Exuma’s Rich Tapestry: Uncovering Slave History in Bahamian Culture

The Pompey Museum of Slavery & Emancipation occupies the old Vendue House on Bay Street in Nassau, a sandstone building where enslaved people were auctioned well into the 19th century. Its name comes from Pompey, an enslaved man from the island of Exuma who led a rebellion in 1830, refusing to be shipped from the plantation where he lived and working instead to secure freedom for his family and others. The museum tells his story and the larger history of the transatlantic slave trade in the Bahamas, but it also raises a question most visitors never think to ask: what does it mean that the majority of Exuma’s present-day residents carry the surname of the man who enslaved their ancestors?

This article traces that question across Exuma’s plantations, its surviving material culture, and the living traditions of music, food, and festival that emerged from the experience of enslavement. It is written for travelers and readers curious about how a small island chain in the Bahamas carries a history that is neither hidden nor fully reconciled — and about what that history looks like when you stop treating it as a footnote to beach tourism.

Quick-Reference: Key Sites and Events in Exuma’s Slave History

Before diving into the stories, here is a map of the major locations and turning points that appear most often in scholarship and public memory.

The table above is a starting point. What follows digs into the specific places and practices that give those rows their weight.

Pompey’s Exuma: The 1830 Rebellion and Its Aftermath

Pompey was enslaved on a cotton plantation owned by Lord Rolle, a British aristocrat who held extensive land on Exuma. In 1830, with abolition debates intensifying in London, Rolle attempted to sell or relocate many of the people he enslaved to other properties. Pompey led a group that refused to board the ship. They hid in the woods and swamps of Exuma, surviving off the land, until colonial authorities captured them.

The details of what happened next vary by account. Some sources state Pompey and his co-conspirators were punished; others suggest that the growing anti-slavery sentiment in Britain made the colonial government reluctant to execute or severely punish rebels. What is not debated is that the rebellion became a touchstone in Bahamian memory. The Pompey Museum, opened decades later in the Vendue House, formalized that memory into a public institution.

One unresolved question remains: why is Pompey’s rebellion far less known internationally than uprisings in Jamaica or Barbados? Bahamian historians point to the small scale of the rebellion — fewer than 50 people were directly involved — and to the Bahamas’ later self-marketing as a peaceful, apolitical tourist destination. The silence, in other words, is itself a historical artifact.

The Rolle Inheritance: Land, Name, and the Weight of a Surname

After full emancipation in 1838, Lord Rolle did something unusual. Rather than abandon his Exuma holdings, he granted parcels of his plantation land to the people he had formerly enslaved. Many of them took his surname as their own. Today, Rolle is one of the most common surnames on Exuma, carried by descendants who have lived on the same land for nearly two centuries.

This act is often described as benevolent in tourist literature, but the reality is more complicated. The land granted was marginal — thin soil, limited fresh water, and far from markets. Freedom did not mean prosperity, and the economic structures of plantation life persisted in altered form well into the 20th century. The surname Rolle, for many families, is a marker of both survival and ongoing struggle.

Material Remains: Plantations, Slave Quarters, and What Survives

Exuma’s plantation ruins are scattered and often unmarked. The great houses — stone foundations, collapsed walls, overgrown courtyards — are the most visible remnants, but the slave quarters are harder to find. Typically built of wattle and daub or rough stone, they were never intended to last, and most have returned to the earth. A few sites on Great Exuma and Little Exuma preserve low stone wall outlines that archaeologists have identified as slave village layouts.

The Out Islands of the Bahamas include remains of plantations and slaves’ quarters that reflect a history the Bahamas does not uniformly celebrate. Local guides on Exuma can point to specific sites, but there is no official trail or signage. The thin soil and insect infestations that made Bahamian plantations marginally profitable also ensured that many sites were abandoned rather than rebuilt, leaving a fragmented archaeological record.

For visitors, the most accessible plantation ruins are on the Rolle property near Rolleville and on Little Exuma near the Hermitage. Both sites are on private land, so permission or a guided tour is necessary. The lack of infrastructure is itself a statement about which histories the tourism economy prioritizes.

Living Memory: Junkanoo, Rake-and-Scrape, and the Sounds of Survival

If the plantation ruins tell a story of rupture, Exuma’s living traditions tell one of continuity. Junkanoo — the parade of cowbells, drums, horns, and elaborate paper costumes that erupts on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day — is the most visible expression of African cultural retention in the Bahamas. Its origins are debated: some scholars trace it to West African masquerade traditions brought by enslaved people; others connect it to John Canoe, an 18th-century Akan leader in Ghana.

Rake-and-scrape music, which uses a carpenter’s saw as a percussion instrument, emerged from the same plantation world. The saw, a goat-skin drum, and an accordion or concertina create a rhythm that is distinctly Bahamian but rooted in West African call-and-response patterns. Straw weaving, another craft brought by enslaved Africans, remains an economic staple in Exuma settlements like Rolle Town and Barreterre.

