Smith, Venture

c. 1729
September 19, 1805

Venture Smith, a slave, was the author of a memoir titled A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident Above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself (1798), one of the earliest American slave narratives and one of the few to include a discussion of African life and of the Middle Passage. Born in Dukandarra, Guinea, as Broteer, son of Prince Saugm, Venture Smith was kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of eight. Brought first to Barbados, then to North America, he received his names from two owners, a steward and a planter.

Smith spent a dozen years as a slave in Stonington, Connecticut, and Fisher's Island, off Long Island in New York. He was notable in his resistance to slavery. Smith refused to act humble or to accept insults. He grabbed whips away from masters and on one occasion beat his master and his brother after they attacked him. Once he planned an escape in a boat, but he argued with his confederates and the plan collapsed.

During his time in bondage Smith accumulated money through hunting and fishing; he also hired out his labor, chopping large forests of wood on Long Island. He acquired a reputation as a superhuman laborer, a giant man, a combination Paul Bunyan/John Henry figure who weighed three hundred pounds with a six-foot waist. So phenomenal was his strength that, according to legend, he often paddled a canoe forty-five miles across Long Island Sound and back in a single day, between chopping nine cords of wood.

Eventually Smith saved enough money, and in 1765 he bought his freedom for £76. He supported himself by chopping wood, hunting, fishing, trading on merchant ships, whaling, and farming. With the proceeds of his tireless labor he bought freedom for his wife and children and for some friends he had made while in slavery. In 1776 he moved to Haddam Neck, Connecticut, where he bought a house and hired two black indentured servants. He lived there until his death in 1805. In 1798, his Narrative, written with Elisha Niles, was printed. Stories of his prowess followed him to Connecticut and survived for a century after his death.

See also Free Blacks 1619–1860; Slave Narratives

Bibliography

Kaplan, Sidney, and Emma Nogrady Kaplan. The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 2d ed. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.

greg robinson (1996)