National Park Service

National Park Foundation

The Georgia Trust

Georgia Department of Natural Resources

The Georgia African American Historic Preservation

Network

National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers

Smithsonian Institution

U.S. Committee, International Council on Monuments 

and Sites

The Slave Route Project of UNESCO

Southeast Regional African American Preservation Alliance

Morris Brown College

Clark Atlanta University

American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and

Artistic Works

Conference Sponsors

1
2

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Introduction 00

Memorializing Places of Diaspora 00

Freedom’s Trail: The Florida Cuba Connection 00

Ralph B. Johnson

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 00

Place Names in the USA

Annette I. Kashif

Autobio-graphic Space: Reconciling African American Identity 00

with the (In)visible Past

coleman a. jordan (ebo)

Agricultural Lifeways and Technologies 00

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory 00

Judith Carney

The Memory of Iron: African Technologies 00

in the Americas

Candice Goucher

Bounded Yards and Fluid Borders: Landscapes of Slavery 00

at Poplar Forest

Barbara J. Heath

Black Cultural Landscapes and Institutions 00

Africanisms on the ‘Old Ship of Zion’: 00

What Are These Forms and Why Do They Persist?

Audrey Brown

Interwoven Traditions: The Conjurer’s Cabin and 00

African American Cemetery at the Jordan Plantation 

and Frogmore Plantations

Kenneth L. Brown

Some Evidence of African Cultural Traditions among the 00

Residents of Black Church Centered Farming Communities 

in North Central Louisiana

Joe Lewis Caldwell

Table of Contents

3
(Table of Contents, continued)

Legacies of Urban Realms and Rural Communities 00

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact 00

on Place Making: Case Studies from African and African 

American Communities

Abimbola O. Asojo

Gardening, Yard Decoration, and Agriculture Among 00

Peoples of African Descent in the Rural South and in

the Cayman Islands

Richard Westmacott

Por La Encendida Calle Antillana: African Influences on 00

Puerto Rican Architecture

Arleen Pabón

African Burial Ground: Discovery, Preservation, 00

and Memorialization

New York’s African Burial Ground Mortuary Complex in 00

Diasporic Perspective

Warren R. Perry, Jean Howson, and Ruth Mathis

Places of Cultural Memory:

4 African Reflections on the American Landscape
The 13 essays that appear in this compilation were

prepared for the conference, “Places of Cultural

Memory: African Reflections on the American

Landscape.” This conference was held May 9–12, 2001,

in Atlanta, Georgia.

The conference developed from an idea posed by Falona Heidelberg, now the

Executive Director of the African American Experience Fund at the National Park

Foundation. While her initial interest was in the African Burial Ground in New York

City, she believed that there was much about African cultural heritage in the United

States that was little known and under-appreciated. Together with Katherine H.

Stevenson, Associate Director, Cultural Resource Stewardship & Partnerships of

the National Park Service, Ms. Heidelberg began a series of meetings to discuss

the possibility of convening a conference on the tangible aspects of African

American history.

As the conference program evolved, three consultants from the scholarly community were engaged to advise on the major conference themes and prospective

speakers. The conference sponsors appreciate the major input of Joseph E. Harris

of Howard University, LaVerne Wells-Bowie of Clemson University, and John Vlach

of George Washington University. Their interest in and support of this conference

clarified the program content.

Antoinette Lee of the NPS National Center for Cultural Resources was assigned

to organize and implement the conference and provide editorial direction for the

conference papers. Scott Whipple, now of the Maryland Historical Trust, assisted

her in the early phases of the conference planning. Later, Brian Joyner was hired

to coordinate the details of the conference and to provide editorial support for this

compilation of papers. Marcia Axtmann Smith prepared the design for this compilation, based in part on the artwork for the printed conference announcement that

LaVerne Wells-Bowie provided. 

The topic of the influence of African cultural heritage on the American landscape

is introduced in this compilation of conference papers. Readers will note that this

topic is a potentially vast one—one that deserves additional attention if the historic

preservation programs of the nation are to adequately reflect the contributions of

Africans to the development of the United States. 

CONFERENCE

PAPERS

May 9–12, 2001

Atlanta, Georgia

PLACES OF CULTURAL MEMORY:

AFRICAN REFLECTIONS 

ON THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE

Introduction 

5
6

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
7

Session One:

MEMORIALIZING 

PLACES OF DIASPORA

For centuries, Africans have been dispersed throughout the world and have established “communities”

outside of Africa. These scattered communities

retain their African identities within the culture of the host

communities. The Diaspora involves places of departure,

arrival, resistance, liberation, linkages, emigration, migration, escape, and other places where movement of human

populations took place.

Freedom’s Trail: The Florida Cuba Connection

Ralph B. Johnson

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African 

Influenced Place Names of the USA

Annette I. Kashif

Autobio-graphic Space: Reconciling African 

American Identity with the (In)Visible Past

coleman a. jordan (ebo)
8

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
9

Session One:

Memorializing

Places of

Diaspora

Freedom’s Trail:

The Florida Cuba Connection

Ralph B. Johnson

Before emancipation and during

Reconstruction in the United

States free Africans found themselves in a very precarious position,

being neither slave nor free. Achieving

freedom was a major accomplishment,

but one that could not be taken for

granted. Even after leaving slavery

some people had to struggle to claim

their civil rights and retrieve them if

they were abrogated for some reason.

They found solace in their own communities. These were self-contained communities where every member of the

community contributed to the whole.

Many were skilled carpenters, masons,

and agriculturists. Together they cleared

the land, planted new fields, built

homes, built the church, and the fortifications to protect their community. 

In their new communities, once again the Africans,

now free, found it necessary to sacrifice their

beliefs in order to fit within the host culture. They

learned a new language, converted to a new religion, risked their lives as many had to escape

bondage on this southern “trail to freedom,” and

acquired loyalty to foreign governments, often by

military services. Such was the case in “La Florida,”

a province of the Spanish crown, and now the

southeast region of the United States of America. 

In 1762 the English were finally successful in

capturing Havana, Cuba a stronghold of the

Spanish Empire in the Caribbean. However, in the

Treaty of Paris Spain ceded La Florida and Gracia

Real Santa Teresa de Mose to England, in

exchange for Havana and Puerto Rico. The following year the residents of her Florida communities

were evacuated and moved to Cuba, even though

His “Britannic Majesty” agreed to allow remaining

inhabitants of in 1763 the “liberty of the Catholic

religion.” No more than eight Catholics and laymen

could be found anywhere on the peninsula. Thus

ended nearly a century of safe haven for run-away

slaves from the British Carolina and Georgia lowcountry plantation system. This was most timely

given the fact that the peak of the colonial import

trade in slaves was probably reached between

1764 and 1773, the period that overlaps nine of the

21 years of British occupation of Florida. 

Slavery in Spain and Her

Colonies

The institution of slavery in Spain was different than

other European nations. Slaves had a moral and

juridical personality, and Spanish legislation specifically granted them rights and protections in addition

to obligations. Spanish slave codes were derived

from the Justinian Code, and had been incorporated into Castilian law in the thirteenth century by

King Alfonso X. As African slaves reached Spain in

the fifteenth century, they were ruled by this legislation, known as the Siete Partidas del Rey Don

Alfonso El Sabio. The Siete Partidas also governed

slavery in the New World. The Siete Partidas, and

its adaptations, formed a body of law that held that

slavery was against natural law, for God had created man free. This philosophy was held in the context of a country steeped in religious righteousness. 

The “Catholic Monarchs,” as King Ferdinand

and Queen Isabelle were affectionately called, were

very concerned about the souls of their subjects.

This applied most importantly to the Indies and

Spanish Florida. Slaves, Native Americans, and

free men were brothers in Christ and it was the

responsibility of masters and the Church to teach

them the rudiments of the faith so that they might

be admitted into the Church and enjoy all its sacra-
ments. These included marriage. The

sanctity of the family was protected by

requirements not to separate members

of the family. Brotherhood in the Church

sometimes served to tie masters to

slaves in fictive kinship arrangements,

when owners served as godparents and

marriage sponsors for their slaves. 

Slavery was considered as an accident of fate, and an aberration in nature,

rather than a perpetual or preordained

condition. These circumstances, the

emphasis on a slave’s humanity and

rights, and the lenient attitude toward

manumission embodied in Spanish

slave codes and social practice made it

possible for a significant free black class

to exist in the Spanish world. Aside from

this attitude, blacks were not free of

racial prejudice. 

Embroiled in a social and religious

reconquest of its own at home, Spain

was nevertheless preoccupied with

racial purity and blacks that ruled Iberia

for several centuries up to this period

were assigned to the bottom of the

social hierarchy. But the Spanish recognized early on the useful contributions

blacks might make in their colonial

empire. Their services were welcomed

particularly in the area of defense.

Florida was an important and strategic

location for the safe passage of Spanish

treasure fleets and later, as a buffer

against French and English colonization.

For some time blacks were drafted into

the militia. As early as the sixteenth 

century, militia companies in Santo

Domingo, Cuba, Mexico, Cartagena,

and Puerto Rico included black regiments. In Florida a company of black

and mulatto militia was formed as early

as 1683, and there may have been 

earlier ones. 

Blacks were incorporated into services in another respect. Pedro Menedez

de Aviles, established the first successful Spanish settlement in Florida, 

assisted by black laborers and artisans

imported from Havana. They worked on

early fortifications, sawed timber, and

built several structures, including a

church, a blacksmith shop, and an

artillery platform. They also cleared land

for planting and harvested the crops.

Florida was a part of Spain’s strategy to

substantiate its claim to the Americas,

denied of course by its rivals, France

and England. It was important therefore

to effectively occupy and populate the

respective territories. 

By papal donation the lands of the

so-called New World belonged to the

Catholic Monarchs of Spain. The

Spanish Crown hoped to populate these

lands with Christian pobladores or population, much as they had done in the

areas Spain re-conquered from the

Moors. They hoped to build ordered and

just communities in the Americas, modeled after those of Spain. Although earlier municipal legislation existed, the regulations of Charles V are notable for the

detail with which they prescribe the rituals for town foundation, the establishment of municipal governments and

parishes, the proper division of lands,

and the actual physical organization of

ideal towns. The Crown, through its local

representatives (the governors or municipal officers) could allocate Crown land

to deserving or needy subjects, and

town building was considered a noble,

and indeed, a necessary objective of the

Spanish administration.

In October 1687, the first known 

fugitive slaves from Carolina arrived in

St. Augustine, the Spanish colony in La

Florida. Governor Diego de Quiroga

dutifully reported to Spain that eight

males, two females, and a three-yearold nursing child had made good their

escape in a boat. Six of the men were

put to work in the Castillo, but two 

others were assigned to work with the

blacksmith, a possible indication that

they already had skills in that area. The

women became domestics in the house

of the governor. All were paid for their

labor. When an English official arrived

the next fall to claim them, Governor

Quiroga refused to release them, on the

grounds that they had received religious

instruction and been converted to

Catholicism, had married, and were usefully employed. Moreover, they claimed

to fear for their lives. Thus a fugitive

slave policy began to evolve which

would have serious diplomatic and military consequences for Spain.(1) King

Charles II, on November 7, 1693, issued

the first official position on the runaways,

“giving liberty to all...the men as well as

the women...so that by their example

and by my liberality others will do the

same.” 

Gracia Real De Santa

Teresa De Mose

By 1736, records show that a total of

630 Spaniards and 143 slaves and free

Africans were confirmed in the new

church of St. Augustine, Nuestra Senora

de la Leche. And, by 1738 the settlement of Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de

Mose or Fort Mose as it was commonly

known, was established by African-born

run away slaves from the English

Carolina and Georgia plantations. It was

located approximately two miles north of

St. Augustine. Fort Mose was strategically situated to protect both land and

water routes to St. Augustine; and, the

African homesteaders vowed to “spill

their last drop of blood in defense of the

Great Crown of Spain and the Holy

Faith, and to be the most cruel enemies

of the English.” They cleared the lands

they received from the governor, planted

crops to sustain their families, and built

a settlement that included a small fort

complex. It included associated 

structures such as a church and 

10

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
sacristy, and a number of houses that

seem to have been scattered among the

planted fields. 

In many ways, the settlement at Fort

Mose resembled those of the Native

American villages also on St.

Augustine’s periphery. The structures at

Fort Mose were said to be thatched

bohios, “such as the Indians have.”

Archeological investigations at the site

also prove the diet of Africans and

Indians to had been heavily dependent

upon riverine resources and nondomesticated animals hunted or trapped

in the surrounding forests. Historical

records indicate that an African

Mandingo leader named Francisco

Menendez governed the community.

This Mandingo warrior also commanded

the Fort Mose militia for almost thirty

years. 

The Free Black Militia Company of

Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose

consisted of the following:

Commander Don Geronimo de Hita y

Salazar; Cura Beneficiado, Don

Agustin Geronimo de Resio; Captain

Francisco Menendez, Lieutenant

Antonio Joseph Eligio, Second

Lieutenant Francisco Escobedo,

Sergeant Pedro Graxales, Antonio

Gallardo, Thomas Chrisostomo,

Pedro de Leon, Pedro de Fuentes,

Francisco Rosa, Juan Fernandez,

Juan de la Torre, Francisco Joseph

Menendez, Joseph Escobedo,

Francisco Graxales, Antonio Blanco,

Francisco Diaz, Joseph Bentura,

Manuel Rivera, Joseph de Pena,

Nicolas Briones, Francisco Suni,

Joseph Fernando, Santiago Solis,

Francisco de Torres, Juan Lamberto,

Antonio Garcia, Julian Bulero, Pedro

Martines, Nicolas de Cesar, Ignacio

Roso, Juan Chrisostomo, Juan

Thomas de Castilla.(2)

After the British General James

Oglethorpe destroyed the first settlement

of Fort Mose during the 1740 invasion, 

Menendez and his “subjects” built a 

second settlement in 1752. Historical

and archeological research at the 

second Fort Mose has produced a rich

picture of the Afro-Hispanic colonial life

on the Spanish frontier. Fort Mose withstood repeated Indian attacks, and the

deprivation associated with an embattled

frontier until the 1763 mass evacuation

of La Florida colonists to Cuba. There,

they established a new frontier homestead, San Agustin de la Nueva Florida

in the province of Matanzas.

San Augustin De Le

Nueva Florida, Cuba:

Ceiba Mocha 

The Seven Year War, known in America

as the French and Indian War, culminated with English forces capturing the

port of Havana. In the First Treaty of

Paris, La Florida was chosen over

Puerto Rico by King Charles III of Spain

to be the more easily expendable property. The transfer of sovereignty to

England was formally done, and the first

Spanish Period of Florida came to an

end.

By March 1764, eight transports

arrived in Havana with 3,104 people.

Florida’s governor, Melchor Feliu, oversaw the evacuation of the Spanish

colony, organizing a flotilla of ships to

carry its citizens to Cuba. The exiles

included Spaniards, Canary Islanders,

Catalans, Indians from the mission villages of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe

de Tolomato and Nuestra Senora de la

Leche, and African residents of Gracia

Real de Santa Teresa de Mose.

Initially the Floridians were housed in

Havana, and in the outlying towns of

Guanabacoa and Regla. Within months

of their arrival in Cuba, however, the

government arranged the transfer of 73

Floridian families or a total of 331 persons to a new settlement in the province

of Matanzas, to be called San Agustin de

la Nueva Florida. It was also popularly

known as Ceiba Mocha. (The word

“Ceiba” is the Spanish name of a tree

also called the Cottonwood tree that in

Africa possesses a sacred significance.) 

The group included 13 Spanish families, 43 Canary Island families; four

English families (called Germans on the

reports), four free pardo or mulatto families (members of the free disciplined

militia of Havana posted in St.

Augustine); and nine free moreno or

black families (from the free militia of

Mose). The following year, 11 more service families from Florida joined them.

A wealthy rancher, Don Geronimo

Contreras, donated the land to establish

the new town and the Crown gave each

household head a caballeria (approximately) of uncultivated land, a stipend of

sixty pesos, tools, and a slave newly

imported from Africa to assist in the

labor of homesteading. The Mose militiamen received the following plots of land:

Lot # 40 Francisco Menedez

Lot # 45 Juan Chrisostomo Gonzalez

Lot # 60 Juan Fernandez

Lot # 61 Francisco Diaz

Lot # 65 Antonio Gallardo

Lot # 67 Joseph Ricardo

Lot # 68 Lieutenant Joseph Antonio

Elixio

Lot # 91 Captain Francisco

Menendez

Lot # 92 Domingo de Jesus Parilla

Lot # 93 Thomas Chrisostomo

The free pardo militiamen from Havana

posted in St. Augustine received the following plots of land:

Lot # 83 Captain Manuel de Soto (of

Havana militia)

Lot # 94 Joseph Orozco

Lot # 98 Juan Fermin de Quixas

11

Freedom’s Trail: The Florida Cuba Connection
Government officials also provided the

new colonists with food until they could

harvest crops. After nine years, the

homesteaders were obligated to repay

the cost of the slave (150 pesos) and

the subsidy (60 pesos) or a total of 210

pesos to the royal treasury.

Conditions at the new settlement

were difficult. The homesteaders struggled to clear the land, plant fields, and

build new structures in an untamed

wilderness. Smallpox swept among the

slaves, killing many. Several slaves

revolted and killed their owners. The

Floridians pleaded for more assistance

from Havana. They reported, “We have

not been supplied with (shelter) to protect our bodies from the punishments of

the weather, and consequently, without

housing or sustenance find ourselves

obliged to sleep under doorways

exposed to inclement conditions.” 

Another report from 1766 stated that

all the conditions at Ceiba Mocha suffered the same defect—there was no

water to drink, it was difficult to drill wells

in the land, and the closest water was

the river which was one-half to twothirds leagues distant. 

The report added that the only reason 16 families stayed there was that

they were too poor to move. Although a

total of 200 solares, or town lots, had

been donated for the Floridians, there

was some delay in allotting the property.

The people lived in huts scattered

around the countryside among their

fields. These “sad shacks” were

described as being constructed of

yagua, which is the impermeable and

pliable material that joins a palm frond to

the trunk of the palm.

Because the homesteaders lacked

oxen with which to plow and could not

afford to buy any, all the land had to be

cultivated with a hoe. The only crops

that the people had been able to grow

were maize, yucca, some beans, 

boniatos, and squashes. The settlers

had no bread or meat, and even cassava was scarce. The report continued,

saying the woods were so thick that they

did not have wherewithal to clear much

land for planting, and the people were

reduced to misery. 

The settlement of Ceiba Mocha had

no doctor, no barber, no pharmacist, no

priest, and people died without the benefits of the sacraments. The closest

church was in the city of Matanzas, 24

leagues distant. For the reasons given,

only 16 of the total 84 families actually

remained on the lands allotted for the

new town of San Agustin de la Nueva

Florida. Others rented outlying farmlands or moved to Matanzas and

Havana. Those that left sold their allotted lands to the remaining families,

allowing the latter to consolidate and

enlarge their holdings.

The free pardos and morenos of the

original Fort Mose community were scattered by the evacuation to Cuba.

Antonio Joseph de Elixio, his wife, and

five children remained on the lands of

San Agustine de la Nueva Florida, or

Ceiba Mocha, as did Captain Manuel de

Soto of the pardo militia of Havana, and

his wife, Gertrudis Contrera, and child.

Thomas Chisostomo, his wife Francisca

Rodriguez, and their three children rented land in the countryside outside of

Ceiba Mocha. Thomas appears in the

burial registers of Ceiba Mocha. He died

on February 23, 1798, by which time his

wife Francisca had already died.

Antonio Gallardo, his wife, and two

children; Domingo de Jesus Parrilla, his

wife, and seven children; Joseph

Ricardo and his wife; and Juan

Fernandez and his wife, Flora de la

Torre; all of these families moved to the

city of Matanzas, where they supported

themselves by working for daily wages.

The pardo (actually Indian) militiaman

from Havana, Joachim de Orozco, with

his wife, and four children; Pedro de

Leon, his wife, and three children; and

Francisco Diaz, his wife, and two children, all returned to live in the vicinity of

Havana where they subsisted on

limosnas, or government subsidies.

Each of these families received one and

one-half reales daily (eighty reales

equals a peso). The pardo militiamen

from Havana, Juan Fermin Quixas, his

wife Maria de Soto, their child, and

Marcelo de Cordova, and his wife did

likewise. 

The Floridian immigrants to Cuba

continued over the years to petition the

Crown and Havana officials for some

relief, and finally, in 1770, the Crown

established a pension for wives and

orphaned daughters of men exiled form

Florida. Several of these pension lists,

dating as late as 1805, have been located, and they show that only white

Floridians were recipients. Documents

from the Archive of the Indies in Seville,

Spain, show that Maria Gertrudis Rozo,

widow of Ignacio Rozo, a free militiaman

from Mose, tried for nine years to win

the same pension for herself and her

orphaned daughter, but despite their

proofs of legitimate marriage and government service, they were repeatedly

denied on the basis of their color.

Nineteenth Century

Ceiba Mocha Town

Plan and Layout

The development and growth of colonies

throughout the Spanish Empire were

prescribed by the Ordinances for New

Towns or Laws of the Indies. Produced

by Seville administrators for the King,

the Ordinances determined exactly how

the new towns of the New World would

be physically organized. The layout used

in San Agustin de la Nueva Florida was

the simplest example of Spanish

American town planning. 

12

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
As was common in Spain the plaza

was the main urban organizing element.

Around the plaza of Ceiba Mocha there

were no civic buildings usually associated with the Laws of the Indies guidelines, rather simple houses that line the

narrow dirt streets. The church was the

only architectural element that identified

this site as a public space. It served as

the place of worship as well as an official point of reference and record keeping. The church was a dominant force in

the lives of the early settlers. Its presence then, as it does today, provided

order for the town layout of Ceiba

Mocha.

The African militiamen that settled in

Ceiba Mocha were skilled carpenters,

ironsmiths, and masons and were familiar with the classical style of nineteenth

century Europe. They built all their own

structures at both the first and second

settlements at Fort Mose. They built the

defense line and the stockade outpost

on the Sebastian River and in the

repairs of fortifications at the Castillo de

San Marcos. Most importantly, they had

also assisted in the carpentry on the

church of St. Augustine. 

The Church of Nuestra Senora de la

Candelaria was built in 1792, almost 30

years after the town’s founding, as a

result of the town’s growth and a sense

of permanence brought about by better

economic conditions. The church is a

small, but significant structure. It is

approached from the north end of the

plaza and accessed through a façade

that is simple, but classically attractive in

design. The upper part of the façade terminates in a classic pediment that

reflects its pitched roof. Simple pilasters

with bases and Tuscan capitols frame

the façade and flank the main entrance. 

As with most of the churches of this

period, the church in Ceiba Mocha has

an open rectangular plan. The interior

space or nave is proportioned approximately three-to-one, length versus width.

The height of the ceiling is slightly more

than the width. The nave has no visible

structural elements, other than a column

that supports an interior balcony. In its

present form, the balcony is too small

and low for much practical use, and is

not an original element of the church.

Although it has been there for many

decades, it is believed that there was

originally an area for a choir. There are

three niches in the interior wall of the

nave, one of which holds a statue of the

African, St. Augustine, an Early Christian

Bishop. A classical neo-Gothic wooden

altar was located in the sanctuary. 

The bell tower is attached to the

main building and to one side. It consists

of three vertical sections, each separated by flat horizontal bands. The tower

terminates with a cupola with four arches from which the bells are hung. There

are also four pinnacles, one on each

corner, and the cross that symbolically

connects the building to the sky. The

walls of the church were constructed of

mamposteria, a technique that utilizes a

mixture of materials including irregular

fragments of stone, clay tile, or brick

with soil and sand. The walls are very

thick and require the placement of

square stones at the corners, and at

intermediate locations along the walls for

reinforcement. 

Housing

Most of the buildings in Ceiba Mocha

were houses built in the nineteenth century that gave form to the public spaces

of the town. They were built to conform

to their respective sites and reflect the

simple domestic life style associated

with this community. There were two

basic types, row houses and detached

homes. The predominant building materials were stone, red clay, sand, and

lime mortar utilizing the mamposteria

technique. The houses built in the mamposteria fashion utilized unfinished stone

instead of the more polished and regularly shaped stone or canteria found in

more important buildings in the larger

towns. Clay bricks were bonded together

with mortar joints from a mixture of lime

and sand. The older structures have

thicker joints with a narrower brick. The

builders reinforced the structure with timber studs placed every two or three

meters.

In several examples, houses were

also built of wood. In these cases, one

can easily distinguish between earlier

examples of the nineteenth century and

those more recently constructed. The

older structures were constructed with

planks of a wider width. The more recent

a structure is, the narrower the planks.

Perhaps the most striking feature

about the houses found in Ceiba Mocha

was the use of clay barrel tile roofs.

Houses have flat as well as slightly

pitched roofs. In every case, however, a

porch was typical. In the older buildings,

signs of structural members are evident.

The beams are larger and located closer

together that those built in the second

half of the nineteenth century. 

The floor plan of the house reveals

another characteristic found to be typical

in this region and unlike those found in

Matanzas and the larger towns. The

perimeter of the houses are normally

rectangular, as opposed to different 

configurations, such as “L,” “T,” “U,” or

“J” layouts. Ceiba Mocha houses included a patio that stretches across the

entire back. Normally only one room in

depth, the Ceiba Mocha houses have

excellent cross ventilation. This condition is enhanced by the fact that the

interior partitions dividing the house into

three major spaces do not extend up to

the ceiling. Instead, there is adequate

space to allow hot air to rise, creating a

comfortable living space below.

13

Freedom’s Trail: The Florida Cuba Connection
Conclusion

Although there is no physical evidence

of the first architectural elements developed in Ceiba Mocha, we can observe

existing configurations and spatial

organizations that help explain how the

domestic space was organized. The repetition of spaces, the relationship of the

house with the street and the clarity of

its interiors indicate the original way in

which people interacted with each other

and with the environment. The dwellings

show that the builders had learned how

to fit their structures to the climate. The

house, with its personal openings, represented privacy within the collective. And,

its façade announced the quality of its

inhabitants, and their function in the

community of Ceiba Mocha. 

The flight to freedom for the African

was “against all odds”. They were challenged on all fronts. However, by the

reliance upon skills learned or inherent

skills they brought with them from Africa

and cultural identities they were able to

survive even within the culture of their

host countries. 

Notes

1. Jane Landers, Against the Odds:

Free Blacks in the Slaves Societies of

the Americas (London and Portland, OR:

Frank Cass, 1996), 6.

2. Taken from Pie de Lista, January

22, 1764, in AGI, Santo Domingo 2595.

Bibliography

Manuscript Collections

Archivo de la Catedral Matanzas (ACM),

Matanzas, Cuba; Black Baptisms,

Black Marriages, Black Burials.

Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Seville,

Spain, Section Five, Audiencia de

Santo Domingo, Legajo 2595, 1598,

1882.

Archivo Historico de Matanzas (AHM),

Matanzas, Cuba, Actas de Cabildo.

Archivo Nacional (AN), Havana, Cuba,

Las Floridas, Legajo 6, 10, 12,

Mapas de Planos.

Libros de Parroquia (LP) Ceiba Mocha,

Cuba, Black Baptisms, Black

Marriages, Black Burials.

Books, Articles, Dissertations, 

and Papers

Gannon, Michael V. The Cross in the

Land. The Early Catholic Church in

Florida 1513-1870. Gainesville:

University of Florida Press, 1967. 

Gold, Robert L. Borderland Empires in

Transition: The Triple-Nation Transfer

of Florida. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University

Press, 1969.

Holloway, Joseph E., ed. Africanisms in

American Culture. Bloomington and

Indianapolis: Indiana University

Press, 1991.

Landers, Jane. “Historical Report on

Garcia Real de Santa Teresa de

Mose.” Submitted to the Florida

Museum of Natural History,

Gainesville, Florida, 1987. 

———. Against The Odds, Free Blacks

in the Slave Societies of the

Americas. London and Portland, OR:

Frank Cass, 1996. 

Manucy, Albert. The Houses of St.

Augustine, 1565-1821. Gainesville:

University of Florida Press, 1962.

McAlister, Lyle. Spain and Portugal in

the New World, 1492-1700.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1984.

14

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
The vitality and trans-ethnic 

influence of African American

language continues to be a

widely acknowledged phenomenon

within the American populace.(1) Since

the mid 1900s, there have been several

systematic studies which demonstrate

that that vitality is in some ways a function of African influences in African

American language varieties.(2) The

African stratum preserves remnants of

the various predecessor African languages in complex, though uneven and

interesting ways. As more evidence is

uncovered which delineates Africanisms in the Diaspora, the once widely

held belief that African culture was

extinguished under the devastation of

slavery will be more firmly overturned. 

For a complete picture to emerge, American place

names research needs to be included in the effort

to discover linguistic Africanisms. It is important to

understand that a “unique source of information

about a society’s history, beliefs, and values is in

the names people give to their surroundings.”(3)

This sources is referred to as place names, or

toponyms, a part of onomastics.(4) One language

study could be found on the subject, and it focused

on only Bantu (Central African) linguistic influences

in the place names of nine formerly confederate

states. Of course, African descendants in the

United States have a heritage of African admixture

extending from Central Africa, to at least, the northwestern belt of the continent.

In its explanation that numerous aspects of a

country’s development achieve linguistic recognition in its place names, The Cambridge

Encyclopedia of Language states that the “various”

steps in the exploration of America...can be seen

reflected in the layers of Spanish, French, Dutch,

Indian, and English names introduced by different

groups of explorers.”(5) Though it is a major reference work found in many public and academic

libraries, there is no mention of any African impact

on America’s development, which may be seen

through its toponyms. Seeking to put an end to

such oversights, this study delineates a broader

and more varied African impact on American

toponyms.

A curious off-hand comment turned the writer’s

attention, in the 1970s, to the impact African

Americans may have had on American place

names. A female acquaintance rushed into a nearby dormitory bedroom, excitedly recounting to her

friend a harrowing experience she had undergone

before dawn with another college classmate. The

gist of the narrative went thusly: returning them to

town after a home visit, the bus driver had dropped

his passengers off at the closed bus station. It was

already after midnight, so they were unable to

catch a cab. Though they returned without incident,

she exclaimed that she was terribly frightened

because they ended up having to walk through

“Colored Town” to get back to campus. The writer,

having never heard such a reference before, was

surprised and unsettled. The acquaintance turned

in surprise to see the writer, then apologetically

explained that no harm was intended; it was just a

term that whites in her Florida hometown used to

refer to the “black section of town.”

Further, when the researcher worked as a camp

counselor the following summer in a rural settlement

near Palakta, Flordia, she was surprised to come

upon a street name, “Colored School Road” emblazoned on an old, wooden-plank street marker.

Those encounters led to wondering, “Were there

or had there been autonomous towns or settlements established by black people in the U.S.?

Session One:

Memorializing

Places of

Diaspora

Africanisms Upon the Land:

A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA

Annette I. Kashif

15
Given the opportunity, would African

Americans assign racially self-referent

names to their town and street names?”

Or, “Was the racially referent, ‘Colored

Town’ just derisive slur?” Subsequent to

those experiences, it was found that

African Americans had exercised onomastic agency in bestowing the alternate

names, e.g., “Chocolate City,” an alternative name for two different types of

predominantly black habitats—one,

Washington, DC, the nation’s capitol;

and, the other a long-standing housing

project in Orlando.(6) These are essentially questions about the language of

group agency, identity, and autonomy

upon the American landscape.

The African enthusiasm for naming

and naming ritual has been widely

observed and document. From Djdehuty

of the Ancients in Egypt, to Nommo of

the Dogon in Mali, this enthusiasm is

tied to African spiritual philosophy.

Obenga says, “we see throughout Africa

the creative and powerful force of the

word. To name is to beget, that is, to call

up a genealogy and an evolution.”(7)

Further, from this African worldview, the

one who names has the power to structure or re-structure reality.(8) We come

to understand then the connections

between naming, power, and dominion.(9) African descendants desired to

structure a reality of self-determination,

and freedom from racist oppression and

exploitation, by securing plots of land

over which they could exercise power

and dominion.

Linguistic Status 

of Names

Place names, or toponyms, are proper

names, and proper names are words

that serve a particularizing and referential function.(10) However, proper

names have varying degrees of transparent meaning, or semantic content,

sometimes no more than that the referent is so-called.(11) Accordingly, the

Cambridge Encyclopedia’s place names

entry explains that “many thousands of

names have an unclear or unknown etymology, and this fact provides a continuing motivation for toponym study.” While

place names may be “fanciful and idiosyncratic” sometimes, a “small set of

creative processes” will account for the

“vast majority” around the world. Those

creative processes result in categories,

such as geographic features; religious

import; royal or lofty status; explorers

and other famous people; memorable or

outstanding events; state of affairs; 

animals; and other places.(12)

African Onomastics

Though African personal names are

characteristically drawn from common

nouns, descriptive phrases, and even

whole sentences which provide transparent meaning, it is not necessarily so

and one may easily find a meaning

known only narrowly to bearer (e.g., a

revered ancestor name with opaque

meaning in the contemporary language

community).(13)

To some onlookers beholding African

onomastica,

[t]he African continent offers a bewildering array of names: names of distinctive populations and their subdivisions, their languages and dialect;

names of countries, geographical

places, and archaeological sites;

names of empires, kingdoms, chiefdoms, and villages; terms for territorial and administrative divisions; and

names of kinship groups, cults, and

associations. This terminological profusion permeates all aspects of life,

from personal name giving to...artistic and technical taxonomies.(14)

Considering the deep antiquity of African

peoples, cultures, and civilizations, one

should not be surprised at this 

onomastic profusion. It is a basis for the

expectation that, being so deeply and

broadly ingrained, onomastic Africanisms would survive within the African

Diaspora.

Migrating African peoples, upon the

founding of settlements, usually named

them after their founders.(15) Yai also

found that in Yorubaland (Togo, Benin,

and Nigeria), for example, the placename also designates the language and

ethnicity of the inhabitants.(16) And

from oral traditions (e.g., oriki recitations), one could discover information

about certain lineages that make up

most of the Yoruba ethnic groups.

Interestingly, he also found some language mixture among the toponyms

where Yoruba have been in contact situations with different ethnic groups in

other localities. First, there are hybridized forms, e.g., where emigrant Yoruba

have assimilated into the Mahi population of Benin, one may find the toponym,

Nagokome, resulting from the agglutination of Nago (Yoruba people) + kome

(district, a determinative in Mahi). This

example serves as historical evidence of

the persistence of ethnic reference in

African toponyms. Second, Yai found

toponymic calques, wherein a word from

one language is translated into the language of the surrounding population. In

a predominantly Fon district in Benin, for

example, one will find that the toponym,

Idaaasa Iqbo, or “underwood,” in

Yoruba, > sasa zume, or “Dasa in the

forest,” in Fon.(17) 

Names and Language

Contact

African influences in African American

onomastics is to be understood in the

context of language contact when

speakers of disparate languages and

social (and/or ethnic) statuses come into

contact within the same geo- and 

16

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
socio-political environment. Linguistic

outcomes may be of three general

types: maintenance, mixture, or shift.

Language mixture includes the development of creole languages.(18) When

features of a supplanted ancestral language persist after language shift, and

exert influence within the successor language, these features constitute a 

stratum in the successor language. The

language forms in the stratum are variously referred to as continuity, retention,

or survivals. Moreover, social and emotional (i.e., non-linguistic) elements

which influence linguistic ones must be

considered in analyses of contactinduced language mixture.

Beside the fact that names reflect

cultural, historical, and social change,

there are other attributes of names that

further justify their importance in the

study of language mixture induced by a

contact situation, as is represented by

the African American experience:

1. Because they are lexical items,

names are among the easiest linguistic items to transfer into a successor or second language.(19)

2. It is not uncommon that a toponym

is the only record of a historical

event, or of a person’s existence.(20)

African American

Onomastics in

Historical Context

A historical overview of the North

American language contact situation into

which Africans were initially plummeted

should be considered basically in three

eras: Colonial/Enslavement;

Emancipation-Reconstruction; and,

Outward Migrations. The literature indicates that the language of African

descendants began shifting first, from an

African polyglot status in the first generations of arrival, to a period of bilingualism between a pidgin and each person’s

African mother tongue.(21) Then, 

subsequent generations incorporated

elaborated and restructured features into

the pidgin, forming deep and more stable regional creoles; they were characterized by mixture of English-Irish, and

West African grammatical structures and

vocabulary. These creoles lasted

throughout the centuries of enslavement. All the while, of course, a smaller

number of African descendants would

have common access to non-African

speakers, which afforded them opportunities to learn other languages. This is

not only true for those more frequently in

contact with prestige dialects of English,

but also those affiliating with Native

Americans. Also, the continuous arrival

of continent-born Africans right up until

the Civil War reinforced persistence of

Africanisms.

Colonial and 

Slavery Era

Africans were brought here mostly in

chains from the 1500s to the beginning

of the Civil War in 1861, an era that lasted longer than any other in African

American history to date. Spanning

Africa’s central region, out to its northwestern bulge, they were kidnapped

from places named Abomey, Calabar,

Congo, Djenne, Gizzi, Gola, Kanem,

Mande, Mina, Ngola, Oyo, Segu,

Whydah, and hundreds more.(22) They

had been the skilled and unskilled, literate and illiterate, peasant and artisan,

bureaucrats and soldiers, royalty and

subjects, aristocrats and commoners,

and et cetera. Their back-breaking toil

and know-how were at the foundation of

the development of the “new” Americas.

Hall found, for example, that in colonial

times, the survival of French Louisiana

was due not only to African labor, but

also to African technology in rice cultivation, indigoterie, medicine, and 

surgery.(23) In addition, Africans did the

“metal work, shipbuilding and river transport.”(24) It was clear that “Africans 

and their descendants were competent,

desperately needed, and far from 

powerless.”(25)

The records indicate that they did not

simply wait idly by for deliverance from

their brutal servitude. Constantly on the

look-out for available opportunities, they

were agents on their own behalf. That

agency included violent and non-violent

resistance to slavery. And, that should

come as no surprise when one considers the wide range of culture complexes

and civilizations, from which they were

so hatefully uprooted. Throughout all of

American history, there were numerous

courageous, desperate, and determined

acts of agency by African descendants

in their quest for freedom and selfdetermination. Prior to the abolition of

slavery, the record is replete with news

of African resistance, including mutinies,

runaways, conspiracies, revolts, and

maroonage (settlements of runaways in

the wilderness). These acts of daring

were committed in the face of white

retaliation, including torture, imprisonment, mutilations, and executions.

Runaways, with opportunity, giving reasons for having done so, “almost invariably cited unjustified and excessive punishment, overwork, and inadequate

food.”(26)

Beginning in the early 1500s, many

maroon settlements were successfully

established throughout the antebellum

era. Their members carried arms, and

sometimes waged guerilla raids and

warfare against the slave plantations.(27) With a few exceptions, the 

literature does not identify maroon settlements of North America by name, 

perhaps one indication of their precarious status. Aptheker reported in 1939

that the “mountainous, forested, or

swampy regions of South Carolina,

17

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana,

Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and

Alabama were the favorite haunts of

these black Robin Hoods.”(28)

According to Creel, a careful examination of the existing sources shows that a

spirit of rebellion, and strong will to freedom were prevalent among South

Carolina slaves.(29) About escapees

along its Gullah coastal regions, Creel

found that, while African-born persons

were more likely to escape singly, a

mixed group of American and Africanborn were more likely to make up a

band of maroons.(30) But even among

the mixed groups, the predominant identity was that of “African.” However, it was

sometimes true that whites and Indians

joined with the maroon bands.

“Maroonage” around colonial French

New Orleans was characterized by more

interracial amalgamation and permanence of its settlements. Rather than a

widely diverse grouping, the Africans

were found to have been taken from

mostly Wolof and Bambara speaking

regions of the continent. Among the

swamps around New Orleans, a network

of maroon villages were established,

and are identified by name on a 1768

map of the region.(31) The daring Juan

Malo, was the singular warrior-governor

over this network. One of the villages

was apparently named after him, Bayou

St. Malo, and another possibly, Bayou

Marron, as well. Apropos for his exploits,

Malo’s surname is from the Mandekan

group, perhaps Bambara. As they

sought to survive and avoid recapture,

these valiant fugitives also forged an

autonomous culture from various ethnic

backgrounds, to create cohesive communities, a process taking place concomitantly within the woeful confines of

“Slave Row,” to use Lerone Bennett,

Jr.’s, terminology.(32) These communities foreshadowed the cultural 

syncretism and creolization which would

become characteristic of the African

American population in the post-slavery

eras.

An important element in the maroon

mix was Native Americans, who were

being killed and cruelly driven from their

ancestral lands by the colonial settlers

and militias. The fleeing indigenous

bands and African escapees established

close relations for mutual benefit, and

sometimes intermarried. But, they generally maintained separate identities. In

Florida, their settlements acquired

names that reflect this admixture.

Although not so identified in the literature, their towns—bearing names such

as Wahoo Swamp, King Cudjoe’s Town,

and Minatti—indicate African linguistic

agency in place-naming. Both “racial”

groups were understood to constitute

the Seminoles, but those of African

descent are most frequently termed

Black Seminoles, or a similar variant. On

the lushly thicketed Florida frontier,

Black Seminoles built housing compounds distinct from the indigenous peoples. Their compounds might be within

the same village as their Native

American affiliates, or situated in a network nearby, or even more remote villages. By the late 1700s across Flordia,

Black Seminoles numbered more than

100,000, a testament to their more than

100-year alliance with indigenous peoples in Spanish Florida.(33) One of the

Seminole initiatives which precipitated

the Second Seminole War (1835-1842)

was the “Dade Massacre” in Sumter

County, and its attendant liberation of

enslaved Africans from plantations to its

north and east.(34) This initiative has

been posed as possibly the largest slave

revolt in U. S. history.(35) So prominent

was African influence in their alliance

that, during, General Jesup wrote that,

in reality, it was not an Indian, but “a

negro war.”(36)

Though most maroon camps and

setlements in the U. S. were eventually

crushed before the Civil War, that was

not always true. The Dismal Swamp

Maroons persisted from the colonial era

up to the War.(37) Their villages stood

in the swamplands bordering Virginia

and North Carolina. Reaching from the

Roanoke are to the Albermarle waterways, the Dismal Swamp sheltered

about 2000 fugitives.(38) Similar to the

permanent marooners of Louisiana and

Florida, they carried on “regular” trade

with ordinary citizens. They even assisted the Union Army, as independent 

contractors, in its triumph over the

Confederate militia in their region, during

the latter part of the Civil War.

Laeming’s cultural analysis of the

Dismal Swamp Maroons also revealed

some maintenance of distinct African

identity in the presence of intimate

alliances with fugitive whites, and indigenous peoples.(39) Pondering the possiblilty that there may have been Africans

in sufficient enough numbers to form

ethnically disticnt villages within the network, he noted that there “was a Congo

village, as well as, individual maroons of

other specific west African cultural or

religious emphases,” reflected in their

leaders’ names, e.g., “Osman (Islamic)

and Gamby Gholar and his spiritual

associates, who he identified as YorubaDahomean.”

Though maroonage was one avenue

through which African descendants

imprinted their language upon the

American landscape in the antebellum

centuries, it was not the only way. In

fact, marooners were often more

campers than settlers, needing to abandon areas quickly to avoid recapture and

slaughter. Aptheker posits that those

maroon towns and settlements in the

U.S., which experienced unusual

longevity, probably had done so

because they traded in desired goods,

18

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
and avoided clashes with white planters

and settlers. Furthermore, because the

large majority of maroon communities

wre destroyed, and the inhabitants captured and/or killed, it could be that the

majority of the toponyms they bestowed

are lost to 

history.

In his Names on the Land, Stewart

expressed no doubt that “many hundreds of small streams and swamps,”

whose meanings he could not distinguish, “were named by Negroes.”(40)

He further recognized that “Pinder Town

in South Carolina preserved the Kongo

Mpinda (peanut).” But, he added that

“white men probably did the naming

after the word had become current in

local speech.” His understanding that

black people did, in fact, assign place

names is correct thinking, but his attitude is somewhat problematic. First, he

seems unable to conceive of Africans

having left their distinct liguistic imprint

on large geographical masses; and, 

second, that when African names

appeared as a whole town name, that is

was not by direct African American

agency.

One attestation concerning personal

names is illustrative of the probability of

a more than insignificant and indirect

African American toponyimc agency. The

son of a Mississippi slaveholder recollected the exasperation of white planters

over the attributive names insistently

given to them by the Africans they held

captive on “Slave Row”:

The redesignation would take place in

spite of all [resistance], and so thoroughly that often friends and acquaintancs of the family never knew the

real name of the child. [Eventually] the

parents themselves at last fell into the

use of the...strange grotesque...applications of Ripper, Snorter, Coon,

Possum, Boots, Horse...and many

others like them...Few could get rid of

them...barnacle-like they clung to

their owners through the whole 

voyage of life.(41)

When one considers that it was overwhelmingly African labor and skill that

cleared and worked the land, it is far

from inconceivable that direct African

American agency is partly responsible

for the African linguistic impact on

American toponyms. That is not to say it

is easy to unmask. Vass provides a convincing example of an African name

upon a massive, as well as famous

geoscape: Suwanee River < nsub’wanyi,

“my house” in Kongo, Mbundu, etc.(42)

Other examples may be expected.

Africans escaping slavery did sometimes, indeed, establish settlements and

towns in the North and West. The

Abolition Movement, particularly through

the Underground Railroad, was instrumental in helping Africans to escape to

free states. They were not always welcomed, and met with white hostility

and/or “white flight.” So they, as a

group, moved into or evolved into onerace towns, respectively. In 1840, Illinois

saw the first of the all-black towns

become established in the North.

Originally named Lovejoy, after the

area’s most vocal abolitionist.(43) It was

re-named Brooklyn later, and incorporated in 1910 with a black majority in political control. It survives to-date. One early

settlement founded by runaways in

Maine is Malaga Island. Established in

1847, its “early settlers are known to

have maintained their ancestral languages and lived in caves” to avoid

recapture.(44) As typical of many eastern island communities, they were

squatters. In 1912, however, the inhabitants were dealt with in a ruthless and

devastating manner. Forced wholesale

by the state into the Maine School for

the Feeble-Minded, the inhabitants

were, along with their houses and

gravesites, wiped from view.(45) An

example of the effect of white hostility

“out West” may be seen in the fortunes

of Kentucky Ridge, established by

African Americans in 1851. Established

in the quartz mining regions, white vigilantes attacked the settlement, and by

1853, the inhabitants, with their

founders, all moved to larger settlements

nearby.(46)

From Black

Reconstruction to the

Great Depression

After a bloody and bitter upheaval

across the southern U. S., the Civil War

finally brought the 300-plus years old

“peculiar institution” to a halt by 1865.

Unfortunately, the African descendants’

ecstatic Jubilees over their liberty, and

“Black Reconstruction” lasted briefly.

Bennett explains that it would be among

“the first of many illusions and deceptions,” as the parasitic exploitation of,

and brutality against African Americans

would be re-instituted in other guises;

one of the first avenues for this reinstitution would be the infamous Black Codes

of 1865-1866, to be followed by the

notorious Compromise of 1877.(47)

By the opening of the Black

Reconstruction period, most African

descendants were speaking a set of

regional, stable Anglo-African creoles.

As they began to take on the status of

“citizens,” African Americans’ language

began decreolizing some toward EuroAmerican English. Decreolization proceeded more quickly among those who

left the isolated rural south for metropolitan areas, received formal education,

and lived among other in-group members who were “mainstream” speakers.(48) As was always true in the 

preceding era, they had acquired a

repertoire of language varieties and registers to be used to their advantage.(49)

19

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
Because disparities in power and opportunity continued, code-switching 

continued to be practiced. One variety

would maintain in-group solidarity, while

a different variety would be used in 

interactions with out-group whites.

African language use, per se, became

even more restricted among the number

of users, and in functional domains (e.g.,

storytelling) because, with the cessation

of illegal African arrivals, there were no

ancestral language reinforcements.

Deep Anglo-African creoles continued to

predominate in isolated enclaves (e.g.,

Gullah in South Carolina, and Gombo in

Louisiana). Additionally, distinctive

African American forms became more

diffused into the language of EuroAmericans, as levels of intergroup contact increased.

