knowledge. He cares so deeply for the abolitionist cause that he often has nightmares, and Aminata worries about him. She says of John: “I liked the man from the instant I met him” (358). They become lifelong friends, and when she is an old woman, she stays with him in London when she joins the abolitionist cause. He and his brother Thomas Clarkson are based on real historical figures, leaders of the British abolition movement. As an agent of the Sierra Leone Company, John Clarkson (1764-1828) was instrumental in the founding of the real Freetown, and served as its first Governor.

Aminata’s father, his real name is Muhammad; but every Muslim man in Bayo is thus named, so he goes by Mamadu to distinguish himself. He is the only one in the village to own a Qur’an, and he has gone to Timbuktu, a seat of Islamic learning, to study his faith. He is from the Fula tribe and makes his living as a jeweler. Mamadu is “one of the biggest men in Bayo,” and he can “outwrestle any man” in the village (19). He refuses to take a second wife, despite being permitted by Islam to do so, and values his wife’s strength above her great beauty. He is kind and liberal, teaching his daughter to read and write Arabic, not a common practice for girls. He wants her to grow up to be strong and smart, and he teaches her to be resourceful. Despite his murder at the hands of African slavers, Mamadu teaches his daughter lifelong lessons well, and throughout her many struggles, Aminata hears his voice guiding her.

Aminata’s mother, Sira is from the Bamana tribe, which means her marriage to Mamadu would have been forbidden, but for shifting rules during periods of invasion. She is a skilled midwife, strong and smart, and learns a few Arabic prayers from her husband. She teaches Aminata to speak her native Bamanankan, and also teaches her midwifery, taking her daughter along during her work. She is greatly respected for her skills as a midwife, for which she is paid well, and works both in Bayo and in neighboring villages. Sira “had a peaceful smile when she was happy and felt safe,” a smile Aminata remembers all her life (12).

He is “strong, gentle man” who is a “woloso,” a second-generation captive who is not a Muslim, and who belongs to the village Chief (16-17). Fomba is a great shot, so the Chief allows him to go hunting and he is excused from farming duties because he cannot quite grasp the techniques. The village children follow him around and tease him, but he does not mind. One of his favorite things to do is play with the ashes of a fire. He is constantly berated by Fanta, the Chief’s youngest wife. After he is enslaved, he is traumatized by the Atlantic crossing, and is sold with Aminata to Appleby. Once on the plantation, Fomba regains some of his senses, but he never regains his speech. Aminata makes sure Fomba’s skills are valued, and he is allowed to fish and hunt by the overseer. He is accidentally shot by a white patrol because he can’t speak and identify himself when called. 

The youngest wife of the village chief, she is a querulous, rebellious young woman. She mistreats Fomba and she thinks Aminata is not disciplined enough by her parents. Aminata does not like her, and neither does Sira. Fanta is in the same coffle of enslaved Africans as Aminata and Fomba, and they all travel together to the new world. During the slave revolt aboard the ship, Fanta throws Sanu’s baby overboard in a fit of insanity, and Aminata cannot forgive her. She is sold in Charles Town and Aminata does not see her again.

The man who will become Aminata’s husband and the father of both her children, Chekura is just a boy when they first meet. He befriends her when she is eleven years old and he is fourteen. He has been employed by the slavers for three years. He tries to help her, but at first, she “distrusts him utterly” (31). She does not understand why he is trying to connect with her, or why he wears “a permanent smile” during the march of the slave coffle (31). Soon she realizes he too is a victim, orphaned and sold to a cruel uncle who later sold him to the captors. The slavers promise to free him after the job is done, but instead, he is sent across the Atlantic with the other captives, and sold in the Charles Town slave market. He finds Aminata again through the fishnet, and they become lovers, marry, and conceive two children together, though they rarely have any time together living in the same place. He is kind, strong, and brave, and he is the love of Aminata’s life. He perishes aboard the Joseph, a ship travelling to Nova Scotia from New York, the ship Aminata would also have boarded but for being detained and arrested.

