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and thirty-five for plantation labor such as awaited the captives in Cuba. There was also a tendency, as the slave trade evolved and traders found fewer men in the prime of life, to buyyounger men. Because age and experience were highly valued among the Mende and others of the Gallinas Coast, the eleven men of “middle age” exercised considerable authority within the group. 29
    The
Amistad
Africans were modest in size, although fit and athletic. In March 1841, John Pitkin Norton noted in his diary that they were “small men” but proud, unbowed by the experience of slavery. Ndzhagnwawni was the tallest adult at five feet nine inches, while Grabeau, an excellent acrobat, was the shortest at four feet eleven inches. The four children were all roughly four feet three inches tall. The average height of the
Amistad
men was a shade above five feet four inches at a time when the typical African American man was about the same size, and the American male of European descent was about two inches taller. 30
    Knowing and speaking multiple languages was common in Mende society, as George Thompson discovered in his own congregation: one man spoke Mende, Kissi, Bullom, Kittam (Krim), Vai, Kono, “Canaan,” and English—eight languages altogether. Most people, he found, including children, could speak two, three, or four languages, as could many of the
Amistad
Africans. Mende and Gbandi, both historically part of the Mande language group, were mutually intelligible. Konoma knew Kono and Mandingo, both part of the Atlantic language group. The most versatile linguist in the group was Grabeau, who as a trader had traveled widely and added to his native Mende the ability to speak Vai, Kono, and Kissi. Burna the younger spoke Mende, Bullom, and Temne. Several men had facility in the Bullom language, probably through commerce—and a few had themselves been the commodity traded. Kimbo, Kinna, Fuliwulu, and Tsukama had slaved in “Bullom Country,” where many merchants were allies of the Spanish. Fuliwulu had been to Freetown “a great many times,” while others had met traders from the British settlement in their own villages, towns, and cities. 31
    Movement, free or forced, and contact with peoples and their languages throughout the region, created an unusual capacity for communication among the
Amistad
Africans. Unbeknownst to themselves, these experienced, mobile, sophisticated, multiethnic people had acquiredtools that would serve them well in their Atlantic odyssey of slavery and freedom.
    Poro Society
    Central to the societies and identities of the
Amistad
Africans, and indeed to all peoples of the Gallinas region, was the Poro Society, an all-male secret society and fundamental governing social institution. All the adult men involved in the rebellion would have been members of the Poro in their native societies and therefore familiar with this type of self-government, even if the rules and rituals had varied from place to place and culture to culture. Everyone knew how the Poro worked, what it was supposed to do, and how to use it. They kept its secrets: there is no mention of the Poro Society in any contemporary records concerning the
Amistad
rebellion. Yet there can be no doubt that it played a significant role as
Amistad
rebels organized themselves throughout their long ordeal. 32
    First described in a book edited by Dutch physician Olfert Dapper in 1668, Poro in the Gallinas was shrouded in mystery because members took a “solemn oath” on pain of death not to reveal the society’s lore. The Poro had a hierarchy of ranks, based on the degrees of sacred knowledge an individual possessed, and signified physically by ritual scarification. The greater the number of marks, the higher the authority of the Poro member. The heavily “tattooed” Grabeau’s high standing in the Poro would have been visible to any and all of the
Amistad
Africans as soon as they laid eyes on him. Likewise Fabanna, “tattooed on the breast,” and