Cinque << SINK ay >>, Joseph (1813?-1879?), was the West African leader of the most famous rebellion by enslaved people in the history of the United States.
Cinque was born around 1813 in the village of Mani, in what is now Sierra Leone. His given name was Sengbe Pieh. He was a member of the Mende people. In 1839, other Africans captured Pieh and sold him to European merchants on the African coast. Traders of enslaved people then brought Pieh and a group of other African captives to Cuba illegally. In Havana, the Spanish traders Pedro Montes and José Ruiz purchased about 50 of these captives, including Pieh. The Spaniards gave Pieh the name Joseph Cinque.
The Spaniards shipped the captives aboard the schooner La Amistad, bound for the Cuban town of Puerto Principe (now Camagüey). The captives were chained to a wall below the deck of the ship. Cinque used a nail to break his chains and helped free his fellow captives. The captives attacked the crew and took control of the ship. They killed the captain and his cook and captured Montes, Ruiz, and the cabin boy. The captives ordered Montes and Ruiz to sail to Africa. However, Montes and Ruiz tricked the captives by following a course that took them near the United States.
The ship reached Long Island, New York, where Montes and Ruiz reported the killings. Officials arrested the rebels and took them to Connecticut, where they were put on trial. United States circuit and district courts reviewed the case. The district court ruled that the rebels had been free people who were illegally enslaved and thus were justified in rebelling. The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1841. The court ruled in favor of the rebels. Cinque and most of the other remaining Amistad rebels then returned to Africa. Cinque worked briefly as a trader at an African mission in Sierra Leone. He died in Sierra Leone in 1879.
See also African Americans (The growth of slavery); Amistad Rebellion.