Sanu is an enslaved African woman who is heavily pregnant when she joins the slave coffle during the long march to the coast. She and Aminata converse in Bamanankan. Sanu is convinced her baby is a girl, because she stubbornly insists at coming at “such a bad time” (46). Aminata delivers the little girl, and Sanu names the child after her, as a mark of gratitude and respect. On the slave ship, Fanta murders the little Aminata by throwing her overboard, and a distraught Sanu jumps to her death after her child

Tom is “a tall, skinny man with hair the colour of an orange” that falls “straight down from the side of his head,” though he is bald everywhere else (58). He has blue eyes, an eye color Aminata has never seen before. He carries a rifle and a sword, but he tries not to use force when examining the slaves. When he notices Aminata’s prolixity with languages, he asks her to help translate during the inspections. He has “black teeth” and flaming red gums, and he is an “ugly man” who looks like “he is rotting from the inside out”; nevertheless, Aminata “spotted no hurting intentions” in his eyes (61). Later, he allows Aminata to bunk with him, and makes her care for his parrot. He gives her food and teaches her English words. He is attracted to her and tries to touch her, but backs off when she hisses at him. Instead, he brings grown female slaves into his bunk, and rapes them with Aminata in the room. 

Chief of the Sama in Africa, part of the Bamana people, he “spoke with an authority” that Aminata could not ignore, even in the stinking hold of the ship under horrific conditions (64). Aminata notes that “he spoke like my father,” and asks about her life (64). He tells her who he is, and asks her to visit him often, bringing information. He tells her to learn the toubab’s language but not to reveal theirs. He is also the leader of the disastrous slave revolt aboard the ship. After he is sold in Charles Town, Aminata does not see Biton again.

Aminata thinks of him as the “jolly abolitionist” because he is kind to her and has a “musical and enthusiastic voice” (99). Sir Stanley “stands short and fierce like an exclamation mark,” and he “frequently removes his wig to scratch his scalp” (99). Later, he will try to insist that he should be the one to write Aminata’s story, but she is resolute, and convinces him that she must write it.

A captive who joins the coffle in South Carolina during the forced march to the indigo plantation. Tala is from a different tribe and does not speak a language that Aminata recognizes. She and Aminata are yoked together, and they teach one another a few words from each other’s language, such as “food,” “water,” and “moon”; she and Aminata lay down together to sleep and warm each other (117). Though her language is unfamiliar, they share a bond.

An African womanwhom Aminata encounters on the second day of walking to Appleby’s plantation, Aminata recognizes that she is Bamana from the way she holds the pail on her head and the way she slings her baby low on her back. Aminata, desperate to reconnect with her homeland, greets Nyeba in Bamanankan, and the latter answers. Nyeba asks who Aminata’s parents are. She tells the girl that she is “daughter of Tembe, from Sikasso,” and that she has been in America for “five rains” (120). It is Nyeba who first tells Aminata about the “fishnet,” the secret message conduit that slaves use to communicate with lost family and friends (121).

When Aminata sees her first master, he looks “like he owned the world”—he has “a sharp nose, a thin chin, and hair as straight as parchment” (124). Appleby is portrayed as a typical plantation owner—his brutal rape of Aminata is par for the course, for he considers her his property. When she becomes pregnant with her first child, he brutally humiliates her in front of the entire plantation, burning her clothes and shaving her head. After he sells her baby, and Aminata stops working, he beats her, but she is intransigent, so he sells her to Solomon Lindo. In Book Three, Chapter 13, he reappears to swear out a warrant for her arrest, but his claim is disproven and the judge throws him out of the courtroom.

Aminata first sees Mamed with Appleby when she arrives at the plantation. She notices that, although he is black, he is dressed better than the other slaves; he stands with the aid of a cane and helps his master examine the new arrivals. His mother is African, the daughter of a Fula chief, and his father was a white plantation owner from Georgia. His mother had learned to read from her master, who had promised to free her and her son one day. He has made a deal with Appleby due to his immense skill as an indigo farmer: he can eat what he likes, keep his home the way he wants, and get supplies and books from Charles Town, as long as he keeps his home locked and does not share ay details of this existence with the other slaves. When he discovers that Aminata is Muslim, like him, he befriends her and teaches her to read.

