Interpreting Ruth Shields MacNiven’s Story About a 1912 Plantation Worker Uprising: Finding the Facts in the Fiction
Analysis of Ruth’s Composition
As I
mentioned in Part 1 of this topic, Ruth was too young to have traveled to
Suriname in 1912, so her epistolary story is likely based on her older sister
Margaret’s 1912 visit. Margaret would have been 16 at the time, and probably
very excited to travel so far to such an exotic location. Ruth seems to have
combined her sister’s recollections with those of her parents, who spent a
couple of years in Suriname in the 1890s, plus her own imagination. So which
parts of the story are factual, and which fictional?
I have
researched the celebration Ruth describes, and had trouble identifying it with
certainty. Ruth is mixing religions and ethnicities in her story—that might
have been common during that era due to American and British ignorance of the
various Indian cultures. Hindus of course are not followers of Muhammed, and I
can find no evidence of Muhammed having sons named Hasan and Hoosan, so Ruth’s
details of the religious background of the celebration are suspect. I have been
unable to find the word “tajah” online at all.
What I have
discovered is that most of the Indian indentured workers in Suriname were
Hindus. Even today, one third of the population of Suriname is Hindu. There is
a Tamil Hindu holiday called the Float Celebration that shares some of the
elements of the ceremony Ruth described. During the Float Festival, certain
temple statues are placed on elaborate rafts—some designed to mimic temples—and
floated on lakes near the temples. A photo of such a “float” appears here.
However, I think it is more likely
she was describing “Tajiya” , which seems to be a procession that is part of
the celebration of Muharram. Muharram, from what I can tell, is both the first
month of the Muslim year, and a remembrance of the martyrdom of Muhammed’s
grandson, Imam Husayn. Ruth
misunderstood Husayn’s relationship to Muhammed, identifying him as a son
rather than a grandson. In addition the brother featured in the story is named
Abbas, not Hasan. Ruth indicated that
most if not all of the “Hindoos” were celebrating “Tajah”, so this would mean
that most of Alliance’s Indian workers were probably Muslim, a minority among
the indentured in Suriname.
It is hard
to find descriptions of Tajiya online—I suspect there are other variants of its
spelling that make it hard for a Westerner to find mention of it. However, the
few images I have run across often feature brilliantly colored parade
float-style temple structures. Here is one such image:
In
addition, I found one photo from around 1900 in Suriname labelled, “British
Indians in Surinam celebrating Tajiya.” The crowd doesn’t look very lively, and
there are no women in sight. Ruth spoke of the women’s finery, earrings and
headdresses, but none are in sight in the photo. Women were in short supply
among the indentured—I have read there were five men for every woman—so perhaps
the photo reflects the dearth of women.
In the back
of the photo, you can see the tall model Ruth described—the “tajah” as she
called them. It is constructed on a platform with handles, and you can see the
group of men carrying it down the street. It is as tall as the large one Ruth
described in the story.
Wikipedia provides more
information about the celebration, calling it “Hosay” and describing it as “a Muslim Indo-Caribbean commemoration that
is popularly observed in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica. In
Trinidad and Tobago, multi-colored model mausoleums or mosque-shaped model
tombs known as tadjah are used to display the symbolic part of this
commemoration. They are built and paraded, then ritually taken to the sea on
last day of observance, and finally discarded into the water.[1] The word
tadjah derived from the Arabic word ta'zieh and signifies different cultural
meanings depending on the region, time period, occasion, and religion. In
British Guiana, (now called Guyana), and Suriname, the festival was called Taziya or creolized into tadjah in
reference to these floats, arguably the most visible and decorative element of
this festival.” (see 1)
Workers dressed for a festival--Suriname
The
Gounder and Hirarel book cited below (See 7) explained that the plantation communities
of Hindustani indentured workers were small, and often the Hindus and Muslims
ignored their religious differences to focus on their shared ethnicity, noting
that “Numerous religious festivals…were celebrated and Hindus and Muslims
celebrated them together.” Tajiya or Tajah was one of them.
A Dutch researcher wrote about uprisings
that began during “Tajah” in 1891, as follows (see 2):
“Unrest at the plantations Zoelen and Geertruidenberg broke out during
the Tadja celebrations in 1891. The most popular festival of the British Indian
moslems was Muharram Tadja to commemorate Hassan and Hossein. The highpoint was
the procession in which groups competed with each other for the most beautiful
tadja, a temple constructed from paper and bamboo which was later thrown into
the river. In 1891 several different groups from the plantations
Geertruidenberg, Marienburg and Zoelen fought over the right of way during the
procession. Calm was soon restored but the arrival of the authorities stirred
things up again. What started as a fight between contract laborers ended in
resistance to state authorities.”
The research paper said that
government forces ended up shooting protesting workers, killing four, and
punishing others. There was no conflict between the Indian Muslims and Javanese
workers in that case. Instead, the conflict was between groups of Muslim
workers from different plantations.
