Amistad

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• Movie Goof (revealing mistake): The actors portraying the Spaniards Ruiz and Montes speak with Mexican and Puerto Rican accents respectively.
• Movie Goof (anachronisms): In 1839, the Capitol building was topped by a small copper dome. This dome was removed in 1856, and the present dome completed in 1863.
• Beginning during Cinque's lifetime, rumors circulated that he himself became a slave trader after his return to Africa. (Oxford History of the American People, 1965 states: "The court with a majority of Southerners, was so impressed by the old statesman's eloquence that it ordered Cinque and the other Negroes set free, and they were returned to Africa. The ironic epilogue is that Cinque, once home, set himself up as a slave trader.") However, recent research disproves these rumors (Joseph Yannielli, Cinque the Slave Trader: Some New Evidence on an Old Controversy, Common-Place, Vol. 10, October 2009). It is believed that Cinque and the other freed prisoners from the Amistad returned to Africa in 1842, at which time Cinque's home country of Sierra Leone was being torn apart by civil war. Cinque and his companions from the Amistad kept in contact with members from the local Christian mission, and this contact provides today's researchers with pieces of information regarding his later life. After a while, Cinque left the area to trade along the coast of West Africa. Most stories of his later life are simply rumor. George Thompson's Thompson in Africa: or, An account of the missionary labors, sufferings... (1852) puts forward the idea that Cinque had moved to Jamaica. Others held that he had become a merchant or a chief, perhaps trading in slaves himself. However, this rumor of Cinque himself engaging in the slave trade has been seriously disputed. The origin of these claims appears to be statements made by early 20th-century author William A. Owens who claimed to have seen letters from AMA missionaries suggesting Cinque was a slave trader. While it is likely that some of the freed Amistad prisoners probably did engage in the slave trade upon their return to Africa, today most historians agree that Cinque was not among them, and these claims are false.
• Denzel Washington and Cuba Gooding Jr. turned down the role of Cinque.