Georgia is Aminata’s first friend in the New World, and she is larger than life. We first meet her when Aminata collapses upon being inspected by Appleby and Mamed—she swoops in and scoops up the little girl, taking her back to her shack to nurse her back to health. Georgia teaches Aminata to speak English, and she teaches her the ways of the plantation. She protects her, and brings the girl with her on her healing and midwife jobs. She has “broken nails, calloused fingers and skin creased like a dried riverbed” (127), a “broad body,” a “broad nose,” and a strong will (125). It is she who names Aminata “Meena,” which is easier for native-born slaves to pronounce. Georgia takes Aminata into her home, a small shack, and the two of them live together. Aminata misses Georgia terribly when she moves to Chares Town with Lindo. Later, she learns that Georgia died peacefully in her sleep.

The slave who cleans the home of Appleby, she lives with her baby in a mud home apart from the other slaves, and does not speak much to anybody. When Aminata sees that Cindy Lou has a “baby slung on her back in the African way,” she tries speaking to her (137). But when she tells Cindy Lou about herself and about Africa, the native-born slave rejects her overtures.

A plantation Negro who rows boats, whittles, and whistles (138).Aside from Aminata, he is the only other black who is allowed in Georgia’s home, as they occasionally have sex. He comes to Aminata’s rescue after she is raped by Appleby, gives her an orange, and carries her home to Georgia, “like a father would lift up his own child” (162).

A Fulfulde woman enslaved on a different plantation who gives birth to twins with Georgia and Aminata’s help, a boy and a stillborn girl whom the three women keep secret so the babe can have a decent burial.

A few years older than Aminata, Sally “had a kind face, wide hips and full breasts” (163). Sally is too weak to do indigo planting work. After Appleby rapes Aminata, he turns his attentions to Sally, until she dies of the pox. Aminata feels guilty that another woman must have Appleby’s sexual attentions forced on her.

A Jew from London, he is the new indigo inspector for the entire Province of South Carolina. He visits the plantation one day and talks with the indigo workers, Aminata included. He eats no pork, which arouses her curiosity. He wears a yarmulke and has smooth fingers and clean nails, not the hands of a planter or overseer (170). He tricks Aminata into revealing that she has learned to read. He is impressed with her intelligence and offers to buy her but Appleby at first refuses because she is too valuable. Eventually, he does sell her to Lindo and a complex relationship develops between master and slave. He calls her a servant, not a slave, and teaches her about arithmetic and currency, so that she can keep his ledgers. He tells her they are both outsiders, and encourages her to read and to better herself. After Aminata is unjustly arrested by Appleby in New York, Lindo testifies that the man is lying, and then sets Aminata free. But in the end, she cannot forgive him for conspiring with Appleby to sell her baby.

A man with a huge belly and a red nose, he runs the slave trade in Charles Town and is the richest slave trader there. He tries to rape Aminata but the acts gets interrupted. He fancies himself an expert on which regions of Africa fetch the best slaves, and draws a crude map of Africa in order to demonstrate his knowledge to Appleby and Lindo.

Baby Mamadu, named for Aminata’s father, is her first child with Chekura. He is stolen in the night and sold to another plantation, but no one can find him, even in the fishnet. Later, Chekura learns that the baby died of a fever less than a year after being stolen from his mother.

Solomon’s wife, she is “tall, slender, very white,” and not much more than a decade older than Aminata (190). She has a thin nose and thin lips, and wears simple garb. She has a “high, excited” voice and “blueish” eyes that seem “friendly,” and indeed she is very kind to Aminata (190). Aminata helps deliver her baby, Samuel, and when Mrs. Lindo dies of a fever, Aminata mourns for her. She teaches Aminata to write well, and is a “gentle teacher” (207).

The Lindo’s first slave, she is five months pregnant when Aminata arrives. She does the shopping and the cooking, and manages the household. At first, she is threatened by Aminata, but they soon become fast friends. Aminata delivers Dolly’s baby, David. Both mother and son die in the same epidemic that kills Mrs. Lindo and her son. 

Aminata sees Jimbo sitting on a stump at the market in Charles Town, selling vegetables and spices in market square. 

Samuel Lindo’s short, squat, and severe sister, she hates Aminata and patrols Samuel Lindo’s house after he is widowed. When her brother goes to New York to transact business, Leah tells Aminata to fend for herself, for she will no longer give her food or supplies, as Mrs. Lindo once did.