Convinced early on of the nonrepentant proclivities of whites, some

tens of thousands migrated to Liberia.

Although many migrated northward or

westward also, the large majority of

African Americans stayed in the rural

south. Pointing to songs, tales, and

other lore of “Slave Row” culture, V. P.

Franklin concludes that, with freedom

having been considered the ultimate

goal of their individual and collective

struggles under slavery, it was logical

that “self determination and social

advancement” would become defining

values among African Americans.

Whenever amenable, they became vastly more involved in government, schooling, and accumulation of land and property. But, with the spirit of the late 1800s

and early 1900s settling on widespread

racial hostility toward them, African

Americans placed increasingly more

emphasis on self-help, mutual aid, racial

solidarity, emigration, separatism, and

attempts to create all-black communities.(50) These efforts were established

within and beyond the confederate

states, and in all-black towns or black

enclaves of other towns.

The Homestead Act of 1866 brought

many of the freedmen into areas more

sparsely settled prior to the Civil War;

and black towns were created within the

former confederacy and without. Land

acquisition through the Freedmen’s

Bureau was woefully insufficient, so

most African Americans who managed

to acquire land had given up the wait 

for “40 acres and a mule,” and some

resolved to make their own land 

purchases.

Even with 40 acres awarded, or

lands collectively purchased, there was

no guarantee African Americans would

be able to keep it. A wide array of obstacles could be faced, including white

opposition. Such was the case that

spawned Belle Ville in McIntosh County,

GA. As an outcome of General William

Sherman’s Special Field Order #15, two

brothers were awarded land on St.

Catherine’s Island. Their colony was

broken up during the backlash, which

returned the properties to the former

slaving planters.(51) But, so determined

was the group that they pooled their

meager monies, formed themselves into

the Belle Ville Farmers Association, and

leased this acreage, when it was still a

plantation. Soon after, they bought it,

and their town was incorporated on

March 4, 1867.(52)

In December 1875, a national black

convention was held in New Orleans.

Learning how widespread were racist

depredations, the delegates formed

“Colonization councils” that helped collect names of African Americans in their

representative areas who were interested in leaving. Henry Adams, one of the

delegates from what is now Shreveport,

LA, wrote, in a letter to the U. S.

Attorney General in late 1878:

“I trust God that the United States

will give us some Territory to our

selves—and let us leave these

Slaveholders to work their own land,

for they are killing our race by the

hundreds every day and night.” 

But the “violence, intimidation, fraud and

terrorism continued...and by April 1879

the Colonization Council had collected

more than 98,000 names of people willing to migrate to the North or West, as

well as to emigrate to Liberia.”(53)

In the late 1870s, when Benjamin

“Pap” Singleton, and other promoters of

westward migration, needed names of

willing persons, the Council was one of

the groups providing them leads.

Estimates are “that during the spring

and summer 1879 and 1880, nearly

60,000 blacks left Northern Louisiana,

North Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, and

Alabama for Kansas and Indiana to take

advantage of the federal government’s

offer of land for homesteading.(54)

Morris Turner calls this period, ending in

1881, the “Black Exodus.”(55)

The Black Exoduster towns came to

have names such as Abila, Blackdom,

Tullahassee, and Three Creeks. Though

scant, some literature about this era

addressed onomastic Africanism.

Personal names, rather than place

names was the subject, though in may

still be found instructive for the study of

the place names of these post-Civil War

black towns. Some African descendants

consciously maintained their Africanness. Cudjo Lewis, for example, became

a leader of ex-slaves captured form

Togo. He also retained his African forename, Cudjo < koJo, ‘male born on

Monday.’(56)

An ironic, but interesting phenomenon served to erode the corpus of surface forms of African names while maintaining African deep structure onomastics simultaneously. Persons reported

that in order to inculcate the status of

20

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
free citizen, they must discard their slavery time name in favor of a free citizen

name, in effect, an Euro-American

name. Thusly, they practiced the African

postulate of marking life’s significant

events through bestowal of additional

names. African influence was not always

masked by this process, because some

acquired new names that are English

words based on common semantic

and/or syntactic categories common in

African names; an example found was a

calque-phrase name, Try and See.(57)

Having not experienced “a marked

improvement in their status from the end

of Reconstruction to the onset World

War I,” black workers were enticed

northward, Bennett explains, by “hard

pressed” industrialists. Previously, these

northern industrialists had severely

restricted blacks’ employment, preferring

white European immigrants, who were

now detoured by the war. To take advantage of increased job opportunities, massive numbers of African Americans

moved in two “Great Migrations,” 1915-

1920, and 1920-1924. By 1930, they

numbered “more than two million.”

Marking the first major shift in their overriding status as servants, laborers, and

peasants since the 1600s, more than

one-third of black workers were

employed in industrial occupations.

Cohesive black communities developed

in these industrial centers; and a northern black professional class

emerged.(58) V. P. Franklin described

the “complex social networks” developed

by African Americans of the Great

Migrations, who shared the values of

self-determination and freedom with the

earlier black-town pioneers:

With the influx of large numbers of

rural blacks into northern and southern urban centers during the last two

decades of the nineteenth century,

Black churches, separate schools,

fraternal institutions, voluntary associations and advancement groups

sprouted up to meet their social and

cultural needs. The expanding 

populations of African Americans

found that they could become a part

of a wide array of organizations in

which blacks exercised complete

control. As long as these institutions

functioned, there was little need of

the discrimination practiced in whitedominated public and private

[ones].(59)

This became the overriding mode until

the Great Depression in the 1930s,

which forced thousands of self-help

organizations to disband. Afterward,

African Americans seemed to have

thought it was best to pursue integration

“into white-dominated programs and

institutions, especially those programs

offered by the New Deal.”(60)

Turner collected copious linguistic

data in the 1930s and 1940s from

Gullah speakers (a.k.a. Geechees),

African descendants who had not

migrated, but remained continuously

over all the centuries on largely isolated

(island) enclaves along the southeastern

Atlantic coasts of Georgia and South

Carolina. His data analyses culminated

in the seminal work, Africanisms in the

Gullah Dialect. It showed decisively the

richness of African onomastics in this

deep creole language variety. Gullahs/

Geechees have an official name, plus

an alternate, or “basket” name that was

kept secret. The basket names were

found nearly always to be African homophones. But, there were also some

calques which related to weather, physical or emotional state, life situation, or

time of birth.(61) 

Even though his informants did not

remember the meanings of their names,

most of which were also personal

names in West African languages, they

continued to use them, because their

older relatives and friends had. Curious

about those whose forenames and surnames were both African, it was

explained to Turner, by informants who

were ex-slaves that “[a]fter slavery,

many of them refused to use any longer

the name of their former enslavers.”(62)

In those words, one finds the evidence

of a self-determining identity expressed

in language. Turner took only slight note

of Gullah/Geechee agency in bestowals

of place-name Africanisms.(63) His nine

examples include Peedee, Tybee, and

Wassaw. A native observer of Edisto

Island (a Gullah enclave) reportedly said

that “the Sea Island Negro is most fertile

in naming everything, giving particular

names even to the narrow saltwater

drains or gutters interlacing the marshes

when they are dry at low tide.”(64)

From the Post

Depression to the

Present

Appearing to be fewer in number than

those founded by previous black pioneers and exodusters of the postReconstruction period, thousands of

African Americans settled “suburban”

towns for themselves prior to the

1960s.(65) Most of these were established in subsequent migrations from the

urban town centers, which were not only

white controlled, but also becoming

“havens of overcrowding, unemployment, and crime.” Weise interprets this

black out-migration as having been part

of the “national trend toward urban

expansion and suburban decentralization,” except that they retained a southern rural flavor in the years before World

War II.(66) Real estate prices and home

ownership were significantly less expensive than in the big cities, and most

were blue-collar workers. Their place

names include Lincoln Heights, Glenarden, and Kinloch. The professional

21

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
class African Americans, not proscribed

to slums, overwhelmingly preferred the

central city.

Numbering more than 3,500,000

people across this country, African

American migration to the suburbs from

1960 to 1980 was “unprecedented.”(67)

On the heels of civil rights legislation,

many opted for integration into more

affluent, white suburbs. They generally

shunned the older black suburban towns

with rural flavor. However, some did, and

do, move into a few of the older suburbs, which have managed to thrive and

up-grade housing-stocks (e.g.,

Glenarden, Maryland). During this interval, the migrations were concentrated in

and around 12 cities, with the concentrations of greatest magnitude in Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. So,

from the close of Reconstruction to the

contemporary era, it is clear that through

“the act of migration, ...families and

entire communities moved [in order] to

control their own destinies and to give

greater meaning and substance to the

cultural value of black freedom.”(68)

Throughout the post-Depression era,

intergroup tensions have persisted, due

in large part to continued Euro-American

resistance to full freedom, justice, and

equality for African Americans. The tension is posed against some highly visible

easements in racial discrimination, in the

aftermath of the Civil Rights movement.

Bennett locates the progress of this period in the “middle of the economy.” We

find the eradication of overt Jim Crow

laws, return of blacks to elective offices,

diversification of career opportunities,

and non-proscription of mobility and

inter-ethnic personal relations. He calls

this state of affairs a “central paradox” of

American life; that is, 

[E]verything has changed in Black

America, and yet nothing has

changed. This means, among other

things, that we have not yet gotten to

the bottom line: the integration of the

money and the power and the

resources. The great movement of

the [1960s] ...did not and could not

at that time destroy the invisible institutional manifestations of racism.(69)

This bi-polarity (and escalating ethnic

duality) increases social identity ambivalence that is mirrored in African

American language. On the one hand,

more African American speakers have

shifted closer to Euro-American varieties, (e.g., employing increased

denasalization). On the other hand,

heightened ethnic distinctiveness has

emerged in certain syntactic forms and

speech events (e.g., specific subject/

verb co-occurrences and rap/rhyme

respectively). The in-group vernacular,

most popularly referred to as Ebonics or

Black English, enhances group solidarity, identity, and/or esteem.(70)

Depending on socio-familial background,

African American variation along the

continuum between “talkin’ black” and

“talkin’ white” is probably more of a conscious choice than in previous eras. And

again, it is seen that some distinctive

African American forms have become

infused into “mainstream” vernaculars.

So salient is “black talk” as an American

pop culture resource (like jazz or blues),

it seems much more likely that some of

the most stable African American speech

markers (e.g., habitual aspect “be”) will

cross racial boundaries rather than

become extinct.

The advocacy for reclamation of

African identity and esteem in this era

has definitely impacted personal names.

In her study of African American personal names, Kashif found that onomastic

Africanisms occur not only as African

homophones, but also in the form of

calques and hybrids. These hybrids

have never been discussed in the

research literature.

a. African Homophones, e.g., Keisha

< kishia, jealousy in Hausa, also a

nickname given to the second wife

who is always seen as a rival of the

first;

b. African Calques (semantic content

transfer), e.g., Prince < Eze, Igbo,

‘prince’ name for one whose grandparent is a hereditary ruler in eastern

Nigeria; the informant for this name

attests that he uses the English

equivalent word to while in the U.S.,

but reverts to Eze when traveling

back home;(71) and,

c. African Hybrids, e.g., Kawanda <

Ka + wanda < Ka-, an Ovimbundu

prefix used very frequently to form

female names from common nouns;

wanda, a Hausa pluralizer for ‘who’

or which; or, e.g., ShaKiethia < Sha 

+ Kieth + a < ‘Sho, Yoruba for ‘seer

or wizard’, a male for female name

prefix for this major cultural class of

names (e.g., Shoyinka); Kieth, the

male, Euro-American name; -(y)a,

Arabic, feminizer.

There is also some evidence, in the contemporary era, for conscious revivals of

African influenced place names; for

example, Oyotunji Village became the

name of a black cultural hamlet, founded

in the late 1970s, in South Carolina; and

the historic town of Prichard, Alabama

officially reclaimed one of its former

names, Africatown.

So, it is shown that, across the centuries of African American history, nonlinguistic factors have interacted with linguistic ones in the evolution African language. The western and central African

polyglot of the antebellum era, under

influence mostly from English and ScotIrish dialects, was largely replaced by a

set of creolized speech varieties among

African descendants. The historical 

evidence is that African descendants

exercised the prerogative of naming settlements, land masses, and other geo22

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
graphical features in their environs,

beginning even during the era in which

they were held in bondage, denied the

status of free citizens, or landowners.

Following Emancipation, African

American creoles shifted closer, over the

centuries, toward Euro-American codes.

But, due to the psychosocial distinctiveness of African descendants, and the

internal vitality of African American language, now more than 500 years old,

enough features of the supplanted

ancestral African language elements

have survived to form an African stratum. Intermittently, various linguistic

Africanisms have been revived, consciously and unconsciously. Under the

influence of a bi-polar psychosocial continuum from assimilationists to separatists, African Americans code-mix and

code-switching along the linguistic continuum, ranging from deep creoles (e.g.,

Gullah and Gombo) to mesolects (e.g.,

Ebonics or Black Vernacular) to

arcolects (e.g., Standard Black English

[SBE] or Standard English).(72)

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study is to expand

the identifications of America’s African

influenced toponyms, especially in terms

of their varied manifestations. Propelled

by the persisting Black Studies movement, and influenced greatly by the work

of Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Africanisms in

the Gullah Dialect, there is a noticeable

increase in the number of contemporary

researchers seriously addressing the

subject of Africanisms. These studies

address African influence within, and

beyond the African American collective.

Few of these discuss onomastics, but

when one considers the literature on the

response of names to extended language contact, and the history of Africa’s

descendants in America, there should be

a greater body of such studies. Those

that do focus on African American onomastics, deal with personal names

almost exclusively.

Vass is the one researcher who has

made place names one of the focal

points of her efforts to identify

Africanisms in American language. Her

chapter in a 1993 work she co-edited,

“Bantu Place Names in Nine Southern

States,” expands an earlier publication,

which, itself, was an outgrowth of her

master’s thesis in mass communications. The Bantu branch of African languages covers almost all of central and

southern Africa. The Bantu languages of

particular import for African Americans

include Fang, Kongo, Luba, and

Mbundu. Arguing for a predominance of

Bantu language influence over all other

African language branches, Vass sought

to identify retentions from the latter two,

predominant in Angola and Zaire/Congo.

She was raised in Zaire, the child of

Caucasian missionaries. A glance at

Turner’s small collection of toponyms,

taken from the Gullah/Geechee region,

and only in South Carolina and Georgia,

alerts one very quickly that much is left

to discern.

Using the corpus of all the town

names in each of nine confederate

states, she compared their pronunciations to words and phrases in the Bantu

languages. She expanded the corpus to

include names of rivers/streams, mountains, locales, and populations; the working definitions of the latter two terms are

not provided. To build her case for an

Africanism, Vass included elaborations

on meanings or emotional character

denoted by the proposed Bantu source

words. She notes that in Zaire, place

names commonly denote “significant

human experience, emotion, or

action.”(73) Too often, she conjectures

or sets forth imagined scenarios that the

African descendants may have been

engaged in or encountered, then 

proceeds to extrapolate upon the conjectures as if they were attested facts.

This was especially problematic when

there were more than a few sound differences between the toponym and her

proposed Bantu source. She was much

less careful than Turner; in order for an

African form to be posed as a source by

Turner, it had to be “phonetically identical with or strikingly similar to” the

Gullah name, emphasizing thereby a

“strong probability that the [selected

Gullah] names are African words.”(74)

However, many of the toponyms

Vass proposed as Africanisms are convincing when based on close sound similarities coupled with transparent, rather

than conjectured, meanings, and/or

when a locality’s historian admits that

the toponym has an unknown origin or

meaning. Another puzzle is that Vass’s

findings from a random sample of Zaire

toponym denotations do not comport

with the findings of Cheikh Anta Diop, an

African toponym expert of international

repute. He found that an African

toponym is most typically the personal

name of the founder of the town or settlement. Perhaps the difference is

explained by whether or not inhabitants

migrated to a site; or a pattern shift may

have occurred on the Continent with the

cessation of the antebellum slave trade. 

Theoretical

Perspective on

Research Needs

As was done in the writer’s discoveries

of patterns of Africanisms in generations

of African American personal names, the

methodology employed within amounts

to card stacking, i.e., using as many linguistic and non-linguistic facts available

which are relevant to African provenance

for each selected place-name

Africanism.(75) Using racial/ethnic history and make-up of a region is one of

23

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
the most convincing card-stacking

strategies. Turner targeted Gullah Sea

Island habitats and Vass widened the

target areas to nine confederate states.

So the geopolitical history serves as

indirect attestation of African linguistic

provenance. The argument for African

influence is also more convincing when

historians of a locale have found the 

etymology of its toponym unsure or

obscure; it is common in place-name

texts to express no consideration whatsoever of African language sources. The

analyses within 

1. Avoids some of Vass’s weaknesses shown in positing a U. S. place

name as a Bantu Africanism or

Bantuism; she

• often did not identify the specific

Bantu language(s) of a posited

source, thereby leaving one to

assume that she means perhaps all

Bantu languages; 

• provided no explanation of guidelines for deciding the extent of phonetic similarity necessary between a

place-name and its posited Bantu

source; this resulted in posited

African sources that seem counter

intuitive, and therefore unconvincing. 

2. Moves beyond “Bantu” language

sources so that place names derived

from the other African languages,

including converging source words,

may be identified.

3. Moves beyond African homophones to include other types of

Africanisms, as described above.

4. Identifies toponym Africanisms

beyond the South, analyzing

“autonomous” black towns and settlements across the U. S., from as early

as the era of maroonage. 

Methodology

Toponym, or place-name Africanisms,

were addressed in terms of language

mixture resulting from language contact

phenomena. These are issues of concern in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, history, and social psychology,

among others. The identification of a

toponym as African influenced is based

on its linguistic similarities to, and modification of, African forms and structures.

A purposive sample of African American

toponyms was collected from historical,

geographical, journalistic and linguistic

surveys. The study began with a central

focus on Florida, because it is found to

have the longest history of African

agency and struggle of any state in the

now United States. 164 place names of

towns identified in the available literature

as having been established and/or

founded by African American were 

collected. 

The researcher identified and classified into transfer types all of the African

American toponyms which (in their morphological, phonological and semantic

characteristics) correspond to or appear

modeled upon African names, words,

morphological processes, and toponym

motifs. Several types of changes in

African words toward American English

phonology were predictable, e.g., (a)

deletion of tones, or (b) simplification of

co-articulated stops (ng-, kp- > g, p or n,

k, respectively).

The selected African American

toponyms were divided into Africanism

types: African homophone, African

hybrid, and African semantic transfer.

They are to be understood as follows:

1. African homophone, the toponym’s

phone or sound sequence matches

that of (an) African source(s); a

match means that the sound segments of the African American

toponym have undergone no more

than two changes that are unexplainable by common American English

phonological processes (as those

noted above).

2. African hybrid, the toponym conjoins (a) two or more African source

words or word-parts or (b) an African

source word or word-part and nonAfrican one. 

3. African semantic transfer, the

toponym is a calque or word(s) in

English that shows transfer of an

African motif or semantic content of

the following type: 

(a) town or settlement founder or

inspirer, 

(b) ethnic/ linguistic group reference, 

(c) duplication of another toponym, or 

(d) commentary on human state-ofaffairs. 

The four subcategories typify, but are

not exclusive to, African place-name

onomastics. However it is firmly established in the language contact literature

that ancestral language retentions occur

in these “translated” forms. One way

that convergence with a non-African language may be unmasked is through

comparison of the preponderance of

each name type among the non-African

language speakers in the contact 

environment. 

Findings and

Interpretations

Entry Guide

Below, an alphabetically arranged roster

with toponym glosses is provided for

each toponym identified as an

Africanism. Symbols are to be interpreted as follows:

< is a form of or has its source in 

> changed to

[ ] approximate pronunciation is

indicated within the brackets (Note:

An informal pronunciation guide of

broadly represented sounds) 

24

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Abbreviations

Sources from the Reference list

Ath, Athearn

Br, Brown 

Dp, Diop, 1978

Lmg, Laeming

Ln, Landers

Mc, McCarthy

MTr, Turner 1998

Od, Oduyoye

Rv, Rivers, 2000

Tr, Turner, 1949

Sources from personal 

communication

Al, Albury, A., 7/00

Ay, Ayittey, G,10/90

CBr, Brown, C., 11/00

Ctr, Carter, W., 1/88

Nj, Njokunma, A., 4/00

Languages

Ak, Akan (Ewe, Fante, Twi)

Egy, Egyptiam or Khemetic

B, Bambara

Bb, Bobangi

Bml, Bamilike

Bn, Bantu (Fang, Kongo, Luba and

Mbundu)

Dj, Djerma

K, Kongo

Mdg, Manding(k)o(a)

T, Twi

Yor, Yoruba 

Alafia River, FL < alafia Yor ‘ health,

peace’, a common greeting (Tr, 49, Al).

By the 1880’s economic decline “many

ex-slaves stayed in the [Tampa, FL] area

to farm and homestead the land. A

group of them established the community of Bealsville, near the Alafia River

(Mc, 306).

Angola, FL - same name as that of the

central African country. So-called by

Cuban fisherman making a land claim in

the area in 1821, referring to a “Negro

maroon settlement on the Manatee

River, across the Sarasota Bay (CBr).

Population consisted of hundreds of

black men, women and children (CB, 8-

9); one of the last refuges for black warriors, having served with Britain in the

War of 1812. Also contained escaped

slaves from Mobile, AL; Pensacola, FL;

St. Augustine, FL; and, Georgia (see Ln,

230-237); disrupted by 1821 Creek raid

(Rv, 195).

Boley, OK < [bolee] B ‘a fetish’; ‘to run’;

‘to desert’ (Tr, 66). Established in 1903,

one of the largest all-black exoduster

towns. The city is reportedly named after

one of the white founders of the town,

but Boley is not found in American surname books, suggesting that the

founder referred to may not have been. 

Booker, TX < [bokaw] E ‘a diviner,

priest’ (Tr, 67); [boh-oka] K ‘to heal (Tr,

68). One of the all-black exoduster

towns (MTr, 142). 

Bucker Woman’s Town, FL < see

“Bucker” above. One of the important

maroon settlements of free blacks in

central Florida, 1814-1840s; aka

Buckra..., lead by the sister to the dead

Seminole chiefs, Kings Payne and

Bowlegs, and mother of Billy Bowlegs.

By 1923, transferred her cattle operations and black vassals to creek flowing

westward into Peace River, 15 miles

below Minatti (Ln, 236, Rv, 195-97) in

the Big Hammock, between today’s

Hernando and Pasco counties.

Coffeyville, KS < Kofi, Ak; personal

name, male, when born on Friday. An

Exoduster colony that lasted only one

year (Ath, 78).

Congo Village, NC < same as name of

the country and language in central

Africa. One of the settlements in the

Dismal Swamp, NC, its leader, Congo

Jonah, was called King Jonah by those

of other settlements. He probably was

from a noble family of the Congo region

(Lmg, 289).

Coosaw, Island/River, SC < [kusaw] Dj

‘dusty’ (Tr, f.n. 7, 307). Located on the

Gullah/Geechee sea islands.

Cudjoe Key, FL < [ko-joe], [kawjoe],

[kwajoe] Ak, personal name, male, for

‘one born on Monday’ ‘(Tr, 115 & 119).

An isolated key out from Key West; etymology of name unknown in Florida

place name texts.(76) During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the

Keys were a major destination of slave

ships, and the site of the infamous 1701

shipwreck of the slaver, Henrietta Marie.

The Keys were well known for working

thousands of enslaved Africans harshly,

and prosecuting a zealous abolitionist

who tried to secure their escapees well

as notoriety over the efforts of a (Mc,

146-153).

Ellaville, FL < [eh-la] Yor ‘one of the root

sources of life in Yoruba cosmology’;

ela, K ‘catch, throw, or pour out’.(77) A

settlement along the Suwanee River in

Florida, the land was given to an African

woman, formerly a favored servant to

the landowner, a Florida government

official. The town was wiped out by Ku

Klux Klan hordes when the residents

lobbied to get a school.

Hayti, NC < [ay-yi-ti] Ga ‘name for the

first-born son of Ayi, ‘a person who

brings fulfillment’(Ay); [ati] Twi, name of

a deity (Tr, 54); Ity Egy ‘sovereign, con25

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
querer’.(78) An African American settlement near Durham, since at least 1877

(MTtr, 121).

[kawkaw], SC < K, ‘to judge unjustly’. A

place-name on Gullah/Geechee coast

(Tr, 113 and f.n. 6,307). KaoKao, an

important, ancient ethnic group that

migrated to Senegal from the Nile Valley

(Dp, 92).

Kush, MS - same as that of the ancient

Nile civilization. So named by the

Republic of New Afrika, this is a district

consisting of 25 black counties along the

Mississippi River from Memphis to

Louisiana (Ctr). 

LaVilla, FL < [luh-VEE-la] K, ‘relationship, family, clan’ (Tr, 126). A freedmen’s town (1866-1887)that was pressured into annexation by the larger, 

predominantly white city of Jacksonville.

It was begun through the protection and

assistance of a Freedmen’s Bureau unit

stationed in the area, and is now designated a historic district.(79) 

Little Coney Colony, LA < [koh-nee] T,

personal name, ‘speechless, absolutely

still’. Exoduster town incorporated in

1881. Led by A. Fairfax, who had been

elected to the LA Congress but forced to

flee by mob of protesting Democrats

(MTr, 85). 

Bayou Malo, LA < malo B, ‘shame; reason’; Mdn personal name, ‘hippopotamus’ (Tr, 128) the name is given to a

leader who defies the status quo to benefit society through the use of special

powers. One of a network of maroon

settlements led by Malo in LA during the

late 1700s.(80)

Black Mingo Pocosin < [MING-go]

Bml, a surname, in French speaking

Cameroon; mingo Bb ‘they’. A swamp in

border areas of NC and VA, near

Roanoke; “living here were ‘black indians’ (Lmg, 286).”(81)

Minatti, FL < referring to the huge “seacow”; first recording of the term in

European texts occurred in 1555;

Moloney’s West African Fisheries is one

of the OED citation sources. Coastal

West Africans were reported to have

high appreciation for its flesh.(82) A

maroon settlement located northeast of

Tampa Bay’s Negro Point maroon settlement north of Bartow in present-day

Polk county (Br,39-40); “housed Creek

Chief Oponay’s slaves and later some of

Angola’s refugees (Rv, 195).”

Fort Mose [moh-say], FL< [maw-say]

Vai personal, name, male (Tr, 133); cf.,

[moosah] Mndn ‘name of the prophet’

personal name, male, (Tr,134). A fortified

town established in 1728 by Spanish

about two miles north of present-day St.

Augustine in territory they held in

Florida. “[T]he old Indian place-name”

according to Landers, but no language

or ethnic group source given (Ln 294).

Complete form of the name, Gracia Real

de Santa Theresa de Mose (Ln, 29).

New Eufala, FL < [ya-law-fa] Yor, ‘to

obtain as a pawn (Tr, 184); deemed to

have unknown meaning.(83) Seminole

maroon plantation established in west

central Florida by 1821. Near present

day Brooksville, it was led by

Simaka.(84)

Ocala (from Ocali, the name of an older

Seminole nation encompassing all of

Marion County), FL < [awkala-kala], E.

Igbo, the judge over land disputes; ‘The

case is settled!’ (Nj); [oko-ah-lay] Yor ‘an

afternoon’s farm work’ (Tr, 143).(85)

Meaning reported to be obscure though

many meanings suggested (Mc,208).(86) 

Okatee River, SC < [okati] Umbundu,

‘middle, interior’. A river in Gullah/

Geechee sea islands area (Tr, f.n.,307).

Oyotunji Village, SC- Yor ‘return of the

ancient Oyo kingdom’ (Al). settlement

near Beaufort, established by African

Americans for traditional Yoruba cultural

practices.

Peedee River,SC < [mpeedee] K, in

Angola, ‘a species of viper’(Tr, 307).

Name for two rivers in Gullah/Geechee

region. 

Suwannee Old Town, FL < Suwane, >

Mndg, personal name; [suu-waa-naa]

Hausa ‘which one’s’ (Tr, 163); Bn, 

nsub wanyi; ‘my house, home’.(87) One

of the Seminole-African refugee settlement along this great river, wiped out in

1818 by Andrew Jackson’ forces in the

opening of the first Seminole War (Rv,

195).(88)

[teetee], SC — Gulla/Geechee placename (Tr, f.n. 7, 307).

Tybee Island/Creek,SC < /tai bi; Hausa

‘an especially fertile, low-lying farmland’

(3Tr, f.n. 7,07). An island and a creek in

the Gullah/Geechee region.

Wahoo Island/River, SC < /wa-hu/ Yor

‘to trill the voice’ (Tr, 307). Located in the

Geechee/Gullah region.

Wahoo Swamp, FL < see above. Site of

Seminole maroon settlements and battles in the 1800s. It lies 80 miles northeast of Tampa, in present-day Sumter

County, above the bend in the Withlacoochee River.(89)

Wando River, SC < Kwando River, K, a

river running from Angola, through

Botswanna and Zambia, also name of a

large city in Angola (Bk, 292); Hausa,

[wan-doh] ‘trousers’. A river in the

Gullah/Geechee region (Tr, 307).

Wassaw Island/Sound, SC < [wassaw]

Twi, a district, tribe, and dialect of the

Gold Coast. Located in the Gullah/

Geechee region (Tr, 307).

26

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
African Homophones

Of the 172 toponyms in the corpus, 31

were found to be African homophones.

Multiple or additional African sources

were posited for some of them. This

strengthens the argument for each proposed Africanism, especially when its

semantic field content is opaque, i.e., no

longer transparent. Identified in earlier

works of Vass and Turner, Suwanee

River and Wando, respectively, are two

of the Africanisms for which the

researcher was able to posit additional

African sources. Concerning Suwannee,

Vass had derived it from nsub’wanyi, Bn,

‘my house, home’. Though its semantic

field content is a powerful argument in

itself, the Mandingo, Suwane, argues for

a more powerful influence for two 

reasons. Suwane [suh-wah-nee?] (1)

requires no or fewer sound changes vs.

nsub’wanyi; (2) is an African personal

name; and, (3) is nearly the same as the

attested name, Suwanna, found among

Gullah/Geechee females when Turner

was collecting their names in the late

1930s. Since a town founder’s name is

the most typical toponym of migrating

Africans, Suwane could easily have

been, like the legendary Malo of colonial

Louisiana, the maroon founder and

leader of the earlier swampy settlements

along the famous river. The Hausa [suuwaa-naa]‘which one’s?’ does not have

the force of the other two sources, but

evokes a picture of Suwane’s followers

asking which sites along the river should

be settled. 

Turner derives Wando from the

Hausa [wan-doh] ‘trousers’. Even though

it shares an apparent one-to-one sound

correspondence with the Africanism,

[wan-doh] is easily subordinated in favor

of Kwando as the predominant African

source; Kwando not only has a strong

sound correspondence with Wando, but

shares one-to-one semantic correspondence in its designation of the geographical feature, ‘river’. Though not the

only one, combined sound-meaning correspondence is always the stronger one.

For this reason, some of the homophone

toponyms were posited without reference to multiple language sources. This

may apply whether the semantic content

of the African source (1) has persisted in

semantic field content in the Africanism;

or, (2) conveys canonical African principles of place naming. 

Florida’s Wahoo Swamp and

LaVilla, are illustrative. Wahoo has

maintained the semantic field of creation

of marked sounds from its Yoruba

source. It is through consideration of the

historical context that the case is sealed.

The historical reality is that fleeing and

warring bands of Seminole-African

maroons had to set up and hide in difficult to access areas, as are swamps;

and a war band would have a designee

whose role was to give out a special

whoop to signal attack. The Seminole

soldier, Jumper was documented to

have done such in the Dade

Massacre.(90) Perhaps the samenamed river and island in South

Carolina were sites of maroon activity or

the founder of the Wahoo Swamp was a

fugitive who escaped from South

Carolina. Also, Wahoo is very likey the

root word for yahoo and yehaw.

LaVilla (pronounced luh-VIh-luh)

shows only a few sound changes in the

Kongo source word, [lu-Vee- la]. As is

typical, the vowels have been reduced in

this homophone Africanism; but the

meaning of the Kongo source word,

‘relationship, family, clan’, shares the

semantic field content, ‘an ethnic group’

with the African principle, thereby stacking the cards more heavily in favor of

the homophone’s selection.(91) As Yai

explained, an African place name is

often the same as one’s ethnic group

and language name. 

LaVilla is also interesting because it

exemplifies convergence or masking,

another expected phenomenon in cultural retention in a contact situation. Its

orthography suggests a romance language word. Even the fact of a non-Latin

pronunciation would just barely attract

attention. Its pronunciation has probably

been thought of as simply interference

from the English sound system. But the

history of LaVilla as an all-black town

coupled with the salient sound-meaning

correspondences unmasks the

Africanism. 

African Hybrids

From this corpus, only one hybrid form,

Black Mingo Pocosin, was found to

occur. It is analyzed as Black + Mingo

Pocosin; the racial/color reference black

is a toponym Africanism that has been

translated into a semantically transparent English “equivalent” and conjoined to

African forms that are retained opaque

homophones. It is expected that, with a

completed analysis of pocosin, it may be

found that the toponym is an independent clause or sentence, “They are the

black buffaloes.” This recalls that African

men, serving in America’s western cavalries were called “Buffalo Soldiers.”

These Dismal Swamp maroons successfully resisted destruction, and were

not assimilated into the American polity

until the end of the Civil War. If the

selection of pocosin (with the gloss “buffalo”) becomes solidified, it would be an

even more powerful Africanism,

announcing ethnic identity and dominion

over a geographic space in a complete

sentence.

There were no admixtures within an

indivisible homophone such as that

which can be found in African American

personal names (as shown above).

However, nineteen of the African homophones do co-occur with European

27

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
28

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Ethnic/Color Reference

African Bar, CA

Africky Town, AL

Arkansas Colored, OK

Bayou Marron, LA

Blackdom,NM

Black Star,CT

Blackville,* AR

Brownlee, NA

Canadian Colored*, OK

Darky Spring, ND

Freemanville, FL

Freedmantown, TX

Negro Bar, CA

Negro Point, FL

Negro Slide, CA

Nigger Heaven, CA

North Fork Colored, 

Tullahassee, OK

Yemassee, FL

State of Affairs-(emotions,experiences, actions,

attitudes)

Belle Ville, GA

Bullet Town, NC

Dearfield, CO

Freedom Hill*, NC

Free Haven, NJ*

Liberty, OK

Little Hell, DE

Lost Creek, IN 

Mystery Hill, CO 

New Discovery, DE

Parting Ways, MA

Peace, AR

Scuffle Town, KS

Southern Improvement,

AL

Duplicate Place Name

Africa,* FL

Kentucky Ridge, CA

Kush, MS

*Little Africa, NY

Mississippi Town, KS

New Africa, MS

Rusk, OK

Tennessee Town, KS

Founders or Memorable

Africans

Abraham’s Town,FL

AdderleyTown, FL

Allensworth CA

Beckwourth, CA

Belltown, DE

Bobtown, LA

**Bookertee, OK

Ceasar’s Creek, FL

Coit Mountain, NH

Daniel Votaw Colony, KS

Dempsey, AL

Douglas City, OK

Eldridge, MI

Estill’s Station, KY

Ferguson

Haney, OK

Harry’s Bay, FL

Hoggstown, KS

James City, NC

King Heijah Town, FL

Langston, OK

Lovejoy*, IL

Montgomery, ND

Mulattoe Girl’s Town, FL

Mulatto King’s Town*, FL

Nero’s Town, FL

*Nicodemus, KS

Payne’s Town, FL

Penneytown, MI

Princeville, NC

Rhodes Creek, ID

Singleton Colony, KS

*St. Maurice Colony, LA

*Wild Cat, OK

Winstonville, MS *Indicates that the name was reported to have been eventually changed. 

Toponyms by Motif or Semantic Content 
words, affixes, and modifiers that mostly

signal a collective of persons under a

system of governance (e.g., town,

colony or -ville). Because these are

highly transportable and unmarked, and

place names are not “required” to have

transparent meanings, their co-occurrence with the Africanism has an effect

of leveling it toward American English. 

African Semantic

Transfers 

The toponyms which fit into the four

African semantic fields are listed by category in the table opposite.

With 39 towns and settlements having

been named after African American

town/settlement founders, Diop’s characterization of the typical African placename is also true for African Americans.

Therefore, this propensity among African

Americans is an Africanism. Of the 39

though, three were illustrious figures

admired by the founders: Nicodemus,

Bookertee, and St. Maurice. Because all

three are African, they may just as easily

have fit into the ethnic/racial category by

indirection. The list of town founders

actually exceeds 39 because there were

white and Native American ones, e.g.,

Eatonville, FL, or Payne’s Town, FL.

There were 11 in the corpus. “Lincoln”

far outnumbers them all (e.g., Lincoln

City, OK, Lincoln Heights, OH, Lincolnville, FL). Washington and Jefferson do

make an impression, though. The listing

firmly suggests African Americans’

desire to exercise self-determination.

Further, Diop and Yai both argued

ethnic designating toponyms are also to

be commonly found among Africa’s

toponyms.(92) There were 17 African

American toponyms that corresponded

with this semantic content. In could even

be argued that toponyms such as Kush

and Africa, in the context of American

race relations, are indirect ethnic/racial

self-references, though here they are

grouped under “duplicated place-name”

category above. This tendency toward

ethnic self reference is an Africanism

that predicts such contemporary appellations as “Chocolate City.” With a

toponyms using the “N-word” and

“Darky” we are witnessing, no doubt,

that words may elevate or deteriorate in

their connotations. Evidently, they were

not always slur words among African

descendants, like the personal name

Africanisms Sambo or Bimbo. An interesting finding was that native American

ethnic group names occurred. This

occurrence confirms the development of

an authentic “Black Indian” identity in

America. Both the Tullahassee and

Yamassee were known to have integrated and sometimes assimilated with

Africans who were exceptional and pivotal as warriors. It is most likely that

these towns were so-named because

the town founders and some of its

inhabitants had been closely affiliated

before forced removal to the west.

The same number (17) of toponyms

referred to natural environmental features, but the researcher is not yet prepared to list such occurrences as

Africanisms. Such names included

Cedar Lake, Mud Town and Three

Creeks.(93) Yai did provide an example

of natural feature toponyms for Fons

migrating to Yoruba districts, but he did

not suggest they were just as numerous

as ethnic references, but ethnic references, in these names, are naturally

designators of Africanness. A methodology to show a propensity for such assignations when compared to other ethnic/

racial groups needs to be investigated.

With 13 toponyms falling into the category, state-of-affairs commentary,

Vass’s position was lent some support.

Names in this category, like Bullet Town

or Parting Ways do evoke a picture of

the inhabitants’ attitudes and experiences, but contrary to Vass’s prediction

that the type would predominate was not

supported. Diop, with his assertion about

town founders’ had found the most powerful explanation. However, Vass’s

explanation that toponym Africanisms

were marked by the absence of animal

reference was firmly supported. Only

two occurred on the entire list, Cow

Creek and Hare Valley. 

The phenomenon wherein African

American towns and settlements undergo a series of name changes seems to

confirm that toponyms may parallel the

stages of creolization evident in other

levels of African American language

(e.g., syntax). These changes seem to

fit along the creole continuum (see also

above). The case of Sandy Ground, NY

is illustrative.(94) Sandy Ground was

settled in 1833 by African American oystermen who chose self-determination

and freedom from industry restrictions in

Maryland. These settlers first named

their town, Harrisville, after one of the

founders, and became “the first free

black community in New York.” Their

district is reported to have run a station

on the Underground Railroad. Later,

they changed the town’s name to “Little

Africa”. Eventually, the town changed to

its current name to reflect the “poor

quality of soil in the area.” Turning to the

creole continuun, we may place the original name at the first stage, the Basilect.

At this stage the toponym, Harrisville

results from the canonical African principle that a town is named after its

founder. Since it is a creole, its name

becomes mixed by the conjoining of the

“Americanism”, -ville. The name change

to “Little Africa” is at a mid-stage, the

Mesolect. The name changes to a 

characteristic that is common, but not

predominant in African place-naming,

i.e., ethnic and/or duplication of another

place-name; it is also mixed through the

co-occurrence of the English word,

29

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
“Little.” Then it shifts to the last stage—

the Acrolect, decreolizing to “Sandy

Ground.” The name refers to natural

environmental features, not a defining

characteristic of African toponyms. With

a movement toward ethnolinguistic distinctiveness, as that being sustained in

the current era. It is expected that

African revivalist toponyms will emerge.

Oyotunji Village (‘return of the Oyo kingdom’) is clearly such a revival.

Overall, it was found that African

influence is identifiable in African

American toponyms or place names of

the United States, not only in the form of

African homophones, but also in the

form of hybrids and semantic transfers.

Further, a range of Kwa and Bantu languages have contributed over the centuries to African retention. This is so

because the overwhelming majority of

the ancestors of America’s African

descendents were brought, so woefully

over the centuries, from cultural zone

complexes of west and central Africa.

Interestingly enough, Cheikh Anta Diop’s

long standing argument of a fundamental cultural unity of Africans is substantiated by the fact that several widely 

dispersed African languages provided

source words for a single place name.

When debates about African American

language variety erupt, and consideration is given to Gullah, or Ebonics, or

Standard Black Vernacular, the body of

African American toponyms belong in

those exchanges. The results from this

study of African American place names

confirm the importance of onomastics in

the effort to identify and describe

America’s African heritage.

Notes

1. The public firestorm over “Ebonics”

in the late 1990s is a recent testament

to that popular interest.

2. Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms

in the Gullah Dialect (Chicago:

University of Chicago, 1949); Annette

Kashif, “Generations of African

Influenced Names Among African

Americans: Forms and Meanings” (Ph.D

dissertation, Howard University, 1991);

J. Holloway and W. Vass, eds. The

African Heritage of American English

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press);

S. Mufwene, ed., Africanisms in AfroAmerican Language Varieties (Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 1993).

3. D. Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1991), 114-115.

4. The study of the etymology and

use of proper names. See Crystal,

Cambridge Encyclopedia, 426.

5. Ibid, 114.

6. Annette Kashif, personal communication with Dorothy Shabazz, January

2000.

7. T. Obenga, “Who Am I?”, in African

World History Project, J. Carruthers and

L. Harris, eds., 31-44 (Los Angeles:

ASCAC, 1997), 43. 

8. N. Akbar, “The Mummy is Out of

the Tomb,” lecture given in Washington,

DC, 1989.

9. A. N. Wilson, The Falsification of

Afrikan Consciousness (New York:

Afrikan World InfoSystems, 1993), 22.

10. S. Mufwene, “Dictionaries and

Proper Names,” in International Journal

of Lexicography 13(3)(1988): 268-283.

11. T. Alegeo, On Defining the Proper

Name (Ganiesville: Uniersity of Florida

Press, 1973), 83. 

12. Crystal, Cambridge

Encyclopedia, 114.

13. See B. Blount, “Luo Personal

Names: Reference and Meaning,” Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the

African Studies Association, Atlanta, 

GA, 1989

14. D. Biebuyck, S. Kelliher, and L.

McRae, African Ethnonyms: Index to ArtProducing Peoples of Africa (New York:

G. K. Hall, 1996), xiii.

15. C. A. Diop, “A Methodology for

the Study of Migrations,” in African

Ethnonyms and Toponyms, 86-109

(Paris: United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization,

1984), 105.

16. O. Yai, “African Ethnonymy and

Toponomy: Reflections on

Decolonization,” in African Ethnonyms

and Toponyms, 39-50 (Pairs: United

Nations Educational, Scientific, and

Cultural Organization, 1984), 41.

17. Ibid, 41-42.

18. A “creole” language means, within a mixed language, crystallized at a

stage intermediate between an ancestor

language, and a targeted successor language that has a second or later generation of speakers.

19. R. Jeffers and I. Lehiste,

Principles and Methods for Historical

Linguistics (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press), 52.

20. Crystal, Cambridge

Encyclopedia, 114.

21. A “pidgin” is a language with a

reduced range of structure and use,

characterized in the first stages of language shift. Ibid, 428.

30

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
22. Diop, “A Methodology for the

Study of Migrations,” 15; J. Harris,

Africans and Their History (New York:

Penguin Group, 1998), 50.

23. G. Hall, Africans in Colonial

Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana

State University, 1992), 121.

24. Hall, Africans in Colonial

Louisiana, 133.

25. Ibid, 155.

26. Ibid, 142.

27. K. Bilby and D. B. N’diaye,

“Creativity and Resistance: Maroon

Culture in the Americas,” in Festival of

American Folklife, P. Seitel, ed.

(Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1992),

54-58. 

28. H. Aptheker, “Maroons Within the

Present Limits of the United States,” in

Maroons Societies: Rebel Slave

Communities in the Americas, R. Price,

ed., 151-167 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1979), 152.

29. Margaret W. Creel, A Peculiar

People: Slave Religion and CommunityCulture Among the Gullahs (New York:

New York University Press, 1988), 114.

30. Ibid, 116.

31. Hall, Africans in Colonial

Louisiana, 212.

32. Ibid, 145-166.

33. Kevin McCarthy, The Hippocrene

U.S.A. Guide to Black Florida (New

York: Hippocrene Books, 1995), 44.

34. McCarthy, Guide to Black Florida,

42-44.

35. L. Rivers, Slavery in Florida:

Territorial Days to Emancipation

(Gainesville: University of Florida Press,

2000), 203. 

36. Rivers, Slavery in Florida, 204.

37. H. Laemming, Hidden Americans:

Maroons of Virginia and North Carolina

(New York: Garland, 1995).

38. Aptheker, “Maroons Within the

Present Limits of the United States,”

152.

39. Laemming, Hidden Americans,

286-293.

40. George Stewart, Names on the

Land (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967),

329. 

41. William Stewart, “Acculturative

Processes and the Language of the

American Negro,” in Language in its

Social Setting, W. Gage, ed., 1-46

(Washington, DC: The Anthropological

Society, 1974), 20.

42. Holloway and Vass, African

Heritage of American English, 134.

43. Ibid, 367.

44. Morris Turner, America’s Black

Towns and Settlements: V.1 (Rohnert

Park, CA: Missing Pages Productions,

1998), 92.

45. Ibid, 94.

46. Ibid, 41-42.

47. L. Bennett, Jr., The Shaping of

Black America (New York: Penguin

Group, 1993) 170, 252; V. P. Franklin,

Black Self-Determination: A Cultural

History of the Faith of the Fathers

(Westport, CT: Lawerence Hill, Co.,

1984), 111-112.

48. Kashif, “Generations of African

Influenced Names,” 20.

49. One language which is modified

from formal to informal based on the

social context of communication.

50. M. Berry and J. Blassingame,

Long Memory: The Black Experience in

America (Oxford and New York: Oxford

University Press, 1982), 403.

51. See Bennett, The Shaping of

Black America, 187-191.

52. P. Cimbala, Under the

Guardianship of the Nation (Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 1997), 288,

footnote 35.

53. Franklin, Black SelfDetermination, 127-142.

54. Ibid, 132.

55. Turner, America’s Black Towns,

12.

56. Kashif, “Generations of African

Influenced Names,” 21.

57. Ibid, 22.

58. Bennett, The Shaping of Black

America, 267-269.

59. Franklin, Black SelfDetermination, 143.

60. Ibid, 144.

61. Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah

Dialect, 40.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid, 307, footnote 8.

64. Holloway and Vass, African

Heritage of American English, 108.

65. A. Weise, “Places of Our Own:

Suburban Black Towns Before 1960,” in

Journal of Urban History 19(3)(1993): 50.

66. Weise, “Places of Our Own,” 31.

67. Ibid, 30.

68. Franklin, Black SelfDetermination, 126.

69. Bennett, The Shaping of Black

America, 341.

70. M. R. Hoover, “Community

Attitudes Toward Black English,” in

Language In Society 1(1978): 65-87.

31

Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
71. It must be remembered that

those of royal lineage were not spared

the Middle Passage during the devastation of slavery, and are most probably,

the original sources of the popularity of

this name as an official one among

African Americans.

72. Mesolect is a theorized “midpoint” between a deep creole and disparate prestige-dialect target. SBE,

Standard Black English, is defined by

the use of codified standard English 

syntax, but with the maintenance of 

distinctive phonological features and 

stylistic devices.

