Most of the captives came from Mende country, but others were Kono, Sherbro, Temne, Kissi, Gbandi (in present-day Liberia), and Loma (in present-day Liberia and in Guinea, where they are known as Guerze). Some, who did not speak Mende, learned the language during their forced journey through Mende country to the coast. Most were farmers, but it is said that others were hunters and blacksmiths. This is surprising, because all over West Africa blacksmiths held a sacred place in society and could neither be enslaved nor killed even in war.

In 1839 a Portuguese slave trader purchased a cargo of about 50 kidnapped African natives from a Spaniard involved in the slave trade on the Guinea Coast of West Africa. The trade was prohibited by a treaty between Spain, Portugal and Great Britain. Transported to the Caribbean aboard the Portuguese vessel, Tecora, the captives, from the Mendi tribe on the northern border of Nigeria, were not slaves but legally free men who had been illegally enslaved. The Tecora landed in Havana, where the captives were marched to a slave market. Two Cubans, Ruiz and Montes, purchased them and planned to take them by the coastal schooner, Amistad, to Puerto Prìncipe, a Cuban plantation area.

All these people were shipped from Lomboko in March aboard the schooner Tecora, which arrived at Havana in the Spanish colony of Cuba in June. At a slave auction following advertisement, Jose Ruiz, a Spanish plantation owner, bought Sengbe and forty-eight others for $450 each to work on his sugar plantation at Puerto Principe, another Cuban port three hundred miles from Havana. Pedro Montez, another Spaniard bound for the same port, bought four children, three girls and a boy. On June 26, the fifty-three Africans were herded on board an American-built schooner, originally called Friendship, but changed to the Spanish La Amistad when the vessel changed ownership and registration to a Spanish subject. Although Spain had prohibited the importation of new slaves into her territories since 1820, the two Spanish planters were able to obtain official permits to transport their slaves. They chartered the Amistad from Ramon Ferrer, who was both owner and captain. Apart from the fifty-three Africans and their Spanish owners, the schooner carried a crew comprising the master, Ferrer; his two black slaves, Antonio (the cabin boy) and Celestino (the cook); and two white seamen. The ship also carried a cargo of dishes, cloth, jewelry, and various luxury items and staples. The cargo was insured for $40,000. Ruiz insured his forty-nine slaves for $20,000, while Montez insured the four children for $1,300.

The Amistad, a Spanish vessel, set sail June 28, 1839. A few days later, the Africans rebelled, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered Ruiz, Montes and the cabin boy to transport them back to Africa. During the day, the pilots steered the vessel eastward, but at night they headed north, ultimately arriving in August 1839 off Long Island, N.Y. There the ship was seized by U.S. government authorities and the Africans were imprisoned after Ruiz and Montes denounced them as rebellious slaves, pirates and murderers.

Almost overnight the incident became a cause célèbre. The Africans, led by the Mende warrior Singbe-Piéh, named Cinquè by the slave traders, insisted that they be freed and returned to their continent. President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) and the Spanish administrators of Cuba claimed that they should be extradited to Cuba to stand trial for mutiny.

A series of complex legal maneuvers then ensued, involving the federal district court in Connecticut and the court of appeals. As a result, it was ruled that the Africans had been illegally captured, illegally transported and illegally enslaved, and that the United States should not become involved in such proceedings. Unwilling to accept the judge's decision, the United States appealed the case to the Supreme Court, where former President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) defended the Africans. In his lengthy argument he stated that all the sympathy seemed to be for the Spaniards rather than for the Africans. He argued it was the Africans who should be treated sympathetically because they were free people who had been kidnapped and illegally enslaved and "were entitled to all the kindness and good offices due from a humane and Christian nation." His argument prevailed, and the surviving Africans were sent home as free men. Wrote Adams in the brief that was to help undermine the Van Buren administration: "... The charge I make against the present Executive Administration is that in all their proceedings relating to these unfortunate men, instead of that Justice to which they were bound not less than this honorable court itself to observe, they have substituted Sympathy: -- Sympathy with one of the parties in this conflict of justice and Antipathy to the other. Sympathy with the white. Antipathy to the black."

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References:
Amistad Slave Revolt Case Documents: http://www.paperlessarchives.com/amistad.html
The Amistad Revolt: http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/archive/amistad/