The owner and proprietor of the renowned Fraunces Tavern, Sam agrees to help Aminata escape from Lindo. He becomes one of Aminata’s closest friends and staunchest allies. His father was a slave owner, and his mother was a slave who had been set free by him. His parents sent him to New York City when he was fifteen with enough money to invest in a business, so he managed restaurants, learned the business, and opened The Queen Charlotte, which he renamed Fraunces Tavern due to rising anti-English sentiment. A Negro, Sam is “tall well-built and light-skinned” (242), and is gracious, kind, and very savvy. The character of Sam is based upon a real historical figure, Samuel Fraunces (1722/23-1795), who was an American restaurateur and owner/operator of the real-life Fraunces Tavern at which General George Washington said farewell to his officers at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. His racial identity has been in dispute since the mid-nineteenth century, as he was commonly referred to as ‘Black Sam,’ but it is not clear why he garnered this nickname, as there are no known references where he is described as a black man during his lifetime. He could have been of West Indian origin, which may account for this nickname, but it is unclear. After the War, he went to work for George Washington, both when Washington was President, and later in Washington’s life. 

The slave of a rich New York gentleman, Thomas is a cello prodigy whom Aminata sees at a concert that she attends with Solomon Lindo. He is a “young black man with a neatly trimmed brown beard, and acorn-brown eyes” (248).During his mournful performance, she does not yet know he is enslaved; he has memorized the music, so he stares at her during the entire show. Aminata feels as if the music is speaking directly to her soul, and later realizes it embodies his yearning for freedom, as well as her own.

One of Aminata’s very first students in New York, he is a runaway slave who attends classes at St. Paul’s Chapel. He is a “tall thin man of about twenty” (259), and he befriends Aminata, helping her build her shack in Canvas Town, after she amasses enough money. Aminata writes his name for him so see, symbolically passing her knowledge to her people. He gives himself the surname “Mitchell” after he has arrived in New York, to symbolize his new life as a “free man,” one who has “two names, both for myself” (259).

A laundress at the British barracks, she is also one of Aminata’s first students at St. Paul’s. She has a crush on Claybourne, and after making sure Aminata is not interested in him, she goes after him herself. They marry and have a child together.

A “seventy-year-old white-haired Negro woman” who is one of Aminata’s students, she “learned the alphabet in three lessons”; she has belonged to the same white man for thirty years and has no wish to be free and live in Canvas Town (264). She attends class all summer, but when she does not show up, her friends go to her owner’s home looking for her. She has taken ill, and after she dies, they give her a proper burial and funeral.

Miss Betty’s crotchety owner, Mr. Croft is a Tory from Boston who allowed Miss Betty to go to St. Paul’s because she told him the lessons were religious instructions. He allows Bertilda and Aminata to visit the dying slave, and, days later, when she dies, he releases her body to them and to Claybourne to be buried in the woods with other deceased black people.

A British naval officer at the rank of Lieutenant when he first meets Aminata, he has been stationed in New York for about a year when the war breaks out. He has “blond hair, cropped and pushed to one side,” a “rugged face with staring eyes” (270), and a “singsong voice” (271). He meets Aminata when he saves her from an attacker who is about to rape her. He has heard about her and wishes to talk to her about “a private matter,” which turns out to be his pregnant mistress (271). Later, he and his superiors hire Aminata to work on The Book of Negroes. 

Rosetta is a thirteen-year old prostitute from Barbados who loves Malcom Waters and bears his child. She believes he loves her, too, but he wants to be rid of her so she allows Aminata to build her and her baby a shack in Canvas Town. Rosetta has “a creamy complexion and dark brown freckles all over her cheeks” (275). She first came to America with her owners and landed in New Jersey, where she fled one night, ending up in New York.

He is a British officer “who had stripes all over his shoulders, a regal bearing, and enough confidence to swallow up” everyone in his path (284). He is introduced to Aminata by Malcom Waters, and offers her a job working for the King, spreading the word to any blacks of Canvas Town who wish to emigrate to Nova Scotia. He offers her this job because he knows that she is a well-respected leader of the black community. She will register her people in The Book of Negroes, an actual historical document that records the names and descriptions of three thousand Black Loyalists. These were free and escaped blacks who worked for the British during the American Revolution, and then journeyed to points in Nova Scotia as free people of color. The Book of Negroes was recorded separately by American and British officers, so there are two versions of the document. The American version is in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the British version is in the National Archives in London. 