73. Holloway and Vass, The African

Heritage of American English, 108.

74. Ibid, 42.

75. Kashif, “Generations of African

Influenced Names.”

76. A. Morris, Florida Place Names

(Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press), 61.

77. Holloway and Vass, The African

Heritage of American English, 129.

78. An analysis for “Pocosin” has not

yet finalized; the Kongo word, mpakasa,

is a strong possibility.

79. P. Kenney, “LaVilla, Florida,

1866-1887: Reconstruction Dreams and

the Formation of a Black Community,” in

The African American Heritage of

Florida, D. Colburn and J. Landers, eds.

(Gainesville: University of Florida Press),

185.

80. Hall, Africans in Colonial

Louisiana, 214-16.

81. Wimby, R., Roberts, R., and

Carruthers, J., Mdt rn Kmt: Kemetic

Name Book (Chicago: The Kemetic

Institute, 1987), 8.

82. Sir Alfred Cornelius Moloney,

West African Fisheries, (London: W.

Clowes and Sons, Ltd., 1883).

83. Holloway and Vass, The African

Heritage of American English, 130.

84. J. Covington, The Seminoles of

Florida (Gainesville: University of Florida

Press, 1993), 15-48.

85. T. Tamuno, “Traditional Police in

Nigeria,” in Traditional Religion in West

Africa, in A. Adegbola, ed. (Ibadan,

Nigeria: Daystar Press, 1983), 181.

86. F. Abate, ed., American Places

Dictionary (Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1974),

151.

87. Holloway and Vass, The African

Heritage of American English, 134.

88. D. Littlefield, Africans and Creeks

(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979),

76.

89. Covington, The Seminoles of

Florida, 80-89,98-99.

90. Ibid, 79.

91. Kashif, Generations of African

Influenced Names, 60.

92. Diop, “A Methodology for the

Study of Migrations,” 92.

93. Toponyms referring to natural

features: Beech Bottoms, NC;

Cedarlake, AL; Fairmount Heights;

Greenwood Village, AL; Highland Beach,

MD; Lakeview, AR; Lawncrest, NJ;

Mound Bayou, MS; Mud Town, KS;

Plateau, AL; Sandy Ground, NY; Star

Hill, DE; Three Creeks, MI; Urbancrest,

OH; Cow Creek, MI; Hare Valley, VA;

Clearview, OK; Small Farms, AL.

94. M. Turner, America’s Black

Towns, 116.

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and Toponyms. Paris: United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization, 1984.

Franklin, V. P. Black Self-Determination:

A Cultural History of the Faith of the

Fathers. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill

& Co., 1984. 

Hall, G. Africans in Colonial Louisiana.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1992.

Harris, J. Africans and Their History.

New York: Penguin Group, 1998.

Holloway, J. Africanisms in American

Culture. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1991.

Holloway, J and Vass, W. eds. The

African Heritage of American English.

Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1993.

Hoover, M. R. “Community Attitudes

Toward Black English.” Language In

Society 1(1978), 65-87. 

Jeffers, R and Lehiste, I. Principles and

Methods for Historical Linguistics.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982.

Kashif, Annette. “Generations of African

Influenced Names Among African

Americans: Forms and Meanings.”

(Ph.D. dissertation, Howard

University, 1991).

Kenney, P. “LaVilla, Florida, 1866-87:

Reconstruction Dreams and the

Formation of a Black Community.” In

The African American Heritage of

Florida, D. Colburn and J. Landers,

eds. Gainesville: University of Florida

Press, 1995.

Laemming, H. Hidden Americans:

Maroons of Virginia and North

Carolina. New York: Garland, 1995. 

Landers, J. Black Society in Spanish

Florida. Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 1999. 

Littlefield, Jr., D. Africans and Creeks.

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,

1979.

McCarthy, Kevin. The Hippocrene

U.S.A. Guide to Black Florida. New

York: Hippocrene Books, 1995.

Moloney, Sir Cornelius, A. West African

Fisheries. London: W. Clowes and

Sons, Ltd., 1883.

Morris, A. Florida Place Names.

Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1995. 

Mufwene, S., ed. Africanisms in AfroAmerican Language Varieties.

Athens: University of Georgia Press,

1993.

Mufwene, S. “Dictionaries and Proper

Names.” In International Jounral of

Lexicography, 1(3)(1988): 268-283.

Obenga, T. “Who Am I?” In African

World History Project: The

Preliminary Challenge, J. Carruthers,

and L. Harris, eds. Los Angeles:

ASCAC, 1997. 

Oduyoye, M. Yoruba Names: Their

Structure and Meanings. London:

Karnak House, 1987.

Rivers, L. Slavery in Florida: Territorial

Days to Emancipation. Gainesville:

University of Florida Press, 2000.

Robinson, R. The Debt: What America

Owes to Blacks. New York: Penguin

Group, 2000.

Rose, H. “The All-Negro Town: Its

Evolution and Function.” The

Geographical Review, 55(3)(1967),

362-381.

Stewart, George. Names on the Land,

3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

1967.

Stewart, W. “Acculturative Processes

and the Language of the American

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Setting, W. Gage, ed., 1-46.

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Society, 1974.

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Publishers, 1988.

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Taylor, Q. In Search of the Racial

Frontier: African Americans in the

American West, 1528-1990. New

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Africanisms Upon the Land: A Study of African Influenced 

Place Names of the USA
Turner, Lorenzo Dow. Africanisms in the

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Weise, A. “Places of Our Own: Suburban Black Towns Before 1960.”

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Gainesville: University of Florida,

1993.

34

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Space, like language, is socially

constructed; and like the syntax

of language, the spatial arrangements of our buildings and communities reflect and reinforce the nature of

gender, race, and class relations in

society. The uses of both language and

space contribute to the power of some

groups over others and the maintenance of human inequality.(1)

In this project, I explore what I call “Autobio-graphic

Architecture,” and the ways in which it can facilitate

a reconciliation of African American identity today

with its (In)Visible Past. The social construction of

space and language, pointed out by Leslie Karnes

Weisman, is crucial to understanding the role of

autobiography in recovering and designing 

(re)presentations of African American architecture.

Thus, our stories and identities need to be recovered and told—both through language, and spatial

constructs. While emphasizing that we should learn

from the past in order to embrace our present 

identities, I will argue for designing structures that

construct American identity as “reconciling” with,

and reflecting inclusive and egalitarian spaces for a

diverse and multivalent society. The journey I present here is an autobiographical account of my

search for an architecture that expresses and constructs identity beyond the stereotypes of “race”

and hegemonic “culture,” while also celebrating

what LaVerne Wells-Bowie calls “rooted[ness] in

actual cultural experience and racial memory.”(2)

As William L. Andrews stated in his introduction

to African American Autobiography: A Collection of

Critical Essays, “autobiography holds a position of

priority, indeed many would say preeminence,

among the narrative traditions of black America.”

Indeed, “ours is an extraordinarily self-reflexive 

tradition.”(3) As I want to argue, this self-reflectivity

ought to become an important feature of the “education of an architect.” If we are ever to go beyond

hegemonic pedagogues and professional practices

that replicates them, we must learn how to engage

in what bell hooks terms “recall[ing] yourself.”(4)

Such a shift in how we view architecture implies a

decisive revision of how we define our whole discipline, and our roles and identities in it. In WellsBowie’s words, we should “want...[our] relationship

to space to evoke architecture as it is informed by

the humanities, not architecture simply as a technical art.”(5) 

While employing Toni Morrison’s creed that “the

past is more infinite than the future,” I argue, then,

that architecture, like literature, writes its own narratives, which reflect specific constructions of identity.

For example, Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison, 

consciously wanted “space” to find themselves in

American literary tradition, in which they were invisible. Like architects, like masters of language, they

had to construct it for themselves. Ellison’s novel,

Invisible Man, and Morrison’s Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, show that

it is possible to reconcile past and present. These

works—a novel and a series of literary critical

essays—can be read as African American autobiographic proofs that we can heal the wounds caused

by the legacy of slavery, and construct a space

where an all-inclusive American identity can be

recalled. In these writers, such a reconciliation

involves an autobiographical examination of the

ways in which knowledge that has been passed on

to us can, as Toni Morrison says, “[be] transformed

from invasion and conquest to revelation and

choice.”(6) Again, such unlearning, or decolonization of one’s mind, is a desired goal for the “education of the architect/designer."

Like Morrison, who wrote her books because

she wanted to read about people like herself, I find

myself in search of a similar “space,” revelation,

Session One:

Memorializing

Places of

Diaspora

Autobio-graphic Space:

Reconciling African American Identity 

with the (In)Visible Past

coleman a. jordan (ebo)

35
36

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 1. View from the African slave

auction hall at Elimna Castle in

Elimna, Ghana

Figure 2. “Door of no return.” Entry to the

male slave dungeon

Figure 3. The first Anglican Chapel in

Ghana above and the entry to the

male slave dungeon below.

Images courtesy of coleman a. jordan.

2

1

3
and choice that can house and express

African American identity today. Through

my autobiographical architectural constructs, I want to reach into the past to

reconstruct the present, and create

spaces and details in which there are no

“invisible” people. A solid foundation

reinforces the sustainability of most

structures. To blacks in America, that

foundation has been obstructed, a

scab(7), by the social constructions of

“race” and racialized definition of

American identity. The following statement qualifies this paradox of African

American identity:

Think of how much a black person

has to sell of himself/ (herself) to try

to get race not to matter... You have

to ignore the insults. You have to

ignore the natural loyalties. You have

to ignore your past. In a sense, you

have to just about deny yourself.(8)

Such denial means erasure of one’s

identity, and thus, of one’s roots in the

past, not to mention one’s cultural heritage in the present. This should be

unacceptable, not only to blacks, but to

all Americans. In effect, “race matters,”(9) is the corner stone of my work

that spans the continents of North

America and Africa. By looking into the

narratives inscribed into African slave

structures, I attempt to construct architecture of African American identity. As

bell hooks says, “It is the telling of our

history that enables political [and architectural] self-recovery.”(10) My autobiographical narrative today recovers Cape

Coast Castle in Ghana, West Africa, as

a space for reconciliation between the

past and present constructs, and the

new awareness of African American and

American identity.

"Sankofa,” a Call to

the “Motherland.”(11)

This project employs the results of my

research in Ghana, while I participated

in a preservation program sponsored by

US/ICOMOS (United States/International

Committee on Monuments and Sites),

and my recent work in both Charleston,

SC and Liverpool, England. As multinational slave trade centers, the African

slave castles provided meeting spaces

and “contact zones,” as Mary Louise

Pratt would call it, for the cultures of

North and South Americas, and

Europe.(12) This coming together of

diverse European and “American,”

traders in “African gold/human flesh”

inspired my inquiry into the specific

national and ethnic cultures, whose histories were inscribed into the castles.

These cultures were subsumed under

all-encompassing geographic, and thus,

in a sense, spatial generalizations—i.e.,

American, African, European. 

My research of the slave structures

focuses on the ways in which they represent more specific cultural identities

and power relations. More important, I

examine the stories of survival of the

oppressed, and the power/arrogance of

the oppressors that were imprinted on

the slave castles. My scholarly, and

autobiographical, project in Ghana is

closely linked to my study of repressed

and “invisible” identities encoded in

American structures, and the practice

and teaching of architecture. I hope to

show that the architectural legacy of the

African Diaspora should provide a context for reading structures that represent

dominant American identity. By examining the conspicuous erasures and

absences of the Africanist presence from

legacies such as Thomas Jefferson, an

architect in his own right who America

has structurally memorialized: 

For all this the enforcers of white

supremacy claimed, and with justice,

a mandate in Thomas Jefferson’s

well-known doctrine that there was

no place for free blacks in American

society. If blacks were emancipated

and yet remained in America and in

the South, then they had to be

brought under restraint.(13)

e. g., the Jefferson Memorial, we can

begin to reconstruct American identity, to

“recall” its true cultural heritage. 

Although I was in Ghana to research

the preservation efforts concerning

numerous castles and forts that served

the African slave trade along Ghana’s

West Coast, I could not resist the call of

my ancestors from whence they came.

And “come” is not exactly the verb that

reflects the historical facts of their

removal.

My focus, Cape Coast Castle, one of

three appellation castles, was first constructed by the Swedes in 1653. 

(Figure 1) It was later occupied by the

British and the Dutch, due to a change

of hands following battles for trade positioning. From this castle trade expanded

to the Caribbean, England, and the

United States. The castle site was

strategically planned, with its foundation

upon a rock bed pier on the water’s

edge of Cape Coast City, the former

capital of Ghana during the colonial period when it was governed by

England.(14) The dominant scale of the

castle is overwhelming, compared to

other nearby structures. However, those

near-by structures tend to face inland, or

away from the castle, as if to deny its

presence. The castle’s appearance,

though imposing in scale, is often

ignored by the inhabitants of the area.

The form seems to be left alone, desolate, and meaningless. But humbled it is

not, as it still stands proud, as a painful

reminder of the past but also a “space”

where reunion and return are now 

37

Autobio-graphic Space: Reconciling African American Identity 

with the (In)Visible Past
possible. As a space that embodies and

requires autobio-graphic architectural

revisions, it can teach us much about

the painful and guilt-ridden origins of

what we today call African American

identity as well as American identity. 

“White-washed history” is a term that

has been used by those activists opposing the preservation efforts to describe

the renovated facades as having suffered an erasure of their characteristic

historic texture and authenticity. This

argument stems from good evidence, as

visitors often question, “is this a new

building?” when referring to the castles

and forts that have been preserved or

renovated like that. Cape Coast Castle

was no exception, and I, too, was taken

by the “white-washed” vibrant nuance of

the facade. Just as the erasure and erosion of these structures were setting in,

the erasure of education about the history they represented was also undergoing

a process of “white-washing.”

Astonishingly enough, because of their

colonized education in the past, many

Ghanaians in the present have not

learned the stories of the castles that

dominate their coastal landscape.

The authenticity of Cape Coast

Castle’s facade—the stone and brick

from the eighteenth century—has been

painted over and, in some cases, parts

have been replaced without any account

having been left of the old texture. The

contrast of images “before preservation”

and “after” may, in effect, be indicating

that these monuments, that carry much

historical depth, seem to have been vandalized. After all, these castles contain

the history of many cultures, not to mention that they sustained many European

and American economies for centuries.

For example, Charleston, South

Carolina, where two thirds of America’s

African slave population landed, succeeded to break free of recession due to

productivity of African slaves tending to

its numerous fields and plantations. Like

South Carolina plantations, the castles

and forts in Ghana are now seen as

tourist attractions. They are controlled by

organizations like GMMB (Ghana’s

Monuments and Museum Board) and

individual European investors that seem

to capitalize on their painful history.

Even worse, these exploiters of historic

spaces often eagerly erase their character under the guise of preservation,

which is often conducted without much

sympathy for those to whom these

spaces embody their sacred past. 

For example, there were proposals to

convert the slave castles into hotels and

restaurants, which were abandoned only

after heavy protest from Ghana’s African

American community and Africanists

from the West Indies. Thanks to these

protests, many of the structures will

become historical museums that are

needed to educate both the inhabitants

of the areas around them, and the

tourists who will come to visit them.

Looking at historic slave structures as

possibilities for capitalist investments

only proves that their original oppressive

functions still prevail. Thus the painful

history of the “other” is overlooked and,

in some cases, identities that are rooted

in them irrevocably lost. As John

Michael Vlach argues for his research of

such structures, it is important to “recover the dimensions of southern architectural history that have...been too long

overlooked and unreported.”(15) Only

when more Americans realize the critical

nature of knowing their inter-connected

roles in history, will identity politics

become an issue of the past. America

must become accountable for and face

its own identity. 

Such coming face to face with their

identity means, among other things, that

Americans preserve not only the past of

slavery at home but also “go back to

Africa” to study the structures there.

Thus, while keeping in mind that we

need to inquire, as Vlach says, “[in] back

of the big house,” let us leap from the

American South back to Cape Coast

Castle in Ghana.(16) The plan of this

form, outside of the defensive post along

the ridge of the castle, is introverted in

design as to focus all attention on the

inside courtyard, where slaves were routinely brought in, and where the traders

came to make their purchases.

Designed as early shopping malls, the

castles became markets for booming

trade in weapons and gold/human flesh.

Their functions dictated their design—it

had to help separate and sort the

humans for sale, and to communicate

the power and might that defended their

precious contents. 

The Governor’s Quarters, the master-controller’s space of power and 

indolence was situated overlooking the

courtyard on the central axis in line of

the entry gate and the exit into the sea.

He was positioned in order to always

know who entered and who exited. The

inhabitants in charge of these structures

were governors and officers, as well as

their soldiers or crewmen sent from

European countries to purchase, sell,

and protect their merchandise. For

example, the Danish castle, Christianborg Castle, which is located in Accra,

Ghana, documents its officers as, “outcast at home, convicts released from

Copenhagen jails, bankrupts, or plain

rejects from a Danish society eager to

get rid of them.” 

In their “castles” overseas, such

“masters,” then, “could lead a life of

indolence, with little or no restraint.

There they might indulge nearly every

human passion with utter freedom,

whether it be confirmed drunkenness, or

unrestrained intercourse with Negro

girls. They knew that the deadly climate

38

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
was likely to claim them, so it was a

‘short life and a merry one’ for many of

these outcasts.” (17)

As mentioned before, overlooking the

courtyard and on axis to it, as if to manage or maintain order within the castle,

was the governor’s quarters. Its central

location allowed a view all around with a

constant breeze to cool the inhabitants.

Cape Coast Castle saw many Governors of different European nationalities. The setting was elaborate compared to settings for the rest of the castle population, enabling them to lay in

comfort of both conscience and greed,

far from the scenes of pain and torture.

The Store Room often revealed a

secret passageway to the women’s dungeon. The secret and dark spaces, “passages” and pleasures of hidden power

are suggested here. Apart from house

wines and objects of personal value, the

governor’s store room thus also had in

store a raw passageway to the women’s

dungeon, where the master could

choose to go for personal pleasure.

Female slaves were routinely selected

for such “inspection of goods.” In these

spaces, the governor could play out his

dual role of master-leader and rapist.

Palaver Hall, the auction hall, was

where merchants/shippers came to purchase their goods. The stillness of this

room was as if suspended in time. The

ghostly presence of the past howled

through this empty room with gaping,

arched windows positioned along the

side for ventilation and light. Ventilation

was provided for the buyers, so that they

could breathe easily as they chose their

purchases; there was light so that they

could see the best of the human stock.

Then there is “the wall” that, like the

whole room, seems suspended in time,

the wall which used to be the backdrop

against which the enslaved were sold. A

stage of sorts, it celebrated dehumanization; it is a platform, where the slaves

appeared with no name, no identity, no

life, where they were paraded as mere

objects. I grew curious about the effects

and emotions of tourists who were in the

room with me—both the descendants of

the Diaspora as well as the descendants

of the oppressors. After all, our “common,”

painful heritage was all around us....

“On Being Brought 

from Africa to America”(18)

‘Twas mercy brought me 

from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, 

there’s a Saviour too;

Once I redemption neither 

sought nor knew.

Some view our sable race 

with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes,

black as Cain (19),

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train. 

The Chapel, the first Anglican church in

Ghana, was located in Cape Coast

Castle. Christianity was the “white” 

religion that saved only a chosen few.

Might the presence of the chapel signify,

though, that maybe there was a conscience to be found in the traders after

all? Upon closer examination a paradox

is revealed. The chapel is founded/supported by the walls of the male slave

dungeons. The entry’s greedy “mouth” is

directly below the floor of the chapel.

The chapel’s windows seem to be

“eyes” placed above a mouth which

resembles, in yet another architectural

inter-text, the famous entry and portal of

Palazzetto Zuccari in Rome. Rasmussen

calls Zuccari’s portal the “gaping jaws of

a giant.”(20) A similar association can

be made with the dungeon entrance at

Cape Coast Castle, windows-eyes peering atop the gaping mouth-entry as if to

watch those entering with a “scornful

eye.” We may want to ask, after Phyllis

Wheatley’s poem, on whose shoulders,

sweat and blood are the church foundations constructed and who receives the

burden of redemption?

In the Dungeons...

A charnel stench, 

effluvium of living death

spreads outward from the hold,

where the living and the dead, 

the horribly dying,

lie interlocked, 

lie foul with blood and excrement.(21) 

Suffocation, suffocation from lack of air

and suffocation from lack of life (or do

we dare say “identity”?). The odor, the

odorous presence of flesh, stale blood,

pain, and death. The excrement and

decayed bones that have lain unsettled

for centuries are there to this day, they

are the floor we walked on. Imagine

thousands of slaves packed in overcrowded spaces with no light, no ventilation, no contact with the outside. The

dungeons and the structure itself seem

to preserve the imprint of their presence.

As we know, many had been raped, tortured; some women bore the children of

their rapists there, never to see them

again after they had been separated

from the mothers on the auction block.

Millions died in the dungeons from poisonous sewage, tropical diseases, trauma, fear, claustrophobia, and suffocation. 

If this feels like a journey, it is

because it was one for me.(22)

Like a conclusion or climax, the coldness of the gate at the end of the castle

was poignant. I felt this doorway, this

“doorway of no return”, stared at me, followed me around as if to draw me to it.

In this sense it clearly provided a frame

and an end to the narrative of our passage. Indeed it is referred to as the

“doorway of no return”—the final exit 

for a slave before she or he reached 

the destiny in a new land or died at 

39

Autobio-graphic Space: Reconciling African American Identity 

with the (In)Visible Past
sea. (Figure 2) As I was told about this

final exit by a tour guide during my first

visit, I heard that this passage was the

exit through which my ancestors were

never to return to this place. I immediately looked him the eye and stated,

“well, I guess I’ve returned.”

Sankofa! 

That bird is wise,

Look. Its beak, back turned, picks

For the present, what is best 

from ancient eyes,

Then steps forward, on ahead

To meet the future, undeterred.(23)

Like stories from the past, the monuments, buildings, and sites inscribe not

only (his)story but also (our)story as the

descendants of Africans in Diaspora.

Just as structures are supported on

foundations, our origins still inform the

present. They are silently whispering the

truth about both “his” story and “ours” in

white-dominated, patriarchal America.

Once the space and detail are created,

or corrupted, in the structure, the erasure or distortion of stories and people

are etched within the walls. 

The entry into the male dungeon at

Cape Coast Castle, an entry into our

past, is a symbolic construct of a

womb/wound of the “motherland” who

was raped, deprived of her identity, and

who has never healed. This dungeon-

”mouth” expelled and devoured many

African lives.(Figure 3) It is a space

where both death and survival coexisted,

much like they do in other sites that witnessed martyrology and genocide.(24)

The stories of the present, are the

effects of what was erected and erased

in the past. More inclusive education

and the communication age have

allowed the “other” to see through the

deceptions and contradictions that are

still often called “tradition.” Today we are

thus, the descendants of those whose

histories sketched and drafted “us,”

wrote us into who we are. But our present identity still raises questions and creates a need to unlearn and reconstruct

traditional knowledge about origins and

functions of identity.

In embracing the past we can at

least try to come to terms with who we

are and how we have been represented.

The healing must begin with the desire

to know and learn about each other. For

example, Nana Cofu Robinson, an

African American, lives in-sync with the

people of Ghana by embracing their culture and understanding his own.

In “our” stories to come, the future,

we attempt to construct an ideal identity

by mapping and transforming into positive material the past pain, cruelty, and

redemption. In my work, I have realized

that I am also retracing a profound

Diasporic journey. However, this journey

is not simply “back to Africa.” My narrative is located between Ghana and the

United States and maps one of many

routes of self-study that can help both

African Americans and all Americans

alike to reconcile a difficult past with an

uneasy present in a multiethnic culture.

It is a look at autobiographical readings

of space as erected by and erecting

American identity.

I was inspired by the Nsibidi symbols

of African origins about which you can

read in Robert Farris Thompson’s, Flash

of the Spirit: African and Afro-American

Art and Philosophy. This symbol is a

metaphorical representation of strength

that I have derived from my journey thus

far. The original symbol means “all the

country belongs to me.” It was one of

the many symbols used to communicate

by Africans in Diaspora. I now (re)interpret it as my logo to mean, his land belongs to me—and—us. It’s all inclusive!

bell hooks emphasizes that “overall,

we have to think deeply about the cultural legacies that can sustain us, that can

protect us against the cultural genocide

that is daily destroying our past. We

need to document the existence of living

traditions, both past and present, that

can heal our wounds and offer us a

space of opportunity where our lives can

be transformed.”(25)

The appearance of the slave castles

as such spaces for transformation of

identity can be very deceiving, as the

preservation efforts are unclear in their

goals. These castles relate different

meanings to different people and the

reactions to them vary widely. Yet the

question remains—why is this part of

world history unknown and unclear to so

many? It was W. E. B. DuBois who said,

“millions of Black men (and women) in

Africa, America and the Islands of the

Sea...are bound to have great influence

upon the world in the future.” That future

is now, but I want to stress that we must

continue “mapping” the past so that we

can live together in the more honest and

egalitarian present.

As I have shown, the Diasporic roots

of many American blacks are architecturally represented by slave castles in

West Africa. In my discussion, I have

focused on the preservation efforts in

Ghana, West Africa, that have enabled

many black Americans like myself to

visit the slave castles as tourists who

seek structures that symbolize their past

and cultural roots. While emphasizing

that we should learn from the past in

order to embrace our present identities, I

thus hope to design structures that construct American identity as “reconciling”

with and reflecting inclusive and egalitarian spaces for a diverse and multivalent

society. Thus the journey I have presented here is an autobiographical account

of a search for my architecture, one that

expresses and constructs identity

beyond the stereotypes of “race” and

hegemonic “culture.”

40

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Notes

1. Leslie Kanes Weisman, Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of

the Man-Made Environment (Urbana

and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,

Illini Books edition, 1994), 2.

2. Wells-Bowie’s quote comes from

the chapter “Talking Black Space,” in

bell hooks, Art On My Mind: Visual

Politics (New York: The New Press,

1995), 153.

3. William L. Andrews, African

American Autobiography: A Collection of

Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, New

Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1993), 1.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., quoted after

Andrews, p.1.

4. hooks, Art On My Mind, 153

5. Wells-Bowie quoted in hooks, Art

On My Mind, 154.

6. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

(New York: The New Press, 1995), 8.

7. Lebbeus Woods, “War and

Architecture,” in Pamphlet Architecture

15, (Princeton Architectural Press,

1993), 24.

8. Mark Whitaker, “White and Black

Lies.” Newsweek, 15 November, (1993).

9. Cornell West, Race Matters

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).

10. bell hooks, Black Looks: Race

and Representation (Boston: South End

Press, 1992), 176. 

11. This term is used in the description of a Ghanaian Adinkra (a past king

of Gyaman, now Ivory Coast) symbol

which means, “It is no taboo to return

and fetch it when you forget.”

12. Mary Louis Pratt, “Acts of the

Contact Zone” in Profession 91 (1991):

34.

13. Morrison, Playing in the Dark.

14. Albert van Datzig, Forts and

Castles of Ghana (Accra, Ghana: Sedco

Publishing Limited, 1980).

15. John Michael Vlach, Back of the

Big House: The Architecture of

Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill: The

University of North Carolina Press,

1993), xii.

16. Vlach, Back of the Big House.

17. Isodor Paiewonsky, Eyewitness

Accounts of Slavery in the Danish West

Indies: Also Graphic Tales of Other

Slave Happenings on Ships and Plantations (New York: Fordham University

Press, 1989), 15-16.

18. Phyllis Wheatley, “On Being

Brought from Africa to America” in The

Norton Anthology: African American

Literature (New York and London: W.W.

Norton and Company, 1997), 170.

19. Cain is said to have been

“marked” by God. Some readers of the

Bible thought that Cain thereby became

the first black man.

20. Steen Eiler Rasmussen,

Experiencing Architecture (Cambridge:

The MIT Press, 1993), 38. 

21. Robert Hayden, “Middle

Passage,” in The Norton Anthology:

African American Literature, 104-107th

verse (New York and London: W.W.

Norton and Company, 1997), 1504.

22. A term originally used by Nana

Cofu Robinson and Queen Mother

Robinson to describe the final departure

gate for African slaves from the castles

and forts.

23. Albert W. Kayper-Mensah,

Sankofa: Adinkra Poems (Tema: The

Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1976), 4.

24. Although not included in this

paper, I have begun to make comparative studies to architectural structures of

martyrology, such as Auschwitz, and

African slave entry ports in Liverpool,

England.

25. hooks, Art On My Mind, 162. 

Bibliography

Andrews, William L. African American

Autobiography: A Collection of

Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1993. 

Hayden, Robert. “Middle Passage.” The

Norton Anthology: African American

Literature. New York and London:

W.W. Norton and Company, 1997.

hooks, bell. Art On My Mind: Visual

Politics. New York: The New Press,

1995.

hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and

Representation. Boston: South End

Press, 1992. 

Kayper-Mensah, Albert W. Sankofa:

Adinkra Poems. Tema, Ghana: The

Ghana Publishing Corporation, 1976.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary

Imagination. New York: The New

Press, 1995.

Paiewonsky, Isodor. Eyewitness

Accounts of Slavery in the Danish

West Indies: Also Graphic Tales of

Other Slave Happenings on Ships

and Plantations. New York: Fordham

University Press, 1989.

Pratt, Mary Louis. “Acts of the Contact

Zone.” Profession 91(1991).

Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing

Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT

Press, 1993. 

van Datzig, Albert, Forts and Castles of

Ghana. Accra, Ghana: Sedco

Publishing Limited, 1980.

Vlach, John Michael. Back of the Big

House: The Architecture of Plantation

Slavery. Chapel Hill: The University

of North Carolina Press, 1993. 

41

Autobio-graphic Space: Reconciling African American Identity 

with the (In)Visible Past
Weisman, Leslie Kanes. Discrimination

by Design: A Feminist Critique of the

Man-Made Environment. Urbana and

Chicago: University of Illinois Press,

Illini Books edition, 1994.

West, Cornell. Race Matters. Boston:

Beacon Press, 1993.

Wheatley, Phillis, “On Being Brought

from Africa to America.” The Norton

Anthology: African American

Literature. New York and London:

W.W. Norton and Company, 1997.

Whitaker, Mark. “White and Black Lies.”

Newsweek, 15 November, (1993).

Woods, Lebbeus. “War and

Architecture.” Pamphlet Architecture

15 (1993). Princeton Architectural

Press.

42

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Two:

AGRICULTURAL LIFEWAYS

AND TECHNOLOGIES

43

African traditions helped develop agricultural methods

that enriched the Americas. These traditions or 

lifeways shaped the tenor of rural life during periods

of slavery, sharecropping, and black-owned farms. Africans

implanted their technological ìknow-howî and cultural 

traditions on the rural landscape and agricultural industry.

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory

Judith Carney

The Memory of Iron: African Technologies 

in the Americas

Candice L. Goucher

Bounded Yards and Fluid Borders: Landscapes 

of Slavery at Poplar Forest

Barbara J. Heath
44

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Two:

Agricultural

Lifeways and

Technologies

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes 

of Cultural Memory

Judith Carney

45

By 1860 rice cultivation in the

U.S. South extended over

100,000 acres along the coastal

plain from North Carolinaís Cape Fear

River to the St. Johns River in

Florida.(1) (Figure 1) Large landholdings

and a sizeable labor force characterized

the ante-bellum rice economy, with

plantations concentrated in the hands

of some 550 planters and worked by

125,000 slaves.(2) On the eve of the

Civil War, Georgia, representing less

than one-third of the total land in rice

(30,000 acres), accounted for 28% (52.5

million pounds) of the regionís total

output: 187.2 million pounds.(3)

The rice plantation economy of South Carolina and

Georgia has received considerable historical and

geographical attention for its role in the regional

economic development of the antebellum South. A

nostalgic view of the rice economy persisted long

past the cessation of planting in the 1920s due to

numerous commentaries that documented the lifeways of planters, their achievements as well as their

ingenuity in shaping a profitable landscape from

malarial swamps.(4) In these accounts, slaves are

presented as having contributed little but unskilled

labor to the creation of the rice economy. In 1974

this planter-based view changed dramatically with

the research of historian, Peter Wood, who carefully

examined the role of slaves in the Carolina plantation system during the colonial period. His scholarship recast the prevalent view of slaves as mere

field hands, to one which showed that they contributed agronomic expertise as well as skilled labor

to the emergent plantation economy. 

Woodís argument rested upon several threads

of archival evidence, namely: the presence of

slaves in South Carolina from the onset of settlement in 1670, early colonial references suggesting

that bondsmen produced their own subsistence

crops, the lack of prior knowledge of rice farming by

the English and French Huguenot planters, but its

familiarity to many of the colonyís African-born

slaves.(5) Further support for Woodís pathbreaking

research occurred in 1981 when another historian,

Daniel Littlefield, drew attention to the antiquity of

African rice farming practices as well as the demographic basis for South Carolinaís slaves during the

early colonial period. Littlefield showed that 40% of

the slaves entering the state during the initial

decades of rice experimentation and development

originated in the area of West Africa where the cropís

cultivation predates the arrival of Europeans.(6)

While this scholarship has resulted in a revised

view of the rice plantation economy as one of both

European and African influences, the role of African

slaves in its evolution is still debated. Current

scholarship questions whether planters recruited

slaves from West Africaís rice coast to help them

develop a crop whose potential they independently

discovered, or whether African-born slaves initiated

rice planting in South Carolina by teaching planters

to grow a preferred food crop. Further understanding is hampered by the absence of archival materials that document a tutorial role for African slaves.

But the silence of the historical record on a critical

role for slaves in teaching planters rice cultivation

is, perhaps, unsurprising given the paucity of materials available in general for the early colonial 

period as well as the fact that accounts of slavesí

lives were placed in the hands of white society who

justified slavery by denying the intellectual capacity

of its victims. 

This paper adds a geographical perspective to

the historical research initiated by Wood, in order to

examine the likely contributions of African-born

slaves to the colonial rice economy. Attention 
focuses on the principal environments

planted to rice on both sides of the

Atlantic, and the techniques developed

for soil and water management.

Emphasis is placed on the initial century

of rice development in South Carolina,

1670-1770, from the colonyís initial settlement by planters and slaves to the

cropís expansion into Georgia.

The paper begins by identifying the

primary lowland environments where

rice was planted on each side of the

Atlantic, which are presented in a classification system based on the principal

water regime regulating cultivation. The

discussion next shifts to the historical

evidence for the presence of such 

systems in West Africa from the earliest

contact with Europeans, and the existence of key principles of soil and water

management that were to resurface later

in Carolina rice systems. In the third

46

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 1. Map of Coastal South Carolina

tidal rice cultivation.

1
section, the discussion shifts to South

Carolina and Georgia where the rice

economy unfolded over time from rainfed to inland swamp production, and 

culminated in the tidewater system.

Rice Cultivation

Systems in the

Atlantic Basin

When the Portuguese arrived along the

West African coast in the mid-fifteenth

century, they encountered rice cultivation over a broad area from Senegal to

Liberia.(Figure 2) Rice (Oryza glaberrima) is an ancient West African cultivar

that was domesticated independently of

Asian rice (Oryza sativa) some two thousand years ago along the floodplain and

inland delta of the Upper Niger River in

Mali.(7) The Atlantic slave trade led to

the introduction of some Asian O. sativa

varieties to Africaís west coast, but their

diffusion remained limited until

Europeans promoted them during the

twentieth century with colonialism.(8)

Rainfall in the West African rice zone

averages between 800-2000 millimeters,

encompassing a wider range than that

found in the cultivated area of coastal

South Carolina and Georgia (1100-1600

mm).(9) Within the West African rice

region precipitation increases steadily

from north to south, with slightly higher

averages along the coast. African cultivation is not, however, limited by rainfall

constraints. Over the past two millennia

farmers carefully adapted rice planting to

other forms of water availability by growing the crop in moisture-holding soils,

depressions fed by subterranean water

sources, and floodplains inundated by

tidal flow. Consequently, rice planting

occurs in a variety of environments,

which include mangrove estuaries, alluvial floodplains, low-lying depressions,

grassland savannas, and upland forests. 

Three major water regimes are used

for rice cultivation: rainfall; artesian

springs, perched water tables, or catchment run-off that keep inland swamps

wet; and, river tides that flow over floodplains and coastal estuaries.(10) By the

1730s each of these systems and their

sub-types had also emerged in South

Carolina. 

As the form of water availability for

rice planting is a response to the cropping systemís location along a landscape, West African cultivation can be

visualized as occurring along a lowland

to upland gradient of changing ecological

conditions. Planting takes place simultaneously in distinct environmentsóa 

practice that enables farmers to manipulate one or more moisture regimes for

crop production.(11)(Figure 3)

The longstanding practice of growing

rice in distinct environments from

plateau, slope, and valley bottom to

floodplain confers several advantages.

By taking advantage of multiple water

regimes, farmers extend rice growing

beyond the limits of the precipitation

cycle. In so doing, they reduce potential

labor bottlenecks since cropping

demands (field preparation, weeding,

and harvesting) in each environment

occur at different periods during the agricultural season. Reliance on several

forms of water availability, moreover,

enhances subsistence security by minimizing the risk of crop failure in any

given year.

Of the three forms of rice cultivation,

rainfed rice depends solely on rainfall for

cropping. It is planted at the top of the

landscape gradient, hence its frequent

designation, upland rice. West African

farmers commonly cultivate the crop on

soils supporting mixed woodland vegetation that is partly cleared and burned of

surface debris. Cattle form a critical part

of the rainfed rice system, as the animals are seasonally herded into the field

to graze the stubble after the harvest,

47

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory

Figure 2. West African rice production

zone. Adapted from P. Richards,

ìUpland and Swamp Rice Farming

Systems in Sierra Leone: An

Evolutionary Transition?î in

Comparative Farming Systems, eds.

B.L. Turner and S. Brush (New York,

1987), p. 157.

2
48

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 3. Rice cultivation along a landscape gradient in central Gambia.

Figure 4. Earthen embankment protects

ricefields from tidal action.

Figure 5. Use of bamboo for Sluices in

rice field, Guinea-Bissau. Photo: J.

Carney.

Upland Inland swamp Tidal

mangrove

areas not planted

rice paddy

3

4

5
their manure fertilizing the soil. When

the cropping cycle ends, the fieldís land

use shifts to cattle pasture.

Rice planted in inland swamps, the

second system, enables the capture of

groundwater from artesian springs,

perched water tables, or catchment runoff. Plots are often enclosed with small

earthen embankments to trap rainwater

or stream run-off for soil saturation during drier cycles of the cropping season.

Water level within the field can be lowered by piercing the plot bunds.

The remaining major African production system occurs in areas of tidal flow,

on floodplains of rivers and estuaries.

Dependent upon tides to flood and/or

drain the fields, tidal cultivation involves

a range of techniques from those requiring little or no environmental manipulation (planting on freshwater floodplains)

to ones demanding considerable landscape modification (mangrove rice 

cultivation along coastal estuaries). The

complex water and soil management

principles embodied in tidal production

are critical for examining the plausibility

of African agency in the transfer of rice

cultivation to the Americas.

Tidal rice cultivation occurs in three

distinct floodplain environments: i) freshwater rivers, ii) seasonally saline rivers,

and iii) coastal estuaries or the lower

reaches of rivers affected by permanent

marine water conditions. The first two

involve similar methods of productionó

letting river tides flow over the floodplain

rice fieldsówhile the third system combines principles of each major rice system for planting under more challenging

soil and water conditions. The floodplain

is composed of two distinct microenvironments: the one adjoining the river

and irrigated by daily tides, and another

located at the inner margin, where the

landscape gradient begins its rise and is

reached only during high tides.(Figure 3)

Rice cultivation, moreover, occurs in

floodplains influenced by seasonal or

permanent river salinity. In the first,

planting occurs after the rains push the

saltwater interface downstream for at

least the three months needed to 

complete a cycle of cultivation. 

In tidal areas of permanent salinity

(known as mangrove rice), the most

sophisticated West African production

techniques are in evidence. This system

has received insufficient attention by historians of rice development, who have

looked to West Africa for potential 

influences in South Carolina and

Georgia.(12) Comparisons between rice

systems on both sides of the Atlantic

Basin have understandably focused on

tidal freshwater rivers, like those planted

to rice in South Carolina and Georgia.

But by separating out one floodplain

system for comparison from the totality

of those planted, the full range and 

complexity of agronomic knowledge that

informs West African rice cultivation is

missed.

Unaware of the complex principles

Africans have long deployed to plant 

different types of floodplains, historians

of rice origins in the South have minimized the real contribution of slave

knowledge to the development of the

tidewater system because the similar

production environment along West

African freshwater rivers involves very

little landscape transformation.(13) The

emergence of the sophisticated tidewater system that led to Carolina and

Georgiaís economic prominence

remains unchallenged as the product of

European technological mastery and

ingenuity. Yet, a careful consideration of

the mangrove rice system along coast

estuaries in West Africa illuminates the

agency of Africans in developing 

principles later deployed in the tidewater

system.

West African rice production in tidal

estuaries occurs south of the Gambia

River in areas of permanently saline

water conditions where rainfall generally

averages 1500 mm annually. These are

environments mantled by extensive

stretches of mangroves, whose aerial

roots trap alluvium carried by marine

tides. The deposited organic matter

makes these soils among the most fertile of the West African rice zone, but

they require careful management to prevent oxidation and their transformation

into a toxic acid-sulfate condition. By

manipulating several water regimes and

developing extensive drainage systems

for its control, the mangrove rice system

reveals the complex assemblage of

knowledge that would transfer to the

tidewater rice fields of the South. 

Rice established in coastal estuaries

depends upon enclosing the site chosen

for cultivation with an earthen embankment, which acts as a barrier against the

flow of marine tides.(Figure 4) Careful

attention to landscape guides the location of the principal drainage canals,

which are used to capture rainfall for 

irrigation. The perimeter is divided into

individual rice fields by forming a series

of lower embankments or berms perpendicular to the main one, again to assist

in water control. Seedlings are established upon the furrows of individual

plots. 

The mangrove rice system combines

the two principles of water control that

later emerged in Southern tidewater 

production. Rainfall is captured by laying

out a system of canals for irrigation as

well as controlled flooding to drown

unwanted weeds. Sluices built into the

berms and main embankment enable

control over water flow for field submersion as well as drainage. Fitted with

valves made from hollow tree trunks and

plugged with palm thatch, sluices in the

individual plots drain into the principal

one built into the embankment.(Figure 5) 

49

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory
Impounding rainwater, which is 

evacuated into the estuary at low tide,

floods the field. Several years of rainfall

are required before the field is initially

desalinated, with the process at times

hastened by directing the flow of seasonal freshwater springs into the perimeter to leach out salt residues.(14)

Cultivation commences once desalination is completed although farmers

depend annually on the rains to rinse

accumulated dry season salt residues. 

Each year soil fertility is renewed

during the dry season by periodically

opening the sluices at high tide to

enable the entry of marine water. This

action results in the deposition of 

organic matter, albeit of saline origin, but

importantly, prevents the oxidation that

leads to acid-sulfate soil formation. In

the month or so prior to the onset of the

rainy season, the sluices are once again

closed to bar the entry of saltwater. A

new cycle of production ensues by 

layering the ridges with accumulated

deposits of swamp mud. Considerable

effort is devoted annually to maintaining

the systemís earthworks, but yields

exceeding two tons per hectare make

the mangrove system among the most

productive traditional African rice system

ever developed.(15) 

The complex soil and water management embodied in growing rice in multiple micro-environments, along a landscape continuum, formed the basis for a

sophisticated knowledge system that

was in place long before the Atlantic

slave trade. The adroit manipulation of

numerous landscapes that characterized

West African rice cultivation reveals

numerous affinities with the process of

technology development in tidal rice, the

antebellum eraís quintessential production system.

Historical and

Geographical

Continuities Across

the Atlantic

When Islamic scholars followed preexisting overland trade routes to the

Malian Empire in the fourteenth century,

they arrived in the heart of West African

rice domestication where food surpluses

had sustained empire formation from the

ninth century.(16) These earliest commentaries on the cropís cultivation note

its abundant harvests and the sale of

surpluses regionally.(17) More detailed

descriptions of West African rice systems came later, with the arrival of

Portuguese vessels along the Atlantic

Coast from 1453. Portuguese vessels

established the pattern of rice purchases

that would later increase demand for

African surpluses for provisioning slave

ships across the Middle Passage.(18) 

The proximity of the mangrove rice

system to Portuguese navigation routes

elicited considerable attention from an

early date. When a prolonged cycle of

drought disrupted mangrove rice 

cultivation in the Sine-Saloum estuary

north of the Gambia River in the fifteenth

century, land use shifted to collecting the

accumulated salt deposits. Diogo

Gomes, the first Portuguese captain to

enter the estuaries of the Geba (GuineaBissau) and Gambia Rivers in 1456,

observed that the regional trade in a red

salt originated on such abandoned rice

fields.(19) De Almada, in 1594, provided

a more detailed description of the mangrove rice system that characterizes rice

planting in coastal estuaries south of the

Gambia River to this day. He noted the

use of embankments and canals to

impound rainwater for seedling submersion and desalination as well as ridging

to improve soil aeration.(20) Thus, long

before the permanent settlement of

South Carolina, De Almadaís description

reveals the existence of the principles of

irrigated, or mangrove, rice cultivation

from the earliest period of contact with

Europeans. The eighteenth century

slave captain, Samuel Gamble, so marveled at the complex system that he provided a diagram of field layout to accompany his description of water management techniques.(21)(Figure 6)

Discussion of the rainfed and inland

swamp cultivation systems away from

coastal and riverine access routes is

documented, ca. 1640, in a manuscript

published by an Amsterdam geographer,

Olfert Dapper. Relying upon information

supplied by Dutch traders operating in

the region currently known as Sierra

Leone and Liberia, Dapper reported rice

cultivation along a lowland to upland

landscape gradient in low-lying swamps

as well as with rainfall.(22) Direct observation of these systems, however, only

came later in the mid-eighteenth century

when Europeans financed overland

expeditions for exploration, trade, and

science.(23)

The growing dispersal of Europeans

into the West African interior during the

nineteenth century brought more

detailed commentaries on the burning of

forests for rainfed rice, the fieldís subsequent rotation for cattle grazing, as well

as the use of earthen reservoirs in

inland swamps for water impoundment

against drought.(24) This form of irrigation drew the interest of the French

explorer, CailliÈ, who in 1830, noted:

ìAs the country is flat, they take care

to form channels to drain off the

water. When the inundation is very

great, they take advantage of it and

fill their little reservoirs, that they may

provide against the drought and supply the rice with the moisture it

requires.î( 25)

50

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Rice Cultivation in

South Carolina

Slaves accompanied the first settlers to

South Carolina in 1670; within two years

they formed one fourth of the colonyís

population, their numbers surpassing

whites as early as 1708.(26) By 1690,

one plantation manager discussed

experiments with sowing the cereal in 

22 different locations in South

Carolina.(27) The first rice exports are

recorded in 1695 with one and onefourth barrels shipped to Jamaica.(28)

The economy was being increasingly

oriented to rice, and in 1699 exports

reached 330 tons; by the 1720s, rice

had emerged the leading staple.(29)

What is significant about this early

period of rice development is the documented presence in South Carolina by

the 1730s of the three principal West

African systems: rainfed, inland swamp,

and tidal. But unlike West Africa, where

these systems of production frequently

occur simultaneously, their unfolding in

colonial South Carolina represented a

distinct stage in the evolution of its plantation economy. The initial emphasis on

the rainfed system shifted in the early

eighteenth century to the inland swamps

and from the 1730s, increasingly to tidal

(tidewater) cultivation.(30) The unfolding

of rice cultivation in South Carolina and

Georgia as an export crop for European

and Caribbean markets embodied a different rationale than that in West Africa.

Food security no longer required the

planting of rice in distinct micro-environments. Instead, mercantile objectives

rested on selecting a specific production

environment for emphasis at different

points in time. 

The first production environment

used for growing rice in South Carolina

was the rainfed system which, as in

West Africa, formed part of a land use

system based on agriculture and cattle

51

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory

Figure 6. Baga rice cultivation. Courtesy:

National Maritime Museum,

Greenwich, England.