This incident would have occurred
shortly before the period when John Sutherland Shields and his wife Jane were
living at Alliance, so perhaps this portion of Ruth’s story was based on their
tales of Tajah-related uprisings.
Ruth’s
story of the French escapees from Devil’s Island seems like the fictional part
of this story. Archie says the men escaped Cayenne, which was a separate prison
complex located on the Guiana mainland. Wikipedia states that Devil’s Island
and Papillion Island “were part of a penal colony from 1852 onwards for
criminals of France, who were convicted by juries rather than magistrates. The
main part of the penal colony was a labor camp that stretched along the border
with Dutch Guiana (present-day Suriname). This penal colony was controversial
as it had a reputation for harshness and brutality. Prisoner-on-prisoner
violence was common; tropical diseases were rife. Only a small minority of
broken survivors returned to France to tell how horrible it was; they sometimes
scared other potential criminals to go straight.”
Obviously, these French characters in
Ruth’s story would have come from the penal colony section along the Suriname
border. While it makes sense that it would be easier to escape from the
mainland than from the island penal colony, where drowning in icy ocean
currents was nearly inevitable for any escapee, there still aren’t many records
of successful Cayenne escapes. And while Dutch records show that plantation owners
struggled to find overseers—even resorting to hiring former slaves— it seems
unlikely Archie would have hired escaped criminals for such responsible
positions, especially after only a single conversation with them. Archie seems
to have been a fairly successful plantation manager—Alliance was one of the
last three plantations operating in Suriname by the 1920s—so I doubt that he
would have acted so recklessly.
In
addition, the idea that this pair would somehow foment a worker uprising merely
as a distraction to cover their safe-cracking crime seems unlikely. As
overseers—never popular figures with the indentured workers—they would have
been at risk of attack by the rioting workers.
There were other flaws with the story. Why
weren’t Archie and other white employees in attendance at the celebration? I
would think it would have been a popular diversion in such a remote area with
few amusements. Wouldn’t they have recognized the risk in riling up these two
groups of oppressed workers? Also, Ruth and Louise Shields’ absence from the
house at the perfect moment for the criminals seems odd and far too convenient.
How could Ruth have so vividly described the uprising if she wasn’t there? And
exactly what did the Frenchmen manage to steal from the safe if not the payroll
money?
I
would guess a large part of this story is fiction. So what can we reliably take
from this story? What parts are true?
First,
the descriptions of the house and the lives and relationships among the Shields
family members were probably accurate. I get the feeling that Ruth’s sister
Margaret and other family members were not fond of Archie’s wife Louise. Her
only appearances in the story are very unflattering. She blithers on about
people coming to tea and the need to roll the tennis courts while Archie is
discussing problems with workers. She repeatedly demands that she be allowed to
order expensive English dresses to keep up with other women in their social
set, and the story ends with her getting her way about ordering the frocks.
Louise and her three daughters around 1910
Second,
there was documented conflict between the Javans and the “Hindoos”. Ruth told
John and Laurel of at least two worker uprisings at Alliance. My transcript of
Laurel’s notes states:
“Alliance
had started importing Javanese, brought in by the Dutch. Alliance had Hindustani
immigrants earlier, then Britain stopped that. There was trouble between the
two groups. There was a riot in 1907. The Javanese took refuge under the Big
House. The Hindustanis surged in. Grandmama stopped them. And in 1912 when
Great Aunt Margaret was there, another riot required that authorities be
called. Same two groups rioting. “
I
can’t believe John and Laurel didn’t ask more questions about how Margaret
Sutherland Shields managed to put down a worker riot in 1907! The mind boggles.
Thomas Shields, her husband, had died in April of 1905, so she would have
travelled to Suriname with only her daughter as company. In 1907, she was 70
years old. If Ruth’s description of the cutlasses wielded by the Indian
laborers has any basis in fact, and from what I have read it does, she must
have been incredibly brave to have stood up to them and saved the Javanese.
In
Part III, I will describe some other Alliance worker uprisings and the
resulting punishments meted out on the workers as described by Dutch
researchers.
Sources:
1. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosay
2. 2. “Control and resistance: indentured labor in
Suriname” by Rosemarlin Hoefte;
3. In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe
West-Indische Gids 61 (1987), no: 1/2, Leiden, 1-22. Pages 9, 10, 11, 12, 13,
14. Uprisings at Alliance. https://ufdcimages.uflib.ufl.edu/UF/00/09/94/61/00073/Volume_61_Number_1_and_2_1987.pdf
4. 5. Omschrijving: Werkers op een veld bezig met het
oogsten van suikerriet. Onderdeel van het fotoalbum Souvenir de Voyage (deel
4), over het leven van de familie Dooyer in en rond de plantage Ma Retraite in
Suriname in de jaren 1906-1913.
8. 7. Women, Gender and the Legacy of Slavery and Indenture edited by Farzana Gounder, Kalpana Hiralal, Amba Pande, Maurits S. Hassankhan