THE PYGMY IN THE UNITED STATES. 



53 



Virginia, there is a letter dated " The Oaks,'' February 20, 1773, 

 and written by Miss Judith Graeme to her friend Miss Sarah 

 Armistede. In this letter Miss Graeme bewails the fact that " Pa 

 has bought four of those trifling, good-for-nothing little ' ginny 

 niggers,' who will steal the cloathes off your back if you give 

 them half a chaunce." After giving a page or so of local gos- 

 sip, Miss Judith closes her letter with a postscript anent the little 

 negroes, who seemed to have aroused her bitterest animosity. 

 Says she, " The biggest one 

 of those nasty little ' ginny 

 niggers' is not five feet 

 high." Thus we see that 

 over a hundred years ago 

 negritos were brought to 

 America and sold as slaves. 

 For all I know to the con- 

 trary, these little negroes 

 had been coming into the 

 country ever since slavery 

 was first instituted. This 

 is probably the reason that 

 pygmies are no longer 

 found in the region of the 

 Niger or in Ashantee. The 

 incursions of the Arab 

 slave dealers have driven 

 them farther and farther 

 inland, until they now in- 

 habit the dense forest soli- 

 tudes of equatorial Africa. 

 I do not believe that any 

 of the Akka have ever been 

 brought to America and 

 sold as slaves, for the evi- 

 dence shows that they have 



occupied the same region of country (Central Africa) for hundreds 

 of years, but negritos closely akin to them and springing from 

 the same root-stock were undoubtedly brought from the west and 

 east coasts of Africa and sold as slaves in America. The descend- 

 ants of these negritos are our American pygmies, who can be 

 found in large numbers either living in colonies like that in the 

 neighborhood of Charleston, S. C, or Bayou Goula, La., or scat- 

 tered along the South Atlantic and Gulf seaboards. Hon. W, T. 

 Ellis, member of Congress, who has made a study of these little 

 negroes, says that they speak a language intelligible to them- 

 selves alone ; that they have undoubtedly retained a large num- 



A Ptgmy of the United States. 