6
grazing. Slaves cleared the forests,

extracting the marketable pitch, tar, and

resins from pines, and then planted subsistence crops, like rice, as a rotation

with cattle, whose manure maintained

soil fertility.(31) These activities resulted

in the export of salted beef, deerskins,

and naval stores which, in turn, generated the capital for additional slave

imports. With the dramatic increase in

the slave population from 3,000 (1703)

to nearly 12,000 (1720) and 40,000

(1745) rice cultivation became the principal occupation of slave labor.(32) 

During these decades of escalating

slave imports, the land use system

based on forest products and rainfed

rice in rotation with cattle grazing, had

shifted to cultivation in inland

swamps.(33) The focus on inland

swamp cultivation represented the first

attempt to control water for irrigation in

South Carolina rice fields, but increased

the demand for slave labor to construct

the berms, ridges, and sluices critical for

water control. Like its counterpart in

West Africa, inland swamp cultivation

depended upon impounding water from

rainfall, springs, high water tables, or

catchment run-off. Small earthen

embankments enabled water capture for

irrigation or field flooding to depress the

growth of opportunistic weeds, thereby

reducing the onerous labor demand of

weeding.

Field flooding for irrigation and weed

control occurred in a variety of inland

swamp environments. For instance,

swamps located within reach of streams

and springs had dikes placed at the high

and low ends. The lower dike or

embankment kept floodwaters on the

field while the upper one enabled the

passage of stream or creek water. Each

dike was equipped with a sluice, the

lower one used for draining the field as

desired, the upper one allowing water to

flow onto the field when needed.(34)

Rice planting could also occur in

inland swamps formed on salt marshes.(35) Under special circumstances,

such as the location of the saline swamp

near the terminus of a freshwater

stream, the plot could be desalinated

and then planted to rice. In such cases,

the embankment at the lower end of the

swamp permanently blocked the entry of

salt water, while a sluice in the upper

embankment delivered stream water to

the plot initially for desalination and

then, for irrigation and weed control.

This system functioned along the lower

reaches of the Cooper River ìnearly

within sight of the ocean.î( 36)

The variation in these inland swamp

systems embodied a range of principles

that reappeared with the later shift to

tidewater cultivation. Controlled flooding

was perfected by constructing a separate reservoir and dam to receive freshwater flows from adjacent creeks and

streams.(Figure 7) Reservoir water

52

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 7. Inland and Tidewater rice

system, South Carolina. Location:

Western branch of the Cooper River.

Courtesy: Richard Porcher.

7
reached the rice field through a canal

that operated by gravity flow.(37) This

water delivery system consequently

enabled water storage for irrigation and

weed control and its delivery on demand

to rice fields positioned outside tidal

flow. But the inland swamp system could

fail in years of high river levels or low

rainfall. The shift to tidewater cultivation

would eventually represent but a fine

tuning of the underlying principles of this

inland swamp system.(38) 

By the 1720s, the key methods of

water and soil management, found in

the rice growing systems of West Africa,

were evident in the inland swamp systems of South Carolina. The next

decade represented an extension and

adjustment of these principles to the

specific topographic and hydrological

conditions of tidal rivers. By the mideighteenth century, rice production was

steadily shifting to tidal river floodplains

in South Carolina and into Georgia, just

prior to repeal of the anti-slavery law in

1750.(39) A notice of a land sale by

William Swinton of Winyah Bay, South

Carolina provides one of the earliest references to the growing emphasis on

tidewater production: ìÖthat each [field]

contains as much River Swamp, as will

make two Fields for 20 Negroes, which

is overflowíd with fresh Water, every

high Tide, and of Consequence not subject to the Droughts.î(40) By 1752 rich

Carolina planters were converting inland

swamps and tidal marshes along

Georgiaís Savannah and Ogeechee

Rivers to rice fields.(41) The shift to tidewater production accelerated after the

American Revolution and remained the

basis of the regionís economic prominence until the demise of cultivation in

the 1920s.(42)

The environment favored for 

tidewater cultivation was the floodplain

adjacent to an estuary where the diurnal

variation in sea level resulted in flooding

or draining a rice field.(43) Three factors

determined where tidewater fields could

be constructed: tidal amplitude, saltwater encroachment, and estuary size

and shape. A location too near the

ocean faced saltwater incursion, while

one too far upstream removed a plantation from tidal influence. As in the West

African mangrove rice system, a rising

53

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory

Figure 8. Tidal swamp conversion,

South Carolina.

Figure 9. Floodgates on a Carolina tidal

plantation, c. 1920. Courtesy: The

Charleston Museum.

8

9
tide flooded the fields while a falling tide

was used for drainage. Tidal pitch varied

between one to three feetóconditions

usually found along riverine stretches

ten to 35 miles upstream from the riverís

mouth.(44) 

Estuary size and shape also proved

important for the location of tidewater

plantations for their effect on water 

mixing and thus salinity. For example,

the downstream extension of tidal rice

cultivation reflected differences in freshwater dynamics between rivers draining

the uplands and those flowing inland

from the sea. Since rivers of piedmont

origin deliver freshwater within miles of

the coast, tidal cultivation could occur

within a short distance from the

ocean.(see Figure 1) But other tidal

rivers are arms of the sea and must

reach further inland for freshwater supplies. Along such rivers the freshwater

stream flow forms a pronounced layer

on top of the heavier saltwater, enabling

the former to be tapped for tidal irrigation.(45) The sites suitable for tidal cultivation consequently required skilled

manipulation of tidal flows and salinefreshwater interactions to attain high levels of productivity. West African tidal rice

farmers had already perfected such

practices. 

Preparation of a tidal floodplain for

rice cultivation followed principles

remarkably similar to the West African

mangrove rice system (compare Figures

4 and 8). Placed next to a river, the rice

field was embanked at sufficient height

to prevent tidal spillover. The earth

removed in the process resulted in an

adjacent canal to irrigate and drain the

swamp. Slaves subsequently cleared

the dense vegetation for cultivation. The

next step involved dividing the area into

quarter sections (ten to 30 acres) that

were fed by secondary ditches. Sluices

built into the embankment and field sections operated as valves for water entry

and evacuation much as they do in

Africaís mangrove rice system.(Figure 8) 

The shift to tidewater cultivation

required considerable landscape modification and ever greater numbers of

laborers. The near doubling of slave

imports into South Carolina from 39,000

to 75,000 between 1750 and 1770 facilitated the transition from inland swamp

cultivation.(46) The labor in transforming

tidal swamps to rice fields was staggering as historical archaeologist, Leland

54

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

10 11
Ferguson, vividly captures for South

Carolina: ìÖthese fields are surrounded

by more than a mile of earthen dikes or

ëbanksí as they were called. Built by

slaves, these banksÖwere taller than a

person and up to 15 feet wide. By the

turn of the eighteenth century, rice

banks on the 12 1/2 mile stretch of the

East Branch of Cooper River measured

more than 55 miles long and contained

more than 6.4 million cubic feet of

earthÖThis means thatÖworking in the

water and muck with no more than 

shovels, hoes, and basketsÖby 1850

Carolina slavesÖon [tidal] plantations

like Middleburg throughout the rice

growing district had built a system of

banks and canalsÖnearly three times

the volume of Cheops, the worldís

largest pyramid.î(47) 

The tidewater plantation continued to

make considerable demands on slave

labor for maintaining the earthen infrastructure even if it reduced the labor

demands for weeding. With full water

control from an adjacent tidal river, the

rice field could be flooded on demand

for irrigation and weeding, and renewed

annually by alluvial deposits. The historian, Lewis Gray, underscored the significance of tidal flow for irrigation, as

well as weeding, in explaining the shift

from rudimentary inland swamp systems

to tidewater cultivation: ìOnly two flowings were employed as contrasted with

the later period when systematic flowings came to be largely employed for

destroying weeds, a process which is

said to have doubled the average area

cultivated per laborerÖThe later introduction of water culture [tidal] consisted

in the development of methods making

possible a greater degree of reliance

than formerly on systematic raising and

lowering of the water.î( 48) A slave was

consequently able to manage five acres

instead of the two typically assigned with

inland rice cultivation.(49)

The systematic lifting and lowering of

water was achieved by the sluices,

located in the fieldís embankment and

secondary dikes.(Figure 9) Sluices

eventually assumed the form of hanging

floodgates, but retained the nomenclature, ìtrunkî, by Carolina planters. The

continued use of the term through the

antebellum period suggests that the

technological expertise of Africans

indeed proved crucial for establishing

rice cultivation in an earlier era. During

55

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory

Figure 10. Women milling subsistence

rice, Sapelo Island, Georgia, c.

1915. Courtesy: Georgia Department

of Archives and History

Figure 11. Rice winnowing with fanner

basket, South Carolina, c. 1935.

Courtesy: the Charleston Museum.

Figure 12. Mandinka girl with rice winnowing basket, the Gambia. Photo:

J. Carney.

12
the antebellum period trunks had

become large floodgates that were

buried in the embankment at a level

above the usual low tide mark. Doors

(gates) were positioned at both ends,

which by pulling up or loosening would

be allowed to swing. The inner doors

would open in response to river pressure as it flowed through the raised

outer door, and then close with receding

waters. Field draining reversed the

arrangement with the inner door raised

and the outer door allowed to swing

while water pressure in the field forced

the door open at low tide.(50) 

Curiosity over the origin of the term,

trunk, for sluices or floodgates led one

planter descendant, David Doar, to inadvertently stumble upon likely technology

transfer from West Africa: 

For years the origin of this name

bothered me. I asked every old

planter I knew, but no one could

enlighten me. One day a friend of

mine who planted on one of the lowest placesÖsaid to me with a smiling

face: ìI have solved that little trunk

question. In putting down another

one, I unearthed the granddaddy of

plug trunks made long before I was

born.î It was simply a hollow cypress

log with a large hole from top to bottom. When it was to be stopped up a

large plug was put in tightly and it

acted on the same principle as a

wooden spigot to a beer key.( 51) 

The earliest sluice system in South Carolina looked and functioned exactly like

its African Counterpart.(see Figure 5)

African antecedents to Carolina rice

culture are also evident in the use of the

African mortar and pestle for husking

and polishing the grain, which was

accomplished by hand until it was mechanized on the eve of the American

Revolution. The mortar and pestle used

for milling rice continued among freed

blacks for subsistence needs into the

twentieth century.(Figure 10) Dale

Rosengartenís historical research on

basket origins in the lowcountry, moreover, indicates the prototypical one

employed for winnowing derives from

the Senegambian area of West Africa,

where oval coiled baskets are still used

to accomplish the task.(52) Figures 11

and 12 illustrate these winnowing baskets respectively in South Carolina during the 1930s and in contemporary

Gambia. From cultivation to processing,

the historical reconstruction of rice 

culture in South Carolina and Georgia

resonates with linkages to Africa.

Conclusion

While the view of Africans as contributing little more than labor to the rice plantation system of South Carolina and

Georgia has given way to recognizing

their pre-existing skills and expertise in

cultivation, debate still rages over the

role of slaves in technology transfer. The

cross-cultural and spatial perspective

presented in this paper suggests that

African-born slaves indeed provided 

critical expertise and technological

know-how in the evolution of the rice

cultivation system of South Carolina and

Georgia. Evidence from the first 50

years of settlement in South Carolina

suggests that technological development

and innovation in the rice economy was

the product of both African and

European knowledge systems. These

knowledge systems and their respective

technological and agronomic heritages

combined in new ways to shape rice 

cultivation along the Atlantic seaboard.

The African contribution to rice development in South Carolina and Georgia

should be featured as part of interpretive

materials to educate the general public

who visit historical parks created from 

former rice plantations.

Notes

1. Albert Virgil House, Planter

Management and Capitalism in AnteBellum Georgia (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1954); James Clifton,

ìGolden Grains of White: Rice Planting

on the Lower Cape Fear,î in The North

Carolina Historical Review 50(1973):

365-393; Pat Morgan, ìA Study of Tide

Lands and Impoundments within a

Three River Delta SystemóThe South

Edisto, Ashepoo, and Cumbahee Rivers

of South Carolina,î (masters thesis,

University of South Carolina, 1974);

Charles Gresham and Donal D. Hook,

ìRice Fields of South Carolina: A

Resource Inventory and Management

Policy Evaluation,î in Coastal Zone

Management Journal 9(1982): 183-203;

Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and

Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida

1821-1860 (Gainesville: University of

Florida Press, 1973); idem, Slavery and

Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia

1750-1860 (Knoxville: University of

Tennessee Press, 1985); Betty Wood,

Slavery in Colonial Georgia (Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 1984).

2. James Clifton, Life and Labor on

Argyle Island (Savannah, GA: Beehive

Press, 1978).

3. House, Planter Management and

Capitalism, 23; Douglas C. Wilms, ìThe

Development of Rice Culture in 18th

Century Georgia,î in Southeastern

Geographer 12(1972): 45-57; United

States Census Office, Agriculture of the

U. S. 1860. 8th Census (Washington,

D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864).

4. Urlich B. Phillips, American Negro

Slavery (New York: D. Appleton and Co.,

1918); A. S. Salley, ìThe Introduction of

Rice Culture into South Carolina,î in

Bulletin of the Historical Commission of

South Carolina 6 (Columbia, SC: State

Company, 1919); Ralph Betts Flanders,

56

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Plantation Slavery in Georgia (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

1933); David Doar, Rice and Rice

Planting in the South Carolina Low

Country (Charleston, SC: Charleston

Museum, 1970[1936]; Duncan Heyward,

Seed from Madagascar (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press,

1927); Norman Hawley, ìThe Old

Plantation in and Around the Santee

Experimental Forest,î in Agricultural

History 23(1949): 86-91.

5. Peter Wood, Black Majority (New

York: Norton, 1974).

6. Wood, in Slavery in Colonial

Georgia, 103, also indicates a similar

trend for Georgia, noting that threefourths of the slaves shipped there during the critical period of tidewater rice

expansion (1766-1771) originated from

West Africaís rice coast. Also see Daniel

Littlefield, Rice and Slaves (Baton

Rouge: Louisiana State University

Press, 1981).

7. Roland PortËres, ìPrimary Cradles

of Agriculture in the African Continent,î

in Papers in African Prehistory, J. D.

Fage and R. A. Oliver, eds. (Cambridge

and New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1970), 43-58; R. J. McIntosh and

S. K. McIntosh, ìThe Inland Niger Delta

before the Empire of Mali: Evidence

from Jenne-jeno,î in Journal of African

History 22(1981): 1-22; Jack Harlan, J.

De Wet, and A. Stemler, Origins of

African Plant Domestication (Chicago:

Aldine, 1976); R. Charbolin, ìRice in

West Africa,î in Food Crops of the

Lowland Tropics, eds. C. L. A. Leakey

and J. B. Wills (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1977), 7-25.

8. PortËres, ìPrimary Cradles of

Agricultureî; Harlan, et al, Origins of

African Plant Domestication. 

9. Charles Kovacik and John

Winberry, South Carolina. The Making of

a Landscape (Boulder, CO: Westview,

1987); Timothy Silver, A New Face on

the Countryside (Cambridge and New

York: Cambridge University Press,

1990).

10. F. R. Moorman and N. Van

Breeman, Rice: Soil, Water, Land (Los

Banos, Philippines: International Rice

Research Institute, 1978); West African

Rice Development Association, ìTypes

of Rice Cultivation in West Africa,î in

Occasional Paper No. 2(1980),

Monrovia, Liberia.

11. Paul Richards, Coping with

Hunger (London: Allen and Unwin,

1986); W. Andriesse and L. O. Fresco,

ìA Characterization of Rice-Growing

Environments in West Africa,î in

Agriculture, Ecosystems and

Environment 33(1991): 377-395.

12. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves; Joyce

Chaplin, Anxious Pursuit. Agricultural

Innovation and Modernity in the Lower

South, 1730-1815 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993).

13. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves.

14. Olga Linares, ìFrom Tidal Swamp

to Inland Valley: On the Social Organization of Wet Rice Cultivation among

the Diola of Senegal,î in Africa 5(1981):

557-594; idem, Power, Prayer and

Production (Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1992).

15. The West African tidal rice yields

are about the same as that recorded in

South Carolina and Georgia during the

ante-bellum period: about 1.7-2.2 tons

per hectare. Doar, Rice and Rice

Planting, 18.

16. H. A. R. Gibb, Ibn Battuta.

Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354

(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1969); Graham Connah, African

Civilizations: Precolonial Cities and

States in Tropical Africa ñ An

Archaeological Perspective (Cambridge

and New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1987).

17. Tadeusz Lewicki, West African

Food in the Middle Ages (Cambridge

and New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1974).

18. Gomes Ennes de Azurara, The

Chronicle of the Discovery and

Conquest of Guinea, Vol. II (London:

Hakluyt, 1899); G. R. Crone, The

Voyages of Cadamosto (London:

Hakluyt, 1937); Paul PÈlissier, Les

Paysans du SÈnÈgal: Les Civilisations

Agraires du Cayor a la Casamance (St.

Yrieix: Imprimerie Fabreque, 1966); A.

Donelha, An Account of Sierra Leone

and the Rivers of Guinea and Cape

Verde (Lisbon: Junta de Investigacoes

Cienticados, 1977).

19. The Gomes observation appears

in Th. Monod, R. Mauny, and G. Duval,

ìDe la PremiËre DÈcouverte de la

GuinÈe,î in RÈcit par Diogo Gomes (Fin

XV siËcle). (Bissau, Guinea-Bissau:

Centro de Estudos da GuinÈ

Portuguesa, 1959), 42, 66. On the arid

conditions over the period c. 1100 to c.

1500 in West Africa, see George

Brooks, Landlords and Strangers:

Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western

Africa, 1000-1630. (Boulder, CO.:

Westview Press, 1993), 7. 

20. Valentim Fernandes, Description

de la CÙte Accidentale díAfrique (Bissau:

Centro de Estudos de GuinÈ PortuguÍsa

1951; PÈlissier, Les Paysans du

SÈnÈgal; Walter Rodney, A History of

the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800

(New York: Monthly Review Press,

1970).

57

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory
21. Note at the bottom of Figure 6

the drawing of an individual using the

kayendo shovel for field preparation.

This is still the principal implement utilized in mangrove rice cultivation.

22. Dapper noted: ìThose who are

hard-working can cultivate three ricefields in one summer: they sow the first

rice on low ground, the second a little

higher and the thirdÖon the high

ground, each a month after the previous

one, in order not to have all the rice ripe

at the same time. This is the commonest

[sic] practice throughout the

countryÖThe first or early rice, sown in

low and damp areasÖthe second, sown

on somewhat higher groundÖthe third,

sown on the high groundÖ.î Excerpt

drawn from Paul Richards, ìCulture &

Community Values in the Selection &

Maintenance of African Rice,î in

Indigenous People and Intellectual

Property Rights, B. L. Turner and S.

Brush, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Island

Press, 1996), 213, based on a translation from the Dutch of Olfert Dapperís

manuscript, New Description of Africa.

23. M. Adanson, A Voyage to

Senegal, the Isle of Goree and the River

Gambia (London: Nourse, 1759);

Francis Moore, Travels into the Inland

Parts of Africa (London: Edward Cave,

1738); G. Mollien, Travels in Africa

(Londone: Sir Richard Phillips & Co.,

1820); Mungo Park, Travels into the

Interior of Africa (London: Eland,

1954[1799]); PÈlissier, Les Paysans du

SÈnÈgal.

24. Rodney, History of the Upper

Guinea Coast; Thomas Winterbottom,

An Account of the Native Africans in the

Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone

(London: C. Whittingham, 1803); Rene

CailliÈ, Travels through Central Africa to

Timbuctoo, and across the Great Desert,

to Morocco, Performed in the Years

1824-1828 (London: Colburn & Bentley,

1830).

25. CailliÈ, Travels through Central

Africa, 162.

26. Wood, Black Majority, 25-26,143.

27. Ibid, 25,57-58.

28. James Clifton, ìThe Rice Industry

in Colonial America,î in Agricultural

History 55(1981); 266-283.

29. Wood, Black Majority, 26;

Converse Clowse, Economic Beginnings

in Colonial South Carolina (Columbia:

University of South Carolina Press,

1981), 57-58; Clifton, ìThe Rice Industry

in Colonial America,î 274.

30. Doar, Rice and Rice Planting;

Kovacik and Winberry, South Carolina.

The Making of a Landscape; Judith

Carney and Richard Porcher,

ìGeographies of the Past: Rice, Slaves

and Technological Transfer in South

Carolina,î in Southeastern Geographer

33(1993): 127-147; Judith Carney, Black

Rice: The African Origins of Rice

Cultivation in the Americas. Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, Spring

2001.

31. John S. Otto, The Southern

Frontiers, 1607-1860 (New York:

Greenwood, 1989); Wood, Black

Majority, 162.

32. Wood, Black Majority, 55.

33. Thomas Nairne, ìA Letter from

South Carolina,î in Selling a New World:

Two Colonial South Carolina

Promotional Pamphlets, ed. Jack

Greene (Columbia: University of South

Carolina Press, 1989[1710], 33-73;

Clifton, Life and Labor on Argyle Island;

Clarence Ver Steeg, Origins of a

Southern Mosaic (Athens: University of

Georgia Press, 1984).

34. Clifton, ìThe Rice Industry,î 275.

35. Hawley, ìThe Old Plantations."

36. John B. Irving, A Day on the

Cooper River (Charleston, SC: R. K.

Bryan Co., 1969),154.

37. Heyward, Seeds from

Madagascar; Sam B. Hilliard,

ìAntebellum Tidewater Rice Culture in

South Carolina and Georgia,î in

European Settlement and Development

in North America: Essays on

Geographical Change in Honour and

Memory to Andrew Hill Clark, ed. James

Gibson (Toronto: University of Toronto,

1978), 91-115; Richard Porcher, ìRice

Culture in South Carolina: A Brief

History, The Role of the Huguenots, and

Preservation of Its Legacy,î in

Transactions of the Huguenot Society of

South Carolina 92(1987): 11-22; David

Whitten, ìAmerican Rice cultivation,

1680-1980: A Tercentenary Critique,î in

Southern Studies 21(1982): 5-26.

38. Heyward, Seeds from

Madagascar; also, Hilliard, ìAntebellum

Tidewater Culture,î 99, makes the point

that during much of the eighteenth century both inland swamp fields with reservoirs and tidewater rice existed simultaneously and that freshwater reservoirs

were common even on plantations situated within or near the tidal zone: ìIn

many cases there must have been a

blending of the two types of irrigation, for

Solon Robinson observed a tidewater

planter on the Cooper River who had

ëÖponds of fresh water covering 100

acres of upland, which are held in

reserve to water the rice fields when the

river is too saltí.î

39. Wilms, ìThe Development of Rice

Culture,î 49.

58

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
40. ìAdvertisement for Tidal Land

Sale,î January 19, 1738, South Carolina

Gazette (Charleston: South Carolina

Historical Society, n. d.); Clifton, ìThe

Rice Industry,î 275-276.

41. Wilms, ìThe Development of Rice

Culture,î 49.

42. Clifton, ìThe Rice Industry,î 276.

43. Hilliard, ìAntebellum Tidewater

Rice Culture,î 100.

44. John Drayton, A View of South

Carolina, as Respects her Natural and

Civil Conerns (Spartanburg, SC: The

Reprint Co., 1970[1802]), 36; Chaplin,

An Anxious Pursuit, 231.

45. Hilliard, ìAntebellum Tidewater

Rice Culture.î 

46. Otto, The Southern Frontiers,

1607-1860, 41.

47. Leland Ferguson, Uncommon

Ground. Archaeology and Early African

America, 1650-1800 (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution, 1992), xxiv-xxv,

footnote 3, 147.

48. Lewis Gray, History of Agriculture

in the Southern U. S. to 1860, 2 vols.

(Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958),

281.

49. R. F. W. Allston, ìEssay on Sea

Coast Crops.î In De Bowís Review

16(1854); John Glen, ìA Description of

South Carolina: Containing Many

Curious and Interesting Particulars

Relating to the Civil, Natural and

Commercial History of That Colony,î in

Colonial South Carolina: Two

Contemporary Descriptions, ed.

Chapman J. Milling (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,

1951[1761]), 15: Clifton, ìThe Rice

Industry in Colonial America,î 275;

Whitten, ìAmerican Rice Cultivation,î 9-

15.

50. House, Planter Management, 25.

51. Doar, Rice and Rice Planting, 12.

52. Dale Rosengarten, ìSocial

Origins of the African-American

Lowcountry Basketî (Ph.D. dissertation,

Harvard University, 1997).

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and Development in North America:

Essays on Geographical Change in

Honour and Memory of Andrew Hill

Clark, ed. James Gibson, 91-115.

Toronto: University of Toronto, 1978.

House, Albert Virgil. Planter

Management and Capitalism in AnteBellum Georgia. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1954. 

Irving, John B. A Day on the Cooper

River. Charleston, SC: R.K. Bryan

Co., 1969.

Kovacik, Charles and John Winberry.

South Carolina. The Making of a

Landscape. Boulder, CO: Westview,

1987.

Lewicki, Tadeusz. West African Food in

the Middle Ages. Cambridge and

New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1974.

Linares, Olga. ìFrom Tidal Swamp to

Inland Valley: On the Social

Organization of Wet Rice Cultivation

among the Diola of Senegal.î Africa

5(1981): 557-594.

óóó. Power, Prayer and Production.

Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Littlefield, Daniel. Rice and Slaves.

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1981.

McIntosh, R. J. and S. K., ìThe Inland

Niger Delta before the Empire of

Mali: Evidence from Jenne-jeno,î

Journal of African History 22(1981):

1-22.

Mollien, G. Travels in Africa. London: Sir

Richard Phillips & Co., 1820.

Monod, Th., R. Mauny, and G. Duval

1959. De la PremiËre DÈcouverte de

la GuinÈe. RÈcit par Diogo Gomes

(Fin XV siËcle). Bissau, GuineaBissau: Centro de Estudos da GuinÈ

Portuguesa.

Moore, Francis. Travels into the Inland

Parts of Africa. London: Edward

Cave, 1738.

Moorman, F. R., and W. J. Veldkamp.

ìLand and Rice in Africa: Constraints

and Potentials.î In Rice in Africa,

eds. I. Buddenhagen and J. Persely,

29-43. London: Academic Press,

1978. 

Moorman, F. R., and N. Van Breeman.

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Philippines: International Rice

Research Institute, 1978.

Morgan, Pat. ìA Study of Tide Lands

and Impoundments within a Three

River Delta SystemóThe South

Edisto, Ashepoo, and Cumbahee

Rivers of South Carolina.î Masters

thesis, University of Georgia, 1974.

Nairne, Thomas. ìA Letter from South

Carolina.î In Selling a New World:

Two Colonial South Carolina

Promotional Pamphlets, ed. Jack

Greene, 33-73. Columbia: University

of South Carolina, 1989[1710].

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Otto, John S. The Southern Frontiers,

1607-1860. New York: Greenwood,

1989.

Park, Mungo. Travels into the Interior of

Africa. London: Eland, 1954[1799].

PÈlissier, Paul. Les Paysans du

SÈnÈgal: Les Civilisations Agraires

du Cayor a la Casamance. St. Yrieix:

Imprimerie Fabreque, 1966.

Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro

Slavery. New York: D. Appleton and

Co., 1918.

Porcher, Richard. A Field Guide to the

Bluff Plantation. New Orleans, LA:

OíBrien Foundation, 1985.

óóó. ìRice Culture in South Carolina:

A Brief History, The Role of the

Huguenots, and Preservation of Its

Legacy.î In Transactions of the

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92(1987): 11-22.

PortËres, Roland. ìPrimary Cradles of

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In Papers in African Prehistory, J. D.

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Richards, Paul. Coping with Hunger.

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óóó. ìUpland and Swamp Rice

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Guilford, 1987. 

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1996.

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1990.

Smith, Julia Floyd. Slavery and

Plantation Growth in Antebellum

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University of Florida Press, 1973.

óóó. Slavery and Rice Culture in Low

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Occasional Paper No. 2(1980).

Monrovia, Liberia.

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61

Rice, Slaves, and Landscapes of Cultural Memory
62

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
I

n the spring of 1798, Thomas

Jeffersonís son-in-law informed him

that several slaves had planted tobacco on his Albemarle County property

without his permission. Randolphís

refusal to let them raise it, and insistence that they grow something sanctioned by Jefferson in its place indicates

that this tobacco was being cultivated

on their allotted grounds, in their own

time, and for their own profit.

Jeffersonís response to this entrepreneurial spirit was unambiguous. 

ÖI thank you for putting an end to the cultivation of tobacco as the peculium of the negroes. 

I have ever found it necessary to confine them

to such articles as are not raised on the farm.

There is no other way of drawing a line between

what is theirs & mineÖ.(1)

This exchange hints at the ìafter hoursî activities of

enslaved people living on plantations throughout

Virginia and the limits placed upon them by slaveholders. While assigned tasks were often explicitly

described in the historic record, activities that

slaves organized and undertook for their own 

benefit and in their own time are often difficult to

trace. Nevertheless hunting and gathering attest to

an intimate understanding of the natural landscape,

while through gardening people consciously shaped

the land for ends that stood outside of an ownerís

control. Market gardening and poultry raising, perhaps more directly tied to the dominant plantation

regimen, reveal how slaves used agriculture for

their own purposes, and how they organized their

labor to do so. Together, these economic actions,

coupled with kinship networks and the mandatory

requirements of servitude, combined to extend their

world far beyond the plantation boundaries.

The consideration of a variety of evidenceó

archaeological traces of houses and yards, preserved fragments of seeds, artifacts, slave censuses, runaway advertisements, store accounts, and

lettersó-is essential in reconstructing how one

group of enslaved African Americans shaped the

landscapes they inhabited. 

By the time Thomas Jefferson was 31 years old,

he held 187 men, women, and children in bondage.

Although the population fluctuated over time with

births, deaths, sales, and purchases, he remained

one of the largest slave owners in central Virginia

throughout his life. The number of individuals living

at his Poplar Forest plantation ranged from a low of

27 in 1774 to a high of 94 in 1819. During this time,

they created a community of extended, multi-generational families, tied by bonds of blood and friendship to the Monticello enslaved community and to a

broader community spread across the region.(2)

African Americans living at Poplar Forest were,

for the most part, two or more generations removed

from the Old World. Clearly the social upheaval of

the Middle Passage, institutionalized slavery, and

the Anglo-American culture of the slaveholding

class were important factors in the development of

a creole culture. Equally important was the physical

reality of the place. As Americans, they experienced

climate, topography, and environmental factors

quite different from those of their African ancestors.

Together, these cultural and natural factors influenced the ways in which people reacted to and

shaped the landscape around them.

Here, the term landscape is used in two ways.

First, it refers to the physical result of the continuing

interaction between people and nature. Second,

landscape describes the real and perceived boundaries that limited oneís experience of the world.

Institutionalized slavery provided the overarching

framework for these boundaries, but the network of

Session Two:

Agricultural

Lifeways and

Technologies

Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest

Barbara J. Heath

69
social and economic connections that

individuals created could stretch or tighten these limits. 

West Africans 

in Virginia

In discussing the identity of Poplar

Forest slaves, it is important to outline

the assumptions used concerning the

origins of Africans brought to Virginia as

slaves. The fragmentary and inexact

nature of the source material has led

scholars to disagree about the ethnicities and absolute numbers of individuals

transported. However, most scholars

believe that the majority of slaves

imported into Virginia during the colonial

period came from West Africa, with the

largest numbers dominated by the Igbo

cultural group from the region surrounding the Bight of Biafra. Akan-speakers

from the Gold Coast made up the next

largest proportion of transported

Africans, followed by Senegambians.(3)

Clues about the origins of Jeffersonís

slaves survive in legal documents and in

naming practices carried out within their

community. Jefferson inherited the

majority of his bondspeople from his

father-in-law John Wayles, a large

planter and entrepreneur who engaged

in the transatlantic slave trade. The

extent of Waylesís participation is

unclear; however debts he incurred continued to plague his son-in-law nearly 25

years after his death.(4) It is possible

that some of the men and women he

held in bondage, and who Jefferson

subsequently inherited, were transported

by Wayles.

Slaves from 11 quarter farms, including ìGuineaî and ìAngola,î made up the

Waylesí legacy. Oral histories, the

recorded ages of a few individuals and

naming practices suggest direct ties to

Africa. Akan day names survive alongside others suggestive of Fanti or Igbo

origins in the slave censuses Jefferson

kept. Many men and women had names

suggestive of origins in the Spanish or

Portuguese-speaking world.(5) Further

analysis of family connections and naming practices is needed to determine the

extent to which West African or

Caribbean naming practices persisted

within families through time.

Agricultural Traditions

Enslaved West Africans and their

descendants formed the backbone of

the tobacco and wheat-based plantation

economies of colonial and antebellum

Virginia. They came from regions with

economies based on the cultivation of

grains like millet and sorghum, root

crops of yams and cocoyams, and

starchy fruits like bananas and plantains.

Agriculturists from Senegal to the Bight

also commonly grew legumes, fruits,

and bulbs. Maize, cassava, and tobacco

from the New World reached West Africa

beginning in the late fifteenth century

and became important crops throughout

the region.(6) Farmers made crop choices based primarily on the amount and

dependability of rainfall. Grains that

could be planted and harvested in fairly

dry conditions predominated in the

northern interior regions, while root

crops were the staple foodstuffs of the

south. Although some groups engaged

in irrigated farming for rice, tree farming,

and shifting cultivation in the region,

West African farmers principally practiced rotational bush fallow in both the

savanna and forest.(7)

In some societies, the care of individual crops was divided along gender

lines, while in others work was divided

by task rather than product, with men

involved in clearing and tilling virgin

land, and women employed in planting,

tending and harvesting.(8) Farmers

planted fields for periods ranging from

three to six years, employing a variety of

strategies to stretch fertility and yield.

They planted multiple crops within the

same plot, a strategy that served the

dual function of discouraging weed

growth and erosion and protecting their

harvest if one crop should fail. Where

rainfall allowed, farmers planted crops in

succession to ensure a constant supply

of food. Finally, they rotated plantings

within each plot to slow down the depletion of nutrients in the soil. After several

years of heavy cultivation, land was

allowed to lie fallow and regenerate for

four to ten years before planting

resumed. In some areas, farmers planted fallow fields with carefully selected

cover crops; in others they allowed fields

to regenerate naturally, only intervening

to prevent the regrowth of trees.(9)

Rotational bush fallow shared some

important characteristics with Virginia

land-use patterns of the late eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries. Cycles 

of land clearance, use, and abandonment characterized tobacco cultivation

for much of the Chesapeake, with Indian

corn or wheat often replacing tobacco

before fields were completely exhausted.(10) By the late eighteenth century,

Jefferson and many of his contemporaries used strategies such as crop rotation, selected cover crops for soil regeneration, and intercropping to boost

yields.(11) While the context of these

practices may have differed between

landowners and enslaved workers, the

practices themselves would certainly

have been familiar to West African 

farmers.

West Africans and Virginians also

shared elements of farming technology.

Hoes were an important tool on both

sides of the Atlantic, and Africans most

likely found the transition from digging

sticks and machetes to dibbles and cuttoes an easy one.(12) Thus, while

enslaved farmers in Virginia did not nec70

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
essarily introduce new agricultural methods to North America, their familiarity

with the technology, crops, and land use

patterns current in colonial Virginia

made the transition from Old World to

New an efficient one from the perspective of their owners.(13)

The Poplar Forest

Landscape

The Poplar Forest landscape from the

1770s through the 1820s consisted of a

changing mosaic of woodlands, farm

fields, meadows, and waste grounds

divided into quarter farms and punctuated by dispersed settlements. Networks

of roads and footpaths connected these

settlements, defined by an overseerís

house, slave quarters, barns, and other

outbuildings. Shared resources such as

a blacksmithís shop, a tobacco prizing

barn, and a grain threshing barn stood

roughly equidistant to living quarters and

convenient to public roads. Tobacco drying barns, cowsheds, and other farm

structures adjoined fields and pastures

within each quarter farm.(14)

Enslaved African Americans shaped

fields and forests at Poplar Forest during

their working hours to fulfill a variety of

tasks. In their private time, they continued to alter this landscape to meet their

own needs. Archaeological investigations of two sitesóthe North Hill and the

Quarteróprovide some important clues

about after hours activities. Both slave

quarters were associated with the ìold

plantationî complex nestled between the

branches of the Tomahawk Creek near

the center of the Poplar Forest tract.

There, men constructed houses on the

margins of eroded fields, a strategy perhaps mandated by overseers to ensure

that the most productive land remained

in cultivation. 

Archaeologists discovered the

remains of a subfloor pit at the North

Hill. Such features are rectangular compartments set beneath cabin floors that

slaves used for storing foodstuffs and

other belongings. Artifacts found in the

fill of the pit indicate that this dwelling

was abandoned sometime before the

mid-1780s. An erosion gully cut across

the hillside southwest of the cabin, and

residents filled it with trash in the final

quarter of the eighteenth century. The fill

of the gully was cut by the line of a palisade fence that formed a substantial

enclosure. It is probably associated with

another cabin located outside of the

excavation area and dating to a slightly

later period.

The Quarter was occupied between

1790 and 1812. Members of at least

three households lived at the site. Their

log houses aligned roughly southwest to

northeast, but did not form part of a

rigidly defined slave row. The cabins

were bounded on the south by a possible garden enclosure, and on the north

by work yards. One yard was enclosed

and shared by the occupants of two of

the dwellings.(15) The most intensively

used areas of the site appear to be the

northern yards that were sheltered from

the surveillance of the overseer, whose

house was located behind the cabins on

the crest of the hill.(16)

Floral and faunal data from both sites

provide important insights into the ways

that residents exploited the surrounding

landscape. Seeds and bones preserve

evidence of foraging and possible gardening activities as well as hunting, trapping, and fishing, pointing to the development of distinctly African-American

foodways.(17)

Some carbonized remains, such as

corn kernels or sunflower seeds, represent food that was directly consumed.

Others represent what slaves discarded

after they used the leaves, stems, or

roots of the plant. Evidence of at least

35 species was recovered at the North

Hill. These included seven fruits, eight

vegetables and grains, two to three nuts,

nine edible herbs, four weeds, three

grasses, one ornamental and one condiment.(18) Of these, nearly three-quarters represent domesticates. These may

have arrived at the quarter in the form of

provisions, or slaves may have raised

them in kitchen gardens or allotted plots.

Slightly more than one quarter of the

plant remains represent native fruits,

nuts and edible and medicinal herbsó

species that clearly fell outside of the

plantation provisioning system.

The subfloor pit in the North Hill

cabin was particularly rich in carbonized

floral remains, yielding nearly all of the

grains and edible weeds, and just under

half of the fruits. The erosion gully contained small quantities of grains and edible weeds, and half of the fruit seeds

and pits.(19)

The variety of identified floral types

recovered at the Quarter Site was less

rich, consisting of only 15 species.

These included six fruits, four vegetables and grains, two nuts, and three edible herbs. Most plant remains were

associated with the fill of a single subfloor pit in one of the cabins.(20) 

While the majority of plant remains

identified at the Quarter Site to date represent domesticated species, just over

20% are gathered, native plants, including nuts, edible herbs, and native wild

species. The proportion of domesticates

to wild species is somewhat lower than

that of the North Hill, but it nonetheless

indicates the continuing importance of

foraging.

How did slaves know which plants

were valuable to gather? In discussing

the transfer of African knowledge to the

Caribbean landscape, anthropologist

Merrick Posnansky has noted that plants

from the same families were used in

similar ways on both sides of the

Atlantic.

71

Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest
This does not mean that West

Africans were necessarily the first to

utilize such plants in the Caribbean,

but it does mean that they were able

to assimilate the knowledge of their

Indian predecessors rapidly, grasp

the potentialities of the plants on or

near the plantation, and integrate this

new information with their own considerable knowledge of plants and

the pharmacopoeia of the obeah

men and women.(21)

The similarities of usage between some

native herbs on Jamaica and in the

American South suggests such a transfer occurred in Virginia as well.(22)

All of these native plants grew in

areas readily accessible to enslaved 

residents foraging within the plantation

landscape. Many grew in open fields,

disturbed grounds, and the edge zone

separating forest from field. Others, like

acorns and hickory nuts, could be collected in forested areas. Black walnut

was a species valued by Jefferson, and

most likely remained easily accessible

as a garden tree after 1806 when he

began landscaping the grounds around

his house. Slaves may have encouraged

the growth of fruit and nut trees near

their quarters, a practice in keeping with

the cultivation of fruit and nut-bearing

trees in the Caribbean and West

Africa.(23)

The native plants represented by carbonized remains served a variety of

nutritional uses. Most could be directly

consumed as greens, cooked as

potherbs, or harvested for their seeds,

which could be parched for cereal or

ground for flour.(24) African Americans

in the South used violets to make soup,

and the plant became known as ìwild

okra."(25) Fruits could be distilled into

alcohol or dried for later use.(26)

African Americans also used these

plants, as well as domesticated species,

to combat sickness. While Jefferson

employed a neighboring physician to

tend to the ill or injured, slaves chose to

treat themselves or, in cases beyond

their skill, to consult a local ìnegro doctor."(27) Leaves, roots, bark, and even

pits held curative properties for a host of

maladies.(28) While the use of native

fruits and herbs was widespread among

both blacks and whites in the South, the

combination of plant use with West

African beliefs about the causes and

cures of sickness and disease formed a

distinctly African-American approach to

healing. Archaeologists working on other

sites occupied by enslaved families and

their descendants have discovered similar assemblages of wild plants, suggesting that strategies for approaching illness that developed under slavery 

continued in the post-Emancipation

south.(29) 

Enslaved gardeners may have also

cultivated several of these plants around

their cabins for their aesthetic qualities.(30) While archaeologists have

investigated the retention of African traditions of yard sweeping, and scholars

have discussed the appearance of yardart in post-Emancipation settings, little is

currently known about the extent to

which enslaved peoples modified the

landscape for beauty alone.(31) In the

end, plants fulfilled multiple functions,

and probably were valued for all of their

properties.

While it is likely that slaves gathered

the edible herbs, medicinal plants, and

many of the native fruits in their own

time, their source for domesticated

plants is less clear. Corn and wheat

were staples within the provisioning 

system. Jeffersonís records of provisions, however, indicate that he customarily allotted these grains as flour rather

than raw ears and sheaves.(32) It is

unclear to what extent slaves gathered

corn, wheat, oats, and rye from 

plantation fields for their own use, and to

what extent they raised these grains in

their own plots. 

Perhaps more intriguing is the presence of sorghum in the fill of the subfloor pit associated with the North Hill. A

staple of the West African diet, the grain

was unfamiliar to Jefferson, who called it

ìguinea cornî when he received a parcel

of seeds from his friend James Madison

in 1791.(33) Its association with the

North Hill indicates that sorghum was in

use at least six years prior to his

acquaintance with it. This contradiction

in evidence suggests that enslaved 

men and women were cultivating the

crop for themselves without Jeffersonís

knowledge.

Jefferson made no direct references

to providing slaves with land for their

own gardening efforts at Poplar

Forest.(34) However, he recorded purchases of garden produce and poultry,

as well as grass seed, hay, and fodder

from enslaved men and women living on

his own and neighboring plantations.(35)

These activities were widespread

throughout the Southeast and the

Caribbean. Men tended to provide the

majority of garden produce, animal

skins, grasses, and fodder, while women

provided the bulk of the eggs.(36)

Archaeologists recovered relatively

small numbers of animal bones at each

site that provide additional clues about

residentsí diets and their after-hours

engagement in hunting, trapping, and

fishing.(37) Pigs provided the staple

meat diet at both quarter sites. The predominance of foot, cranial, and long

bone fragments indicates that slaves

received less meaty portions of the 

animals that were distributed as part of

their pork provisions.(38) Bones from

other domesticated species, such as

cows and chickens, were found in relatively small numbers.(39) 

72

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Faunal analyst Susan Andrews has

noted that the highly fragmented mammal bones recovered at the North Hill

may be attributed to the theory of the

ìone-pot meal,î which is a method of

cooking that is based on African traditions. This would presumably involve the

breaking of bones into pieces small

enough to fit into a cooking crock so that

stews or dishes such as hoppiní john

could be prepared.(40)

Wild species made up an additional

portion of the slavesí meat diet. They

consumed white tailed deer, eastern 

cottontail rabbits, eastern gray squirrels,

opossums, a woodchuck, a raccoon,

and a fresh water bass or sunfish.(41)

While all of these species are edible,

some of the small mammals may also

have been hunted for their skins. These

could be used at home or sold, traded,

or bartered for goods.(42)

No significant variability was

observed between the sites, although

the North Hill appears to have had more

diversity in wild species. Because of the

poor preservation of the bones at both

sites, it is impossible to establish

whether the decline of diversity points to

an increased reliance on provisions over

time, or whether it simply reflects taphonomic biases.(43)

Archaeologists found lead shot of

various weights and gunflints at both

sites and a musket frizzen at the North

Hill. Together with the variety of wild animals remains present, these artifacts

indicate that some enslaved individuals

had access to firearms and used them

for hunting. Fishing, hunting, and trapping most likely took place during the

evenings or on Sundays when slaves

were dismissed from plantation labor.

While all of the bones found represent

animals that likely inhabited the Poplar

Forest fields and woodlands, slaves

might have had occasion to go further

afield to find food. 

Poplar Forest Slaves

and the Broader

Landscape

What do we know about the movement

of enslaved men and women at Poplar

Forest? While travel was legally restricted to those with permission to do so,

boundaries appear to have been less

rigid than the law implied. From a relatively early age, Jeffersonís slaves knew

of and experienced a landscape that

extended far beyond the borders of their

home plantation. Through a variety of

mandatory assignments and voluntary

choices, they left the plantation and

experienced this wider community. Ties

of kinship, economic activities, work

assignments, and acts of rebellion, separately or in combination, influenced the

frequency and distance of their travel. 

Some men and women were separated from family members by ìabroad

marriagesî or sales, and made travel a

regular part of their weekly routine to

visit spouses, children, and relations.

Others left the plantation to pursue 

economic activities in local shops or

markets, or to attend church services.(44) For many Poplar Forest slaves,

travel was a part of their assigned work

load. Wagoners carried goods to and

from Lynchburg and area mills; messengers ran errands throughout the neighborhood.(45) These trips strengthened

ties not only between landowners, but

also between enslaved workers, who

doubtlessly used such opportunities to

renew acquaintances with their neighbors.

Because of the close ties between

the two plantations, many Poplar Forest

slaves traveled to Monticello, extending

their knowledge of central Virginia far

beyond the bounds of Lynchburg. As

assigned by Jefferson and his overseers, they transported goods and 

livestock, provided labor at key points

in the harvest cycle, and served 

apprenticeships.(46) People also voluntarily traveled between the two plantations to visit family members.(47) 

The route, whether followed by

wagon or on foot, wound through

Buckingham County, fording the James

River at Warren before entering

Albemarle County for the final push to

Monticello. Depending on the roads

taken, the journey was between 93 and

116 miles, and could last as long as

eight days.(48)

Through these trips, and the stops

they entailed, enslaved travelers extended their social and economic networks in

important ways. Acquaintances in neighboring counties shared a meal,

exchanged news, goods, and services;

and created new bonds that might provide shelter for a tired wagon driver or

aid a runaway in negotiating hostile 

territory. 

On those occasions when slaves

traveled to escape bondage, family ties

clearly figured in to where they fled.

Runaway advertisements throughout the

South are full of comments indicating

that husbands sought out wives and

sons returned to the plantations of their

mothers. As families were broken up by

sales, they nevertheless found ways of

maintaining connections.(49)

For a small group of enslaved men,

and a smaller number of women, the

landscape beyond Monticello was also

familiar. Watermen, transporting goods

from the plantation to market in

Richmond, were afforded an uncommon

degree of free movement and association. These men likely played vital roles

in maintaining family connections and

sharing cultural knowledge across the

region. Their familiarity with large

stretches of territory, and the people that

dwelled along the rivers, made them

important sources of information for runaways and aided in running away themselves. One Poplar Forest slave, Jame

73

Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest
Hubbard, was ìcarried upriverî by a

waterman. He remained free for a year

before being captured in what is now

West Virginia.(50)

A few Monticello-based slaves traveled beyond Virginia, serving Jefferson

during his residence in Philadelphia,

Washington, D.C., and Paris. While

these places were far removed from the

realities of daily life at Poplar Forest,

they nevertheless played some part in

the perception of the wider world shared

by the men and women that lived there.

