The tragedy of the slave trade is not shown by Hurston in facts or figures. Instead, she teleports the reader into the first person account of someone who really suffered the slave trade. Kossula's story is naturally poignant, having come from rags to riches in the context of his tribal community, just to lose it all in a horrifying moment when he became enslaved by local warlords and sold to Americans who used him as an animal and nothing more. The timing of this story is at an interesting moment when slavery ends so his story provides a peer behind the veil into the future of difficult race relations.
The intersection of religion and Kossula's character is a wonder expose of his human nature. This is a wonderful way to celebrate his intensely intelligent capacities as a human being not only for thought and philosophy, but for intimate spiritual aspects of consciousness which often go ignored. He was not born a chief, but through intense personal experience, he was elevated to a position of spiritual authority by his community. This is the opposite of slavery; instead of treating him as if he has nothing but animal qualities, his tribe treated him as if he were a minor deity on earth.
That aspect of his character takes him through to the world of Baptist ministry, tying together two very important cultural connections for understanding the culture that Hurston herself belongs too. This Baptist ministry is spiritual in a new way, as if Kossula's character has adapted to a new environment where it now takes on similar roles. At the same time that spirituality is reintroduced to his life, so it autonomy. He is freed by the US government from slavery at the end of the Civil War.
