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“Bassel tree” together), then wove it into six-inch strips, which were sewn together, primarily to make clothing for personal use and for exchange. “Country cloth,” as it was called, had a ready market, and a broad one. Several of the
Amistad
Africans were skilled weavers who practiced their craft while they were in jail to produce napkins in the “fringed African style,” which, as skilled artisans, they proudly demonstrated at public meetings after their liberation from jail. 25
    The
Amistad
Africans were, by and large, urban people. Foone had lived in the “large town” of Bumbe, while Gnakwoi hailed from Tuma, “the largest town in the Balu country.” Their home cities, they insisted, were roughly equal in size to New Haven, which in 1840 had a population of roughly twelve thousand, suggesting significant urbanization in Mende country. The urban past of many was illustrated by Fuli’s comment about how man-stealers preyed on city dwellers, and perhaps even more dramatically by the way in which fully a dozen of the
Amistad
Africans were captured and enslaved while they were “on the road” traveling from one place to another, most often to “buy clothes.” The leaders of the rebellion, Cinqué and Grabeau, were both caught while “traveling in the road.” Burna was captured while “going to the next town,” Kinna while on his way to Kongoli. 26
    They were living, clearly, within a vibrant system of regional trade. According to their teacher Sherman Booth, they “traffic principally in rice, clothes, and cattle, and these are the only currency of the country.” There was also a ready trade in domestic items such as salt and fish, both from the coast, along with European goods of various kinds, especially the rum about which Cushoo spoke, as well as guns, gunpowder,textiles, and tools. Over time the main commodity exchanged for the European items was slaves, but there was “by-play” (secondary trade), as one merchant explained, in ivory and camwood, in addition to rice required by the slave trade. 27
    The
Amistad
Africans presented themselves as part of extended, usually multigenerational kin groups that lived under the same roof, as was common among the Mende and their neighbors. Sessi lived with his three brothers, two sisters, wife, and three children. Fabanna was the only person to mention that he had more than one wife; he had two, and one child. It was later discovered by missionaries that Burna, who, in detailing his kin mentioned no wife, actually had seven. Fuli lived with his mother, father, five brothers, and, for a time, with his grandmother. Family trumped everything else, in his worldview. When asked if he might wish to stay in the United States after gaining his freedom, he replied, “If America people would give him his hat full of gold, and plenty of houses and lands, to stay in this country, he would not, for gold was not like his father, nor his mother, nor his sister, nor his brother.” Throughout their ordeal the
Amistad
Africans steadfastly insisted that they wanted to return to “their homes, their birth-place, the land of their fathers.” 28
    It is difficult to know precisely how old the
Amistad
Africans were because they did not reckon age according to the European calendar. A visitor to the jail grouped them into four basic categories, probably based on appearance and whatever information he had been able to gain through interviews. The youngest group was the four children, each of whom (including Margru) was probably around nine years old in 1839. Then came five youths, very likely in their early to mid-teens. Another eleven were said to be “in middle age,” which probably meant late twenties and early thirties. That left the largest group, sixteen, in early adulthood, late teens to mid-twenties. These numbers are consistent with the long-standing preferences of slave traders and American plantation owners, who always wanted to buy men between the ages of fifteen