Hannah, Jeffersonís enslaved cook, was

a literate woman. The only letter in her

hand that survives is signed ìAdieu.î

Exactly how she learned French will

never be known, but it is interesting to

speculate about the extent to which

Jeffersonís travels, and those of a few

members of the enslaved community,

affected the worldview of those who

stayed behind.

Conclusions

Drawing on traditions from West Africa

and conditions endured in the New

World, enslaved men and women

formed the backbone of agricultural

labor in colonial and antebellum Virginia.

While slaveholders ordered plantation

landscapes for the production of cash

crops, slaves modified and exploited

them through foraging, gardening, poultry raising, hunting, and fishing. The

landscape that African Americans inhabited at Poplar Forest shaped the

rhythms of their working and private

lives and formed a starting point for

exploring the broader communities of

Lynchburg, Bedford County, and

beyond. Movement between neighboring

plantations, shops, warehouses, and

places of worship provided men and

women with opportunities to share

ideas, foster friendships and family ties,

and plan for the future.

Slavesí familiarity with and reliance

on the resources of the immediate landscape structured choices of foods and

methods of preparing them, guided healing practices, influenced aesthetic preferences, and touched on many other

aspects of daily life. These choices,

made individually on thousands of plantations throughout the region, were

shared and refined by the formal and

informal exchanges of travelers. Beyond

the boundaries of the plantation lay a

world of possibilities: for finding a

spouse, earning some money, sharing

faith, or finding freedom. Through myriad

contacts with the broader world, men

and women received, developed, maintained and spread a regional AfricanAmerican culture. 

Notes

1. Edwin Morris Betts, Thomas

Jeffersonís Farm Book, (Charlottesville:

The University Press of Virginia, 1987),

268-269.

2. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the

Virginian, (Boston: Little, Brown and

Company, 1948), 21, 31-32; Betts,

Jeffersonís Farm Book, 5-18; Barbara J.

Heath, Hidden Lives, The Archaeology

of Slave Life at Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest, (Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1999), 10-13.

3. Donnan puts Angolans ahead of

Senegambians, in Philip D. Curtin, The

Atlantic Slave Trade, A Census,

(Madison: The University of Wisconsin

Press, 1970), 157; Mechal Sobel, The

World They Made Together, Black and

White Values in Eighteenth-Century

Virginia, (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1987) 6, 244-245; Michael Mullin,

Africa in America, Slave Acculturation

and Resistance in the American South

and the British Caribbean 1736-1831,

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1994), 24; Michael Gomez, Exchanging

Our Country Marks, The Transformation

of African Identities in the Colonial and

Antebellum South, (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press

1998), 150.

4. Wayles was a factor for a group of

Bristol merchants whose ship, the

ëPrince of Wales,í sailed for the coast of

Africa in 1772 and delivered a cargo of

280 slaves to Virginia. Julian P. Boyd,

editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,

Volume 15, March 1789-November

1789, (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1958), 676-677; James A. Bear

and Lucia C. Stanton, editors,

ìJeffersonís Memorandum Books,

Accounts, with Legal Records and

Miscellany, 1767-1826,î in The Papers

of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series,

volumes 1 and 2, (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1997), 752.

5. As recalled by her grandson

Madison, Betty Hemings was the daughter of an African woman and a white

shipís captain. She resided with her six

children and grandson at Waylesís

Guinea quarter before Jefferson became

her owner and moved her family to

Monticello in 1774. Betts, Jeffersonís

Farm Book, 9; Annette Gordon Reed,

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings,

An American Controversy

(Charlottesville: University Press of

Virginia, 1997), 23. The connection to

Africa of others owned by Jefferson

remains less clear. It is most likely that

Squire, Judy and Goliah, all born

between 1727 and 1731, were the children or grandchildren of survivors of the

Middle Passage, or experienced it themselves. 

Cuffey probably was derived from

Kofi, Friday. Phoebe and Quash may

have come from Efua (Friday), and

Kwesi (Sunday), names that were later

creolized. There can be no doubt that

ìblack Sallísî son Quomina, who fled

74

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
with his mother and siblings to the

British during the American Revolution,

carried the Akan day name for Saturday

(Kwamena). Other names are suggestive of Fanti or Igbo ethnicities: Beck

may be derived from ëBeke,í Anthony

from the tribal name ëAndoni,í and Jenny

from ëGinneh.í Laurie A. Wilkie,

ìContinuities in African Naming Practices

Among the Slaves of Wadeís Green

Plantation, North Caicos.î Journal of

Bahamas Historical Society 15(1)(1993),

33-34. Anglicized names like Jack, Joe,

and Abby, all common among

Jeffersonís slaves, may also be derivative of Akan day names. Ibid, 33.

Sanco, Luna, Isabel, Bella, Lucinda,

Belinda, and Emanuel bore Hispanic

names. The name Dilcy, given to two

girls born in the 1760s (one at Shadwell

and the other at Poplar Forest), may

have been derived from the Spanish

word dulce, meaning sweet. Later generations of men and women owned by

Jefferson carried on these names,

adding Flora, Amanda, Lucinda, Sophia,

Melinda, Lania, Maria, Lovila, and Lovilo

for children born into the community.

6. A.G. Hopkins, An Economic

History of West Africa (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1973), 30.

7. Hopkins, An Economic History, 

33-34.

8. S. O. Babalola and Carolyne

Dennis, ìReturns to Womenís Labour in

Cash Crops in Nigeria,î in Agriculture,

Women and Land, The African

Experience, edited by Jean Davidson

(London: Westview Press, 1988), 82; Ifi

Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female

Husbands, Gender and Sex in an

African Society (London: Zed Books,

1987), 29, 34; E. Francis White,

ìWomen in West and West-Central

Africa,î in Women in Sub-Saharan

Africa, edited by Iris Berger and E.

Francis White, (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1999), 65; see also

Miriam Goheen, ìLand and the

Household Economy: Women Farmers

of the Grassfields Today,î in Agriculture,

Women, and Land, the African

Experience, 90-105.

9. Hopkins, An Economic History,

33-34.

10. Rhys Isaac, The Transformation

of Virginia 1740-1790, (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press,

1982), 22-24.

11. At both Poplar Forest and

Monticello, corn and peas, and corn and

potatoes shared the same fields. Edwin

Morris Betts, Thomas Jeffersonís

Garden Book, (Philadelphia: The

American Philosophical Society, 1944),

192-194, 517-518; Betts, Jeffersonís

Farm Book, 88, 312-317; Joel Yancey to

Jefferson, February 7, 1820, MHi.

12. Hopkins, An Economic 

History, 36.

13. See Hopkins, 36-37, for discussion on why plows were not used in

West Africa.

14. Barbara J. Heath, ìRediscovering

an Historic Landscape: Archaeology,

Documents and GIS at Poplar Forestî

(paper presented at the annual meeting

of the Society for Historical Archaeology

Conference on Historical and

Underwater Archaeology, Salt Lake City,

UT, 1999).

15. Heath, Hidden Lives, 27-46;

Barbara J. Heath and Amber Bennett,

ìëThe little Spots allowíd themí: The

Archaeological Study of AfricanAmerican Yards,î in Historical

Archaeology 34(2)(2000), 46-47.

16. Heath, Hidden Lives, 44. The

three cabins excavated at the Quarter

are designated Structures 1,2,and 3 in

the analysis. Structure 1 measured 15 ft.

x 25 ft., was divided into two rooms,

contained three subfloor pits, and was

raised off the ground on wooden and

stone piers. Structure 2 measured 13 ft.

square, contained no pits, and had an

earthen floor. Structure 3 was badly preserved. It probably measured 18.5 ft.

sq., and was raised off the ground on

stone piers. It did not contain any subfloor pits, but had an extensive midden

beneath it.

17. Leslie Raymer, ìMacroplant

Remains from the Jeffersonís Poplar

Forest Slave Quarter: A Study in African

American Subsistence Practices,î New

South Associates Technical Report

#402(1996), Stone Mountain, GA; idem,

ìDraft data from the Poplar Forest North

Hill,î (manuscript on file, Thomas

Jeffersonís Poplar Forest, Virginia,

2000); Heath, Hidden Lives, 59-60;

Heath and Bennett, Historical

Archeology, 46-48.

18. Plant remains from the site

include blackberry, elderberry, grape,

peach, persimmon, strawberry and

sumac (fruits); common bean, maize,

oats, rye, sorghum, sunflower, and

wheat (vegetables and grains); acorn,

hickory and hickory/walnut (nuts); bedstraw, carpetweed, dock, goosefoot,

knotweed, pigweed, purslane, smartweed, and vervain (edible herbs); copperleaf, nightshade, prickly mallow, and

ragweed (weeds); agropyrn, goosegrass, and an unidentified grass family

(grasses); viola (ornamental/edible) and

poppy (condiment). Raymer, ìDraft

data."

19. Raymer, ìDraft data.î The data

break down as follows: 90% of the grain,

46% of the fruit, and 89% of the edible

weed assemblages were recovered from

the fill of the subfloor pit; 8% of the

grain, 50% of the fruit, and 8% of the

75

Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest
edible weed assemblages came from

the fill layers in the erosion gully that

correspond with the occupation dates of

the cabin. The remainder of the carbonized floral materials recovered from

the site came from a small pit located

just outside of the cabin (less than 2%

overall) and the upper layers of gully fill

(7%) and small isolated features (less

than 2% overall).

20. The data in the following discussion of the Quarter site reflect floral

remains from Structures 1 and 2 only.

Analysis of Structure 3 is not yet complete, but a preliminary examination indicates no new species present. Floral

remains include cherry, grape, huckleberry, peach, persimmon, and raspberry

(fruits); common bean, maize, sunflower,

and wheat (vegetables and grains); hickory and walnuts (nuts); and bedstraw,

goosefoot, and smartweed (edible

herbs). Distributions are consistent with

the North Hill findings if peaches are

excluded from the count. Nearly 73% of

fruits, vegetables, and edible and medicinal herbs were recovered from the most

intact subfloor pit in Structure 1, while

the other two pits contained less than

1% of the assemblage. These features

were extremely shallow, however, and it

is likely that most of their contents were

displaced by plowing. The floor of

Structure 2 contained 25% of the edible

assemblage excluding peach pits, which

made up 79% of the total assemblage

from this feature. See Raymer, New

South Technical Report #402. 

21. Merrick Posnansky, ìWest

Africanist Reflections on AfricanAmerican Archaeology,î in I, Too, Am

America: Archaeological Studies of

African-American Life, edited by

Theresa Singleton, (Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1999), 32.

22. U. P. Hedrick, editor, Sturtevantís

Edible Plants of the World, (New York:

Dover Publications, Inc., 1972), 43.

23. Heath and Bennett, Historical

Archaeology, 39-41. Remains of carbonized wood were systematically

recovered from the fill of the subfloor pit

in the North Hill cabin and the associated erosion gully fill. These were analyzed by Leslie Raymer of New South

Associates. In all, 17 identifiable species

of trees are represented in the wood

charcoal assemblage. The ubiquity

(expressed as a percentage of the total

number of proveniences in which a

given species is present) of such as walnut, sycamore, hophornbeam, elm/hackberry, dogwood, black locust, beech,

basswood, ash, hickory, oak, and pine

indicates that at this time, much of the

land surrounding the cabin site was covered in hardwood forest, and had not

been cleared for cultivation. Carbonized

oak made up nearly 40% of all the charcoal recovered at the site, followed by

hickory (7%), and beech (4%), suggesting that site residents preferred these

woods with oak the clear favorite.

Charcoal samples recovered from

the Quarter site indicate that by the first

decade of the nineteenth century, the

landscape around the ìold plantationî

had changed dramatically. The number

of identifiable species recovered from

features associated with two of the cabins shrank to three (hickory, oak, pine),

with pine predominating. These are consistent with the regeneration of secondary growth in abandoned fields.

24. The young leaves of goosefoot,

dock, nightshade, pigweed, and

purslane were eaten as greens or

cooked as potherbs, comparable in taste

to spinach and asparagus. Dock, goosefoot, pigweed, purslane, and smartweed

seeds provided flour or cereal. Hedrick,

Sturtevantís, 43-44, 450-451, 512-514,

544; Leslie Raymer, ìMacroplant

Remains from Six Nineteenth-Century

Cabins at the Hermitage, Tennessee: A

Study of Antebellum and Early Emancipation Era African American Subsistence

Patterns,î in New South Associates

Technical Report #376 (1997), Stone

Mountain GA, 39-40, 42-44.

25. Hedrick, Sturtevantís, 598.

26. Ibid, 244, 522. Jefferson reported

on the abundance of the peach harvests

at Poplar Forest, noting that enslaved

women dried and processed the fruits in

a variety of ways. Peaches, persimmons, blackberries, grapes, and elderberries could be distilled for wine, beer,

or spirits. See also Betts, Jeffersonís

Garden Book, 517-518; Joel Yancey to

Jefferson, November 19, 1819, MHi.

27. Joel Yancey to Jefferson, April

10, 1819, MHi; Joel Yancey to Jefferson,

July 1, 1819, MHi; see also Thomas M.

Randolph to Jefferson, April 25, 1800,

ViU.

28. Sumac cured worms, sores,

yaws, and burns. See Pamela Forey

and Ruth Lindsay, An Instant Guide to

Medicinal Plants (New York: Gramercy

Books, 1991), 101; Kay K. Moss,

Southern Folk Medicine 1750-1820

(Columbia: University of South Carolina,

1999), 77, 101, 104, 110, 132, 207.

Raspberries, strawberries, blackberries,

and persimmons served for kidney or

bladder complaints, ìlooseness of the

belly,î and sores. Persimmon fruit was

valued for its astringent qualities, and

used to clean wounds. Virtually all parts

of the peach served some curative purpose: the leaves and flowers acted as a

purgative or, made into a poultice, diminished swelling; the stones aided sore

throat and pain in the side. Flowers,

roots, leaves, and bark of elderberry

trees eased swelling, snakebite,

toothache, burns, and the symptoms of

76

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
a skin irritation known as scald head.

Taken internally, they could be used as a

purgative, diuretic or emetic. See Moss,

Southern Folk Medicine, 173, 182, 198,

199, 207.

Edible herbs also possessed medicinal qualities. Infusions of knotweed,

smartweed, or pigweed stopped bleeding from ulcers, sores, piles, and

relieved menstrual pain. See Forey and

Lindsay, Instant Guide to Medicinal

Plants, 23; Raymer, New South

Technical Report #376, 40, 43; see also

Betts, Jeffersonís Garden Book, 644.

Knotweed tea dispelled kidney stones,

while bedstraw relieved throat and chest

inflammations, and disorders of the kidneys. Moss, Southern Folk Medicine, 58,

94. Purslane was also known to have

astringent properties, while the value of

dock was in its ability to treat skin conditions, leprosy, venereal disease, and

tumors. It also served as a laxative and

blood purifier. See Raymer, New South

Technical Report #376, 44; see also

Moss, Southern Folk Medicine, 181.

The presence of jimsonweed at the

North Hill hints at the possibility of its

use medicinally. While all parts of the

plant are poisonous, the seeds are

especially toxic. Nevertheless, eighteenth and nineteenth century healers

put it in salves and poultices to treat a

variety of skin conditions. Its most

important use, however, was in treating

spasmodic coughing associated with

asthma. The plant was burned and the

smoke inhaled to relieve symptoms. See

Raymer, New South Technical Report

#376, 47; see also Betts, Jeffersonís

Garden Book, 644.

Jefferson also included malvaceae in

his listing of medicinal plants native to

Virginia (sida rhombifolia and sida abutilon), and a prickly mallow was recovered at the North Hill (sida spinosa).

Raymer, ìDraft data."

29. Charles B. Purdue, Jr., Thomas

E. Barden and Robert K. Phillips, editors, Weevils in the Wheat, Interviews

with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Charlottesville,

University Press of Virginia, 1976), 73,

221-222, 263, 310; Ywone D. EdwardsIngram, ìAn Inter-Disciplinary Approach

to African-American Medicinal and

Health Practices in Colonial America,î in

The Watermark 20(1997), 71; Raymer,

New South Technical Report #376.

30. Poppies, violets, pigweed, and

jimsonweed were commonly used as

ornamentals by white gardeners of the

period. Betts, Jeffersonís Garden Book,

24, 644; Raymer, New South Technical

Report #376, 40, 46-47.

31. Heath and Bennett, Historical

Archaeology, 41-45.

32. Betts, Jeffersonís Farm Book, 50,

52, 77, 163.

33. Idem, Jeffersonís Garden 

Book, 166.

34. Subsequent owners of the estate

made reference to provision grounds.

Hutter Farm Journal, 1844-1854, (manuscript on file, Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar

Forest).

35. Barbara J. Heath, ìEngendering

Choice: Slavery and Consumerism in

Central Virginiaî (paper presented at the

annual meeting of the Society for

Historical Archaeology Conference on

Historical and Underwater Archaeology,

Atlanta, GA, 1998); see also Bear and

Stanton, Jeffersonís Memorandum

Books.

36. Heath and Bennett, Historical

Archaeology, 39-42; Heath,

ìEngendering Choice."

37. Because of the natural acidity of

the Poplar Forest soils, bone preservation was relatively poor. Those bones

that did survive represent the more

durable ones (i.e. teeth or long bones)

or fragments preserved in features

whose soil chemistry had been altered

historically by the addition of ash or

other materials that neutralized the soil.

Additionally, many bones suffered

weathering, burning, butchering, gnawing, and other modifications, both intentional and natural, that made it impossible to identify them beyond broad categories such as ìunidentified birdî or

ìunidentified mammal.î Consequently,

the following discussion provides a fairly

sketchy assessment of the importance

and variety of meat in the diets of

enslaved residents of each site.

38. Susan Trevarthen Andrews,

ìFaunal Analysis of Slave Quarter Site at

Poplar Forestî (manuscript on file,

Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar Forest,

Virginia, 1993); Betts, Jeffersonís

Garden Book, 467; idem, Jeffersonís

Farm Book, 48.

39. Archaeologists did collect quantities of eggshells at both sites, suggesting the dietary importance of eggs, but

raising questions about the low frequency of chicken bones.

40. Susan Trevarthen Andrews,

ìFaunal Analysis of North Hill Features,

Poplar Forest,î (manuscript on file,

Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar Forest,

Virginia, 1999), 19.

41. Bones from eastern cottontail

rabbits, eastern gray squirrels, opossums, a woodchuck, a raccoon, and a

fresh water bass or sunfish were recovered at the North Hill; white tailed deer,

opossum, rabbits, and gray squirrels

were found at the Quarter. Andrews,

ìFaunal Analysisî 1993; idem, ìFaunal

Analysis for Poplar Forest Feature 1206î

(manuscript on file, Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest, Virginia, 1995); idem,

ìPoplar Forest Quarter Site Faunal

Analysisî (manuscript on file, Thomas

77

Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest
Jeffersonís Poplar Forest, Virginia,

1996); idem, ìFaunal Analysis of North

Hill, Poplar Forestî (manuscript on file,

Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar Forest,

Virginia, 1998); idem, ìFaunal Analysis

of North Hill Featuresî 1999. 

42. Bear and Stanton, Jeffersonís

Memorandum Book, 500. Jefferson purchased squirrel skins from Jame

Hubbard, an enslaved waterman in

1780. Heath notes in ìSlavery and

Consumerism: A Case Study from

Central Virginia,î in African-American

Archaeology Newsletter 19 (1)(1997), 6,

that a merchant who operated a store

near Poplar Forest recorded purchasing

raccoon skins from one of his enslaved

customers.

43. Betts, Jeffersonís Garden Book,

517-518; idem, Jeffersonís Farm Book,

48, 58, 149, 417; Jefferson to Jeremiah

Goodman, February 3, 1814, ViU;

Jefferson to Patrick Gibson, November

3, 1814, NHi. In addition to corn, wheat,

herring, and pork, Poplar Forest slaves

received milk, salt, and whiskey.

44. Heath, African-American

Archaeology Newsletter; Heath,

ìEngendering Choice.î Will kept shop

accounts in New London and

Lynchburg. Joel Yancey to Jefferson,

October 14, 1819, MHi. Others frequented the Lynchburg Sunday markets as

buyers and sellers. When a Sunday cold

snap threatened the tobacco crop in

1819, overseer Joel Yancey discovered

ìevery man except Armstead at B. Creek

had gone off and 2 of the women to

Lynchburg, and 2 men and 2 women

from TomahawkÖ.î See also John Early,

ìDiary of John Early, Bishop of the

Methodist Episcopal Church, South,î in

Virginia Magazine of History and

Biography 35 (1927), 7, on the African

Meeting House in the Forest area.

45. Jefferson to James Lyle, April 5,

1811, MHi; Jefferson to Jeremiah

Goodman, August 9, 1812, DLC; James

A. Bear, editor, Jefferson at Monticello

(Charlottesville: University Press of

Virginia, 1967), 67-68. Jeffersonís social

and economic relationships within the

local community necessitated the regular movement of slaves passing throughout the neighborhood conducting his

business. Wagoners carried flour to local

mills, tobacco to market, and supplies

from the waterfront in Lynchburg back to

the plantation.

Jefferson to Charles Clay, December

18, 1811, MHi; Jefferson to Charles

Clay, December 14, 1812, DLC;

Jefferson to Charles Clay, May 5, 1813,

MHi, Charles Clay to Jefferson,

September 5, 1810, MHi; Charles Clay

to Jefferson, May 1, 1813, MHi.

Messenger service seems to have been

the task of teenage boys and girls. Over

the course of three years, they delivered

notes, surveying equipment, garden

seeds, and a copy of Tacitus to

Jeffersonís friend, Charles Clay, who

lived at nearby Ivy Hill. In return, Clay

sent his own slaves to Poplar Forest

carrying rye seeds, a basket of asparagus, and a variety of notes.

William Steptoe to Jefferson, July 24,

1819, MHi; Ellen Randolph to Martha

Randolph, August 24, 1819, ViU. When

Jefferson sent a messenger to physician

William Steptoe, asking leave to borrow

his syringe, Steptoe replied that the

desired object was ìso often lent and

sent about the neighborhood that I am

sorry to say I do not know who had it

last. However I will dispatch a boy after

it.î Two enslaved maids belonging to

Mrs. Walker, whose property bounded

Poplar Forest to the west, made weekly

deliveries of fruits, vegetables, sweetmeats, and lamb to Jeffersonís granddaughters during the summer of 1819.

BCOB 1781, 333-334; BCSB1:351;

BCSB2:166. Unsanctioned travel within

the environs of Poplar Forest also

occurred. In 1781, Jack and Will joined

Peter, the slave of John Thompson, Sr.,

in breaking into the mill and stillhouse

owned by Thompsonís son. The three

were caught, tried, and punished for

their actions. Peter probably lived on

Thompsonís tract of land adjoining

Poplar Forest to the east.

46. Jefferson to Jeremiah Goodman,

December 31, 1811, ViU; Jefferson to

Jeremiah Goodman, January 6, 1815,

ViU; Jefferson to Joel Yancey, March 6,

1817, MHi; Jefferson to Joel Yancey,

January 11, 1818, MHi; Joel Yancey to

Jefferson, January 9, 1819, MHi; Joel

Yancey to Jefferson, December 31,

1819, MHi; Jefferson to John Wayles

Eppes, October 22, 1820, MHi; Betts,

Jeffersonís Farm Book, 42-44. In the

years following Jeffersonís retirement,

wagoners made frequent journeys

between the two properties, carrying 

furnishings, farm equipment and food

from one plantation to another.

Jefferson to Edmund Bacon,

December 5, 1811, DLC; Jefferson to

Jeremiah Goodman, December 13, 1812,

ViU; Jefferson to Jeremiah Goodman,

January 8, 1813, ViU; Jefferson to

Jeremiah Goodman, January 6, 1815,

ViU; Betts Jeffersonís Garden Book, 534-

535. Workers moved between the two

places when Jefferson needed extra

hands at harvest or planting time. He also

sent teenage boys and girls to Monticello

to learn a trade in his nailery or textile

factory. Enslaved men, as well as

teenage boys drove cattle, hogs, and

sheep from Bedford to Albemarle in the

early winter for slaughter.

47. Heath, Hidden Lives, 16, 69, note

12. To create productive farms,

Jefferson split most of the families that

he owned between his two properties.

78

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
He granted family members to visit their

kinspeople from time to time. Such visits

usually took place at Christmas, and

often individuals accompanied wagons

bearing supplies to Poplar Forest, or

aided in the driving of livestock on the

return journey.

48. Jefferson to Martha Randolph,

November 10, 1816, MHi; Joel Yancey

to Jefferson January 9, 1819, MHi;

Jefferson to Joel Yancey, January 17,

1819, MHi. While Johnny and Randall

made the reverse trip in about three

days, other slaves accompanying the

wagon and herds of recalcitrant livestock

northward might be on the road for eight

days or longer. 

Joel Yancey for Nace, March 12,

1812, MHi; Jeremiah Goodman to

Jefferson, December 30, 1814, ViU;

Jefferson to Jeremiah Goodman,

January 6, 1815, ViU; Joel Yancey to

Jefferson, October 14, 1819, MHi. It took

Nace two days to traverse the thirtyseven miles from Poplar Forest to Henry

Floodís tavern in Buckingham County

when he traveled to Monticello on an

early spring trip in 1821. Phil Hubbard

made shorter work of the journey from

Bedford to Albemarle, taking only two

days to traverse the one hundred miles

between the two plantations. His was an

unauthorized trek, triggered by anger

about an overseerís refusal to recognize

his marriage. At Monticello, he sought,

and gained Jeffersonís support. Five

years later, his nephew, William, ran to

Monticello, this time to contest being

asked to work on a Sunday.

Joel Yancey to Jefferson, December

24, 1818, MHi. Whether others apprehended between the two plantations had

larger plans for freedom is unclear. In

1813, Hercules was detained in

Buckingham jail and returned to Poplar

Forest. Two other young Monticello men,

Dick and Moses, arrived a Poplar Forest

on stolen horses, and without a pass, at

Christmas in 1818. When the owners of

one horse arrived, Dick claimed that he

had found the horse, and that they had

come to Bedford to visit family. He was

whipped for the offense. Moses declined

to make excuses, escaping before he

could be punished.

49. Lynchburg Virginian, August 31,

1824, 4. Bob, a young man who had

been raised by Jefferson at Monticello,

and subsequently sold, was employed

by his fourth owner as a waterman. His

owner, in drafting the advertisement for

his return, recognized the importance of

kinship, stating that ìhe has relations at

Monticello, at Mr. Jeffersonís plantation

near Lynchburg, in RichmondÖand at

Wilton below Richmond.î He added that

it was most likely that Bob was making

his way to Monticello or Poplar Forest.

Whether he succeeded, or was captured

and returned, is not known. 

50. Reuben Perry to Jefferson,

March 29, 1811, ViW; Jefferson to

Reuben Perry, April 16, 1812, ViW;

Daniel Meaders, Advertisements for

Runway Slaves in Virginia 1801-1820

(New York: Garland Publishing Inc.,

1997), 161. In the spring of 1811, while

Jefferson was visiting Poplar Forest,

Jame Hubbard fled Monticello by boat

with Harry, a waterman who belonged to

Jeffersonís son-in-law. In a previous

flight, he had ìattempted to get out of

the state Northwardlyî and had been

apprehended. This time he made his

way to Lexington, where he lived for

nearly a year before he was discovered.

He eluded capture, getting as far as

Pendleton County, in what is now West

Virginia, before he was arrested.

Bibliography

Manuscript Sources

Bedford County Court Records. Order

Book (BCOB). 

Bedford County Court Records. Survey

Book (BCSB).

College of William and Mary,

Williamsburg (ViW). 

Jefferson Papers.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

(DLC). Jefferson Papers.

Massachusetts Historical Society,

Boston (MHi). Jefferson Papers. 

New York Historical Society, New York

(NHi). Jefferson Papers.

University of Virginia Library,

Charlottesville (ViU). Jefferson

Papers.

Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar Forest.

Hutter Farm Journal 1844-1854.

Books, Articles, and Papers

Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters, Female

Husbands, Gender and Sex in an

African Society. London: Zed 

Books, 1987.

Andrews, Susan Trevarthen. Faunal

Analysis of Slave Quarter Site at

Poplar Forest. Manuscript. Forest,

Virginia: Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar

Forest, 1993.

óóó. Faunal Analysis for Poplar

Forest Feature 1206. Manuscript.

Forest, Virginia: Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest, 1995.

óóó. Poplar Forest Quarter Site

Faunal Analysis. Manuscript. Forest,

Virginia: Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar

Forest, 1996.

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Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest
óóó. Faunal Analysis of North Hill,

Poplar Forest. Manuscript. Forest,

Virginia: Thomas Jeffersonís Poplar

Forest, 1998.

óóó. Faunal Analysis of North Hill

Features, Poplar Forest. Manuscript.

Forest, Virginia: Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest, 1999. 

Babalola, S.O. and Carolyne Dennis.

ìReturns to Womenís Labour in Cash

Crops in Nigeria.î In Agriculture,

Women and Land, The African

Experience, edited by Jean Davison,

79-89. London: Westview Press,

1987.

Bear, James A., editor. Jefferson at

Monticello. Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1967.

Bear, James A. and Lucia C. Stanton,

editors. ìJeffersonís Memorandum

Books, Accounts, with Legal Records

and Miscellany, 1767-1826.î The

Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second

Series, volumes 1 and 2. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1997.

Berger, Iris and E. Frances White.

Women in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1999.

Betts, Edwin Morris. Thomas Jeffersonís

Garden Book. Philadelphia: The

American Philosophical Society,

1944.

óóó. Thomas Jeffersonís Farm Book.

Charlottesville: The University Press

of Virginia, 1987.

Boyd, Julian P., editor. The Papers of

Thomas Jefferson, Volume 15, March

1789-November 1789. Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1958.

Chambers, Jr., S. Allen. Poplar Forest

and Thomas Jefferson. Little

Compton, RI: Fort Church

Publishers, Inc, 1993.

Curtin, Philip D. The Atlantic Slave

Trade, A Census. Madison: The

University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.

Davison, Jean, editor. Agriculture,

Women and Land, The African

Experience. London: Westview

Press, 1987.

Early, John ìDiary of John Early, Bishop

of the Methodist Episcopal Church,

South.î Virginia Magazine of History

and Biography 35 (1927): 7-8.

Edwards-Ingram, Ywone D. ìAn InterDisciplinary Approach to AfricanAmerican Medicinal and Health

Practices in Colonial America.î The

Watermark 20 (3)(1997): 67-73.

Forey, Pamela and Ruth Lindsay. An

Instant Guide to Medicinal Plants.

New York: Gramercy Books, 1991.

Goheen, Miriam. ìLand and the

Household Economy: Women

Farmers of the Grassfields Today.î In

Agriculture, Women and Land, The

African Experience, edited by Jean

Davison, 90-105. London: Westview

Press, 1987.

Gomez, Michael A. Exchanging our

Country Marks, The Transformation

of African Identities in the Colonial

and Antebellum South. Chapel Hill:

The University of North Carolina

Press, 1998.

Gordon Reed, Annette. Thomas

Jefferson and Sally Hemings, An

American Controversy.

Charlottesville: University Press of

Virginia, 1997.

Heath, Barbara J. ìSlavery and

Consumerism: A Case Study from

Central Virginia.î African-American

Archaeology Newsletter 19(1)

(1997): 1-8.

óóó. ìEngendering Choice: Slavery

and Consumerism in Central

Virginia.î Paper presented at the

annual meeting of the Society for

Historical Archaeology Conference

on Historical and Underwater

Archaeology, Atlanta, GA, 1998.

óóó. ìAfrican Americans and

Consumerism: Historical and

Archaeological Sources on Material

Culture.î Paper presented at the 20th

annual Conference of the National

Council of Public History, Austin, 

TX 1998.

óóó. Hidden Lives, The Archaeology

of Slave Life at Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest. Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1999. 

óóó. ìRediscovering a Historic

Landscape: Archaeology, Documents

and GIS at Poplar Forest.î Paper

presented at the annual meeting of

the Society for Historical Archaeology

Conference on Historical and

Underwater Archaeology, Salt Lake

City, UT, 1999.

Heath, Barbara J. and Amber Bennett.

ìëThe little Spots allowíd themí: The

Archaeological Study of AfricanAmerican Yards.î Historical

Archaeology 34(2)(2000):38-55.

Hedrick, U. P., editor. Sturtevantís Edible

Plants of the World. New York: Dover

Publications, Inc, 1972.

Hopkins, A.G. An Economic History of

West Africa. New York: Columbia

University Press, 1973.

80

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790. Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press,

1982.

McNeill, William H. ìAmerican Food

Crops in the Old World.î In Seeds of

Change, edited by Herman J. Viola

and Carolyn Margolis, 43-59. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1991.

Malone, Dumas. Jefferson the Virginian.

Boston: Little, Brown and Company,

1948.

Martin, Ann Smart. Buying into the World

of Goods: Eighteenth-Century

Consumerism and the Retail Trade

form London to the Virginia Frontier.

Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms

International, 1993.

Meaders, Daniel. Advertisements for

Runaway Slaves in Virginia 1801-

1820, New York: Garland Publishing

Inc, 1997.

Moss, Kay K. Southern Folk Medicine

1750-1820. Columbia: University of

South Carolina Press, 1999.

Mullin, Michael. Africa in America, Slave

Acculturation and Resistance in the

American South and the British

Caribbean 1736-1831. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Purdue, Charles L. Jr., Barden, Thomas

E., and Phillips, Robert K. Weevils in

the Wheat, Interviews with Virginia

Ex-Slaves. Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1976.

Posnansky, Merrick. ìWest Africanist

Reflections on African-American

Archaeology.î In ëI, Too, Am America:í

Archaeological Studies of AfricanAmerican Life, edited by Theresa

Singleton, 21-37. Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1999. 

Raymer, Leslie. ìMacroplant Remains

from the Jeffersonís Poplar Forest

Slave Quarter: A Study in African

American Subsistence Practices.î

New South Associates Technical

Report #402(1996). Stone Mountain,

GA.

óóó. ìMacroplant Remains from Six

Nineteenth-Century Cabins at the

Hermitage, Tennessee: A Study of

Antebellum and Early Emancipation

Era African American Subsistence

Patterns.î New South Associates Technical Report #376(1997). Stone

Mountain, GA.

óóó. ìDraft data from the Poplar

Forest North Hill.î Manuscript.

Forest, Virginia: Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest, 2000.

óóó. Personal communication, 1992.

Singleton, Theresa, editor. ìI, Too, Am

America": Archaeological Studies of

African-American Life. Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1999. 

Sobel, Mechal. The World They Made Together, Black and White Values in

Eighteenth-Century Virginia.

Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1987.

Viola, Herman J. and Margolis, Carolyn,

editors. Seeds of Change. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian

Institution Press, 1991.

White, E. Francis. ìWomen in West and West-Central Africa.î In Women in

Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Iris

Berger and E. Francis White, 63-130.

Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1999.

Wilkie, Laurie A. ìContinuities in African

Naming Practices Among the Slaves

of Wadeís Green Plantation, North

Caicos.î Journal of Bahamas

Historical Society 15(1)(1993): 32-37.

81

Bounded Yards and Fluid Boundaries:

Landscapes of Slavery at Poplar Forest
82

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Three:

BLACK CULTURAL 

LANDSCAPES 

AND INSTITUTIONS

83

Although many were enslaved well into the nineteenth century, people of African descent infused

their African cultural traditions in domestic spaces,

public and secret routes, the education of their young, burial practices, and other aspects of their physical and

social environments. Related historic places include, but

are not limited to, schools, churches, gardens, cemeteries,

settlement patterns, places of spirituality and worship,

houses, transportation routes, and places of assembly and

social interaction.

Africanisms in the ìOld Ship of Zionî:

What Are Their Forms and Why Do They Persist?

Audrey Brown

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology at The Conjurerís Cabins and African

American Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore

Plantations

Kenneth Brown

Some Evidence of African Cultural Traditions 

Among the Residents of Black Church Centered 

Farming Communities in North Central Louisiana

Joe Lewis Caldwell
84

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Three:

Black Cultural

Landscapes 

and 

Institutions

Africanisms in the ìOld Ship of Zionî:

What Are These Forms and 

Why Do They Persist?

Audrey Brown

85

I

n 1980 my husband and I went to live

with his mother's people in rural

north central Florida. We left

Interstate 75 at Ocala and headed west

on SR 40 for about eight to ten miles.

There, just off the road as it turned from

asphalt to dirt, we found New Zion

Baptist Church. We were in the heart of

Zion, where African Americans have

lived for at least 178 years, first as

maroons, then as slaves, and then as

free pioneers. Where they once homesteaded, now a few members of those

families continue as a community, in a

place of cultural memory, an African

American ethnographic cultural landscape called Zion (pseudonym).(1)

The landscape concept derives from the art world

where beginning in the sixteenth century painters

depicted rural scenery as an idealized or imagined

place where people lived divorced from the realities

of the everyday real world.(2) Anthropologists use

the concept of an ethnographic landscape as a

framing convention, as they try to distinguish

between the "objective" outsider's view of place

and the insider's or "native's point of view." We

describe the objective and interrogate how, as

Setha Low put it, "place becomes space made 

culturally meaningful."(3) In this paper I aim to

uncover how, in Zion, African Americans created

and sustained such a place for generations. I argue

that some of the "Africanisms" I found in Zion

helped sustain this community for more than a century. The paper is based on primary source ethnographic and archival data I collected between 1980

and 1994 in Florida and other parts of the south

and the Caribbean, along with comparative data

derived from the literature on African American

archeology. 

Precinct 4

The place that people who live here call Zion, U.S.

Census Population schedules call Precinct 4. Oral

history, historical documents, tombstones, maps

and references to the population from 1828 through

1875 suggests that most Zionites are descendants

of maroons, freed slaves, and Seminole Indians.(4) 

In 1828 J. C. Ley, a Methodist circuit rider was

traveling through Florida preaching to settlers, their

slaves, maroons and Seminoles. In his diary Ley

says he heard about a group of blacks living with

the Indians a few miles west of Camp King, the

general location of present day Zion.(5) He set out

to find them hoping they would translate his message to the Indians. Ley tells of finding the Indians

and about 50 blacks who came out of the woods

led by Pompey, the "father and grandfather and

leader of them all."(6)

Early maps of Florida mark "Negro Town" at the

mouth of the Withlachochee River, and Negro

towns along the Suwanee River. Modern day Zion

is geographically located between the

Withlachochee and Oklawaha Rivers. Comparison

of the 1860 and 1870 census schedules for

Precinct 4 show a dramatic increase in the black

population. This finding supports historical accounts

that after the Afro-Seminole Wars some maroons

went into hiding only to reemerge after the Civil

War. It also supports oral history and written historical accounts of slaves leaving South Carolina and

Georgia plantations during the final days of the Civil

War, traveling by boat along the Georgia coastal

waters down the St. John and Oklawaha Rivers to

freedom in the isolated thickets of Central

Florida.(7) Zion is an ethnographic cultural landscape full of structures, sites and places of memory
86

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

1

2

3 4

to descendants of seven African

American families enumerated there in

the U.S. Census of 1870 and the Florida

State Census of 1875.(8)

Around 1863, my husband's greatgrandparents, Abraham Lincoln and

Melinda Johnson, run-a-way slaves from

South Carolina, first camped in the

woods of present day Zion. By 1870 one

finds the Staggers, Mobleys, Austins,

Robinsons, Carters, and Jacobs lived

nearby. In the 1880s these seven families and their descendants, formally

homesteaded the lands on which they

settled. [Figure 1] The Lewis brothers

joined them and married their daughters.

The Wilson brothers and Joe

Maeweathers did the same thing ten

years later. One hundred years later, I

recorded accounts of life in Zion as the

children and grandchildren of these

African American pioneers remembered

it or as their elders recalled it to them.(9)

Between 1870 and 1880, "Uncle"

Oliver Lewis, an ex-slave Baptist deacon

from Virginia and "Aunt" Suzie Staggers,

the community midwife, began to hold

Baptist church meetings in Zion "peoples

homes," then in "bush harbors." "Aunt"

Suzie was the first Mother of the Church.

The people built a log cabin church on

land donated by Huldy Austin, who later
became the second Mother of the

Church. Huldy Austin was also a community midwife. Around 1885-1890

"Aunt" Suzie's son Reverend Henry

Staggers was called to pastor the

church. He continued to pastor there

until his death in the 1940s. His daughter, "Cousin" Rea, the Mother of the

Church when I lived in Zion, remembered her father holding services in a

one-room frame church, before he built

"Old Zion" around 1900. [Figure 2]

"New" Zion church followed a half century later.[Figure 3] Zion settlement was

named after the church. Zion church like

other rural churches was originally a

family church, with no outside membership. To keep it that way, one person

told me the community men built another little church for "them boys who come

down here to work in the turpentine stills

and quarries."(10) [Figure 4]

Old Zion church like the other Baptist

churches that mushroomed across the

rural south after the Civil War, was the

center of community life. From Old Zion

and the other churches sprang schools,

benevolent and mutual aid societies,

social institutions that sustained community life. Between 1869 and 1889 Zion

churchwomen were among the AfroBaptist women who formed 28 women's

societies in Florida to help ex-slaves.(11) 

Over the first 40 years of the twentieth century the hamlet was at its zenith.

During this time about 300 Zion people

farmed over 1,700 acres of homestead

land. They were mostly subsistence and

small cash crop farmers of cowpeas,

corn, and rice. The community grew as

women birthed families of five to ten

children. Taking their small babies with

them, women worked the fields along

side of the men.[Figure 5] Some tasks

were the sole province of women such

as delivering babies, caring for the elderly and children, and treating common

illnesses with herbal remedies.(12)

Even in the 1980s there were some

women who still farmed and all women,

regardless of education and occupation,

were responsible for providing and cooking vegetables and other staple foods

for the family, and caring for the elderly

and the young.(13)

My husband and I first lived in one of

three houses still found on his greatgrandfather's homestead. It was a tinroofed, cement-block house that had

been built in 1959. The rooms ranged in

size from eight feet by eight feet to 12

feet squared. The cabin behind it in the

northeast was about a 12-feet squared

room with another smaller room behind,

and a little eight feet by eight feet room

built out in front on one side of the

porch. [Figure 6] It had wooden windows

and an open hearth for cooking and

warmth.(14) There was frame shotgun

house behind our house on the southwest, back about 50 yards. [Figure 7]

The rooms in the frame house were

small, no larger than ten feet by ten feet.

Like most houses in Zion, all three of

these houses had porches.

The Staggers home about a half-mile

east of where we lived was a modified

shotgun house. There were two rooms

built parallel to the basic two room, shed

kitchen model seen in Figure 12. In

1980 it was still heated by an open

hearth. Two of Suzie Stagger's granddaughters lived there along with their

extended families. None of the rooms in

this house exceed ten feet by ten feet.

Nearby there were ruins of a building of

the same design that had been home to

another one of their sisters. About 50

feet away, a third building, that had

housed their youngest brother had been

torn down and replaced by a trailer. 

The Mobley land began just beyond

the Staggersí. When we first came to

Zion there were seven Mobley home

sites, four houses, one ruin, and two

trailers. Malachi, whose mother was a

87

Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zionî: What Are These Forms 

and Why Do They Persist?

Figure 1. Homestead Deed of Abraham

Lincoln Johnson. Courtesy of the personal papers of James Brown, Jr. 

Figure 2. Old Zion Church built circa

1900. Photo courtesy of James

Brown, Jr. Figure 3. New Zion Baptist

Church, Zion, FL, built circa 1950.

Courtesy of Audrey L. Brown. 

Figure 3. New Zion Baptist Church, Zion,

Florida built circa 1950. 

Figure 4. Friendship Church in Martel,

Florida built circa 1900-1915 by people of Zion for migrant African

American workers in lime quarries,

on roads and railroads. Photo courtesy of Audrey L. Brown, ëTis the Old

Ship of Zion; Rituals and Oral

Traditions of Afro-Baptist Churches in

Florida, 1983-1986. Ocala, FL: n.p.,

1986. 

Figure 5. Women worked in the Fields.

Photo courtesy of Dorothea Lange,

America from the Great Depression

to World War II: Black-and-White

Photographs from the FSA-OWI,

Division of Prints and Photographs,

Library of Congress. 

5
88

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 6. Side view of cabin on

homestead of Abraham Lincoln

Johnson, a founder of Zion, FL.

Photo courtesy of Audrey L.

Brown, 1984, Gimme that ol' time

religion: Oral history Tapes.

Audiotapes and slides. Ocala FL:

n.p., 1983-1984.

Figure 7. Home of Turpentine worker

near Cordele, AL. FSA- OWI,

Division of Prints and

Photographs, Library of

Congress. 

Figure 8. Malachi Green's Mothers

House, circa 1930s, Zion, FL.

Photo courtesy of Audrey L.

Brown, 1984, Gimme that ol' time

religion: Oral history Tapes.

Audiotapes and slides. Ocala FL:

n.p., 1983-1984.

Figure 9. Mud and log construction in

old house originally built in the

late 18th or early 19th century by

free people of color, descendants

of Marie Therese Coincoin, a

freed slave who established

Yucca Plantation, Natchitoches,

LA. Courtesy of Prints and

Photographs Division, Library of

Congress. 

Figure 10. Frame house on posts,

former slave dwelling, Wray

Plantation, Greene County, GA.

Photo courtesy of Prints and

Photographs Division, Library of

Congress. 

6

7

8
89

Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zionî: What Are These Forms 

and Why Do They Persist?

9

11

10

12

Figure 11. Shotgun quarters at Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation, Thibodaux,

Lafourche Parish, LA. Drawings courtesy of Historic American Buildings

Survey/Historic American Engineering Collection, Prints & Photographs

Division, Library of Congress.

Figure 12. Shotgun quarters at Laurel Valley Sugar Plantation, Thibodaux,

Lafourche Parish, LA. Photo courtesy of Jet Lowe, Historic American

Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Collection, Prints &

Photographs Division, Library of Congress. 
Mobley, preserved his mother's home

after her death. He lived next to it in a

trailer about 25 feet away. Three other

buildings on Mobley land were home to

an elder Mobley man and his cousins,

two elderly sisters. These homes, built

about 25-30 feet apart, were the same

design as Malachi's mother's house and

about the same size. [Figure 8] They

had small rooms about ten to 11 feet

squared. After the elder Mobley's died

the houses were torn down and four

trailers erected. Although the trailers had

larger rooms and they were located on

several acres of land, the close settlement patterns persisted.

Younger people, like Pauline a

school teacher and her husband, a

retired military person, built their home

with seven rooms and a porch, none of

which exceed the 12 feet by 12 feet

dimensions that we shall see was characteristic of colonial African American

domiciles. In 1986, J.B.'s cousin

Georgie, a retired postal worker, built

her mother a "new" house. The rooms in

the new home, built by a local African

American contractor, are about 12 feet

by 12 feet or less. I asked myself what

does it mean that Zion people with the

means to build spacious houses recreate rooms the same size as the houses

built by their foreparents? What are the

origins of the architectural styles and

settlement patterns found in Zion? To

answer that question I turned to the

archeological record of colonial African

American sites in Low Country South

Carolina, the place of origins of almost

all the people who settled Zion.(15) 

Archeological

Evidence 

Yaughan and Curriboo plantations operated in an isolated area of South

Carolina low country from 1740 through

the 1820s. During the 1700s the ratio of

Africans to Europeans was 15:1 and

population increases resulted from fresh

infusions of Africans. Natural increase

resulted in the 27:1 ratio found after the

Revolutionary War. During this period

slave families were kept together even

when estates were settled, a factor promoting stable family life. Left largely on

their own under these conditions,

Africans and their descendants had cultural autonomy that was reflected in their

material culture.(16) They established

and maintained a society that Berlin

argues was based on an African model.

