A Green Beret's True Story of His Jack Lawson with Sully de Fontaine

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Tmbwfs’’’’’’’’’ (t!Xiffm
told countless times as they danced around Slaver’s Wheel ceremoniously
to remind their children of their ancestor’s defeat of tyranny
in that battle won centuries ago. The ceremony conveyed to all in
the tribe their pride, bravery and determination that they would be
no one’s slave, that they would be free people.
Through this celebration the story was passed down from generation
to generation. This wheel was the centerpiece of the village
and around it were places where bonfires lit the night thousands of
times while they danced.
As the story was told for generations, the wheel is from the oxcart
of Portuguese slavers. These vicious and brutal slave hunters had
surprised and raided this African village to harvest their one and
only crop: native Africans to be sold to the highest bidder. On that
fateful day, wives would lose husbands and children, husbands would
lose wives and children, children would lose parents and most children
would be slaughtered or left to die on their own as had happened
countless times in other villages raided by slavers and rival
tribes for centuries.
The Portuguese and an allied rival African tribe had surrounded
and raided this village in the early morning hours. The story goes on
that the slavers were leading hundreds of the village’s captive people
to the coast, the Portuguese riding on top of their possessions in two
ox carts. It was a seemingly endless line of people chained to each
other to be loaded on waiting ships. Just another lucrative cargo of
nameless black Africans bound for slave auctions in the West Indies.
Many of the warriors of the village they had just raided had been
on a hunting party and returned to see the devastation and annihilation
of their village. They were soon angrily pursuing the Portuguese
slavers and their line of slow moving, walking misery. The Portuguese
came under increasingly sporadic and vicious attacks by these warriors
over the coming days. Attacks would materialize from seemingly
nowhere. The jungle would suddenly erupt along both sides of their
trail with deadly strikes on the slavers and their African helpers.