A print shop owner in Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, Theo believes in treating each person according to their merits. When he first meets Aminata, she is desperate and hungry having just arrived stepped off the ship. He gives her food, and information. He also helps Aminata by giving her a proofreading job, for which he pays her in food, newspapers, and information. He remains someone whom she considers a friend, although she is disappointed that he either could not or would not stop the Witherspoons from kidnapping her daughter.

Also called Preacher Man, or, more frequently, “Daddy Moses,” he first meets Aminata in the Land Registry Office in Nova Scotia. He is described as “an old Negro,” with “cheeks pitted with scars from the pox,” an illness which also blinded him; he wears spectacles with no glass in them, and has one “milky” eye and one clear one (315). He holds a cane of birch wood, and he is a Methodist preacher who lives in Birchtown with the other free blacks. He offers her shelter with his wife in their humble cottage until Aminata can get settled. He often talks to her about accepting Jesus, and becoming a practicing Christian, but after when she attends his services, she continues to pray in her own way. Daddy Moses is based upon a real person of the same name who lived during the mid-eighteenth century. He was a slave from Virginia whose master was Mills Wilkinson, but he ran away after the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, leading a group of slaves to freedom behind British lines. In New York, Wilkinson gathered a congregation, and he is listed in the actual Book of Negroes; he was transported to Halifax after 1783, when the British were defeated.

He is a young black boy who helps Daddy Moses, and in exchange the preacher “tends to his soul” (317).He and his mother are so poor that she has to kill their own dog so they can eat. Later on, he reveals to Aminata that she is the one who wrote his name in The Book of Negroes, and that all the blacks in New York revered her for the work she did on behalf of her people. 

The wife of Daddy Moses, she is a “big woman who carried a hatchet on her belt”; she manages the British rations with an eagle eye (320). She is a kind and extremely pious woman with a strict sense of decency who frowns on drinking and dancing, often criticizing the carousing that goes on in Birchtown. She and her husband make room for Aminata in their small shack when the latter first arrives in Nova Scotia, until she can get enough money to build her own shack.

Aminata’s and Chekura’s daughter is only three years old when she is kidnapped by the Witherspoons. Even as a baby, she has a strong personality, and her mother does not know what to make of her temper, for it is as if “all the wrongs of the world were pent up in her soul, waiting for an excuse to erupt” (331). When she resurfaces at the end of the novel, we learn that she has remained strong-tempered all her life, and is as determined as her mother. The eighteen-year old May has “cheeks smooth like ebony,” and she reminds Aminata of someone from her own village, even before she knows who May is (465). That morning, on her way to meet the King and Queen, Aminata had noticed her waiting in the throng of people—even among a crowd, May was somehow distinctive. Aminata is struck by “her dignity and…upright bearing” (462). Later, May describes how she would throw tantrums while she was an unpaid servant—a slave, really—for the Witherspoons, demanding to find her mother (466). May follows in her mother’s footsteps, working hard and saving money to become educated so that she can become a teacher of black children.

A white Loyalist whom Aminata meets at Theo McArdle’s print shop, she likes to hold baby May. She and her husband kidnap May during the white riots in Nova Scotia, leaving Shelbourne on a ship bound for Boston during the three days that Aminata returns to Birchtown to help her people recover from the riots. Later, we learn that she and her husband told May she was abandoned, and they did not allow her to walk freely in the streets of London, instead keeping close tabs on her. They come after her after she runs away, but they are rebuffed with the help of an abolitionist who tells them they have no right to detain May.

The husband of Alverna, he runs a whaling business. He and his wife are kind to Aminata and May, but they turn out to be sinister, just as Daddy Moses had warned, kidnapping May and bringing her first to Boston, then to London as their unpaid servant.

A “tall, thick-set man” who is murdered by an angry white mob during the Shelbourne riots in Nova Scotia, despite the fact that he is working hard sawing lumber and minding his own business (339).

A “short, stocky” black fellow from Annapolis Royal who served in the British Army in a special unit called the Black Pioneers (353), he was promised a land by the British, but grows tired of waiting for them to keep their promises. He comes to speak to Daddy Moses’ congregation, and is raising money to return to England to petition the British Parliament. He also intends to bear witness to the continuation of slavery in Nova Scotia (353). Aminata admires his both his boldness and his ambition. When the Black Loyalists finally make it to Sierra Leone, he is among them. He dies on the docks in Freetown, trying to save captured Africans from being enslaved. Peters is based on a real historical figure, known as Thomas Peters, but born Thomas Potters (1738-1792), a former slave from North Carolina who fled north to serve the British. He has been called the first African-American hero, and is considered a founding father of Freetown, Sierra Leone. 