The fact that Mintz and Price argued for

a Caribbean model, Wheaton and

Garrow comment, "does not change the

fact, however, that the slaves who

inhabited Yaughan and Curriboo maintained a material culture that was distinct from that extracted from EuroAmerican sites."(17)

House Architecture

Three distinct slave quarters were excavated, early Yaughan (1750-1780), later

Yaughan (1780s-1820s), and one slave

quarter at Curriboo occupied from the

1740s until shortly after 1800. The architectural features of these structures

present a clear picture of change from

mud-walled huts, evidenced by wall

trenches with cob-wall construction in

the earliest structures to frame houses

constructed on posts after the

Revolutionary War.[Figures 9,10] The

Early Yaughan structures had no chimneys. Evidence of an open hearth directly on the earthen floor was found in one

house along with the bottom of another

hearth outside the houses.(18)

The dimensions of the Yaughan and

Curriboo houses varied in size between

periods: the earlier structures had

ranged from 12.5 feet by 11 feet to 13.5

feet by 20 feet, three of the later structures were 14.5 feet by 9.8 feet to 15.5

by 10 feet in dimension. Most were rectangular and housed one family. (19)

Settlement Patterns 

In the early slave quarter, one set of

Yaughan houses are located approximately 25 -50 feet apart in a circle. The

houses in a second set are adjacent to

each other and approximately 25 feet

apart. A third set of structures show a

similar pattern. At Curriboo, houses are

50 feet or less apart. Wheaton and

Garrow concluded that settlement patterns and architectural form of the buildings on Yaughan and Curriboo plantations appeared to have antecedents in

West Africa, and "probably represents a

West African architectural form."(20) 

Other scholars commenting on architectural form and settlement patterns of

eighteenth and early nineteenth century

African Americans, both slave and free,

agree that the patterns seen reflect

West African origins. Vlach commenting

on architectural form and settlement patterns on enslaved African American constructions noted the twelve-foot squared

unit, the presence of porches and close

settlement patterns resonates with houses constructed in Haiti and West

Africa.(21) Deetz made similar comments about the closeness of settlement

patterns in an excavation of houses built

by free African Americans in

Massachusetts. He concludes that the

close settlement patterns at the site differed significantly from their Yankee contemporaries and that they "reflect a

more corporate spirit than four AngloAmericans might show under similar circumstances."(22) 

By the late nineteenth and early

twentieth century African American

architecture featured the shotgun house,

one room wide, two or three room deep

house with a forward-facing gable and

90

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
porch. [Figures 11, 12] A modified shotgun house was built with two room additions along the side of the basic floor

plan. The second Florida house we lived

in followed this pattern with room sizes

ranging from 10 to the 12 foot-squared

dimension. It was located in a family

clearing along with two trailers. One

author comments that the close settlement patterns are African ways of

expressing kinship and corporate closeness through physical nearness.(23)

The persistence of small room size in

African American architecture might also

express the same kinds of African 

values.

Zion people still live in "micro-" settlements of extended families, their homes

built close together. The older houses

and some new ones replicate the architectural characteristics of their foreparents. History shows there were close

connections between post-emancipation

land use and familial and kin beliefs of

freed men and women. Of particular

concern to freed slaves were their "old

and infirm Mothers and Fathers and our

children."(24)

During the Great Migration people

left Zion and over the years much of the

land was sold to "outsiders," both

African Americans and Whites. Today,

relatively few Zionites actually live in the

circumscribed area around the church

building. Those that do are mostly middle age and elderly people. Yet Zion

community and New Zion Baptist

Church persist as a culturally meaningful

place to Zionites across the state and

the nation, connected by modern transportation and communication networks.

Wherever they live people return periodically for church services. Some come

annually for Homecoming Sunday in

July. Others come only for Home-Going

Celebrations when people die. The

turnout for the Mother of the Church,

Cousin Rea, in 1993 was one of the

largest in recent years. Mothers Day

services draw the largest congregations. 

Kinship, community, and funeral celebrations are all significant aspects of

West African culture. Along with the

housing and settlement patterns, it

seems to me there are also reflections

of West African influences in the matrifocality I observed in Zion family and

church life. 

Matrifocality in the

Social Organization of

Zion

Zion family and church social organization are matrilocal, matrilfocal, and matrilineal. [Table 1] When asked, people say

they live near their mother's people even

though their father's people also live in

the community. They attend their mother's church. Men who marry into the

community attend their wife's mother's

church. People venerate their mothers

and motherhood. If women do not bear

children they adopt them. Elderly mothers have the greatest prestige in Zion.

Adult children will visit their mothers frequently and elderly mothers are visited

daily. Women and men will provide

physical care for their mothers as needed. When a daughter or granddaughter

are unavailable to give care, other

women, cousins, nieces, and daughterin-laws help. If no one else is available a

son will live with his or mother and take

care of her. People reckon descent

through their mothers, again even when

their father's people live in the 

community.

The New Zion Baptist Church social

organization is also characteristically

matrilocal, matrifocal, and matrilineal.

People attend their mother's church.

Men who marry into the community

attend their wife's mother's church. If a

man from the community marries a

woman from another church, at least

one of his children, usually a daughter,

will attend his mother's church, but the

rest of the children attend their mother's

church. A man or woman who marries

into the community may be "funeralized"

at New Zion but they are buried in the

cemetery of their mother's church.

Prestige in the church is determined by

gender, age, descent, and religious commitment. Elderly women, who never left

the church, called church mothers, have

greater prestige than even the deacons.

The church social organization is illustrated by the way Zion elders arranged

themselves for photographs. [Figure 13]

The oldest women are in front with those

descended from the original families in

the middle. Their younger sisters and

cousins are on the second row. Cousin

Rea, 93 years old, Mother of the Church

and granddaughter of the first Mother,

sits in the center in a white hat. "Aunt"

Sister, the granddaughter of Huldy

Austin, sits next to her dressed in white.

The women on the ends of the front row

are an "incomer" on the right and an

"outsider," on the left. The men arranged

themselves behind the women by age,

then by family descent of their wives or

mothers.

The most prestigious woman's role is

Mother of the Church. Theoretically she

is elected from among all the church

mothers. However, a pattern of what

seems to be matrilineal succession is

evident among all the women who have

been elected. [Figure 14](25)

"Africanisms" in

American Culture:

Women's Church

Roles along the

Continuum 

Locating the presence of this African

American cultural landscape was relatively straightforward. Linking house

91

Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zionî: What Are These Forms 

and Why Do They Persist?
92

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Family

People live near their 

motherís people

Veneration of motherhood

and mothers. 

Expressed in biological of 

fictive motherhood.

Expressed in physical care

for elderly mothers.

People reckon descent

through their motherís 

family

Church

People attend their 

motherís church

Elderly women are called

ìchurch mothers.î

Highest prestige accorded

elected ìMother of the

Churchî

Mother of the Church

Office only held by female

descendents of first and

second Mothers of the

Church (circa 1880-2001)

Social Organization

Matrilocal

Matrifocal

Matrilineal

Family and Church Social Organization

Table 1. Comparison of Family and Church Social Organization

13

Figure 13. New Zion Elders, 1985. Front

Row: Left to Right, Sister Tot Bellamy;

Sister Josephine Maeweathers

Tindall; Deaconess Annie Staggers

Jacobs ("Cousin" Rea, Mother of the

Church); Deaconess Harriet Jacobs

Lewis ("Aunt" Sister, Acting Mother of

the Church); Mrs. Rosabelle Lewis

Simms ("Cousin' Rosabelle); Mrs.

Cecelia Carter; Mrs. Mary Mobley

("Miss" Mary). Second Row: Mrs.

Hattie Staggers Butler (Present

Mother of the Church); Mrs. Cora

Maeweathers Beasley; Mrs. Crozella

Mobley Jacobs (Presently on Mothers

Board and Mother of the current pastor); Mrs. Victoria Bell (Former

Pastor's Widow). Back Row:

Chairman of Deacon Board, Deacon

Edgar Simms; Reverend Henry Lewis;

Deacon Prince "Doc" Brooks; Deacon

Sebron Bellamy ; Deacon Irving

Lewis; Mr. Isom Mobley. Photo courtesy of Audrey L. Brown, 1986, ëTis

the Old Ship of Zion; Rituals and Oral

Traditions of Afro-Baptist Churches in

Florida, 1983-1986. Audio and videotapes. Ocala, FL: n.p. 

Figure 14. Mother of Church, Zion

Baptist Church, 1880-2001. Chart

courtesy of Audrey L. Brown. 
architecture and settlement patterns to

West African customs and material culture can be supported or refuted by

observation. However, making the argument that matrifocality in Zion family and

church social organization are

"Africanisms" is more problematic.

Social scientists question, if there are

"Africanisms" in African American 

culture, how does one identify them and

explain the persistence of some African

cultural traditions and not others?

Herskovits held that what he called

"Survivalisms" are likely to be found in

religious cultural forms and that one

could best identify African patterns by

comparing the intensity with which they

present themselves along a continuum

beginning in the Caribbean and ending

in urban areas of North America. If the

form was of African origin, he theorized,

it would be most recognizable and

intense in the Caribbean and least evident in the northern urban milieu.(26)

Following his model I searched for the

presence or absence of a woman with

the title, role and functions like the

"Mother of the Church." I looked at

Jamaica Revivalists and Spiritual

Baptists of Barbados,(27) two religious

communities with ethnohistorical linkages to North American Afro Baptists

dating back to the late 18th century.(28)

I also searched for evidence of an

emphasis on "Mother" in New Ferryfield

Baptist Church on Johnís Island, South

Carolina; Salem Baptist Church in

Washington, DC and Kaighn Avenue

Baptist Church in Camden, New Jersey. 

I found the title of "Mother" used in

different variations for elderly women of

prestige was more or less emphasized

in all of the religious communities except

in New Jersey. Just as Herskovits predicted, the northern most, urban church

demonstrated least evidence of the cultural form. Kaighn Avenue Baptist

church, established in 1854, is

one of the oldest Afro-Baptist congregations in New Jersey. In a 1986 interview

the present pastor who told me there

was no one with the title of Mother of the

Church. At Salem Baptist Church, established in 1874 in Washington, DC, the

Mother of the Church was the oldest living church member. She held the title

but with no role-functions. At Ferryfield

Baptist church, established in 1885, the

Pastor's wife's mother was the Mother of

the Church. 

There were multiple "Mother" roles

among the churchwomen in both

Jamaica and Barbados. The Mother with

the most Status in the Jamaica group

had similar role-functions as those of the

Florida Mother of the Church. [Figure

15] Much as Herskovits theorized, I

found this social form had greatest

intensity among the Spiritual Baptists in

Barbados. There were greater numbers

of Mother roles among them and probably most telling, the highest women's

role was the Arch Mother. [Figure 16]

The Arch Mother blesses the sea and

sanctifies the beach where baptism

takes place. The Arch Mother is also the

sister of the group's leader evidence of

matrilineal social organization.(29) 

Matrifocality is clearly a West African

cultural form. It was evident in the precontact social organization of ALL of the

Sub-Saharan West African societies that

were the provenance of the majority of

the slaves coming to Barbados,

Jamaica, the northern colonies and

South Carolina between 1650 and 1806.

The Mande, Akan, and the Kongo cultures were matrilineal. Even though Oyo,

Benin and Dahomean social structure

was patrilineal, females were central figures in their religious pantheons.

Women held prestigious roles of religious ritual authority with the title of

Mother, for example the Ilyorishas, or

Mother of the Orishas [gods] among the

Yoruba. Women were equal partners in

the Ogboni and other secret societies

that served as super-ordinate institutions

for social control and whose members

had great prestige.(30) In fact, matrifocal

social forms within the context of religion, are among what Turner called "the

same ideas, analogies and modes of

association [which] underlie symbol formation and manipulation from the

Senegal River to the Cape of Good

Hope. They are symbols which remain

extraordinarily viable," he noted, "and

the themes they represent and embody

are tenaciously rooted."(31) Herskovits

suggested the tenacity of cultural patterns was related to the compelling

nature of their cultural significance.

The Africanisms found in Zion are

also expressed in a myriad of ways by

African Americans in general. The cultural landscape I describe here is one

where closeness and cooperation within

and between families are as necessary

now as they were 150 years ago. It

seems to me that the social forms and

material cultural Africanisms that continue to have salience in Zion are precisely

those needed to sustain the community

over time. Matrifocality in the family and

the church expressed in roles and

responsibilities of the Mother of the

Church are, as Clifford Geertz put it, at

once models for and of social reality, in

this case what women had to do to

maintain family and community integrity

both physically and spiritually.(32) The

West African architectural and settlement patterns promote living accommodations that seem to buttress the centrality of family. The primacy of family

relationships and the closeness of family

ties are forged in the intimacy of small

size rooms, while the settlement 

patterns emphasize the necessity of

closeness and cooperation between

family groups. 

The Africanisms in Zion are a microcosm of Africanisms in African America.

93

Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zionî: What Are These Forms 

and Why Do They Persist?

14
One has only to observe the various

award shows to be struck by the frequency with which Blacks receiving various awards, first give thanks to God and

then to their family particularly their

mothers. African American literature and

ethnographies repeat themes and

descriptions of settlement patterns in

urban and rural settings that reinforce

closeness and cooperation.(33) It seems

to me that these discernable Africanisms

in the cultural landscape of Zion represent values and belief systems that were

and are necessary to sustain this particular community and African American

communities in general. New Zion

Baptist Church is still the central social

institution in Zion as the church is still

the central African American social institution. In Zion, Atlanta, and Harlem the

family is in the church and families are

the church. 

When our politic representatives

speak they use the idiom of the matrifocal family; a notable example is the

referral to Rosa Parks as the "Mother "

of the Civil Rights Movement. In the

family and church, the emphasis on

women as "mothers" in the church's

social organization and their church

roles of prestige, are African-derived cultural values and social forms which are

materially significant to day-to-day family

life that have sustained Zion over time,

as a cultural landscape. A place of cultural memory, an imagined place where

people can find respite from the realities

of the everyday real world as well as not

yet forgotten, if not always adhered to,

principles to live by. 

94

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

14

13

Figure 15. Episcopate Mother of a Revivalist Band Church, Kingston, Jamaica. Photo

courtesy of Audrey L. Brown. 1988, REVIVAL! Kapo's Last Pentecost: Rituals and

Oral Traditions of St. Michael's Tabernacle, a Jamaica Revivalist Band

[Audiotapes, Slides and Videotapes] n.s., n.d. 

Figure 16. Reverend Mother of Spiritual Baptist church, Ealings Grove, Barbados.

Photo courtesy of Audrey L. Brown, 1989, Another Ark: Rituals and Oral Traditions

of the Spiritual Baptists of Barbados 1988-1989, n.s., n.d. 
Endnotes

1. The paper is based on primary source

ethnographic and archival data I collected

between 1980 and 1994 in Florida, in other

parts of the south, and the Caribbean, along

with comparative data derived from the literature on African American archaeological

sites. The research reported in this paper

was funded by: National Endowment of the

Humanities, Summer Seminar for College

Teachers, Atlanta University, 1984; University

of Florida Minority Graduate Student

Fellowship, 1983-1984; National Institute of

Health, NRSA, postdoctoral Advanced Research Training Grant,

NU05738-01, 02, and 03, Department of

Anthropology, University of Florida, 1984-

1987; Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship,

University of the West Indies, Cave Hill,

1988-1989; Thanks be to Grandma Winifred

Foundation, 1993-1995; American University

Graduate Student Fellowship, 1994-1996.

2. Eric Hirsh, "Introduction," in The

Anthropology of Landscape Perspectives in

Time and Space, eds., Eric Hirsh and Michael

OíHanlon, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995),

1-3.

3. Setha M. Low, "Cultural Conservation

of Place," in Conserving Culture: A New

Discourse on Heritage, ed., Mary Hufford

(Chicago: University of Illinois, 1994), 66-67.

4. General D. L. Clinch, "Letterbook,

1834-1835, Fort King, FL," DLC; U.S.

Territorial Census, 1840, "Alachua County,

FL, Photo-reproduction of manuscript schedules. Tri-County Regional Library, Ocala FL.;

U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1850. U.S.

Census, Marion County FL. Microfilm of

manuscript schedules, Tri-County Regional

Library, Ocala FL; U.S. Bureau of the

Census. 1860. U.S. Census, Marion County

FL. Microfilm of manuscript schedules, TriCounty Regional Library, Ocala FL; U.S.

Bureau of the Census. 1870. U.S. Census,

Marion County FL. FL Photo-reproduction of

manuscript schedules. Tri-County Regional

Library, Ocala, FL; J. R. Giddings, Exiles in

Florida (Columbus OH: n.p., 1858); Florida

Bureau of Census. 1865. Florida State

Census. Manuscript schedules. Tri-County

Regional Library, Ocala FL; Florida Bureau of

Census. 1885. Florida State Census.

Manuscript schedules. Tri-County Regional

Library, Ocala FL; J. C. Ley, 52 Years in

Florida (Nashville TN, Dallas TX: Publishing

House of the M. E. Church South, Barbee

and Smith, 1879); Kenneth Porter, "Florida

Slaves and Free Negroes in the Seminole

War, in Journal of Negro History 28(4)(1943):

390-421. Audrey L.Brown, "Gimme that Ol'

Time Religion: Oral History Tapes, 1983-

1984," Audiotapes and slides. (Marion

County, Florida, n.s., n.d.)

5. Camp King came to be known as Fort

King during the Afro-Seminole Wars. It was

subsequently developed into the city of

Ocala.

6. Ley, 52 Years in Florida, 39-42.

7. Clinch, "Letterbook, 1834-1835," DLC;

M. M. Cohen, Notices of Florida and the

Campaigns. Florida State Museum Library

(Gainesville: University of Florida Press,

1964[1863]).

8. US Bureau of the Census. 1870 US

Census, marion County, FL, photo reproduction of manuscripts schedules. Tricounty

Regional Library, Ocala, FL; Florida State

Census, 1875, manuscript schedules. Tricounty Regional Library, Ocala, FL; Florida

Bureau of the Census.

9. U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1870.

U.S. Census, Marion County FL. Photoreproduction of manuscript schedules. TriCounty Regional Library, Ocala FL Personal

documents of the Abraham Lincoln Johnson

Family 1883-1937; audiotapes of Malachi

Green, Cora Maewathers Beasly, Mary

Mobley, Willie Bostick, Harriet Jacob Lewis,

Rosabelle Lewis Simms from Brown,

"Gimme that Ol' Time Religion."

10. Audrey L. Brown, personal communication with "Doc" Prince Brooks.

11. George P. McKinney and Richard I.

McKinney, History of the Black Baptists of

Florida 1850-1985 (Miami, FL: Florida

Memorial College Press, 1987).

12. Brown, "Gimme that Olí Time

Religion."

13. According to oral history, the men

were responsible for providing meats and

fish in the past. Interestingly, in the 1980s

they still were responsible for doing so just

as they were when they hunted and fished

for them.

14. Even though a nearby "horse farm,"

steadily encroaches upon these lands, buying up acreage whenever land came on the

market to settle estates, much of the original

hamlet is still evident in these old houses

standing after new houses are built.

15. Brown, "Gimme that Olí Time

Religion"; and Census data

16. Amy Friedlander, "Establishing

Historical Probabilities for Archeological

Interpretations: Slave Demography of Two

Plantations in the South Carolina Low

Country, 1740-1820," in The Archaeology of

Slavery and Plantation Life, ed. Theresa A.

Singleton, 215-238 (Orlando, FL: Academic

Press, 1985)

17. Thomas R. Wheaton and Patrick H.

Garrow, "Acculturation and the

Archaeological Record in the Carolina Low

Country," in The Archaeology of Slavery and

Plantation Life, ed. Theresa A. Singleton,

242, (Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985).

18. Wheaton and Garrow, "Acculturation

and the Archaeological Record," 243-257.

19. Ibid, 243-247.

20. Ibid, 257.

21. S. Fiske Kelso, Kingsmill Plantations,

1619-1800 (New York: Academic Press,

1984); John M. Vlach, By the Work of Their

Hands: Studies in Afro-American Folk Life

(Ann Arbor, MI and London: UMI Research

Press, 1991), 225.

22. James H. Deetz, In Small Things

Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early

American Life (New York: Doubleday, 1977).

23. Susan Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture: An Historical and Geographic

Perspective (New York: Africana Publishing

Co., 1978) 18.

24. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family

in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925 New

York: Vintage Books, 1976), 209-210.

25. In 1993, after Cousin Rea died, the

church conference elected Cousin Crozella

Mobley Jacobs, a descendant of Abraham

Lincoln Johnson through her father's mother.

Cousin Crozella is also the mother of the current pastor. However she declined passing

the title instead to Cousin Hattie Butler the

granddaughter of Suzie Staggers.

26. Melville Herskovits, "Problems of

Method and Theory in Afro-American

Studies," in The New World Negro, ed.,

Frances Herskovits (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1966[1945]), 565-57.

95

Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zionî: What Are These Forms 

and Why Do They Persist?
27. The Revivalists evolved out of the

Native Baptists, who were established by

George Liele and Moses Baker, two ex-slave

Afro-Baptist preachers from Georgia. Liele,

who was born into slavery in Virginia in 1752,

was converted and baptized by Matthew

Moore, an ordained Baptist minister, becoming the first Black Baptist in Georgia. After

being licensed to preach, between 1773-

1775, he and his converts formed an AfroBaptist church, on a plantation in Silver Bluff,

South Carolina. In 1788, another of Lieleís

converts established the Bryan Street African

Baptist Church in Savannah that was reorganized in 1794 as the First African Baptist

Church.

Liele, freed in his masterís will, traveled

to Jamaica and Trinidad preaching to slaves

and freedmen. Military companies of former

slaves who fought for the Loyalists in the

War of 1812 were freed in Trinidad. Liele

traveled to Trinidad to preach to them and

Africans still enslaved. The soldiers formed

so called Company towns in Trinidad, where

they practiced a more "Africanized" form of

Baptist religion. They shared these communities with Yoruba peoples, who had also been

freed by the British. The Spiritual Baptist religion evolved out of the syncretism between

Yoruba orisha worship, called Shango in

Trinidad, and the African American soldiersí

spirited "African" form of the Baptist religion.

See, Asram L. Stapelton, "The Birth and

Growth of the Baptist Church in Trinidad and

Tobago, and the Caribbean," (for the

International Spiritual Baptist Ministerial

Council, West Indies Pamphlet, West Indian

Collection, U.W.I., Cave Hill, Barbados,

1982).

28. In 1988 I spent a week interviewing

and videotaping at St. Michael's Revivalist

Tabernacle, Kingston, Jamaica. I conducted

participant observation in Barbados from

October 1988 through May 1989 as an initiate of the Spiritual Baptist religious 

community.

29. Reverend Neverson of the St. Vincent

Spiritual Baptist told me that Mother

Reverend is the title of the highest woman's

role in their religious community and she too

is the church leader's sister.

30. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in

Colonial Louisiana: Development of AfroCreole Culture in the Eighteenth Century

(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University

Press, 1992). Hall summarizes Germaine

Dieterlen, Essai sur la Religion Bambara

(Bruxelles, Belgique: Editions de l'UniversitÈ

de Bruxelles, 1988); Adu Boahen, with J.F.

Ade Ajayi, and Michael Tidy, Topics in West

African History, 2 nd ed (Edinburgh Gate,

Harlow, Essex, England: Longman Group,

1986); Wyatt McGaffey, Religion and Society

in Central Africa: the Bakongo of Lower Zaire

(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986);

Pascal Imperato, Buffoons, Queens, and

Wooden Horsemen; the Dyo and Gouan

Societies of the Bambara of Mali (New York:

Kilima House, 1983); John M. Janzen,

Lemba, 1650-1930: a Drum of Affliction in

Africa and the New World (New York:

Garland Publishing, 1982); Albert J.

Raboteau, Slave Religion : The "invisible

institution" in the Antebellum South (Oxford

and New York: Oxford University Press,

1978); W. T. Harris, and Harry Sawyer. The

Springs of Mende Belief and Conduct

(Freetown, Sierra Leone University Press

[Distributed by the Oxford University Press,

New York], 1968); E. Bolaji Idowu,

OlÛd ̆marË; God in Yoruba Belief (New York:

Praeger, 1963); Karl Edvard Laman,. The

Kongo, volume 4 (Upsala: Studia

Ethnographica Upsaliensia, 1953-1968);

Melville J. Herskovits, Dahomey, an Ancient

West African Kingdom (New York: J.J.

Augustin, 1938).

31. Victor W. Turner, "Symbols in African

Ritual," in Science 179(1973): 1100-1105.

32. Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a

Cultural System," in the Interpretation of

Cultures (New York: Basic Books,

1973[1966]). For further discussion read:

Audrey L. Brown, "Women & Ritual Authority

in Afro-American Baptist churches of

Florida," in How Sweet the Sound: The Spirit

of African American History, Nancy E. Fitch,

ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Publishers,

2000); Idem, "Women & Ritual Authority in

Afro-American Baptist Churches of Florida,"

in Anthropology & Humanism Quarterly

13(1)(1988): 2-10.

33. Zora Neal Hurston, Dust Tracks on a

Road: An Autobiography, 2nd ed. (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press 1984[1970]); Carol

B. Stack, All our Kin: Strategies for Survival

in a Black Community (New York, Harper &

Row, 1974); Carol B. Stack, Call to Home:

African Americans Reclaim the Rural South,

(New York: Basic Books, 1996); Alice Walker,

The Color Purple: A Novel. (New York:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982); Melvin D.

Williams, On the Street Where I Lived (New

York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981).

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Places of Cultural Memory:

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Spiritual Baptist Ministerial Council.

West Indies Pamphlet. West Indian

Collection. U.W.I., Cave Hill,

Barbados, 1982.

Turner, Victor W. "Symbols in African

Ritual." In Science 179(1973).

Vlach, John M. By the Work of Their

Hands: Studies in Afro-American Folk

Life. Ann Arbor, MI and London: UMI

Research Press, 1991.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple: A Novel.

New York: Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1982.

97

Africanisms in the "Old Ship of Zionî: What Are These Forms 

and Why Do They Persist?
Wheaton, Thomas R., and Patrick H.

Garrow. "Acculturation and the

Archaeological Record in the

Carolina Low Country." In The

Archaeology of Slavery and

Plantation Life, ed. Theresa A.

Singleton. Orlando, FL: Academic

Press, 1985.

Williams, Melvin D. On the Street Where

I Lived. New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1981.

98

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Within the past two decades a

major focus of historical

archaeology in North America

has become the study of ìpeople without history.î(1) That is, historical

archaeologists have begun to systematically investigate the lives, beliefs, and

behaviors of people who left relatively

few primary, readable written accounts

despite their living within a ìliterate

society.î Thus, a written record of these

ìpeople without historyî may exist.

However, what is significant is that

authors outside of the actual community

under study produced that written

record. For example, many written

records describing the beliefs and

behaviors, e.g., the culture, of enslaved

Africans and African Americans exist,

some even written and/or transcribed

from the testimony of enslaved persons.

However, the extant records discuss little to nothing concerning the details of

the use and meaning conferred on the

material culture or the landscape by

enslaved and/or emancipated people of

African descent. While oral testimony

may add to our knowledge of this aspect

of African American culture, detailed

social archaeological investigation also

has the potential to expand our knowledge well beyond the confines of peopleís inherited memories.

Unfortunately, much of the historical archaeological

investigation of people of African descent in the

New World has focused on questions related to the

material items utilized by the enslaved. Included

within these studies, one finds research focused

upon the African origins of individual items from

houses, tobacco pipes, the production of low-fired

earthenware ceramics, the meaning of blue glass

beads, and even the symbols placed on a number

of these items.(2) Many of these studies were 

conducted with the explicit attempt to link African

cultures with enslaved peoples in North America

and/or the Caribbean. However, in a majority of

these studies the actual meaning of these items

and the symbols for peoples of African descent in

the New World has been directly inferred from the

Old World.(3) Only in very rare instances have the

archaeological contexts for these objects been as

systematically investigated. That is, what use

and/or meaning did such objects have for people of

African descent in North America, and this determination must be based upon the other directly associated artifacts. The question that needs to be

addressed here relates to the construction of the

culture of African Americans within the systems of

enslavement and, later, freedom.

This paper represents an attempt to demonstrate the utility of archaeological research in defining use and meaning of objects recovered from

sites occupied by both enslaved and free African

Americans. This will also begin to define some of

the use of space in, and, importantly, under the

landscape of the sites. Within this paper, aspects of

the archaeological record from two Quarters sites

will be examined: The Levi Jordan Plantation,

Brazoria County, Texas; and the Frogmore Manor

Plantation, St. Helena Island, Beaufort County,

South Carolina.

Session Three:

Black Cultural

Landscapes 

and 

Institutions

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and

the African American Cemetery at the

Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations

Kenneth L. Brown

99
History and

Archaeology of the

Levi Jordan Plantation

Quarters

Archaeological excavations, directed by

the author, have been conducted within

the slave and tenant quarters of the Levi

Jordan Plantation, Brazoria County,

Texas.(4) The Jordan Plantation

Quarters Community was founded in this

location in 1848. During the period from

1848 through the early 1870s, the plantation produced sugar and cotton as

cash crops, along with wheat, corn,

potatoes, and other subsistence foods.

The work of the plantation was organized through the use of the gang labor

regime. Jordan purchased the Texas

land as the last in a series of plantations

he bought, occupied, and sold stretching

across the South, beginning in western

South Carolina and continuing through

Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas. At

its pre-1865 height, the Jordan plantation had a resident enslaved population

exceeding 140. After emancipation until

the late 1880s, approximately 100 people resided within the tenant community

occupying the old slave quarters. All of

these individuals participated in agricultural activities as wage laborers, renters,

and/or sharecroppers. A number of the

members of the community practiced

specialized occupations in addition to

their farming activities, e.g., conjurer/

mid-wife, carver, hunter, seamstress,

blacksmith, and carpenter. 

By the mid-1870s, sugar had been

abandoned as a cash crop. However,

cotton continued to be raised by tenants,

sharecroppers, and wage laborers residing on, and around, the plantation

through the late 1880s. Historical

archaeological investigation of the plantation has focused on the recovery of

detailed contextual information to permit

the interpretation of the life of the

enslaved people as well as the tenants

who resided within the community.

Historical research has demonstrated

that the vast majority of the residents of

the community during the post-emancipation period had previously been

enslaved on the plantation.(5)

The Jordan Plantation investigation

has been referred to as ìthe best known

exampleî of an archaeological approach

that has ìÖattempted to identify archaeological contexts and assemblages that

represent religious behavior on the part

of enslaved African Americans.î(6)

However, this research has developed

evidence related to a much wider variety

of behavioral patterns than is implied by

the quote above. Economic, political,

and social behaviors have been defined

from the archaeological and historical

research thus far conducted. The historical data concerning the continuity of

population when combined with the

archaeological evidence strongly supports the pre-emancipation nature of the

behavioral patterns defined. Thus, this

data, and its interpretation, has been

employed to define a number of the

adaptive responses made by members

of the community to the conditions of

both enslavement and freedom. While a

number of historical archaeological studies have included the interpretation of

African American ritual activities, the

Jordan Community investigations (and

recently concluded research at the

Frogmore Manor Plantation on St.

Helena Island, South Carolina) have

identified a variety of archaeological

contexts that aid in the definition of ritual

activities and symbols for African

American populations.(7) Several of

these contexts at Jordan demonstrate

the community-based nature of these

religious, social, and economic behavioral patterns.

The research design for the Jordan

Plantation slave and tenant quarters

included a variety of activities. The standard excavation unit measured five feet

by five feet. The stratigraphy of the site

demonstrates that three broad levels

were present within the artifact bearing

deposit, each with its own depositional

history and formation processes. The

upper level included the modern topsoil

and the brick rubble from the collapse of

the walls of the structures over the past

110 years. The second level included a

wide variety of artifacts, some whole, or

that had entered the archaeological

record whole and been broken after they

were deposited. Further, within this level,

a number of artifact types that would

normally be employed together in an

activity were found together in the

ground. The third level contained small

artifacts distributed in a somewhat more

random fashion.

The artifacts contained in level two

suggested that an intentional abandonment of the quarters had taken place at

some point in the past. This abandonment was not known from any historical

records we were (and are) aware of, nor

did any members of the descendant

families (black or white) have any information concerning such an event.

However, the discovery of this artifact

and context-rich zone forced an alteration of the excavation strategy.

Continuing with units that disturbed

25 square feet in this artifact and context

rich zone did not appear to be an appropriate methodology. As the excavation

grid had been imposed over the site,

and several excavation units completed,

the standard excavation unit remained

five-feet by five-feet. However, immediately before excavating through the brick

rubble layer, each of these units was

divided into 25 one-foot by one-foot 

subunits. Further, unless the stratigraphy

noted within a unit dictated otherwise,

the standard level depth was 1/10th of a

foot once the unit was placed into 

100

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
subunits. The subunits and the level

depth were maintained throughout the

excavation of both the second and third

artifact bearing zones. This methodology

permitted the recording of highly specific

provenience information, including actual

maps, of the distribution of artifacts within zone two (the so-called ìabandonment

zoneî) and zone three (the so-called

ìsub-floor zoneî).

Archaeological investigation also

included research within the African

American cemetery on the original

Jordan Plantation.(8) This research

included the mapping and recording of

surface features along with limited,

though systematic, excavation. Initial

surface survey involved establishing a

grid over the cemetery area and 

mapping in the location of all apparent

cultural features. The cultural features

included on the map consisted of graves

and other depressions, tomb markings,

and plant types. This mapping project

provided information on approximately

140 graves. The excavation was limited

to testing ten percent of the unmarked

grave shafts to determine if we were

correct in our definition of these depressions as grave shafts. This investigation

consisted of the excavation of one foot

wide by five feet long units across the

short axis of the depression. These units

were excavated only as deep as was

necessary to determine the presence or

absence of a grave shaft. Any artifacts

encountered in these excavation units

were noted and left in place. No artifacts

were collected or moved during this

research. In all approximately 140

graves were recorded and mapped during this investigation. The data collected

from the tombstones, oral history, and

historic documents has permitted the

identification of forty-eight of the individuals buried within this cemetery. 

Throughout this project, historical

and oral historical information has been

collected related to the occupants of the

plantation.(9) Black and white descendants have visited the site, viewed the

data, were presented interpretation of

structures and activities, and had their

information recorded and incorporated

into the interpretations. Federal census,

county tax, and genealogical records

have been investigated and analyzed in

order to determine the families who

occupied the plantation, and their roles

within the community. The purpose of

this portion of the investigation was to

provide an active data source that could

be employed to test, as well as interpret,

the archaeological record. This active

use of a number of legal records and

family oral histories provided the apparent cause for the abandonment of the

quarters between 1886 and 1888.(10)

Finally, the projectís research design

included the continual collection of

ethnographic data from among the black

and white descendants.(11) Additional

ethnographic data has been obtained

from reports of investigations conducted

in Africa, the Caribbean, South America,

and North America.(12) The ethnographic information has been utilized along

with the historical data to interpret and

test the artifacts and contexts recorded

within the archaeological record of the

Jordan Plantationís African American

community.

The result of this approach has been

data that can be utilized to define behavior and beliefs practiced and maintained

by members of the Jordan Plantation

community. Only those interpretations

dealing with one occupational specialization, e.g., the Conjurer/Midwife, the

determination of community membership, and spirituality practiced within the

slave/tenant community will be summarized and discussed within this paper.

However, a very brief description of

some of the physical aspects of the

Quarters area will be presented prior to

this discussion. This description will provide some of the spatial organization of

the residential portion of the community.

A Description of the

Jordan Quarters

The Jordan Community was physically

located approximately 350 feet north of

the ìMain Houseî area of the plantation.

The area of the Jordan Plantation occupied by the communityís cabins measures approximately 300 feet by 150 feet.

The community members were housed

in four blocks of paired ìbarracks-likeî

buildings. That is, each block consisted

of two brick buildings set facing one

another along a central hallway, with an

in-ground cistern at the northern end of

this hallway. Three (Blocks I, III, and IV)

to four (Block II) individual cabins were

contained in each of the buildings within

the blocks. Thus, Blocks III, IV each

contained six actual cabins, and I while

Block II consisted of eight cabins. The

exterior of the walls of each building was

made of dry-laid bricks, while the interior

divisions within and between the cabins

were made of wood. Evidence suggests

that a single, continuous roof covered

each block. During the pre-1865 period,

an additional ìblockî of three cabins was

built near the Main House. The enslaved

household staff occupied this set of 

cabins. After 1865, the occupants of this

block who remained on the plantation

took up residence within the 26 cabins

of the Quarters.

Archaeology within the Quarters has

suggested that within I, III, IV, and the

Main House Block each cabin appears

to have consisted of two rooms. The

main roomís floor space measured

approximately 15 feet by 16 feet, and

contained the hearth. The second room

measured approximately six feet by 16

feet, and, in at least two cases these

rooms function for both sleeping and

101

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations
craft activities. Each hearth had its own

chimney. In Block II, each of the eight

cabins consisted of a single room measuring approximately 16 feet by 16 feet.

While each cabin had its own hearth, the

hearths in adjacent cabins in the same

building shared a single chimney. The

only ìcabinî to vary from this pattern was

cabin I-A-1, the Praise House discussed

below. The reason for the different architecture of Block II may be that it was the

first to be constructed, and may have

been built prior to the Jordanís actually

taking up residence on the plantation.

The Conjurer/

Midwifeís Cabin

(Cabin II-B-1)

The Conjurer/Midwifeís residence is the

northeast cabin in Block II of the slave

and tenant quarters. This residence has

been discussed in two previous publications, and appears to be best known as

a result of the discovery of the so-called

ìConjurerís Kitî located in the southeastern corner of the cabin.(13) The contents of this kit included a wide variety of

artifacts including among other items

five cast iron kettle bases, chalk, at least

one sealed tube made of brass bullet

casings, medicine bottles, and a thermometer. Adjacent to this deposit were

water worn pebbles, mirror fragments,

many square nails and spikes, several

fake metal knife blades, a small doll, a

concave metal disc, several ocean

shells, and a number of blue glass

beads. These artifacts have been interpreted as representing both the actual

curing kit as well as the remains of an

Nkisi similar to those found among the

BiKongo peoples of West Africa. The

Nkisi was employed as an integral part

of the curing ritual among West African

groups, but this represents its first interpreted presence in North America.

Taken together, this full set of materials

was utilized in the manipulation of the

supernatural world for the benefit of the

health of members of the community.

However, within this cabin there are

at least four other ritual deposits, three

of which, when combined with the conjurerís kit, form a cosmogram. The

northern most of the three deposits consists of a set of seven silver coins. This

set includes four quarters, two dimes,

and a perforated half-dime. The coins

had been deposited tightly wrapped

together by cloth. Little of the cloth

remained, but what was left appears to

be coarsely woven cotton. The coins

may have been ordered in a particular

way within the cloth before being placed

into a small hole, dug into the soil below

the floor of the cabin. The set of coins

was placed into the ground so that the

coins were ìstandingî nearly vertically on

their sides. They were oriented on a

north-south axis. The perforated halfdime (dated 1853) was on the outside

facing south, then came three quarters

(two dated 1853 and one dated 1858),

then the two dimes (one dated 1853 and

the other 1858), followed by the last

quarter (dated 1858). Thus, only two

years were represented among the

dates of these seven coins.

On the west side of the cabin was

another interesting type of Nkisi deposit.

The artifacts of this feature had been

intentionally placed in a small pit dug

into the soil adjacent to the brick foundation and under what appears to have

been the doorway into the cabin. This

set of materials included a wide variety

of artifacts, nearly all of which were

made of cast iron. The primary focus of

this feature was two cast iron kettles

placed upright, one inside the other. A

third, smaller kettle had been broken

and the pieces of the walls had been

placed on top of the other two kettles.

The bottom of this kettle was found

approximately five feet to the northeast.

Before the two kettles were placed one

inside the other, the bottom kettle had

ash placed into it. This ash lens was the

sealed by the upper kettle. The upper

kettle contained a few objects of metal,

ocean shells, glass, small bone fragments, and soil. Indeed, the kettle may

have been filled simply by the accumulation of items falling through cracks in the

floorboards. These kettles were wrapped

around their circumference by a heavy

chain.

Two ìlinesî of artifacts radiated out

from these kettles. Toward the northeast

were Confederate military buttons, large

bone fragments, unperforated cockleshells, more chain, and a complete

bayonet. Toward the southeast a number of large metal objects were placed

along with two additional Confederate

military buttons, a quartz crystal, perforated cockleshells. The large metal

objects included a hinge, several spikes,

a bolt, and a fragment of a plow. This

feature likely formed a Nkisi that aided in

ritually securing the protection of the

cabin, its occupants, and the activities

conducted inside from harm that might

be caused by powerful elements from

the outside world. However, this set of

artifacts may not solely symbolize this

transition. These artifacts may also represent an amula to Ogun, a Yoruba

deity, similar to those noted from Cuba.

Another deposit was discovered after

the previous three, and as a direct result

of an archaeological test to discover a

possible meaning for the others. That is,

taken together, the previous three

deposits could be interpreted as having

represented the eastern, northern, and

western points of a cosmogram, the

BiKongo symbol for the cycle of life as

well as an important curing symbol. The

eastern point of the cosmogram is represented by the Conjurerís kit, which

would be employed in helping to give

and maintain life. The northern point on

102

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
a cosmogram represents the height of

oneís power in this world, and maleness.

To the north the set of coins was located. The western point on the cosmogram represents the point of passage

from this world to the nextóthe process

of moving from life to death. The presence of the ash and the distribution of

perforated and unperforated shells may

support a symbolic view of this transition. Thus, it was felt that one possible

test of the cosmogram hypothesis would

be the discovery of an artifact feature

forming the southern point which, on the

cosmogram, represents the height of

oneís power in the spirit world, and

oneís femaleness.

During the excavation of the living

area of the cabin around the hearth, no

such feature was encountered.

However, excavation within the hearth

area did produce a deposit of artifacts

that forms the southern point as predicted by the cosmogram model. Based

upon the presence of a lens of soil and

brick over this feature, this deposit was

placed into the hearth sometime after

completion of the fireplace. The feature

itself consisted of a hole dug into the soil

supporting the base of the hearth and

chimney. Ash, burned ocean shell, and

burned square nails and spikes were

placed on the floor of this hole. The hole

was then filled with soil and brick rubble

and the hearth floor reconstructed. This

represents the only feature placed into a

hearth yet discovered within the

Quarters area of the plantation. At the

risk of being considered ìpolitically incorrect,î in light of the traditional female

association for the southern point on the

cosmogram, it is interesting that it was

placed within the hearth of the cabin.

Certainly, however, placement within the

hearth may have been the result of the

shape of the cabin and the need to

maintain cardinal directions while 

placing the points of the cosmogram.

The importance of hearth and household

will be noted later in yet another context.

Each of these four features within the

Conjurer/Midwifeís Cabin support the

interpretation of an African American

behavioral and belief systemóone that

serves to control the outside world

through the manipulation of the supernatural world. The full set of artifacts and

contexts suggest that many of the basic

ideas and rituals were of African origins.

Very importantly, however, they show an

interesting mix of materials from at least

two West African cultural groupsó

BiKongo and Yoruba. However, the

patent medicine bottles and the thermometer demonstrate some adaptation

of non-African ideas as well. That is, all

of these elements support the hypothesis that the conjurer/midwife had sanctified the floor space of the cabin for its

use within the ritual performance of 

curing, conjuring, and, possibly giving

birth. In the truest sense of the word,

these features, along with the artifacts

present, represent an example of the

creolization process in operation.

Praise House/Prays

House (Cabin I-A-1)

Cabin I-A-1, the northwest ìcabinî within

Block I has been identified as a

ìCommunity Building.î(14) Given the

artifacts excavated from this cabin, and

Barnesí analysis of this material, it is

likely that the model of a ìPraise

House/Prays Houseî more clearly

defines its uses.(15) Excavations were

begun here as the final test for the

arrangement of the Quarters area at the

time of its abandonment. At the time, it

was decided that the testing of this cabin

would provide information on the apparent ìtwo-roomî nature the tenant/sharecropper cabins. Further, the excavation

of this cabin had the potential to provide

information on the earliest slave quarters

on the plantation along with the brick

manufacturing area that had been located below this Block of cabins. The first

two units excavated into the cabin yielded a surprisingly low frequency of artifacts. However, not only was the amount

of material lower than expected, even in

so-called ìnon-abandoned cabins,î but

there was less variability in the artifact

types present. Therefore, additional

units were excavated in an attempt to

more completely determine the nature of

the deposits within this cabin.

These units revealed additional differences between the sub-floor deposits

in this cabin and all of the other 16 cabins tested. These differences include:

the reduction in artifact frequency and

variability, the movement of the hearth,

an increase in the size of the cabin, and

several sub-floor features not previously

observed in other cabins. As a result of

the continued excavation of this cabin,

artifact counts and distributions have not

been completed. However, a few tentative and general comments can be

made. First, total artifact counts per unit

within this cabin appear to be from onequarter to one-third of the counts for

other cabins. Second, this represents

the only cabin in which the building

material artifact class is, by far, the

largest. Indeed, one artifact typeó

square nailsómakes up close to 25% of

the artifacts recovered. Third, artifact

types that generally appear in high frequencies in other cabins, such as

ceramics, cooking, and eating utensils,

bottle glass, bone, buttons, various personal items, and shell, are in very low

frequency within this cabin. Thus, the

artifact classes indicative of residential

activities are the ones that exhibit the

low frequency of occurrence. Other than

a badly broken pocketknife, no tools

were found within this cabin. Again, this

is atypical of the artifact inventories of

103

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations
the other 16 cabins tested, in that it is

the only cabin that lacked tools. On this

evidence, it is possible to conclude that

this cabin, unlike all of the others tested,

may not have served as a residence.

Although, it may have had a residential

function for only a short period of time.

On the other hand, certain artifact

types appear at a somewhat higher frequency in this cabin than in others. This

ìhigher frequencyî is likely the result of

the low overall artifact density, thus 

making rare artifact types appear in

higher frequency. However, the types of

artifacts involved are interesting. The

artifact types noted in higher than normal frequencies include: buttons, coins/

metal tokens, fragments of slate boards,

and slate pencils. The frequency of jewelry is approximately the same, or very

slightly higher, in I-A-1 than for the other

cabins tested.

One item of jewelry appears to be

extremely significant in the determination of the function and meaning of this

ìcabin.î This item is a small brass cross

set with five cut red glass pieces and

suspended on a small brass chain. The

cross and chain were found to have

been placed approximately in the geographic center of the cabin. When discovered, the cross was oriented north to

south, with the actual cross located to

the south of the closed-clasp chain. The

chain and cross appear to have been

deliberately placed below the floor,

rather than having been ìdropped.î

Indeed, the appearance was almost as if

it was ìon displayî in a very shallow hole

scooped out of the soil below the floor.

Equally important, in terms of its deposition, the clasp on the chain was closed.

This last point may represent a further

indication that the cross and its chain

may not have simply become lost below

the floorboards. Certainly it could have

been lost after being removed by the

person wearing it, and then dropped

through the floor boards of the cabin

before it was known to have been lost,

the closed clasp and the slight depression in the ground surface, at least supports the possibility of its having been

intentionally placed. This positioning

within the cabin, the location of the

cross, vis-‡-vis the chain, and the closed

clasp all aid in making this item potentially very important in the determination

of the function and meaning of the

cabin. That is, the cross might support

the hypothesis that the meaning and

function of the cabin was within the

Christian religious views held by members of the community: the ìcabinî was

the location of the ìPrays House.î

This hypothesis is further supported

by the presence of two coins located

near the cross. One of these coins, an

1858 half-dollar piece, was found two

feet north of the cross. The second coin

is an 1858 half dime found 3.5 feet west

of the cross. The coins appeared to be

located roughly on the lines that would

be created if one were to continue outward from the cross along two of its

axisís (e.g., north and west from the

cross). Also, it should be noted that both

of these silver coins date to the same

year as at least six of the seven coins in

the cosmogram placed beneath the floor

of the Conjurer/Midwifeís Cabin. Again,

both the location of the coins, and their

date, supports the hypothesis that they

are related to the cross, and functioned

within the same sub-system as the cross

and chain. While more excavation is

required to determine if coins, or other

items, radiate out from the cross on the

east and south, the cross/chain and

coins may represent a cosmogram with

the cross in the center. This might suggest either another example of the creolization process, or a statement of 

completing views of the organization of

the way the world operates.

