Enslaved People's Self-Harm and Feigned Illness as Documented Resistance

Plantation records and slaveholder correspondence from the late 17th century document enslaved people deliberately injuring themselves to reduce their market value or avoid sale, feigning illness to disrupt plantation work, and other forms of day-to-day resistance. A 1685 Virginia estate inventory notes that an enslaved man had cut off his own fingers to prevent being sold south. Such acts of what historians call 'weapons of the weak' — working slowly, breaking tools, poisoning livestock — were widespread enough that colonial laws specifically addressed sabotage, with severe penalties for enslaved people who damaged their enslavers' property.