The friendly proprietor of The King’s Inn in Halifax, he likes to stop and chat when he brings Aminata her breakfast and the morning paper. He also admires her literacy and accomplishments. 

He is the wily leader of the Temne people, with whom the British have negotiated for land in Nova Scotia, though later he demands further payment and is a shrewd negotiator. He will not talk to the blacks, only to Clarkson, and, albeit grudgingly, to Aminata. He sends his men to help the colonists disembark from their flotilla of ships, but he and his people loom threateningly over the Freetown colony. He is “bombastic,” and his broken English “made him appear…more as a buffoon than a threat,” Aminata thinks (381).

She is a black Nova Scotian whose husband had died on the voyage. Aminata catches her baby and for a while they bunk together in Freetown. She helps Debra set up a curio shop that sells Temne wares to visiting sailors. She is often paid in goods which she barters with the Temne, and they build her a lovely house on stilts. Her shop becomes so successful that she and her daughter Caroline live very well. She and Aminata become lifelong friends. 

A black Nova Scotian who brings supplies from Halifax and sets up a tavern near the docks in Freetown that becomes so popular, he can “divorce himself from the politics of the struggles between the settlers” and the British (392).

She is young Temne woman who barters with Aminata and haggles mercilessly. Aminata tries to talk to her in order to find an overland route back to Bayo, but Fatima will only answer “that is our secret” (394). She does not accept Aminata’s African heritage, and instead tells her she is a “toubab with a black face,” and therefore an outsider (394).

A Company man and Clarkson’s second-in-command in Sierra Leone, his boss is away and he must negotiate the conflict down on the docks of Freetown between slave traders and Nova Scotians. This confrontation results in the death of Thomas Peters and Scott Wilson.

The black Nova Scotian settler aims his own musket at the African slavers who march through Freetown. Because of his resistance, which the British view as disobedience, he is shot and killed by the Company men. 

Though we never learn the name of this little girl, she figures symbolically in the novel. She is part of a group of slaves yoked together in a coffle that is marched through Freetown with the permission of King Jimmy, despite Clarkson’s assurances that this type of incident would not happen. The little girl looks at Aminata pleadingly, and speaks in an unknown language asking for help. But Aminata can do nothing, and as the slave trader pushes her away, she has just enough time to give the girl her red scarf—all she can offer. After the confrontation on the docks, Neil Park allows the slave traders to leave on their boats; the little girl looks back at Aminata, symbolically representing all the children torn away from their families, Aminata included.

Another governor of the Freetown colony, he attends the memorial service for the slain men, Peters and Wilson. He stands quietly in the back, observing the service, and afterwards introduces himself to Aminata. He is a “tall” man, “broad about the shoulders, and big in the stomach in ways that made his breathing labored” (402-403). He has “bushy eyebrows,” as well as “dilated pupils,” and his breath smells of rum; but Aminata sees “kindness in his eyes (403). He is a naval surgeon who has worked aboard slave ships, which has in turn caused him to publically denounce the slave trade. He helps Aminata pursue her dream of returning to her village, introducing her to the men who can help her make the dangerous journey back to Bayo.

Alexander’s wife, she lives aboard a defunct ship with her husband. She is kind to Aminata and they become good friends. She is the only Company person who comes to Aminata’s home in Freetown. When Aminata decides to go back to Bayo, Anna Maria begs her friend not to undertake the dangerous inland journey.

Second-in-command of all the English forts, he is a whiskered, big-bellied man dressed all in white who meets Aminata and Falconbridge on the dock of Bance Island, and helps her plan her voyage to Bayo. Upon first meeting him, Aminata notes that “he did not seem like the sort of man who would press a band of red-hot metal into my chest” (413), a commentary on the differing gradations of responsibility for the slave trade. He asks Aminata whether her life of captivity has really been so bad, believing, like many whites, that the slave trade is not so barbaric. But when she tells him he has no idea what horrors she has lived through, and then shows him her branded skin, he is devastated. He vows to do all he can to help her return to her village.