Another point of support for the

Prays House function of the ìcabinî is

that at some point early in the history of

its use, the hearth was moved outside of

the main room, and its size was slightly

increased. Early Prays Houses in the

Gullah area of the Lowcountry were built

without hearths. Excavation along the

west wall demonstrated that the original

hearth was located near the northwest

corner of the cabin, as defined by the

presence of the wall trench for a hearth

in this area. At some point this hearth

was moved approximately 12 to 13 feet

southward along the west wall. It is here

that the remains of the brick walls of the

hearth were found. Excavation of the

west side of the rebuilt hearth walls

demonstrated that they met, but were

not integrated into, the western brick

wall of the cabin block. This is the only

set of hearth walls not integrated into a

cabin block wall in the ten cabins excavated where this could be investigated.

Further, no other hearth was found

within the main room of the cabin. Thus,

the movement of the hearth also had the

impact of increasing the size of the

ìcabinî nearly seven feet toward the

south. That is, the newly reconfigured

ìcabinî would have measured 16 feet by

28-29 feet. Robert Harrisís analysis of

cabin I-B-3, the ìCarverís Cabin,î the

standard cabin size in Block I was 16

feet by 22 feet, and cabins appeared to

have had two rooms within this space.

Thus, the extension of cabin I-A-1 would

have increased its size; while at the

same time reduced the size of cabin 

I-A-2 by almost exactly the amount of

the narrow interior room defined by

Harris.

The heaviest distribution of artifacts

that appear to be indicative of residential-type activities was located within this

extended area of the cabin. In general,

the dating of the bulk of the materials

deposited here, supports the view that

104

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
this extension to the cabin was utilized

very late in the use-history of the cabin

(post 1880). Thus, it is likely that this

material was deposited sometime after

the extension of the cabin and the

movement of the hearth, but exactly

when cannot be determined. However,

cabin I-A-1 was reconfigured into a larger two-room cabin (with one of the

rooms measuring 16 feet by 22 feet and

the second measuring 16 feet by 6 feet)

much earlier during its use. This would

have made it the largest cabin in the

quarters. In this light, the lack of artifacts

indicative of a domestic function is all

the more interesting and important.

In this context, two unique sub-floor

deposits were discovered within this

cabin. The first extended around the

eastern and northern sides of the reconstructed hearth. This was a thick intentionally placed deposit of ash and charcoal. Mixed into the ashy matrix of this

feature were bones (some very large),

small ceramic shards, small glass

shards, broken buttons, burned shell,

and square nails. This material was

placed into a shallow hole, approximately four to six inches in depth, dug out to

a distance of approximately one foot out

from the eastern and northern walls of

the hearth. Clearly, ash and charcoal

tend to increase in frequency on the surface of the ground as one approaches

the hearth walls in each of the cabins

thus far investigated. However, the situation in the so-called Prays House represents the only time that a special hole

was dug around the hearth to hold this

material. Further, this is the only time

that charcoal, ash, and small household

artifacts appear to have been deposited,

as opposed to their having accumulated,

around the hearth.

The second deposit was found along

the eastern wall of the cabin. The feature consists of a shallow pit dug into

the soil likely near the area of the

entrance to the cabin. Lime-based plaster was employed to produce a raised

design on the floor of the hole. The

matrix filling the hole and surrounding

the ìsculptureî consisted soil containing

many tiny pieces of the same white,

lime-based plaster and very few brick

fragments. The soil matrix into which the

hole was dug contained a very high density of brick fragments, thus suggesting

the hole was not refilled with the soil

originally dug out of it. The hole had

been capped by two layers of firmly

packed, finely crushed brick separated

by a thin lens of tightly packed soil.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to

fully determine what the intended design

might originally have been. Tree roots

and ground water have destroyed a

large portion of the design that was originally present. As with the feature connected with the hearth, this is the only

sealed deposit of plaster yet discovered

on the site.

Initially, this cabin appears typical of

the others in Block I in terms of size and

functionóit was a residence. However,

early in its use, the cabin was physically

altered and its function changed. In

attempting to interpret the reconstructed

cabinís function, the archaeological

deposit was tested against Margaret

Creelsí ethnographic description of a

Gullah Praise House (or Prays

House).(16) Unfortunately, she does not

include any discussion of the material

items and artifact contexts associated

with such a structure. However, a number of test implications that might be

developed from her model are met by

this structure. For example, she states

that the Praise House was the first cabin

in the quarters, often originally the residence of an important person within the

enslaved community. This is confirmed

by the data from cabin I-A-1. 

The presence of the cross, the coins,

and the ash feature around the hearth

all suggest a community ritual nature for

the reconstructed cabin. Both Creel(17)

and Patricia Guthrie(18) have demonstrated that, among the Gullah, the

Praise House functioned as the center

of community religious and political

activities. In their data, households and

residences on a plantation define communities, and households are defined by

the presence of hearths. Thus, it is not a

great leap to attempt to interpret the

ash, charcoal, and burned household

artifact deposit around the reconstructed

hearth as having been intentionally

placed to demonstrate community membership, and helping to secure Praise

House membership. Limited historical

information further suggests the presence of a religious structure for the black

community on the Jordan Plantation

prior to 1870.

The African American

Cemetery 

David Bruner conducted research within

the plantationís African American cemetery during 1994-96.(19) This investigation was primarily oriented toward the

mapping of the cultural features within

the cemetery. Initially, the cemetery was

located and its boundaries defined by

oral testimony. That is, the currant

landowner, a descendant of Levi and

Sarah Jordan, as well as an individual

with several ancestors buried within the

cemetery, provided information on its

location and extent. In order to insure

that the complete cemetery was included within out research, the initial mapping project extended outside the ìtraditionallyî defined boundaries. A grid was

superimposed over the area, and all

mapping was done from the grid points.

A total of 140 probable graves were

recorded in this mapping operation. Of

these potential grave shafts, 37 were

marked in some fashion at the surface.

105

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations
However, only twelve were marked in

the traditional European American fashion with head- and/or foot-stones. The

others were marked with a variety of

forms of markersóe.g., pipes, railroad

rails driven into the ground, and other

forms of metal ìobjects.î No signs of

wooden markers remained on the surface at the time of the investigation. The

vast majority of potential graves, therefore, lacked surface monuments. In

order to determine the actual number of

graves present, it was decided that two

additional operations would be undertaken to aid in the definition of graves: the

use of a metal detector, and highly 

controlled and limited excavation.

A metal detector was employed in an

effort to determine whether or not a pattern of metal artifacts was present within

the area of an unmarked potential grave

depression that might indicate the presence of a coffin within the depression.

This operation was successful in determining the apparent location of coffins

below the surface of the ground within

the several of the depressions defined.

Also significant was the observation that

no ìcoffin [p]atternsî were defined unless

there was a depression present.

However, not all depressions revealed

the presence of a coffin through this

operation. The metal detector also discovered a number of objects that appear

to mark graves, in an African American

fashionóe.g., metal ìpipes.î A number

of these pipes were no longer observable from the surface. However, based

upon the information from marked

graves, pipes had been placed standing

upright near the western end of graves

within this cemetery. Therefore, the information from the metal detector portion of

the survey suggested that such pipes

could be employed as grave markers,

even if the original intent was not for this

purpose. Metal pipes were employed to

ìconnectî many of the dead buried within the cemetery with the surface.

Further, shallow excavation units

were placed within the cemetery focusing solely on the confirmation of grave

shafts and, in a very limited fashion, to

aid in the illustration of the surface treatment of the graves. That is, units one

foot wide and up to five feet long were

excavated across a randomly selected

ten percent sample of the unmarked,

potential grave depressions. Excavation

in these units was continued until it was

determined whether or not an actual

grave shaft was present. No bodies

were disturbed, and no artifacts were

collected during this operation. When

artifacts were discovered in these units,

they were left in place, and excavation

continued down around them. Bottles,

ceramics, knives, plow parts, car parts,

and tractor parts were identified as 

having been placed on top of or within

the graves. All of the depressions tested

were determined to have straight-walled

shafts that were interpreted as graves.

Based upon this archaeological

investigation, the cemetery appears to

be the resting place for the physical

remains of approximately 140 individuals. Research into a variety of records

(both written and oral) was employed in

an effort to determine the names of the

actual individuals present. Study of the

information derived from the head

stones, combined with genealogical

data, death certificates, oral historical

knowledge, and other information, has

revealed the identities of approximately

one-third of the individuals believed to

have been interred within the cemetery.

In turn, this evidence has led to an interesting hypothesis concerning the decision-making pattern for burial within this

cemetery. With one exception, only people known to have spent their childhood

on the plantation were buried in this

cemetery during the 125 years of its

active use. Spouses of those buried in

the cemetery and who did not grow up

on the plantation are buried elsewhere. 

The single known exception is that of

a week old child who died in 1973. This

child was, however, born into a family

that had continued to live on land that

was part of the original Jordan Plantation. Indeed, the child was buried in the

portion of the cemetery employed by the

family through the 1970s. The scope of

this project did not include the investigation of other plantation cemeteries in an

attempt to determine if it was possible to

identify whether or not they also demonstrate this pattern. However, this pattern

appears to be similar to that defined for

the Gullah by Guthrie.(20)

Another of the important discoveries

made during this survey was the presence of a metal object placed in the

ground between the edge of the slough

and a set of ten graves. For a variety of

reasons, it appears likely that these

graves were the earliest ones placed

within the cemetery, and may represent

the graves of enslaved individuals. This

object consisted of a metal half-circle

welded onto a railroad rail. Bruner noted

that this marker resembles the lower half

of a cosmogramóthe half which signifies that portion of the life cycle related

to death and oneís life in the spirit

world.(21) This marker does not appear

to have been placed on or near a grave.

It is, on the other hand, likely that this

marker (along with the yucca plants that

flank it on either side) identifies the

entrance to the cemetery from the

slough. If this was, indeed, the case,

then a link can be made between the

symbolism employed within the communityís cemetery and beliefs expressed in

a number of contexts within the community itself.

106

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Excavations at

Frogmore Manor

Plantation

Historical archaeological investigation at

the Frogmore Manor Plantation Quarters

was begun during March, 1998, under

the direction of the author. At the

request of the landowner, excavations

had to be concluded in August, 2000. In

this case, excavation was undertaken

solely within the area of the Quarters,

although the main house and at least

one of the eighteenth century plantation

buildings are still in use. Historical

records indicate that the Quarters were

first built and occupied by enslaved

Africans and African Americans owned

by William Bull sometime after 1770. By

the time of his death in 1791, William

Bull operated a sea island cotton plantation covering over 3,300 acres with at

least two Quarters areas: the one excavated during our project, and a second

one inhabited by enslaved people

owned by Bullís overseer, a Mr. Robertson, and located on the northern end of

the original plantation, near the modern

town of Frogmore.

The earliest written documentation

related to the Frogmore Manor Quarters

consists of a 1791 map showing the

location of the Quarters and several of

the plantations other structures. At that

time, the Quarters consisted of 18 houses with an enslaved population of less

than 100 people. Under the ownership

of Colonel John Stapleton and, later,

William Grayson, the enslaved population had increased to over 170. Not

including the Federal Census lists, a

series of four ìslave listsî exist for the

plantation spanning the period from

1791 (Bullís probate record) through

1852 (Graysonís sale of enslaved people). Each of these lists is in family

groups and includes such information as

gender, age, occupation, and, in three

cases, continent of origin. Thus, the

actual written documentation for the

enslaved population that occupied the

Frogmore Manor Quarters is much more

complete than that for Jordan. However,

for the purposes of this paper, two

aspects of the record are critical: one,

that the populations of enslaved people

were relatively ìthe same,î and two, that

one of the occupations listed at

Frogmore Manor was that of ìmidwife.î

The excavation methodology followed at Frogmore Manor was essentially identical to that employed at Levi

Jordan. The major exception being that

the size of the unit was changed from

five by five to three by three. This alteration of the initial unit size was deemed

necessary as a result of the sand soil

matrix encountered on St. Helena

Island. However, these units were also

divided into subunits after the first level

removed the forest leaf litter. The continuation of the use of subunits throughout

this excavation was maintained for two

reasons: one, the aid in recording

detailed archaeological context, and two,

to aid in identifying the two primary

house types (based upon their foundation) for enslaved people known from

the Carolina Lowcountry, if the types

existed within this community.

Prior to discussing the results of our

excavation into one of the Frogmore

Manor Quarters residences, it is necessary to point out that our investigations

at Frogmore Manor, while terminated,

are not complete. Therefore, some of

the results are tentative at this time.

After originally agreeing to four field seasons of excavation, during the third field

season it was requested that we not

return. The current landowners were

receiving a great deal of pressure from

other members of their large extended

family to have the excavations halted.

According to the owners, the rest of the

family is certain that we could somehow

steal their land as a result of the presence of an important archaeological site.

While the owners were assured that

such an event could not happen, and

were given copies of existing South

Carolina and Federal Laws to that effect,

nothing would alter their opinion. Thus,

excavations were terminated before the

planned completion date, leaving important information unavailable.

That having been said, we were able

to recover information on at least eleven

cabins (five from the early Quarters and

six from the later Quarters) and a possible lime and/or ceramic kiln. Of these

cabins, two were extensively excavated,

both from the later Quarters. The results

of one of the excavations of one of

these cabins will be presented here as

they relate to the Conjurer/Midwifeís

cabin at Jordan. 

The Possible

Conjurer/Midwifeís

House

The house was located in the eastern

portion of the Quarters as defined by our

testing. Approximately 50% of the original cabins floor area was investigated

during our excavations. Of importance

here was the discovery of four sub-floor

features centered on each of the four

walls of the cabin. Two of these deposits

consisted of the intentional burial of

articulated animals, one a storage pit,

and the other a deposit of ash and

burned shell and metal. These four

deposits appear to form a cosmogram

below the floor of the cabin. Unlike the

Jordan cosmogram, however, this cosmogram was oriented to the walls of the

cabin, and not to cardinal directions.

The first deposit was discovered during the Summer 1999 field season. The

deposit consists of a fully articulated

chicken placed in a small hole facing

east with its wings slightly extended to

107

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations
either side. The chicken had been

placed below a broken base of a green

glass wine bottle. As yet, we have been

unable to determine how the bird was

killed. It was the discovery of this

deposit that led to the decision to excavate a number of additional units in the

area in an attempt to determine the reason for the burial of this animal. This

later excavation has demonstrated that

the chicken had been placed along the

western wall of the cabin.

The second deposit was discovered

during the Summer 2000 field season.

The deposit consisted of an almost fully

articulated young cow. Upon complete

excavation, it was determined that the

cow was missing its tail. Like the chicken, the cow had been placed into a hole

with its legs and head facing to the east.

One major difference between the positioning of the cow and the chicken was

that the cow was placed lying on its side

and the chicken had been placed standing up. The cow was placed below both

a green glass wine bottle base and a

complete wine bottle. As with the chicken these glass objects had been placed

upside down. A large portion of a

colonoware vessel was also recovered

from above the cow in the fill of the pit.

The cow was placed to the northeast of

the chicken, and along the northern wall

of the cabin.

The third deposit was also discovered during the Summer 2000 field season. Indeed, both the third and forth

deposits were found as a direct result of

a test that the cow and chicken formed

two of the four deposits of a cosmogram. The third deposit consisted of a

shallow, rectangular pit placed below the

ground surface immediately in front of

the cabinís fireplace. At the time of its

excavation, the pit contained a great

deal of shell (possibly from the disintegration of the fireplace base), a complete green glass wine bottle, the 

fragments of another wine bottle missing

its base, a long cast iron ìneedle,î a

large blue glass bead, several mirror

fragments, a number of smoothed bone

fragments, and several colonoware

sherds. Samples of the soil were collected for possible botanical analysis. This

deposit may have been a ìhidey-hole,î

and unrelated to the other deposits,

except for three factors: the wine bottles,

the association of artifacts the help to

comprise the conjurerís kit at Jordan and

in the ethnographic examples recorded

by Bascom, and the fact that no other

houses for which hearths have been

identified (four) had these pits.(22) This

deposit was located northeast of the

cow, but it would have been placed

alone the eastern wall of the cabin.

The forth deposit was also discovered during the Summer 2000 field season. This deposit was the most

ephemeral of the four. It consisted of a

fine, lime ash, with very small fragments

of burned shell and metal (including a

number of small nails). This deposit was

placed in a very shallow hole scooped

into the sand. The texture of the sand

lined the bottom of the pit suggested

that the materials might have been

burned in situ. However, later depositional factors have had the effect of softening this burned lens, and making it 

difficult to determine if the materials

were actually burned there. The artifacts

recovered from within this deposit are

identical to those of the southern deposit

in the cosmogram interpreted from the

Jordan Quarters, and like that one, the

one at Frogmore was located on the

southern wall of the cabin.

Taken together, these four deposits

directly mirror the cosmogram deposits

recovered from the Jordan Quarters,

and the ethnographically defined meanings of the four points of a cosmogram

found in West African contexts. The only

major difference between the two 

cosmograms is the use of animals at

Frogmore Manor, rather than the

European American technology

employed in the Jordan cosmogram.

However, the meanings of the deposits

appear to have been identical. Indeed,

the Frogmore Manor deposits have a

much more ìAfricanî appearance. Cattle

often symbolize wealth in many West

African cultures, while protection from

spirits can be obtained from chickens. In

both Frogmore Manor and Jordan,

chickens were sacrificed and then buried

fully articulated, though in the case of

Jordan this may have been done at the

death of the Conjurer/Midwifeís two 

children and husband during the 1870s. 

Summary and

Conclusions

There can be no question that African

cultural traditions became actively incorporated into African American culture

through the interactions and adaptations

made by Africans, Europeans, and

Native Americans who operated within

the system of enslavement practiced in

the American South. For Africans and

African Americans, however, a number

of these traditions had to be maintained

through their being hidden from the

wider, dominant society. Thus, the traditions had to continued but in an ìundergroundî and/or altered expression from

those originally practiced in Africa. Some

could be hidden within the traditions and

beliefs of the dominant culture, as in the

Christianity of the Prays House.(23)

Sometimes they were hidden, as Bruner

stated, in ìplain viewî within the landscape they created.(24) In other cases,

the symbolic representatives of the

beliefs and behaviors had to literally be

hidden from the view of individuals both

within and outside the community. Thus,

for African Americans the placement of

objects below ground was far more

108

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
important than had been the case in

Africa. Given the power of the inhabitants of the spirit world, placement out of

view, below cabin floors or other locations below ground, even on their bodies, had no impact on the efficacy of the

deposits thus ìhiddenî/placed out of

view.

The detailed contextual historical

archaeological research of the African

American communities of the Jordan

and Frogmore Manor Plantations have

revealed a number of patterns of behavior along with symbolic representations

that appear to have antecedents in

Africa: the conjurer, the cosomograms,

and other symbolically charged objects,

along with a number of beliefs and rituals connected with the burial of the

dead. Further, the information discovered during both the Jordan and

Frogmore Manor Quarters excavations

have also revealed another pattern

found within the African American

expression of this symbolic culture. That

is, for the most part, these displays are

hidden from the view of individuals within this world, especially those of the

dominant culture, unlike in West Africa

where they could be placed into the

above ground landscape defined by the

inhabitants. 

However, what is important in this

transition from plain view to hidden is

that the elements were still ìvisibleî to

inhabitants of the supernatural world.

These elements still functioned to aid in

the manipulation and maintenance of the

supernatural worldóa world still heavily

defined by the beliefs of peoples of

African descent. Such patterns appear

similar to historically and ethnographically defined practices from the Caribbean,

South America, North America, and,

most importantly, the Gullah of the Sea

Islands where Frogmore Manor is 

located.(25)

Clearly, over time the material

objects that have symbolic importance

within African American systems of belief

and behavior were changed from their

African counterparts. As people of

African descent became increasingly

confronted with European American

technology they gave it meaning and

value within their own cultural contexts.

In this they had little choice. Stores and

merchants in the New World spent little

effort importing the goods from Africa

necessary for African belief and behavioral practices to continue with the same

materials that might have been

employed in Africa. Further, the pattern

of cultural repression practiced by

European Americans noted above, literally drove people of African descent to a

redefinition of meaning and beliefs connected with European American technology and definition of the landscape

around them. Thus some of the behavioral and belief patterns noted by historians and historical archaeologists appear

to represent adaptations to life under the

conditions of enslavement.(26) These

patterns would include: determination of

community membership, treatment after

death, Prays House, and internal community craft production.

The two cosmograms defined from

Frogmore Manor and Jordan represent

this change from more ìAfricanî material

culture to European American items

being assigned identical meanings.

Unfortunately, it is this change toward

European American material culture that

has caused historical archaeologists

ìtroubleî in defining African and African

American impacts on the landscape of

American culture. We have spent too

much time looking for African material

culture, rather than African meaning and

value assigned to European American

material items. Historians and historical

archaeologists have conceived of

African practices/material expressions

as ìretentionsî rather than as what they

areóelements of a new culture constructed to permit survival within the

oppressive systems of enslavement and

tenancy/sharecropping. We have taken

the view that the dominant culture ìprovidedî the beliefs and behaviors that

African and people of African descent

had to follow. Phillip Morgan even

assigns the role of the labor system as

the determining character for ìAfrican

American cultural retentions.î(27) In this

view, people of African descent are

merely vessels that slowly are filled with

European American culture. Clearly, the

material presented above suggests this

view is totally inadequate. Peoples of

African descent played the major role in

their cultural development. They simply

placed it in contexts ìhidden from view.î

Notes

1. Charles E. Orser and Brian M.

Fagan, Historical Archeology (New York:

Harper Collins College Publishing,

1996); Leland Ferguson, Uncommon

Ground: Archaeology and Early African

America, 1650-1800 (Washington:

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992);

Kenneth L. Brown, ìMaterial Culture and

Community Structure: The Slave and

Tenant Community at Levi Jordanís

Plantation, 1848-1892,î in Working

Toward Freedom, Larry E. Hudson, Jr.,

editor, (Rochester: University of

Rochester Press, 1994), 95-118.

2. Thomas Wheaton, Amy

Friedlander, and Patrick H. Garrow,

Yaughan and Curriboo Plantations:

Studies in Afro-American Archaeology

(Atlanta: Soil Systems, 1983); Matthew

C. Emerson, ìAfrican Inspirations in a

New World Art and Artifact: Decorated

Pipes from the Chesapeake,î in ìI, Too,

Am Americaî: Archaeological Studies of

African-American Life, ed. Theresa A.

Singleton, (Charlottesville: University

109

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations
Press of Virginia, 1999), 47-82;

Ferguson, Uncommon Ground; Leland

Ferguson, ìThis Cross is a Magic Sign:

Marks on Eighteenth-Century Bowls

from South Carolina,î in ìI, Too, Am

Americaî: Archaeological Studies of

African-American Life, ed. Theresa A.

Singleton, (Charlottesville: University

Press of Virginia, 1999), 116-131;

William H. Adams, editor, ìHistorical

Archaeology of Plantations at Kings Bay,

Camden County, Georgia,î in

Department of Anthropology, University

of Florida, Reports of Investigation

(1987), Gainesville, FL; Ferguson, ìThis

Cross is a Magic Sign.î

3. Ferguson, ìThis Cross is a Magic

Signî; Aaron E. Russell, ìMaterial

Culture and African American Spirituality

at the Hermitage,î in Historical

Archaeology 31 no. 2(1997): 63-80;

Emerson, ìAfrican Inspirations.î

4. Kenneth L. Brown and Doreen

Cooper, ìStructural Continuity in an

African American Slave and Tenant

Community,î in Historical Archaeology

24, no. 4(1990): 7-19; Brown, ìMaterial

Culture and Community Structure,î

1994; Doreen Cooper, ìThe Archaeology

of Abandonment at the Levi Jordan

Plantationî (masters thesis, University of

Houston, 1989); David E. Bruner,

ìHidden Power: Burial Practices from a

African American Slave and Tenant

Communityî (masters thesis, University

of Houston, 1996); Jorge Garcia

Hererros, ìA Munitions Makerís Cabin:

An Archaeological Investigation at the

Levi Jordan Plantation, Brazoria County,

Texasî (masters thesis, University of

Houston, 1998); Mary K. Barnes,

ìChurch and Community: An Archaeological Investigation at the Levi Jordan

Plantation, Brazoria County, Texasî

(masters thesis, University of Houston,

1999).

5. Brown, ìMaterial Culture and

Community Structure,î 1994.

6. Russell, ìAfrican American

Spirituality,î 1997, 63.

7. Charles H. Fairbanks, ìThe

Kingsley Slave Cabin in Duval County,

Florida, 1968,î in The Conference on

Historic Site Archaeology Papers, 1972,

7(1974): 62-93; Jerome S. Handler and

Frederick W. Lange, Plantation Slavery

in Barbados: An Archaeological and

Historical Investigation (Cambridge MA:

Harvard University Press, 1978);

Wheaton, et al, Yaughan and Curriboo

Plantations; John S. Otto, Cannonís

Point Plantation, 1794-1860: Living

Conditions and Status Patterns in the

Old South (New York: Academic Press,

1984); Douglas V. Armstrong, The Old

Village and the Great House: An

Archaeological and Historical Examination of Drax Hall Plantation, St. Annís

Bay, Jamaica (Urbana: University of

Illinois Press, 1990); Ferguson,

Uncommon Ground; idem, ìThis Cross

is a Magic Signî; Theresa A. Singleton,

ìThe Archaeology of Afro-American

Slavery in Coastal Georgia: A Regional

Perception of Slave Household and

Community Patternsî (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1980);

Theresa A. Singleton, ìArchaeological

Implications for Changing Labor

Conditions,î in the Archaeology of

Slavery and Plantation Life, edited by

Theresa Singleton (New York: Academic

Press, 1985), 291-308; idem, ìThe

Archaeology of Slave Life,î in Before

Freedom Came: African-American Life in

the Antebellum South, eds. J. D. C.

Campbell and K. S. Rice (Charlottesville:

University Press of Virginia, 1991), idem,

ìThe Archaeology of Slavery in North

America,î in Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 119-140; Charles E.

Orser, The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant Plantation: Historical

Archaeology in the Piedmont of South

Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia

Press, 1988); idem, ìThe Archaeological

Analysis of Plantation Society:

Replacing Status and Caste With

Economics and Power,î in American

Antiquity 53(4)(1988): 735-751; idem,

ìThe Archaeology of African-American

Slave Religion in the Antebellum South,î

in Cambridge Archaeological Journal

4(1)(1994):33-45; idem, ìBeneath the

Material Surface of Things: Commodities, Artifacts, and Slave Plantations,î in

Contemporary Archaeology In Theory: A

Reader, edited by Robert W. Preucel

and Ian Hodder, (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996)189-

201; Laura Wilke, ìMagic and Empowerment on the Plantation: An Archaeological consideration of African-American

World View,î in Southeastern

Archaeology 14(2)(1995): 136-148;

idem, ìSecret and Sacred: Contextualizing the Artifacts of African-American

Magic and Religion,î in Historical

Archaeology 31(4)(1997):81-106;

Theodore R. Rhinhart, ed., The

Archaeology of Shirley Plantation

(Charlottesville: The University Press of

Virginia, 1984); Linda France Stine,

Melanie A. Cabak, and Mark Groover,

ìBlue Beads as African-American

Cultural Symbols,î Historical

Archaeology 30(3)(1996):46-75; Anne E.

Yentsch, A Chesapeake Family and

Their Slaves: A Study in Historical

Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1994); Amy Young,

ìRisk Management Strategies Among

African-American Slaves at Locust

Grove Plantation,î in International

Journal of Historical Archaeology

1(1)(1997): 5-38; Drake M. Patton,

ìMankala and Minkisi: Possible

Evidence for African-American Folk

Beliefs and Practices,î in Newsletter for

African American Archaeology,

6(1992):5-7; James L. Michie, Richmond

110

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Hill Plantation 1810-1868: The Discovery

of Antebellum Life on a Waccamaw Rice

Plantation (New York: The Reprint

Company, 1990); Russell, ìAfrican

American Spirituality.î 

8. Bruner, ìHidden Power.î

9. Cheryl Wright, ìHeard it Through

the Grapevineî (masters thesis,

University of Houston, 1994); Mary L.

Hill, ìThe Discipline of Social Corsets:

Negotiation of the Gender Typification of

the Southern Lady by Female Descendants of Levi and Sarah Stone Jordanî

(masters thesis, University of Houston,

1997); Carol McDavid, ìThe Levi Jordan

Plantation: From Archaeological

Interpretation to Public Interpretationî

(masters thesis, University of Houston,

1996); idem, ìDescendants, Decisions,

and Power: The Public Interpretation of

the Archaeology of the Levi Jordan

Plantation,î in Historical Archaeology

31(3)(1997):114-131.

10. Mary K. Barnes, ìEverything That

They Ownedî (paper presented at the

Annual Meeting of the Society of

Historical Archaeology, Atlanta,

GA,1998).

11. Wright, ìHeard it Through the

Grapevineî; Hill, ìThe Discipline of

Social Corsets.î

12. Brown and Cooper, ìStructural

Continuityî; Brown, ìMaterial Culture.î

13. Brown and Cooper, ìStructural

Continuityî; Brown, ìMaterial Culture.î

14. Barnes, ìChurch and

Community.î

15. Margaret W. Creel, ìA Peculiar

Peopleî: Slave Religion and Communityculture Among the Gullahs (New York:

New York University Press, 1988).

16. Creel, ìA Peculiar People,î 1988.

17. Ibid; ìGullah Attitudes Toward Life

and Death,î in Africanisms in American

Culture, ed. Joseph E. Holloway

(Bloomington, Indiana University Press,

1991), 69-97.

18. Patricia Guthrie, Catching Sense:

African American Communities on a

South Carolona Sea Island (Westport

and London: Bergin and Garvey, 1996).

19. Bruner, ìHidden Power.î

20. Guthrie, Catching Sense.

21. Bruner, ìHidden Power.î

22. William Bascom, ìTwo Forms of

Afro-Cuban Divination,î in Acculturation

in the Americas, Proceedings and

Selected Papers of the XXIXth

International Congress of Americanists,

Sol Tax, ed., 1 (Chicago: University of

Chicago, 1952), 63-69.

23. Creel, A Peculiar People.

24. Bruner, ìHidden Power.î

25. Robert F. Thompson, Flash of the

Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and

Philosophy (New York: Random House,

1983); Bascom, ìTwo Forms of AfroCuban Divinationî; Sidney Mintz and

Richard Price, in The Birth of AfricanAmerican Culture: An Anthropological

Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press,

1992); Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth

of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon

Press, 1941); Roger D. Abrahams,

Singing for the Master: The Emergence

of African-American Culture in the

Plantation South (New York: Penguin

Books, 1992); Michael Mullin, Africa in

America: Slave Acculturation and

Resistance in the American South and

the British Caribbean 1736-1831

(Urbana and Chicago: University of

Illinois Press, 1994); Sandra T. Barnes,

editor, Africaís Ogun: Old World and

New (Bloomington and Indianapolis:

Indiana University Press, 1989); GladysMarie Fry, Stitched from the Soul: Slave

Quilts from the Ante-Bellum South (New

York: Dutton Studio Books, 1990);

Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in

Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (New

York: Vintage Books, 1976); T. J.

Woofter, Black Yeomanry: Life on St.

Helena Island (New York: Octagon

Books, 1978); Guthrie, Catching Sense,

George P. Rawick, From Sundown to

Sunup: The Making of the Black

Community (Westport: Greenwood

Publishing Company, 1972); John

Blassingame, The Slave Community:

Plantation Life in the Antebellum South

(New York and Oxford: Oxford Press,

1979); Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture:

Nationalist Theory and the Foundation of

Black America (New York and Oxford:

Oxford University, 1987); Eugene D.

Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll (New York:

Vintage Books, 1976); Creel, A Peculiar

People, idem, ìGullah Attitudes Toward

Life and Death.î

26. Creel, A Peculiar People; idem,

ìGullah Attitudes Toward Life and

Death,î Guthrie, Catching Sense, Eric

Foner, Nothing But Freedom:

Emancipation and Its Legacy (Baton

Rouge: Louisiana State University

Press, 1983); and Phillip D. Morgan,

Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the

Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and

Lowcountry (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1998).

27. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint.

111

Interwoven Traditions:

Archaeology of the Conjurer's Cabins and the African American

Cemetery at the Jordan and Frogmore Manor Plantations
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óóó. ìDescendants, Decisions, and

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Mintz, Sidney W. and Richard Price. The

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114

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Four:

LEGACIES OF URBAN REALMS

AND RURAL COMMUNITIES

127

As people of African descent arrived in or moved to

the burgeoning cities, they established uniquely

urban cultures. In rural areas, many black towns

were established during Reconstruction, where blacks

expressed their environmental and commercial values and

traditions. Historic and continuing influences of African

origins are evident on both the urban and rural landscape.

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact 

on Place Making: Case Studies From African and 

African American Communities

Abimbola O. Asojo

Gardening, Yard Decoration, and Agriculture

Among People of African Descent 

in the Rural South and the Cayman Islands

Richard Westmacott

Por La Encendida Calle Antillana:

African Influences on Puerto Rican Architecture 

Arleen PabÛn
128

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Four:

Legacies of

Urban Realms

and Rural

Communities

Traditional African Architecture 

and Its Impact on Place Making:

Case Studies from African and 

African-American Communities

Abimbola O. Asojo

129

Since the era of independence

from colonial rule in African

nations and the civil rights

movements in the United States,

Africans and African-Americans have

engaged in developing new identities

through the integration of culture in the

design of contemporary societies. This

paper examines the impact of cultural,

historical, and traditional African 

architecture on historical and contemporary design practices. Traditional

architectural forms from Africa are 

presented to illustrate significant 

elements of the style, its applications,

and implications on contemporary

design practices in African and AfricanAmerican communities.

Traditional African

Architecture

Traditional African architecture varies from simple

rectangular dwellings in clay, to round houses,

tents, sophisticated tombs, obelisks, palaces, 

pyramids, and monumental structures built by peoples of varying cultures all over Africa. A diversity of

building forms existed in traditional African societies, and most of them built highly ornamented

structures. The Tassili cave paintings illustrate early

forms of human communities in the Sahara desert

in Africa. These cave paintings convey information

about life in the Sahara region before the rivers and

lakes of the desert began to dry, forcing people to

move closer to the Nile. Some contemporary historians have stressed the influences of Saharan art

and engravings on ancient Egyptian art. Some of

these scholars believe ancient Egyptian art borrowed heavily from Saharan art, which preceded,

then ran parallel to the Egyptian form. Cave paintings were not restricted only to this area. Some

have been found in South Africa, predating those in

the Sahara.(1)

Early Innovations of

African Craftsmanship 

An early innovative example of African craftsmanship is the Ethiopian Monarchyís Obelisk at Aksum

(B. C. 300ñA. D. 300), which highlights techniques

of building freestanding masonry structures. The

Obelisk at Aksum was 108 feet tall, with false

doors, windows, columns, and wall treatments that

had horizontal timber reinforcements and outward

projecting wooden stumps. Today, an obelisk still

stands in Rome, approximately 25 meters high, the

second largest built by the ancient Akumites. It was

looted on the orders of Mussolini, and taken to Italy

in 1937.(2) In addition, the Meroetic pyramids

(North Cemetery at Meroe, B. C. 250ñA. D. 350) in

Sudan show early craftsmanship in building royal

tombs and structures. 

Other early illustrations of innovative building

techniques are the grand castles and great stone

monuments of Zimbabwe. Timbuktu, Mali, and

Benin were some medieval empires of West Africa

that built exorbitant structures. Denyer noted ìthe

ancient city of Benin, the capital of the Benin

Empire was an urban center when the Portuguese

arrived in Benin around 1500.î(3) Historians have

stated they found a city that was a nautical mile

long from gate to gate; the inhabitants were prosperous and experienced in metalworking.(4) The

empire was later burned down and looted by the

British invaders. Today, the looted artifacts from

these nations can be found in museums throughout

the western world.(5) Despite these precedents,

many historical surveys in architecture stop 

primarily at Egyptian civilization, ignoring the 

civilizations south of the Sahara.
Traditional African

Architectural Styles 

Some authors have classified traditional

African architecture as tents; Sudanese

style; Impluvium style; Hill style;

Beehive; Ghorfas; Kasbahs; and, underground structures.(6) Hunters, gatherers,

and pastoralists who needed structures

that could be dismantled and transported usually used tent structures. The

Tuaregs in West Africa utilized these

structures during the trans-Saharan

trade. They were based on a framework

of hoops covered by mats. The average

family could pack its house and their

entire belongings on the back of a camel

or a donkey. The Masai were pastoralists living in northern Tanzania and

southern Kenya, their houses were semi

portable, and made out of wooden

frames which were often transported on

the back of animals. The Fulanis, who

are distributed throughout West Africa,

took their cattle around over large distances, moving from one settlement to

another, and utilizing materials available

on the site to construct their tents.

Sudanese style was generally a variety of rectangular adobe buildings with

courtyards, found mostly in West Africa

in areas where Islam was dominant. The

style has often been attributed to Islamic

influence. However, excavation at

Nteresso in Northern Ghana reveal the

remains of rectangular planning, and the

fact that Fulanis, Nupes, and

Khassonkesóother convertees to

Islamódid not build in Sudanese style

also suggested the style predated Islam.

Several characteristics of the style are

courtyard plans, flat or dome-shaped

vaulted roofs, parapets pierced with 

gutter pipes or channels. Walls were

constructed of mud bricks set in mortar

and mud roofs supported by palm frond

joist. 

Impluvium style was houses with four

buildings facing one another in a courtyard, with gabled roofs. Examples are

found among the Benin, Yoruba, Asante,

and Ibo peoples of West Africa. Yoruba

palaces for kings were larger versions of

the Impluvium style. The Yorubas had a

monarchy system that considered the

Kingís Palace as sacred. The Palace

consisted of hundreds of courtyards,

with several buildings facing each other

in the courtyards. In the palaces, elaborately carved columns supported gabled

roofs along the courtyard perimeters.

Dwelling units were also built on a courtyard plan, with four rectangular units

facing each other in a courtyard. 

The largest palace in the Oyo Empire

was twice the size of a sports field. Each

of the courtyards was reserved for 

special functions. The largest used for

public assemblies or dancing at festivals, while smaller ones were used for

the Kingís private activities. Some of the

courtyards were paved with quartz 

pebbles and potsherds.(7) Today, the

largest palace is in Owo, Southwestern

Nigeria and covers 44 hectares (4,400

acres).

Archaeological and ethnographical

studies indicate that traditional Yoruba

towns comprised several compounds,

and each compound consisted of houses built around a series of open courtyards of different sizes, which usually

contained pots to collect water from

rooftop. Yoruba cities were roughly circular in shape, and surrounded by some

kind of defensive wall. The afin (Kingís

palace) was an intricate labyrinth of

rooms and courtyards, often decorated

with sculpted doors, walls, and columns.

Andah noted ìfamily and compound continue as it were from all sides of the

palace and merge into one another.î(8) 

This feature of continuity is reflected

in the opening lines of the poems in the

Yoruba divinatory system of Ifa. One

such poem reads: ìbuild a house

around you Ifa, so you can build a

house around me, so you can let children surround me, so you let money 

surround me.î The architectural forms of

the city are interlocked within a welldefined concentric town plan. Yoruba

architecture is an organization of disparate units into an interlocking whole.

The compound design expresses an

architecture of intimacy and encourages

the success of the extended family.

The Asantes, found in present-day

Ghana, constructed their buildings

based on a courtyard system, with a

central courtyard usually joining four

buildings; the fourth one was usually

closed off. The courtyard was used as a

meeting space, childrenís play area, and

a place for food preparation. Windows

ornamented in gold, silver inlay, and

applied finish demonstrated the wealth

of the Asantes. The Asantes were governed by a monarchy system, and historical surveys found the Kingís Palace

located in the center of the town overlooking a central playground for children. 

The palace consisted of several

buildings surrounding a number of courtyards, typical in many West African

palaces. The walls were well decorated

with symbolic ornamentation, and the

main entrance of the palace led to a

court 200 yards long. The roof structures

of the palace buildings itself were 

primarily of gabled form. The Asantes

also built royal mausoleums for their

kings that contained several rooms that

housed their remains. The link between

the living and the dead made these

mausoleums uniquely celebrated 

buildings. 

Hill style houses were usually found

in hilly settlements around Africa, and

their main features were stone terracing

and round buildings, with diameters less

than their heights. 

130

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Beehive styles were built of stepped

thatch, houses were usually round plan

and often dome shaped. Pliable material

like reeds, grass, leaves, woven mats,

and animal skins were often used.

Ghorfas were multi-story, barrelvaulted stone storage chambers, constructed with stone, sun baked brick, or

furnaced baked bricks. 

Kasbahs were ten or more stories

high structures built out of packed clay

and air-dried bricks. They were usually

built to house families of one ancestral

origin. They evolved out of defensive

necessities, and have often been

referred to as forts built in indigenous

Moroccan styles. 

Underground structures were commonly rectangular or circular in plan with

roof structures supported by branches

and rafters covered by earth.

Traditional African architecture cannot be examined without examining

African decorative arts since both are

closely related in African societies.

Some of the decorative arts of Africa

include symbols, patterns, motifs, dress,

fabrics, hairstyles, body decoration,

metal work, carving, pottery, basketry,

beadwork, wall decoration, etc. Ola

Balogun noted ìAfrican artistic genius

was strongly asserted in the decorative

embellishment of the built environment.

Varying decorative patterns could be

found sculpted or painted on walls and

wooden doors, which ranged from 

figurative designs to complex abstract

patterns which revealed an exquisite

balance of form, color, and shading.

Painting was carried out as an extension

of architecture than an independent

medium.î(9) 

Calvin Douglas of the Brooklyn

Museum of Arts noted ìArtistic expression is not the luxury to African peoples

that is has become to the west. It is considered a natural and necessary way of

giving meaning to phases of a personís

life and enhancing his work. This tradition continues in independent African

countries today, where cultural dances

and attires are used in political festivals.

In addition, if the vitality of a culture can

be measured in terms of its ability to

produce art and enlarge its conception

of human life, it is not difficult to understand why so many black people in the

U[nited] S[tates] today look to Africa as

their cultural sourceî.(10) 

Traditional African

Forms and Decorative

Arts in Seventeenth &

Eighteenth Century

America

The contribution of African-Americans in

historic America has often gone unacknowledged. Vlach noted ì[T]he material

achievements of blacks are generally

assumed to have been negligible, if not

non-existent. Yet, now and again, diligent scholarship brings to light an AfroAmerican tradition in basketry, ironwork,

pottery and other crafts. The mortar and

pestle, dug out canoes of Chesapeake

region and banjo are African influences

in American landscape.î(11) The AfricanAmerican shotgun house has been

noted to have its roots in African architecture. New Orleans is considered the

center of shotgun housing development

in the United States. Shotgun houses

are usually one room wide and several

rooms long with a gable roof 

facing the main street. Towns of southern Haiti have houses similar to the

shotgun houses in Louisiana. The houses were also one room wide and one

story high with their gables facing the

main road. Historians have linked the

occurrence of shotgun houses in Haiti

and Louisiana to trade links and 

immigration. 

Vlach noted the ìarchitectural links

between Port-au-Prince and New

Orleans cannot be denied. All the

nonessential details that are associated

with the shotgun in Haiti are also associated with the shotgun in Louisiana,

although not always to same degree. It

is evident that the concept of Shotgun

houses was imported from Haiti.î(12)

The Haitian shotgun had its roots in

Yoruba, West Africa. Vlach noted that

ìYoruba and Yoruba related peoples

were brought to Haiti in the first days of

slavery in sufficient numbers to preserve

many traits of their African cultureî.(13)

The basic Yoruba house form consists of

a two-room linear building, the first room

is the parlor/kitchen and the second a

bedroom. Impluvium style houses, mentioned earlier, are a multiplication of this

basic unit, and the roofs were also gable

in form.

Post-Colonial African

Spaces

Since the era of independence from

colonial rule in the 1960s, there has

been a cultural revival in many African

nations. Current design practices incorporate elements from traditional Africa in

contemporary spaces. Contemporary

African architecture is deeply rooted in

Mazuriís ìtriple heritage,î which presents

African history as comprised of three

principal influences: indigenous, western, and Islamic. Western influences

began with the Greeks in B. C. 333,

continuing through Roman settlement in

B. C. 146, and Europeans in mid fourteenth century. Portuguese constructed

medieval fortress architecture, the

English built gothic forts, Victorian style

houses, and English cottages. The

Dutch erected Victorian style houses,

and Brazilian style houses were built by

free men and women, returned to Africa

after the abolition of slave trade.

International styles buildings were

designed by African who went abroad to

131

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact on Place Making:

Case Studies from African and African-American Communities
study, and expatriate architects who

practiced in many African nations, after

independence from colonial rule.(14) 

Islamic influences were more predominant in North Africa, because of its

strategic location (Egypt fell to Arabs in

A. D. 641). Trade contact with people

east of the Indian Ocean, from China

and Arabia, facilitated Islamic influences

in this area. The West African TransSaharan trade gave Islam a route to

West Africa. Structures were made out

of coral limestone, flat roofs, domes,

gables, and vaults. Many West African

mosques had West African features. The

Djenne Mosque in Mali is an example of

a mosque built out of adobe in

Sudanese style architecture. 

Today, several architects are striving

to recapture elements from traditional

African architecture lost since colonial

rule. Nigerian architect Demas Nwokoís

Catholic Church in Ibadan, Nigeria,

designed in the late seventies, is one

example. The church was designed for

the Dominican Order in the Catholic

Church, which takes a vow of simplicity.

(Figure 1) African forms are integrated in

the design, through the use of natural

materials; the concrete masonry unit

wall is left plain and unfinished, the

steeple on the roof is roughly fashioned,

and the walkway around the perimeter

of the church is finished in cobbled

stone. A pond around the perimeter of

the church relates to the Yorubaís appreciation of natural forms. The building is

modeled on the traditional West African

hut style, and the sanctuary radiates

around the altar, serving as a central

focus, similar to palaces and shrines in

traditional African societies. 

Another of Nwokoís designs the cultural center in Ibadan, Nigeria sits on a

hilly site in Ibadan, serving as a cultural

landmark.(Figure 2) Natural materials

are utilized to recall traditional architectural forms, the relationship with nature,

and the Yorubaís appreciation for natural

forms. The articulated exterior walls

appear to be telling a story similar to

forms utilized in traditional societies.

Another example is the Oduduwa

hall, at Obafemi Awolowo University, 

Ile-Ife, Nigeria.(Figure 3) This amphitheater was designed by Sharon and

Sharon, from 1969-1972. Ile-Ife is

regarded in Yoruba mythology as the

cradle of civilization. The building form

mimics the bronze heads carved in traditional African societies. Landscaping the

base plane is used to express the impor132

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 1. Dominican Catholic Church,

Ibadan, Nigeria.

Figure 2. Cultural Center, Ibadan,

Nigeria.

Figure 3. Oduduwa Hall, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

Figure 4. Saint Mary's, Houston, Texas.

Figure 5. Saint Benedict the African,

Chicago, IL

Figure 6. Entertainment Space: Larry

Levy.

1

2

3

4

5

6
tance of nature, and the murals on the

building walls are elements from traditional Yoruba geometry, which appear to

be telling a story similar to traditional

environments. 

Twentieth Century

African American

Spaces

African-American communities are

engaged in cultural revival through

spaces, which integrate culture-based

issues. Saint Maryís Catholic Church,

Houston, Texas, designed by the

African-American firm of Archi-technics/3

approaches culture-based issues

through form, materials, and artifacts.

(Figure 4) The final design incorporates

a ìparti,î based on interlocking circles. A

gathering space with a baptismal font in

form of the Goree Island provides a transition from the outside to inside, which

the priest interprets as being synonymous with the passage from slavery to

freedom. 

Another example, Saint Benedict the

African, was built in a Chicago neighborhood of African Americans in 1990.

(Figure 5) The building committee and

architects, Belli & Belli, while concerned

about representing the communityís heritage were also concerned with creating

a place that would uplift the spirit. A

concept of interlocking circles, based

upon traditional West African compound

dwellings, was represented by multiples

of circular forms interlocking each other.

African form is again reinforced through

the materials of the sanctuary ceiling of

wood decking, semi-circular seating

plan, and trees planted below grade

along the interior walls. 

