Central Question

How do we know Venture Smith’s story?

Abstract

Help elementary students understand the evidentiary nature of history by investigating a documentary film clip—one that is adapted from the 1998 PBS series Africans in America.

Using the question, "How do we know Venture Smith’s story?" students consider the differences between fiction and history while learning about slave narratives and slavery in the colonies.

Film Clip: The Life of Venture Smith excerpted from Africans in America produced by the WGBH Educational Foundation, 2009 (Duration: 2:33)

Historical Thinking Focus: Fact vs. Fiction, Evidence and Perspective

Essay

Broteer Furro was born in the 1720s in the West African region known today as Ghana. In his autobiography, he called himself the son of a West African prince although this has not been confirmed by scholars. Slave traders captured Broteer around the age of six, and transported him to a life of enslavement in New York and Connecticut. He received the name "Venture" after being purchased on the America-bound ship by a ship steward. After several changes of ownership in the colonies, he was able to make a deal to buy his freedom over a five-year period. He accomplished this at the age of 31 and then used money he earned from fishing and agricultural activities to buy freedom for his son, daughter, and wife.

Near the end of the 18th century, he related his life history to Elisha Niles, a white schoolteacher and Revolutionary war veteran. Published in 1798, 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 recounted his life story.

Smith told of his troubles and successes and his story, when considered in the context of his times, reminds us of important facts. Smith lived in colonial America, but also lived through the American revolution and birth of the United States. As a slave in 18th-century colonial America, he was like the vast majority of African Americans at the time, enslaved and only removed from Africa in his own life or a generation prior. He was also part of a labor system that included indentured servants, apprentices, and sailors impressed into service, and these roles were not permanently fixed.

Historian Eric Foner explained in The Story of American Freedom, “Freedom in colonial America existed along a continuum from the slave … to the independent property owner, and during a lifetime an individual might well occupy more than one place on this spectrum” (p. 10). Indeed, Smith was both slave and a property owner during his life. However, by the end of the 18th century, this kind of mobility became less common. Indentured servitude disappeared and the distinction between a Southern slave-labor system and Northern free-labor system became sharper.

Smith’s autobiography is one of approximately 65 slave narratives published between 1740 and 1865. These narratives have been identified as the founding texts in African-American literature as well as important historical sources for understanding American slavery. They give us a window into the slave’s perspective on a life in bondage as well as insights into the conditions that slaves experienced.

Authors of the narratives used literary devices to prove that their story was authentic. Smith was no exception. As with most of these narratives, he included a phrase in his title, “related by himself,” to establish his authorship. This was meant to confirm that his story was true rather than an invented piece of propaganda written to send a message about slavery. The certificate at the end of his narrative, signed by local community members, also served to verify the legitimacy and authenticity of his story.

This clip includes a story where Smith tells of resisting his master’s son. The audio includes an actor reading excerpts from Smith’s autobiography. The visuals include a re-creation of the setting of the altercation. Students may wonder—how do we have pictures and how can we hear Smith’s voice? Explain that this footage is a re-creation of events. Use the supplemental sources to help students see that the filmmakers relied on historical sources, specifically Smith’s autobiography, to create this simulation.

Because Venture Smith related his autobiography, we know his story. His gravestone’s inscription supports his account with its brief overview of his life, but it is the narrative that really brings Smith alive for us. Historians turn to a number of other sources to investigate Smith’s life and corroborate his story. These include family stories, the details of his burial (a very large coffin!), and even DNA evidence. We do not know how much Elisha Niles influenced the words and the language, but Smith's autobiography provides his account of the experience of slavery and freedom—something we do not have for the vast majority of slaves and African Americans in early and revolutionary America.

How do we learn about people in the past? We can start with sources that they and the people who knew them left behind. The connection between the film clip and the sources in this case is direct, helping young students see how evidence matters to knowing about the past.

Use these materials to challenge students’ ideas that:

• Slavery was a monolithic system throughout the colonies and over time;
• All slaves lived in the South;
• All slaves worked on large plantations; and
• All slaves held in the colonies and U.S. were permanently slaves.

Smith’s story challenges each of these ideas. At the time of the Revolution, slavery was legal in every colony. Both large and small-scale farmers held slaves as did artisans in southern and northern cities. The slavery system became more fixed and consistent after the American Revolution. Smith’s story can be used to help students understand the variety of slave experiences and that slavery as a system changed over time.

Supplementary Sources

Excerpt from Venture Smith, 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 (C. Holt, New-London, 1798), pp. 5, 13, 25, 32.

Use this excerpt to consider the role of sources in historical stories, challenge students’ ideas about slavery, and practice close reading. This excerpt helps students see the broad contours of Smith’s life story and consider the question of authenticity in slave narratives.

Excerpt from Venture Smith, 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 (C. Holt, New-London, 1798)

Use this excerpt to consider the role of sources in historical stories, challenge students’ ideas about slavery, and practice close reading. This (more difficult) excerpt source recounts the story told in the movie.

Using this primary source with Document A helps students understand that it is sources like these that make it possible for us to know Smith’s story.

Use this map of the colonies to help students see that Smith was in the northern colonies and that slavery was not confined to the south.

Historical Thinking

This clip is intended to tell a true story about the past rather than a fictional one. Use it to help students understand that historical narratives differ from fictional stories as the former rest on evidence. In the clip, different kinds of historical sources and evidence are used to tell the story, including a primary source (Venture Smith’s autobiography) and secondary sources (historian’s comments and recreation of Smith’s living quarters.)

Making the point that there are many slaves whose stories we cannot recover because of a lack of evidence helps students learn the central role of historical sources and evidence to telling true stories about the past.

Ask questions about whose voices and perspectives are most commonly heard when studying slavery. Explain that studying history demands we seek out multiple perspectives. Additionally, the supplementary primary sources (Smith’s gravestone and an excerpt from his autobiography) can be used to consider the genre of slave narratives as a particular kind of source, where the “as told to” phrase and “certification” indicate something about the times and how the narratives were suspect given the fact that they helped the abolitionists’ cause.

Questions

• What is the difference between fiction and non-fiction?
• Are historical stories fiction or non-fiction?
• What do historians and authors read and use to write non-fiction history?
• What do you know about slavery? What have we studied about slavery?
• Where have you learned what you know?
• Whose point of view on slavery is most easily known? Why is this?

• Whose stories do you hear?
• Whose viewpoints do you hear?

• How could we hear Venture’s words?
• Can we believe this story?
• What primary sources and secondary sources were included in this clip?

• See questions on each prepared document.

• What do these sources tell you about slavery in the colonies and early United States?
• How do we know Venture Smith’s story?

For More Information

David W. Blight, "The Slave Narratives: A Genre and a Source" History Now: American History Online (December 2004). A short informative article about the place of slave narratives in American History.

Teachersdomain, Colonial Economy and Slavery.

Alan J. Singer, “Venture Smith’s Autobiography and Runaway Ad: Enslavement in Early New York” Middle Level Learning (Jan-Feb, 2007). An article about teaching with slave narratives that includes a middle school lesson using Smith’s Narrative and a runaway slave advertisement.

Servants and Slaves Becoming American: The British Atlantic Colonies, 1690-1763 National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Primary Resources in U.S. History & Literature. Memoirs from servants and slaves with helpful background information.

National Public Radio, Venture Smith, "The Black Paul Bunyan" (September 18, 2006).