The principle slave trader who barters with Armstrong for goods in exchange for slaves on Bance Island. He is known there as “the great Fula trader” (424) and is proud of his skills and reputation. Aminata does not trust him so she converses with him in Temne because she does not want him to know she can speak Fulfulde, the language of her father. He is a “tall, thin, serious man” who is around Aminata’s age (432). He travels with many armed men, but carries only “a knife sheathed to his hip” and “a Qur’an hanging in a leather pouch from his shoulder” (432-433). On the trip to Bayo, he reveals to his men that he is planning on selling her into slavery, not realizing that she can speak Fulfulde. Aminata calls him a man stealer, and cannot believe she was almost betrayed by a fellow Muslim.

The goatherd is described as both wiry and young. Aminata throws herself at his feet after escaping from Alassane. He gives her water and carries her to his village. She speaks to him first in Bamanankan, which he does not understand, and then in Fulfulde, which he does speak.

This little girl comes to visit Aminata when Aminata the protagonist is recovering in the African village, after her escape and rescue. They are both named Aminata, a fact which delights the little girl. She brings the elder Aminata water, and asks if she is a toubab (441). The little Aminata also functions symbolically to express the longing of all the African girls who are stolen from their safe, happy lives of freedom.

The village elder who talks with Aminata about her life and asks her to be his fifth wife, to which she replies, “I can only be the first, and the only” (445). She must cajole him, however, for she needs his help to leave the village and get back to Freetown. 

A botanist aboard the Sierra Leone packet that takes Aminata to England in 1802, he brings “crates of insects, reptiles, and animals preserved in rum, as well as diverse living species” back to England to exhibit to a curious public (448-449). In the end, all of his creatures, except the termites, die on the ocean voyage, so he scrambles to preserve them for the upcoming exhibition.

John Clarkson’s wife, she is very kind to Aminata in London, when Aminata lodges in the Clarkson’s home.

John Clarkson’s black butler, he is under orders not to disturb Aminata. She discovers this prohibition when she corners him one day for conversation. She asks to meet “the blacks of London,” but the abolitionists do not want her associating with them, for they are not well regarded and this would taint her lie story in the eyes of the public (454). She and Dante discuss the famous slave narrative, an autobiography written by Olaudah Equiano.

A “slender, well-dressed man” (455), Aminata respects him for his dedication to the cause of abolition, but she is adamant that she must write her own story, not he or his men. His character is based upon the famous English politician, philanthropist, and leader of the Abolition movement (1759-1833), who eventually became an independent Member of Parliament, serving from 1784-1812. After becoming an Evangelical Christian, he became a reform leader, and headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty years, until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Officially called the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807, this act of Parliament abolished the slave trade in the British Empire, particularly the Atlantic slave trade, and also encouraged British action to press other European states to abolish their slave trades. It did not, however, abolish slavery itself, though many supporters expected that to happen eventually. However, slavery remained legal in most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

Aminata has longed to meet the ‘Black Queen,’ who is delicately rendered in official portraits and portrayed with “porcelain composure” (463).In person, however, Aminata finds the Queen to be “a woman with a broad nose and full lips, and skin much richer than in any painter’s rendition” (463). The Queen addresses her as “Aminata,” (463) and the latter is touched that the queen has taken the trouble to learn her real name. The Queen gives her a gift, a leather-bound volume, On Poetry: A Rhapsody, by Jonathan Swift, one of her favorite writers. More importantly, this is also the text from which the fragment is taken that Aminata discovers in the map room at the Governor’s mansion in Halifax—the famous passage ends with the phrase: “Place elephants for want of towns,” (352) for which Chapter 16 is named. It is also one of the novel’s two epigraphs, signaling its larger thematic and symbolic resonance. Charlotte’s status as the first ‘black queen’ of England is considered by some historians to be a dubious claim, and many portraits of the time do not depict any stereotypically ‘black’ features. However, it is known that she is descended directly from an African branch of a Portuguese royal family ancestor, Margarita de Castro y Sousa, which may have given rise to the idea of her blackness. For the purposes of this novel, the most important aspect of Charlotte’s multi-racial identity is its thematic resonance; the ambiguity of her appearance, along with her respectful greeting of Aminata (using her African name), highlight the ways in which racial identity is a cultural construct rather than a strict category of human experience.