These traditions are not frozen in time. Younger Bahamians have adapted Junkanoo into a competitive, year-round activity, and rake-and-scrape has influenced modern goombay music. The debate over whether commercialization strengthens or dilutes these traditions is ongoing — a sign that the culture is alive enough to argue about.

Context & Comparison: Museums, Memory, and the Politics of Display

How the Bahamas presents its slave history varies dramatically by institution. A comparison of the four major heritage sites reveals different curatorial strategies, audiences, and silences.

The Pompey Museum comes closest to a dedicated slavery narrative, but even there the story of Exuma — the island that produced Pompey and the Rolle surname — is compressed into a single panel. The Heritage Museum offers a broader sweep but does not dwell on the violence of enslavement. The Pirates Museum, popular with cruise passengers, treats piracy as swashbuckling adventure while glossing over the fact that Nassau’s pirate economy depended on the slave trade.

What emerges from this comparison is a landscape of uneven memory. The sites that attract the most visitors — the Pirates Museum, the Atlantis resort — have the least to say about slavery. The sites that address it directly are smaller, less funded, and harder to find. This is not an accident; it reflects decades of tourism policy that prioritized a sanitized version of Bahamian history.

Questions Readers Ask About Exuma’s Slave History

Can I visit actual slave quarters on Exuma?

Yes, but they are not marked or maintained as tourist sites. A few stone foundation outlines survive on the Rolle plantation properties near Rolleville and on Little Exuma. You will need a local guide to find them; several Exuma tour operators offer history-focused excursions that include these sites.

Why do so many Bahamians on Exuma have the last name Rolle?

After emancipation in 1838, Lord Rolle granted land to the people he had formerly enslaved. Many adopted his surname. The name is now carried by descendants who have lived on Exuma for generations, though its origin is a source of complex feelings — pride in survival, but also awareness of the power imbalance it represents.

Is the Pompey Museum worth visiting if I’m only in Nassau for a day?

If you have any interest in Bahamian history beyond beaches, yes. The museum is small — you can see it in under an hour — and the building itself is historically significant. It is a 10-minute walk from the cruise port. The main limitation is that it focuses heavily on Nassau and does not devote much space to Exuma specifically.

What was Pompey’s rebellion, and why isn’t it more famous?

In 1830, Pompey and a group of enslaved people on Exuma refused to be relocated to another plantation. They hid in the island’s interior until colonial forces captured them. The rebellion is well-documented in Bahamian historiography but little known internationally, partly because of its small scale and partly because the Bahamas has marketed itself as a peaceful destination with a benign history.

Are there any books or documentaries about Exuma’s slave history?

Academic works by historians like Michael Craton and Gail Saunders cover Bahamian slavery in depth. The best popular introduction is The Bahamas: A History Through Maps by Saunders, but it is out of print. Documentaries are scarce; the Pompey Museum has a short film, and the National Art Gallery occasionally screens works by Bahamian artists addressing slavery.

What Exuma’s Slave History Reveals About the Bahamas Today

The ruins of cotton plantations on Exuma are not tourist attractions in the usual sense. They are unmarked, overgrown, and often inaccessible without a guide. The people who live near them carry the surnames of the men who built those plantations. The music that fills the air during Junkanoo and the rhythms of rake-and-scrape carry rhythms from West Africa that survived the Middle Passage. This is not a past that has been neatly packaged for visitors. It is a living, contested inheritance that Bahamians navigate every day — in their family names, in their festivals, in the shape of their communities.

For the traveler willing to look beyond the resorts, Exuma offers something rarer than a pristine beach: a chance to see how a small island society carries a history that is neither fully reconciled nor fully hidden. The questions Pompey asked in 1830 — about freedom, land, and who gets to tell the story — are still being answered.

To understand more about how family and community ties have shaped this inheritance, read about the enduring traditions of Bahamian community life.

Sources and further reading

Pompey Museum of Slavery & Emancipation. “Exhibits and History.” 🔗

Bahama Islands. “Uncovering the Bahama Islands’ Role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Historical Deep Dive.” 🔗

My Out Islands. “Exuma’s Rich Tapestry: Uncovering Slave History in Bahamian Culture.” 🔗

Related reading on IslandHopperGuides

Exploring the Rake-and-Scrape Music Tradition in the Bahamas — A deep dive into the African-derived musical form that emerged from plantation life.

From Colonial Past to Caribbean Present: Examining Bahamian Identity — How the legacies of slavery and colonialism continue to shape national identity.

The Magic of Bahamian Folktales: A Window Into Our Culture — Oral storytelling traditions that carried African memory through generations of enslavement.