Identificación de las variedades de olivo autóctonas

As the travellers drove along they passed a small house, just off the road, hardly more than a double cabin, but it was set back amid fruit-trees, sheltered by one great oak, and there was an air of quietude and peace about it which went to Ruth’s soul. A lady in black, with a white cap on her gray hair, and a white kerchief on her shoulders, was sitting out on the little veranda, knitting, and Ruth was sure that as they drove by she bowed to them.

The sense of peace was still on the girl when they came on a country store, at a fork in the road a mile below. There was a well, off to one side, and a small group of negroes stood around it, two or three of them with muskets in their hands, and one with a hare hung at his waist. Another, who stood with his back to the road and had a twisted stick in his hand, and an old army haversack over his shoulder, was, at the moment the wagon drew up, talking loudly and with vehement gesticulation; and, as Major Welch stopped to ask a question, Ruth caught the end of what this man was saying:

“I’m jest as good as any white man, and I’m goin’ to show ’em so. I’m goin’ to marry a white ’ooman and meck white folks wait on me. When I puts my mark agin a man he’s gone, whether he’s a man or a ’ooman, and I’se done set it now in a gum-tree.”

His hearers were manifestly much impressed by him. An exclamation of approval went round among them.

The little wagon stopping attracted attention, and the speaker turned, and then, quickly, as if to make amends for his loud speech, pulled off his hat and came toward the vehicle with a curious, cringing motion.

“My master; my mistis,” he said, bowing lower with each step until his knee almost touched the ground. He was a somewhat strongly built, dark mulatto, perhaps a little

past middle age and of medium height, and, as he came up to the vehicle, Ruth thought she had never seen so grotesque a figure, and she took in by an instinct that this was the trick-doctor of whom Dr. Gary had spoken. His chin stuck so far forward that the lower teeth were much outside of the upper, or, at least, the lower jaw was; for the teeth looked as though they had been ground down, and his gums, as he grinned, showed as blue on the edges as if he had painted them. His nose was so short and the upper part of his face receded so much that the nostrils were unusually wide, and gave an appearance of a black circle in his yellow countenance. His forehead was so low that he had evidently shaved a band across it, and the band ran around over the top of his flat head, leaving a tuft of coarse hair right in the middle, and on either side of it were certain lines which looked as if they had been tattooed. Immediately under these were a pair of little furtive eyes which looked in quite different directions, and yet moved so quickly at times that it almost seemed as if they were both focussed on the same object. Large brass earrings were in his ears, and about his throat was a necklace of blue and white beads.

Major Welch, having asked his question, drove on, the mulatto bowing low at each step as he backed away with that curious motion toward his companions by the well; and Ruth, who had been sitting very close to her father, fascinated by the negro’s gaze and strange appearance, could hardly wait to get out of hearing before she whispered: “Oh, father, did you ever see such a repulsive-looking creature in all your life?”

The Major admitted that he was an ugly fellow, and then, as a loud guffaw came to them from the rear, added, with that reasonable sense of justice which men possess and are pleased to call wisdom, that he seemed to be very civil and was, no doubt, a harmless good-natured creature.

“I don’t know,” said Ruth, doubtfully. “I only hope I shall never set eyes on him again. I should die if I were to meet him alone.”

Source: Thomas Nelson Page, Red Rock: A Chronicle of Reconstruction (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 291–293.

Commentary

This selection illustrates the low opinion white southerners historically held of both conjure and African Americans. Here Thomas Nelson Page, a late nineteenth-century author of the moonlight-and-magnolias school of southern literature, introduces a villain in the course of a novel about Reconstruction. As implied by the author’s grotesque description of the trick doctor named Moses and the reaction of Ruth, a white immigrant to the South, the conjurer appears distinctly threatening. Ruth’s misgivings are proven accurate later in the tale when Moses waylays her and attempts to lead her into the forest. His clear intent is rape. Depictions like these helped whites justify consigning African Americans to second-class citizenship.

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