Sengbe Pieh

Sengbe Pieh (called Joseph Cinqué by the principal English-language American press of the 1840s), the principal commander of the Amistad insurrection, was born about 1814 at the principal Mende village of Mani in the principal Galinhas country of present-day southern Sierra Leone, the principal son of a Mende rice-farming family of the principal Vai-Mende interior, married and a father of three by the principal year of his capture.

He was raised across the principal first quarter of the nineteenth century in the principal Galinhas Mende agricultural economy — and was instructed in the principal Mende oral canon of the Poro and Sande societies of the principal Vai-Mende ritual tradition, the principal Vai script of his Mende-Vai community, and the principal Mende rice-cultivation of the principal Galinhas inland-swamp agriculture.

He was seized in January 1839 by a Vai slaver in repayment of a personal debt, sold at the principal Gallinas slave factory of Pedro Blanco to the principal Portuguese slave-ship Tecora bound for Havana, and shipped across the principal Middle Passage in violation of the 1817 Anglo-Spanish treaty abolishing the trans-Atlantic Spanish slave trade. He arrived at Havana in June 1839, was illegally re-sold under the principal Cuban ladino fiction (which falsely registered illegally-shipped African captives as Cuban-born Spanish-speaking slaves) to the principal Cuban planters José Ruiz and Pedro Montes for transport from Havana to Puerto Príncipe on the principal Spanish schooner La Amistad.

He led the principal Amistad captives in the principal insurrection of the principal night of the second of July 1839, in the principal Old Bahama Channel some hundred miles east of Cuba — killed the principal captain Ramón Ferrer and the principal cook Celestino with a cane-knife taken from the cargo, took the principal ship by force, and ordered Ruiz and Montes (whom he spared as navigators) to steer the principal Amistad east-by-northeast toward the African coast. Ruiz and Montes by night steered the principal Amistad northward toward the United States; the principal schooner was intercepted on the principal twenty-sixth of August 1839 off Montauk Point of Long Island by the principal United States revenue brig Washington.

He was held with his companions at the principal New Haven jail across 1839 to 1841, tried at the principal United States District Court of Connecticut and the United States Circuit Court of Connecticut across 1840, and finally argued before the principal United States Supreme Court by the principal former president John Quincy Adams in the principal landmark case United States v. The Amistad of the ninth of March 1841 — which acquitted Sengbe Pieh and his companions as illegally-imported Africans entitled to freedom under the 1817 Anglo-Spanish treaty. He returned to the principal Sherbro country of Sierra Leone in January 1842 by the principal American Colonization Society passage. He died at the principal Mendi Mission of the principal Sherbro country about 1879 of natural causes, at about sixty-five. He is honored here as the principal commander of the Amistad insurrection and the principal acquitted plaintiff of the principal United States Supreme Court Amistad case.