In the fall, Kunta Kinte is given the job of harvesting and storing the pumpkins. Kunta has learned many of the toubob words now, and although he does not wish to communicate, he shows that he understands. Kunta notices other plants being harvested as well. Kunta takes special notice of the tobacco, something that is forbidden by Allah. Kunta feels the same way about tobacco as he does about swine.

Kunta notices that the women don’t tie their hair the same way as the women back home and they beat their clothes against folded pieces of tin to get them clean in the wash water.  Kunta wonders why these women don’t do things “properly” as they are done in Africa.

After all of the crops are harvested and stored, the mood becomes lighter on the plantation. Kunta, however, spends most of the time in his hut taking care of his ankles, festering from the leg chains. He is amazed, however, at the carpet of autumn leaves on the ground. It is at this time that Kunta considers something he hasn’t heard: drums. Kunta wonders why the black people here don’t use drums. Do they not know how to use them? Do the white men forbid it?

While pondering drumbeats, Kunta’s mind begins to soften towards these kindred, black “pagans.” He is drawn to the things he sees them doing that are purely African: laughing with their whole bodies, singing loud songs, voicing similar exclamations, talking in hand gestures, wrapping their babies, cleaning their teeth with the edges of sticks, sitting around a fire to chat, making similar facial expressions, and training their children to respect elders. The other slaves are looking at Kunta with gathering concern for his infected ankle. Kunta “almost” acknowledges them. Kunta begins to wonder if Allah “willed him to be here in this place amid the lost tribe of a great black family.” Perhaps his purpose is to teach them their African roots.

Kunta Kinte realizes as time goes on that the other black people hide their true hatred for the toubob as much as Kunta does. Kunta notices when they purposely break farm tools, speak to each other in a secret language, steal away in the night in order to return by morning, work slower than they can, pray to their “Lawd” which is their word for Allah, scowl when backs are turned, mock the toubob around the fire, and dislike the blacks who work as hard as they can to please the “massa.”

Thanksgiving day holds a great celebration. All the white people and black people eat their full of the harvest and then dance all night in the barn. The music is made by a fiddle, or as Kunta describes it, a “musical instrument with strings running down its length." The fiddle is played by an older black man who often sits in a rocking chair and makes brooms from corn husks. He is one of the first blacks to give an approving nod towards Kunta. Kunta marvels at these masters and slaves dancing together and decides that “the blacks and the toubob had some need for each other.”