[^0]
[^0]:    1 'Petite[s] allure[s] de récit', Farge, 2005, p. 15.  
same way, from one slave-owning society to another, as their purpose, from the standpoint of the person drafting them, was to lead to the capture of a hunted slave. So, there is no need to compare them in time or across the Atlantic. It is enough to gather and collect them, transcribe and study them, like so much incriminating evidence. Evidence that slaves wanted to be free, and that slavery was a violent institution, based on terror. Evidence.  
But what if the main function of the notices was not to lead to capture? And those well-known sources were something other than mere transparent pieces of evidence? What if it is time to read them again and allow ourselves to be surprised? Those are the three questions this chapter will set out to answer. The notices that follow are drawn from three regions: Louisiana, South Carolina and Jamaica, in the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century. The analyses presented rest on hypotheses that will have to be verified by sampling other bodies of evidence from other regions.  
Meanwhile, let us open the gazette from Spanish Town, Jamaica:
Trafalgar, November 12, 1808. RUNAWAYS.