Story Overview  Enslavement || The Baracoons of Gallinas || The
Middle Passage  The Cuban Slave Market || The Revolt || The
Black Schooner  The Africans in America || The Amistad Trials ||
The Return to Africa  The Baracoons of Gallinas  From the
interior, the Africans were marched to the delta at the mouth of
the Gallinas River.  Here they came into Spanish hands. Several
of the Amistad Africans would later name these new captors:
"Laigo," "Peli," "Belewa" (meaning Great Whiskers), and most
prominently, a merchant named "Luiz" (sometimes recorded as
"Luis," or "Luisi"). Few of the captives had ever seen Europeans
before.  The Spaniards kept them in baracoons -- crude
structures, many of them little more than walled, open-air pens,
with high, stout walls -- built on the marshy, low-lying islands
along the river. The slaves were chained together in pairs by
leg irons to discourage escape or revolt.  Meanwhile, beyond the
baracoon walls, African and European traders palavered (meaning
they bargained), trading t