Other renowned examples are

Robert Millsí winning entry for the

Washington Monument Competition,

which is modeled after the African

Obelisk from Ethiopia (15); William

Stanleyís Ebenezer Baptist Church in

Atlanta, which uses African forms (16);

and Jack Travis in his cultural interpretation for Wesley Snipes.(17) 

Summary

The impacts of traditional African architecture on African and African-American

spaces are numerous. The most recurring elements today include building

forms based on the traditional African

hut, gathering spaces, natural forms,

courtyards, carved doors and columns,

ironmongery, interlocking forms, and

rectilinear planning. Developing an

Afrocentric architecture that recalls

African traditional architecture is not an

easy task; the process requires not only

a consideration of building form but cultural meaning, and a design process

that empowers the community through

building communities. Other prominent

concepts begin with the building forms

inspired by styles deeply rooted in

African culture and materials. Surface

articulation and space delineation are

some other design elements. The major

challenges today lie in integrating 

pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa

spaces to create a unique Afrocentric

architectural style. 

Notes

1. Macleod, ìThe Nileís Other

Kingdom, Nubia: Nubia, not Egypt, May

Have Been the First True African

Civilization,î in Time Magazine:

Commemorative Issue (1997): 102-106.

2. Nnamdi Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation (New

York: McGraw Hill, 1997).

3. Susan Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture (New York: Africana

Publishing Company, 1978).

4. Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture.

5. Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation.

6. Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture, Richard Hull, African Cities

and Towns Before the European

Conquest (New York: W. W. Norton and

Co., 1976); Herbert Porthon,

Architectural Styles (New York: Facts on

File Publication, 1982); Labelle Prussin,

Islamic Design in West Africa (Berkeley

and Los Angeles: University of California

Press, 1986); Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation.

7. Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture.

8. Bassey Andah, Nigeriaís

Indigenous Technology, (Nigeria: Ibadan

University Press, 1992).

9. Ola Balogun, ìForm and expression in African arts,î in Introduction to

African Culture: General Aspects, 69:

1979, Paris: UNESCO.

10. Douglas quote found in Louise E.

Jefferson, The Decorative Arts of Africa

(New York: Viking Press, 1970).

11. John M. Vlach, ìBy the Works of

Their Hands. Studies in Afro-American

Folk Life,î in American Material Culture

and Folklife (London: UMI Research

Press, 1976).

12. Vlach, ìBy the Works of Their

Handsî.

13. Ibid.

14. Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation.

15. Brad Grant, ìCultural Politics and

Pedagogy,î in Voices in Aritectural

Education (New York: Bergin and

Garvey, 1991); Elleh, African Architecture Evolution and Transformation.

133

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact on Place Making:

Case Studies from African and African-American Communities
16. J. Moline, ìMLKís Congregation

in Atlanta Gets a Striking New

Sanctuary,î in Architectural Record 

5(1999): 104.

17. N. A. Diop, ìJack Travis Cultural

Vanguard. Persistence Continuing in a

Course in the Face of Difficulties,î in

Blacklines 1(1999): 10-13.

Bibliography

Andah, Bassey. Nigeriaís Indigenous

Technology. Nigeria: Ibadan

University Press, 1992.

Antoniades, Anthony C. Poetics of

Architecture: Theory of Design. New

York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Asante, Kete, Mofeti. Afrocentricity. New

Jersey: Africa World Press, Inc.,

1996. 

Balogun, Ola. ìForm and Expression in

African Arts.î In Introduction to

African Culture: General Aspects,

69(1979). Paris: UNESCO. 

Barrie Thomas. ìThe Context of Sacred

Architecture.î In Journal on Religion,

Art & Architecture 3(1997): 9. 

Boyer, E. L. and Mitgang, L. Building

Community, A New Future for

Architecture Education and Practice.

Princeton, New Jersey: The Carnegie

Foundation for the Advancement of

Teaching, 1996.

Denyer, Susan. African Traditional

Architecture. New York: Africana

Publishing Company, 1978.

Diop, Cheika Anta Diop. The African

Origin of Civilization Myth or Reality.

New York: Lawrence Hill & Company,

1974. 

Diop, N. A. ìJack Travis Cultural

Vanguard. Persistence Continuing in

a Course in the Face of Difficulties.î

In Blacklines 1(1999): 10-13.

Elleh, Nnamdi. African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation. New

York: McGraw Hill, 1997.

Grant, Brad. ìCultural Politics and

Pedagogy.î Voices in Architectural

Education. New York: Bergin and

Garvey, 1991.

Guidoni, Enrico. Primitive Architecture,

(trans.) R. E. Wolf. New York: Harry

N. Abrams, 1978. 

Hull, Richard. African Cities and Towns

Before the European Conquest. New

York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976.

Jefferson, Louise E. In the Decorative

Arts of Africa. New York: Viking

Press, 1970.

King, Neol. African Cosmos, An

Introduction to Religion in Africa.

California: Wadsworth Inc., 1986.

Macleod, S. ìThe Nileís Other Kingdom

Nubia: Nubia, not Egypt May Have

Been the First True African Civilization.î In Time Magazine: Commemorative Issue (1997): 102-106.

Moline, J. ìMLKíS Congregation in

Atlanta Gets a Striking New

Sanctuary.î In Architectural

Record(5)(1999): 104

Parrinder, Geoffrey. African Traditional

Religion. London: S.P.C.K., 1962.

Porthon, Herbert. Architectural Styles.

New York: Facts on File Publication,

1982. 

Prussin, Labelle. Islamic Design in West

Africa. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1986.

Rapport, Amos. ìVernacular Architecture

and the Cultural Determinants of

Form.î In Buildings and Society, 281-

305. London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1980.

Rodney, W. How Europe

Underdeveloped Africa. Washington

D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.

Vlach, John M. ìBy the Works of Their

Hands. Studies in Afro-American

Folklife.î In American Material

Culture and Folklife. London: UMI

Research Press, 1976.

Source Notes about Photos

Figure 1. Dominican Catholic Church.

Source: Photo by author.

Figure 2. Cultural Center. Source: Photo

by author.

Figure 3. Oduduwa Hall. Source: Photo

by author.

Figure 4. Saint Mary's. Source: St.

Maryís Building Committee.

Figure 5. Saint Benedict the African.

Source: St. Benedictís Building

Committee.

Figure 6. Entertainment Space. Source:

Studio project by Larry Levy.

134

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Four:

LEGACIES OF URBAN REALMS

AND RURAL COMMUNITIES

127

As people of African descent arrived in or moved to

the burgeoning cities, they established uniquely

urban cultures. In rural areas, many black towns

were established during Reconstruction, where blacks

expressed their environmental and commercial values and

traditions. Historic and continuing influences of African

origins are evident on both the urban and rural landscape.

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact 

on Place Making: Case Studies From African and 

African American Communities

Abimbola O. Asojo

Gardening, Yard Decoration, and Agriculture

Among People of African Descent 

in the Rural South and the Cayman Islands

Richard Westmacott

Por La Encendida Calle Antillana:

African Influences on Puerto Rican Architecture 

Arleen PabÛn
128

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Session Four:

Legacies of

Urban Realms

and Rural

Communities

Traditional African Architecture 

and Its Impact on Place Making:

Case Studies from African and 

African-American Communities

Abimbola O. Asojo

129

Since the era of independence

from colonial rule in African

nations and the civil rights

movements in the United States,

Africans and African-Americans have

engaged in developing new identities

through the integration of culture in the

design of contemporary societies. This

paper examines the impact of cultural,

historical, and traditional African 

architecture on historical and contemporary design practices. Traditional

architectural forms from Africa are 

presented to illustrate significant 

elements of the style, its applications,

and implications on contemporary

design practices in African and AfricanAmerican communities.

Traditional African

Architecture

Traditional African architecture varies from simple

rectangular dwellings in clay, to round houses,

tents, sophisticated tombs, obelisks, palaces, 

pyramids, and monumental structures built by peoples of varying cultures all over Africa. A diversity of

building forms existed in traditional African societies, and most of them built highly ornamented

structures. The Tassili cave paintings illustrate early

forms of human communities in the Sahara desert

in Africa. These cave paintings convey information

about life in the Sahara region before the rivers and

lakes of the desert began to dry, forcing people to

move closer to the Nile. Some contemporary historians have stressed the influences of Saharan art

and engravings on ancient Egyptian art. Some of

these scholars believe ancient Egyptian art borrowed heavily from Saharan art, which preceded,

then ran parallel to the Egyptian form. Cave paintings were not restricted only to this area. Some

have been found in South Africa, predating those in

the Sahara.(1)

Early Innovations of

African Craftsmanship 

An early innovative example of African craftsmanship is the Ethiopian Monarchyís Obelisk at Aksum

(B. C. 300ñA. D. 300), which highlights techniques

of building freestanding masonry structures. The

Obelisk at Aksum was 108 feet tall, with false

doors, windows, columns, and wall treatments that

had horizontal timber reinforcements and outward

projecting wooden stumps. Today, an obelisk still

stands in Rome, approximately 25 meters high, the

second largest built by the ancient Akumites. It was

looted on the orders of Mussolini, and taken to Italy

in 1937.(2) In addition, the Meroetic pyramids

(North Cemetery at Meroe, B. C. 250ñA. D. 350) in

Sudan show early craftsmanship in building royal

tombs and structures. 

Other early illustrations of innovative building

techniques are the grand castles and great stone

monuments of Zimbabwe. Timbuktu, Mali, and

Benin were some medieval empires of West Africa

that built exorbitant structures. Denyer noted ìthe

ancient city of Benin, the capital of the Benin

Empire was an urban center when the Portuguese

arrived in Benin around 1500.î(3) Historians have

stated they found a city that was a nautical mile

long from gate to gate; the inhabitants were prosperous and experienced in metalworking.(4) The

empire was later burned down and looted by the

British invaders. Today, the looted artifacts from

these nations can be found in museums throughout

the western world.(5) Despite these precedents,

many historical surveys in architecture stop 

primarily at Egyptian civilization, ignoring the 

civilizations south of the Sahara.
Traditional African

Architectural Styles 

Some authors have classified traditional

African architecture as tents; Sudanese

style; Impluvium style; Hill style;

Beehive; Ghorfas; Kasbahs; and, underground structures.(6) Hunters, gatherers,

and pastoralists who needed structures

that could be dismantled and transported usually used tent structures. The

Tuaregs in West Africa utilized these

structures during the trans-Saharan

trade. They were based on a framework

of hoops covered by mats. The average

family could pack its house and their

entire belongings on the back of a camel

or a donkey. The Masai were pastoralists living in northern Tanzania and

southern Kenya, their houses were semi

portable, and made out of wooden

frames which were often transported on

the back of animals. The Fulanis, who

are distributed throughout West Africa,

took their cattle around over large distances, moving from one settlement to

another, and utilizing materials available

on the site to construct their tents.

Sudanese style was generally a variety of rectangular adobe buildings with

courtyards, found mostly in West Africa

in areas where Islam was dominant. The

style has often been attributed to Islamic

influence. However, excavation at

Nteresso in Northern Ghana reveal the

remains of rectangular planning, and the

fact that Fulanis, Nupes, and

Khassonkesóother convertees to

Islamódid not build in Sudanese style

also suggested the style predated Islam.

Several characteristics of the style are

courtyard plans, flat or dome-shaped

vaulted roofs, parapets pierced with 

gutter pipes or channels. Walls were

constructed of mud bricks set in mortar

and mud roofs supported by palm frond

joist. 

Impluvium style was houses with four

buildings facing one another in a courtyard, with gabled roofs. Examples are

found among the Benin, Yoruba, Asante,

and Ibo peoples of West Africa. Yoruba

palaces for kings were larger versions of

the Impluvium style. The Yorubas had a

monarchy system that considered the

Kingís Palace as sacred. The Palace

consisted of hundreds of courtyards,

with several buildings facing each other

in the courtyards. In the palaces, elaborately carved columns supported gabled

roofs along the courtyard perimeters.

Dwelling units were also built on a courtyard plan, with four rectangular units

facing each other in a courtyard. 

The largest palace in the Oyo Empire

was twice the size of a sports field. Each

of the courtyards was reserved for 

special functions. The largest used for

public assemblies or dancing at festivals, while smaller ones were used for

the Kingís private activities. Some of the

courtyards were paved with quartz 

pebbles and potsherds.(7) Today, the

largest palace is in Owo, Southwestern

Nigeria and covers 44 hectares (4,400

acres).

Archaeological and ethnographical

studies indicate that traditional Yoruba

towns comprised several compounds,

and each compound consisted of houses built around a series of open courtyards of different sizes, which usually

contained pots to collect water from

rooftop. Yoruba cities were roughly circular in shape, and surrounded by some

kind of defensive wall. The afin (Kingís

palace) was an intricate labyrinth of

rooms and courtyards, often decorated

with sculpted doors, walls, and columns.

Andah noted ìfamily and compound continue as it were from all sides of the

palace and merge into one another.î(8) 

This feature of continuity is reflected

in the opening lines of the poems in the

Yoruba divinatory system of Ifa. One

such poem reads: ìbuild a house

around you Ifa, so you can build a

house around me, so you can let children surround me, so you let money 

surround me.î The architectural forms of

the city are interlocked within a welldefined concentric town plan. Yoruba

architecture is an organization of disparate units into an interlocking whole.

The compound design expresses an

architecture of intimacy and encourages

the success of the extended family.

The Asantes, found in present-day

Ghana, constructed their buildings

based on a courtyard system, with a

central courtyard usually joining four

buildings; the fourth one was usually

closed off. The courtyard was used as a

meeting space, childrenís play area, and

a place for food preparation. Windows

ornamented in gold, silver inlay, and

applied finish demonstrated the wealth

of the Asantes. The Asantes were governed by a monarchy system, and historical surveys found the Kingís Palace

located in the center of the town overlooking a central playground for children. 

The palace consisted of several

buildings surrounding a number of courtyards, typical in many West African

palaces. The walls were well decorated

with symbolic ornamentation, and the

main entrance of the palace led to a

court 200 yards long. The roof structures

of the palace buildings itself were 

primarily of gabled form. The Asantes

also built royal mausoleums for their

kings that contained several rooms that

housed their remains. The link between

the living and the dead made these

mausoleums uniquely celebrated 

buildings. 

Hill style houses were usually found

in hilly settlements around Africa, and

their main features were stone terracing

and round buildings, with diameters less

than their heights. 

130

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Beehive styles were built of stepped

thatch, houses were usually round plan

and often dome shaped. Pliable material

like reeds, grass, leaves, woven mats,

and animal skins were often used.

Ghorfas were multi-story, barrelvaulted stone storage chambers, constructed with stone, sun baked brick, or

furnaced baked bricks. 

Kasbahs were ten or more stories

high structures built out of packed clay

and air-dried bricks. They were usually

built to house families of one ancestral

origin. They evolved out of defensive

necessities, and have often been

referred to as forts built in indigenous

Moroccan styles. 

Underground structures were commonly rectangular or circular in plan with

roof structures supported by branches

and rafters covered by earth.

Traditional African architecture cannot be examined without examining

African decorative arts since both are

closely related in African societies.

Some of the decorative arts of Africa

include symbols, patterns, motifs, dress,

fabrics, hairstyles, body decoration,

metal work, carving, pottery, basketry,

beadwork, wall decoration, etc. Ola

Balogun noted ìAfrican artistic genius

was strongly asserted in the decorative

embellishment of the built environment.

Varying decorative patterns could be

found sculpted or painted on walls and

wooden doors, which ranged from 

figurative designs to complex abstract

patterns which revealed an exquisite

balance of form, color, and shading.

Painting was carried out as an extension

of architecture than an independent

medium.î(9) 

Calvin Douglas of the Brooklyn

Museum of Arts noted ìArtistic expression is not the luxury to African peoples

that is has become to the west. It is considered a natural and necessary way of

giving meaning to phases of a personís

life and enhancing his work. This tradition continues in independent African

countries today, where cultural dances

and attires are used in political festivals.

In addition, if the vitality of a culture can

be measured in terms of its ability to

produce art and enlarge its conception

of human life, it is not difficult to understand why so many black people in the

U[nited] S[tates] today look to Africa as

their cultural sourceî.(10) 

Traditional African

Forms and Decorative

Arts in Seventeenth &

Eighteenth Century

America

The contribution of African-Americans in

historic America has often gone unacknowledged. Vlach noted ì[T]he material

achievements of blacks are generally

assumed to have been negligible, if not

non-existent. Yet, now and again, diligent scholarship brings to light an AfroAmerican tradition in basketry, ironwork,

pottery and other crafts. The mortar and

pestle, dug out canoes of Chesapeake

region and banjo are African influences

in American landscape.î(11) The AfricanAmerican shotgun house has been

noted to have its roots in African architecture. New Orleans is considered the

center of shotgun housing development

in the United States. Shotgun houses

are usually one room wide and several

rooms long with a gable roof 

facing the main street. Towns of southern Haiti have houses similar to the

shotgun houses in Louisiana. The houses were also one room wide and one

story high with their gables facing the

main road. Historians have linked the

occurrence of shotgun houses in Haiti

and Louisiana to trade links and 

immigration. 

Vlach noted the ìarchitectural links

between Port-au-Prince and New

Orleans cannot be denied. All the

nonessential details that are associated

with the shotgun in Haiti are also associated with the shotgun in Louisiana,

although not always to same degree. It

is evident that the concept of Shotgun

houses was imported from Haiti.î(12)

The Haitian shotgun had its roots in

Yoruba, West Africa. Vlach noted that

ìYoruba and Yoruba related peoples

were brought to Haiti in the first days of

slavery in sufficient numbers to preserve

many traits of their African cultureî.(13)

The basic Yoruba house form consists of

a two-room linear building, the first room

is the parlor/kitchen and the second a

bedroom. Impluvium style houses, mentioned earlier, are a multiplication of this

basic unit, and the roofs were also gable

in form.

Post-Colonial African

Spaces

Since the era of independence from

colonial rule in the 1960s, there has

been a cultural revival in many African

nations. Current design practices incorporate elements from traditional Africa in

contemporary spaces. Contemporary

African architecture is deeply rooted in

Mazuriís ìtriple heritage,î which presents

African history as comprised of three

principal influences: indigenous, western, and Islamic. Western influences

began with the Greeks in B. C. 333,

continuing through Roman settlement in

B. C. 146, and Europeans in mid fourteenth century. Portuguese constructed

medieval fortress architecture, the

English built gothic forts, Victorian style

houses, and English cottages. The

Dutch erected Victorian style houses,

and Brazilian style houses were built by

free men and women, returned to Africa

after the abolition of slave trade.

International styles buildings were

designed by African who went abroad to

131

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact on Place Making:

Case Studies from African and African-American Communities
study, and expatriate architects who

practiced in many African nations, after

independence from colonial rule.(14) 

Islamic influences were more predominant in North Africa, because of its

strategic location (Egypt fell to Arabs in

A. D. 641). Trade contact with people

east of the Indian Ocean, from China

and Arabia, facilitated Islamic influences

in this area. The West African TransSaharan trade gave Islam a route to

West Africa. Structures were made out

of coral limestone, flat roofs, domes,

gables, and vaults. Many West African

mosques had West African features. The

Djenne Mosque in Mali is an example of

a mosque built out of adobe in

Sudanese style architecture. 

Today, several architects are striving

to recapture elements from traditional

African architecture lost since colonial

rule. Nigerian architect Demas Nwokoís

Catholic Church in Ibadan, Nigeria,

designed in the late seventies, is one

example. The church was designed for

the Dominican Order in the Catholic

Church, which takes a vow of simplicity.

(Figure 1) African forms are integrated in

the design, through the use of natural

materials; the concrete masonry unit

wall is left plain and unfinished, the

steeple on the roof is roughly fashioned,

and the walkway around the perimeter

of the church is finished in cobbled

stone. A pond around the perimeter of

the church relates to the Yorubaís appreciation of natural forms. The building is

modeled on the traditional West African

hut style, and the sanctuary radiates

around the altar, serving as a central

focus, similar to palaces and shrines in

traditional African societies. 

Another of Nwokoís designs the cultural center in Ibadan, Nigeria sits on a

hilly site in Ibadan, serving as a cultural

landmark.(Figure 2) Natural materials

are utilized to recall traditional architectural forms, the relationship with nature,

and the Yorubaís appreciation for natural

forms. The articulated exterior walls

appear to be telling a story similar to

forms utilized in traditional societies.

Another example is the Oduduwa

hall, at Obafemi Awolowo University, 

Ile-Ife, Nigeria.(Figure 3) This amphitheater was designed by Sharon and

Sharon, from 1969-1972. Ile-Ife is

regarded in Yoruba mythology as the

cradle of civilization. The building form

mimics the bronze heads carved in traditional African societies. Landscaping the

base plane is used to express the impor132

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape

Figure 1. Dominican Catholic Church,

Ibadan, Nigeria.

Figure 2. Cultural Center, Ibadan,

Nigeria.

Figure 3. Oduduwa Hall, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

Figure 4. Saint Mary's, Houston, Texas.

Figure 5. Saint Benedict the African,

Chicago, IL

Figure 6. Entertainment Space: Larry

Levy.

1

2

3

4

5

6
tance of nature, and the murals on the

building walls are elements from traditional Yoruba geometry, which appear to

be telling a story similar to traditional

environments. 

Twentieth Century

African American

Spaces

African-American communities are

engaged in cultural revival through

spaces, which integrate culture-based

issues. Saint Maryís Catholic Church,

Houston, Texas, designed by the

African-American firm of Archi-technics/3

approaches culture-based issues

through form, materials, and artifacts.

(Figure 4) The final design incorporates

a ìparti,î based on interlocking circles. A

gathering space with a baptismal font in

form of the Goree Island provides a transition from the outside to inside, which

the priest interprets as being synonymous with the passage from slavery to

freedom. 

Another example, Saint Benedict the

African, was built in a Chicago neighborhood of African Americans in 1990.

(Figure 5) The building committee and

architects, Belli & Belli, while concerned

about representing the communityís heritage were also concerned with creating

a place that would uplift the spirit. A

concept of interlocking circles, based

upon traditional West African compound

dwellings, was represented by multiples

of circular forms interlocking each other.

African form is again reinforced through

the materials of the sanctuary ceiling of

wood decking, semi-circular seating

plan, and trees planted below grade

along the interior walls. 

Other renowned examples are

Robert Millsí winning entry for the

Washington Monument Competition,

which is modeled after the African

Obelisk from Ethiopia (15); William

Stanleyís Ebenezer Baptist Church in

Atlanta, which uses African forms (16);

and Jack Travis in his cultural interpretation for Wesley Snipes.(17) 

Summary

The impacts of traditional African architecture on African and African-American

spaces are numerous. The most recurring elements today include building

forms based on the traditional African

hut, gathering spaces, natural forms,

courtyards, carved doors and columns,

ironmongery, interlocking forms, and

rectilinear planning. Developing an

Afrocentric architecture that recalls

African traditional architecture is not an

easy task; the process requires not only

a consideration of building form but cultural meaning, and a design process

that empowers the community through

building communities. Other prominent

concepts begin with the building forms

inspired by styles deeply rooted in

African culture and materials. Surface

articulation and space delineation are

some other design elements. The major

challenges today lie in integrating 

pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa

spaces to create a unique Afrocentric

architectural style. 

Notes

1. Macleod, ìThe Nileís Other

Kingdom, Nubia: Nubia, not Egypt, May

Have Been the First True African

Civilization,î in Time Magazine:

Commemorative Issue (1997): 102-106.

2. Nnamdi Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation (New

York: McGraw Hill, 1997).

3. Susan Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture (New York: Africana

Publishing Company, 1978).

4. Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture.

5. Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation.

6. Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture, Richard Hull, African Cities

and Towns Before the European

Conquest (New York: W. W. Norton and

Co., 1976); Herbert Porthon,

Architectural Styles (New York: Facts on

File Publication, 1982); Labelle Prussin,

Islamic Design in West Africa (Berkeley

and Los Angeles: University of California

Press, 1986); Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation.

7. Denyer, African Traditional

Architecture.

8. Bassey Andah, Nigeriaís

Indigenous Technology, (Nigeria: Ibadan

University Press, 1992).

9. Ola Balogun, ìForm and expression in African arts,î in Introduction to

African Culture: General Aspects, 69:

1979, Paris: UNESCO.

10. Douglas quote found in Louise E.

Jefferson, The Decorative Arts of Africa

(New York: Viking Press, 1970).

11. John M. Vlach, ìBy the Works of

Their Hands. Studies in Afro-American

Folk Life,î in American Material Culture

and Folklife (London: UMI Research

Press, 1976).

12. Vlach, ìBy the Works of Their

Handsî.

13. Ibid.

14. Elleh, African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation.

15. Brad Grant, ìCultural Politics and

Pedagogy,î in Voices in Aritectural

Education (New York: Bergin and

Garvey, 1991); Elleh, African Architecture Evolution and Transformation.

133

Traditional African Architecture and Its Impact on Place Making:

Case Studies from African and African-American Communities
16. J. Moline, ìMLKís Congregation

in Atlanta Gets a Striking New

Sanctuary,î in Architectural Record 

5(1999): 104.

17. N. A. Diop, ìJack Travis Cultural

Vanguard. Persistence Continuing in a

Course in the Face of Difficulties,î in

Blacklines 1(1999): 10-13.

Bibliography

Andah, Bassey. Nigeriaís Indigenous

Technology. Nigeria: Ibadan

University Press, 1992.

Antoniades, Anthony C. Poetics of

Architecture: Theory of Design. New

York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Asante, Kete, Mofeti. Afrocentricity. New

Jersey: Africa World Press, Inc.,

1996. 

Balogun, Ola. ìForm and Expression in

African Arts.î In Introduction to

African Culture: General Aspects,

69(1979). Paris: UNESCO. 

Barrie Thomas. ìThe Context of Sacred

Architecture.î In Journal on Religion,

Art & Architecture 3(1997): 9. 

Boyer, E. L. and Mitgang, L. Building

Community, A New Future for

Architecture Education and Practice.

Princeton, New Jersey: The Carnegie

Foundation for the Advancement of

Teaching, 1996.

Denyer, Susan. African Traditional

Architecture. New York: Africana

Publishing Company, 1978.

Diop, Cheika Anta Diop. The African

Origin of Civilization Myth or Reality.

New York: Lawrence Hill & Company,

1974. 

Diop, N. A. ìJack Travis Cultural

Vanguard. Persistence Continuing in

a Course in the Face of Difficulties.î

In Blacklines 1(1999): 10-13.

Elleh, Nnamdi. African Architecture

Evolution and Transformation. New

York: McGraw Hill, 1997.

Grant, Brad. ìCultural Politics and

Pedagogy.î Voices in Architectural

Education. New York: Bergin and

Garvey, 1991.

Guidoni, Enrico. Primitive Architecture,

(trans.) R. E. Wolf. New York: Harry

N. Abrams, 1978. 

Hull, Richard. African Cities and Towns

Before the European Conquest. New

York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1976.

Jefferson, Louise E. In the Decorative

Arts of Africa. New York: Viking

Press, 1970.

King, Neol. African Cosmos, An

Introduction to Religion in Africa.

California: Wadsworth Inc., 1986.

Macleod, S. ìThe Nileís Other Kingdom

Nubia: Nubia, not Egypt May Have

Been the First True African Civilization.î In Time Magazine: Commemorative Issue (1997): 102-106.

Moline, J. ìMLKíS Congregation in

Atlanta Gets a Striking New

Sanctuary.î In Architectural

Record(5)(1999): 104

Parrinder, Geoffrey. African Traditional

Religion. London: S.P.C.K., 1962.

Porthon, Herbert. Architectural Styles.

New York: Facts on File Publication,

1982. 

Prussin, Labelle. Islamic Design in West

Africa. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 1986.

Rapport, Amos. ìVernacular Architecture

and the Cultural Determinants of

Form.î In Buildings and Society, 281-

305. London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1980.

Rodney, W. How Europe

Underdeveloped Africa. Washington

D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.

Vlach, John M. ìBy the Works of Their

Hands. Studies in Afro-American

Folklife.î In American Material

Culture and Folklife. London: UMI

Research Press, 1976.

Source Notes about Photos

Figure 1. Dominican Catholic Church.

Source: Photo by author.

Figure 2. Cultural Center. Source: Photo

by author.

Figure 3. Oduduwa Hall. Source: Photo

by author.

Figure 4. Saint Mary's. Source: St.

Maryís Building Committee.

Figure 5. Saint Benedict the African.

Source: St. Benedictís Building

Committee.

Figure 6. Entertainment Space. Source:

Studio project by Larry Levy.

134

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
I

n this paper, I pose two questions

concerning African American cultural

landscapes. The first is one of origin.

Does the use of ornamental plants

around dwellings have African

antecedents? I have found none,

although the use of flowers and other

ornamental plants by African

Americans in the United States and in

the Caribbean has evolved very distinctive characteristics. The second question concerns the survival of African

farming practices. Why are African

methods of farming practiced in some

areas of the Americas but not others?

In the Cayman Islands for instance, I

found slash and burn agriculture that

appeared to be little changed from traditional farming practices in West

Africa.(1)

First, a few caveats. I interpret ìAmerican

Landscapeî as landscapes of the Americas, North,

Central, South, and the Caribbean. Therefore I

include as African Americans, people of African

descent in all the Americas as well as the United

States. Second, most of my work has been in rural

areas. African American society until quite recently

had been predominately rural throughout the

Americas. My work in the United States has

focused on the rural piedmont in Georgia, Alabama,

and the low country of South Carolina. Thirdly, my

first hand knowledge of the Caribbean is limited to

the Cayman Islands and the Lesser Antilles. My

knowledge of agricultural practices and gardening

on other Caribbean Islands is mostly derived from

Lydia Pulsipherís work.(2) Fourthly, my knowledge

of African cultures is rather superficial.

A striking feature of the yards of people of

African descent in the Americas is that they are

often highly decorated with both plants and other

ornaments. When working on my book, African

American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South, I

searched of many of the earliest photographic collections from West Africa in the Commonwealth

Office Library in London. But I found no examples

of the use of plants for ornament. Nor did I find reference to plants being grown for ornament in the

descriptions of early travelers in West Africa. 

Shade trees were frequent, but I concluded that

the use of plants for decoration was not common in

Africa and, in the Americas, had resulted from

acculturation during colonialization and slavery. Yet

I felt that I might be ìdenying rather than investigatingî Africanisms as Melville Herskovits suggested

researchers had been inclined to do in the past.

However, the publication in 1993, of Jack Goodyís

The Culture of Flowers, reassured me that I was

not alone in my conclusion. The title of the first

chapter of Goodyís book poses the question, ìNo

flowers in Africa?î He described his observations in

West Africa thus:

I had attended many ceremonies and had seen

food, the raw and the cooked, offered at innumerable shrinesóbut never flowersÖIslam certainly has its culture of flowers, at least in Asia,

the Mediterranean, and to some extent in East

Africa.(3)

However, although there may have been no ornamental plants grown in African yards, the spaces

around dwellings were kept bare by hoeing and

sweeping them regularly, and this practice was

adopted in the Americas. The ìswept yardî became

a feature that was once ubiquitous at all levels of

society in the Southern United States, and in the

islands of the Caribbean. The sweeping was done

Session Four:

Legacies of

Urban Realms

and Rural

Communities

Gardening, Yard Decoration, and 

Agriculture Among Peoples of

African Descent in the Rural South 

and in the Cayman Islands

Richard Westmacott

135
not only to keep the yard tidy, but the

pattern and texture of the sandy surface

became very important. 

In the Cayman Islands, the ìsand

yardî has become highly stylized with

meticulously raked sand between the

plants. The routine involved also

became a ritual on the Islands. On a

moonlit night shortly before Christmas,

the whole family would go down to the

beach where they would collect sand in

large baskets that were normally used

for carrying produce (locally known as

ìbackingî) from provision grounds to the

home.(4) The sand would be piled in

the yard, spread, and then carefully

raked smooth. Alan Ebanks described it

to me.

It was a family occasion to get

together and back sand. The moonlight made it easy to seeÖ. If youíve

ever seen clean, fresh sand spread

in the moonlight, you realize how

beautiful it is. Itís very much prettier

than in the day and in the sun. 

Yards are swept with brooms that are

made of an appropriate local plant material. In the Cayman Islands, branches of

a shrub, known locally as rosemary

(Croton linearis), are bound together to

make yard brooms. House brooms are

made of thatch palm (Coccothrinax proctorii). In the southern Piedmont region of

the United States, dogwood (Cornus

florida) is almost always used for yard

brooms, but gallberry (Ilex coriacea), or

dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) is

more commonly used in coastal areas.

In the southern United States, memories

of sweeping the yard are still vivid in the

minds of many older people, both black

and white.

Although the plants are different,

their arrangement in yards in the South

was strikingly similar to the arrangement

of plants in the yards in the Cayman

Islands. Plants are spaced individually

and are appreciated as individuals. Very

rarely are they grouped or massed and

are generally are not used for purposes

such as ground cover, as an edging, or

to provide a screen. They are not used

as ìstructuralî elements in the composition, to enclose a lawn, to provide a

background, or to screen the foundations of a building. Probably for this reason, evergreen shrubs, grown mostly for

their foliage, are not common in African

American yards in the South. Nor is it

usual to group several of the same plant

together. Rather, they are set apart from

adjacent plants so that they can be

clearly distinguished.

Color is the most important criterion

for choosing plants. In the tropics, there

are many highly colored foliage plants,

the croton (Codiaeum variegatum), in all

its variations, being the most popular.

Among the flowers, old favorites such as

hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis and H.

schizopetalus), oleander (Nerium oleander), and bougainvillea (Bougainvillea

spectabilis) are all spectacularly colorful.

In more temperate areas however, there

are few hardy colorful foliage plants, and

flowers predominate. But I discovered

no recurring patterns in the use of colors. I found no cases of deliberately

arranging colors to clash, as has been

noted by Robert Farris Thompson in

African American quilt design. He wrote

ìBlack quilters usually enliven cloth with

what might be called ëattack colorationí

(i.e. even outpouring of high decibel,

often clashing hues).î(5) 

In my research in the southern states

of the United States, I found little evidence of agricultural practices that could

be attributed to Africa. Littlefield has

argued convincingly that plantation owners on the South Carolina coast sought

out slaves with expertise in growing rice,

but the multicropping systems typical of

much of equatorial West Africa appears

to have had no equivalents in the United

States. Recently, I was studying subsistence agricultural practices and gardening traditions on the Cayman Islands.(6)

I was astonished to find not only complex multicropping, but also slash and

burn land rotation typical of West Africa.

The Cayman Islands were not inhabited

when the British first colonized the

islands and it is doubtful if Amerindian

practices had any influence on agriculture on the islands. 

The rotation takes place, in the

instance described here, over a sevenyear period.(7) The land is first cleared

and burned. The slash is piled more

thickly on tree stumps to increase the

effectiveness of the burn. The soil is

then cultivated with a hoe or a machete.

Several crops were planted in a typically

complex arrangement, with pumpkins,

sweet potatoes, yams, cassava, plantains, papaya, and even mango trees,

although from appearances they were

probably survivors of an earlier rotation.

After about five years, productivity will

have fallen, and an area is fenced in

preparation for conversion to a grass

pasture, known locally as a grass

ìpiece.î Pasturing livestock on the plot

can restore the fertility in a much shorter

period than a forest rotation. Animals

were not used in slash and burn rotations in equatorial Africa and, in the

Cayman Islands, probably resulted from

European influence.

Multi-cropping has distinct advantages in wet tropical climates for subsistence farming. There are no seasons,

and crops can be harvested as-andwhen needed. Consequently, land is not

exposed to erosion and leaching for

much of the year, as it is in seasonal

seed agriculture. Harvesting as-needed

also eliminates the problem of storage.

The complex of plant types, annual and

perennial herbaceous plants, root crops,

vines, shrubs, and trees gives excellent

soil protection and uses sunlight most

136

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
efficiently. Multicropping is not suited to

producing large surpluses of produce for

sale, an important goal of plantation

agriculture. But, as subsistence was the

goal of most Caymanians (cash crops

were palm rope and turtles), there was

no great pressure for change. However,

in the United States, perennial multicropping is impractical due to the seasonal

climate. Many slaves were not permitted

to have their own gardens, and for those

that were, there was strong pressure to

adopt the practices of the plantation.

The soil on the Caymans is so rocky

that row cropping and mechanical cultivation are impossible. As a result, a

plantation agricultural economy never

developed as it did on most other

Caribbean islands. Slaves were brought,

mostly from Jamaica, to cut the

mahogany, which covered much of the

interior of the islands. But after all the

mahogany had been cut, most slaves

were returned to Jamaica. Very few

Africans were brought to the Caymans

as field hands. They were brought as

house slaves, to work on the wharves,

and in shipbuilding. These slaves would

have acquired a much wider range of

skills than field hands. 

When slavery on the Caymans was

ended in 1835, there were considerable

areas in the interior of the islands that

were not used or occupied. Although

most of the land had actually been

granted to individuals in large tracts

between 1734 and 1742, the valuable

timber has been cut. The land was of little value to its owners, and it was not

difficult for ex-slaves to find land to cultivate and occupy without being evicted.

Thus, a measure of independence and

even land proprietorship came much

earlier to the Cayman Islanders than to

Africans on other Caribbean islands or

in the Southern United States. The catalog of the Jamaican Exhibition of 1891

noted that the Caymans were remarkable for peasant ownership of the

land.(8)

Most Cayman Islanders used to live

close to the sea, just behind the dunes,

and their provision grounds were in the

interior of the islands. The house was a

thatched, frame structure of ironwood

(Chionanthus caymanensis), protected

by dense thickets of sea grape

(Coccoloba uvifera), sea almond

(Terminalia catappa), Australian pine

(Casuarina equisetifolia), and coconuts

(Cocos nucifera). In sheltered areas,

adjacent to the house, islanders grew a

wide range of different fruits including

avocados (Persea americana), akee

(Blighia sapida), breadfruit (Artocarpus

atilis), various citrus fruits (Citrus spp.),

soursop (Annona muricata), sweetsop

(Annona squamosa), star fruit or carambola (Averrhoa carambola), and naseberry (Manilkara zapota). Some fruits

such as plantains (Musa paradisiaca)

and papaya (Carica papaya) were too

sensitive to the salt spray and tended to

be grown on the provision grounds well

away from the shore. These provision

grounds were sometimes quite distant

from the dwelling and often a hut would

be built to allow the owner to stay

overnight. 

Pulsipher noted that on the island of

Montserrat, slaves cultivated provision

grounds far from the plantations, but this

had to be done surreptitiously for fear of

the plantation owner finding out. In contrast, Cayman Islanders had ready

access to land both for agriculture and

fruit growing. They were not subject to

pressures to adopt methods of row-crop

agriculture, and traditional multicropping

slash and burn techniques were more

adaptable to local soil conditions. 

Notes

1. In this paper, I use the term ìgardenî to refer only to the place where

vegetables are grown. The ìyardî

includes other places around the

dwelling including those used for pleasure and ornament.

2. Lydia M. Pulsipher, ìThey Have

Saturdays and Sundays to Feed

Themselves: Slave Gardens in the

Caribbean,î Knoxville: University of

Tennessee, 1898; reprint, in Expedition

2(2)(1990): 24-33. 

3. Jack Goody, The Culture of

Flowers (Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1993), 11.

4. Provision grounds are plots of

land, usually in the interior of the islands

and often distant from the home where

produce is grown.

5. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of

the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art

and Philosophy (New York: Random

House, 1983), 13.

6. Richard Westmacott, Gardens,

Yards, Pieces, and Grounds: The

Domestic Places and Spaces of

Caymanians (George Town: National

Museum of the Cayman Islands, 1999).

7. The area Hutland, Grand Cayman,

was named for the huts that were built

on the provision grounds that were often

so distant from homes that the owners

built places to stay overnight.

8. Neville Williams, A History of the

Cayman Islands (Grand Cayman: The

Government of the Cayman Islands,

1970), 65.

137

Gardening, Yard Decoration, and Agriculture Among Peoples of African

Descent in the Rural South and in the Cayman Islands
Bibliography

Goody, Jack. The Culture of Flowers.

Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1993. 

Pulsipher, Lydia M. ìThey Have

Saturdays and Sundays to Feed

Themselves: Slave Gardens in the

Caribbean.î Knoxville: University of

Tennessee, 1898. Reprint, in

Expedition 2(2)(1990): 24-33. 

Pulsipher, Lydia M. ìThe Landscapes

and Ideational Roles of Caribbean

Slave Gardens.î In The Archeology

of Garden and Field, Naomi F. Miller

and Katheryn L. Gleason, eds.

Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Williams, Neville. A History of the

Cayman Islands. Grand Cayman:

The Government of the Cayman

Islands, 1970. 

Westmacott, Richard. African American

Gardens and Yards in the Rural

South. Knoxville: University of

Tennessee Press, 1992. 

Westmacott, Richard. Gardens, Yards,

Pieces, and Grounds: The Domestic

Places and Spaces of the Cayman

Islands. George Town, Grand

Cayman: Cayman Islands National

Museum, 1999. 

138

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
When premier Puerto Rican

poet PalÈs Matos wrote the

well-known lines of his 

Black Majesty poem: 

Por la encendida calle antillana 

va Tembandumba de la QuimbambaÖ

he was trying to capture the Tembandumbaís impact as she walked down

the Antillean street. His artistry with

words allows us to picture her elusive

progress and the lasting impact her

beauty and African heritage had on the

population. PalÈsí poem, like this paper,

deals with intangibles. One of Puerto

Ricoís most powerful cultural components is embodied by our African heritage. However, just as Tembandumba

lives only by means of a poem, the subject of this paperóAfrican impact on

the islandís domestic architectureó

exists only in the interpretation of some

rapidly disappearing ruins and a few

old photographs.(1) 

This work is about things that are no more. It deals

with absence and tries to dislodge two of Westerners most cherished attitudes. First, the idea

thatñ-to use Pevsner's grand metaphoróonly

cathedrals and not bicycle sheds deserve academic

scrutiny and, second, that cultural significance is

exclusively embodied in physically identifiable

architectural artifacts. Many, many years ago, when

I first tried to understand why historic preservation

(or architectural history for that matter) seldom

dealt with aspects present in herstory (as opposed

to history), I realized that Western thought is, at

best, seriously biased. Take as an example

Caribbean domestic architecture, its historical and

cultural development. Seldom, if ever, is the topic

academically explored; seldom, if ever, is it analyzed as a significant part of our cultural heritage. 

While a few Caribbean dwellings, almost always

examples of the big house type, are presented as

transplanted examples of grand European architecture, the topic is rarely analyzed in holistic fashion.

As a result, society fails to understand how, for

example, the slave hut bred as many, if not more,

important and relevant domestic types as the big

house. More significantly, we fail to consider the

role women, Puerto Ricans of African decent, and

other subordinate groups played in the creation of

our architectural heritage. African influence in

Puerto Rican architecture is non-subject in part

because the following questions have not been

addressed. How can a subordinate group contribute to a cultureís architectural development?

Even if possible, are huts and similar humble structures culturally significant? Most importantly and

assuming there was an influence, where are the

artifacts that prove it? For many decades, only

silence answered these questions. Unfortunately,

the void in knowledge was construed as nonparticipation by the African group. This work tries to

shed light upon these topics. 

The Caribbean Hut 

When Columbus first came into contact with native

Puerto Rican or TaÌno architecture he wrote: ìThere

[he is referring to Puerto Rico] I saw very good

houses that would compare favorably with those in

Valencia.î It soon became obvious that he was

fudging the truth: the Caribbean Natives did not

construct following European ideas. In a fascinating

and ironic historic twist, the nativeís paradigmatic

buildingóthe bohÌoówas similar to the Vitruvian

hut: a makeshift affair, open to nature although 

usually round. As expected, the bohÌo had much in

Session Four:

Legacies of

Urban Realms

and Rural

Communities

Por La Encendida Calle Antillana:

African Impact on Puerto Rican 

Domestic Architecture

Arleen PabÛn

139
common with many African types,

enshrined in the memories of those that

suffered the slave Diaspora.

When the tragic trade first started,

slaves in the island were not provided

with or allowed to have their own individual homes. Usually, they lived in 

barracas or barracones where they

experienced a total and degrading lack

of privacy. However, as time went on,

some were allowed to have their own

huts. In spite of their humble ethos, this

buildingñ-a condensation of native and

African ideasóis iconic of a momentous

cultural transformation. The hut provided

something the barracones did not: your

very own dwelling artifact, a place where

you could plant your very own roots. It is

known that Caribbean islanders followed

(they still do) specific rites as they built

these houses, known as huts, ranchitos

or bohÌos. From Guadeloupeís ceremony of marking the cutting down of the

master post of the hut (2) and the old

Puerto Rican phrase: plantar holcones,(3) to the Cuban religious ceremony that took place at the construction

site, they all showcase the importance

associated to this rite of passage (having your own dwelling). There is dignity

associated to being able to construct

your very own hut for, even the simplest

of them, represented the transcription of

many hopes and dreams. It is fascinating that so much immutable feeling

could go into such an architecturally

mutable form.

The African descendants transformed that native typology and made

possible a new organization, both spatial

and urban. Instead of the round floor

plan common to the natives, the square

or rectangle was preferred, as in many

African locales. The makeshift, nomadic

native ethos was also transformed: the

bohÌo acquired more substance both in

terms of its materials and structural

components. Probably, the most 

interesting transformation was that it

became a closed and enclosed space.

In most cases it sported no windows and

only a small door to the interior.

This lack of windows needs to be

explored, for one would think that opening interiors unto the outdoors is a must

in a tropical milieu. However, for the

enslaved population (and you were

enslaved whether you were a slave or

freed slave) the bright outdoor space

was not their space, but rather a cruel

stage, a vivid reminder of the unfortunate situation they experienced. A dark,

closed interior created a sense of intimacy that protectedñ-to paraphrased

Bachelardóthe userís immense intimacy from prying eyes. It is recorded that

all over the Caribbean, in the few cases

where windows do appear, blind shutters

closed them, as per African tradition and

in marked contrast to the fancy European shutters. When inside, you wanted

to shut out the exterior, not to bring it in.

This characteristic became an intrinsic

part of the Puerto Rican house. To this

day, most windows, when shut, allow for

no light to come in.

In most cases, the interior space

served as living-cum-sleeping place

(called a pieza or aposento) that sported

a dirt floor. The dirt floor had a unique

symbolism and, in keeping with its significance, had its own special name: the

soberao, a word of unknown origin.

Some years ago, when visiting one of

these abodes, the lady of the house

kept excusing herself regarding her

untidy soberao.(4) As I knew, she insisted, her husband was a carpenter and

there was no way she could keep it

clean all the time. At first, I was nonplussed with her extreme preoccupation.

I now understand that the soberao

proves you have a place of your own

(even if you an arrimao and the land

belongs to another person), that you

possess your very own dwelling locus.

For the old lady, her soberao was evidence not only that she had a house but

also that she was the lady of that house.

I have read that in the United States,

slaves at times insisted on this type of

floor finish as an act of appropriation.(5)

The feel and texture of the dirt against

bare feet, the smell of packed earth, and

the darkness enveloping these sensations was probably a reminder of their

long-gone African past.

In the island, cooking was considered a communal affair and, once again,

the African influence transformed the

native experience: the TaÌno batey

became a common area shared by the

bohÌos that help organize it. Contrary to

European plaza standards for such

areas, this iconic space did not follow

any particular geometric layout. It was

an informal place to work, chat, cook,

play, and, on occasions, dance. It is

interesting to note that balconies, the

paradigmatic European architectural

domestic artifact, are not present in the

African-Puerto Rican hut. In the island,

Europeans used balconies as visual

instruments of order. While in the countryside, they acted as tribunes from

where the activities of the farm could be

inspected in the city, they maintained the

feminine purdah system, being the only

outside place a woman could venture on

her own. In both cases, they represented something foreign, seldom experienced by the group under study: a place

to spend time at ease. The communal

batey was the equivalent of the

European balcony: it was both signifier

and a signified.

The lack of interest in formal

arrangement evidenced in the batey is

parallel to the way the group related to

the city. Even in the tightly restricted San

Juan urban area, the free African-Puerto

Rican population chose to express

themselves in a different manner. It is

interesting to note that the barrio where

140

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
most lived was distinguished by its own,

if unfortunate, name. If we analyze an

1880 copy of a 1771 plan of the area,

we detect that the individual houses in

the barrio do not follow the rigid urban

grid layout that defines the rest of the

urban enclave. As the orthogonal

scheme reaches the area and as can be

seen even today, the houses deconstruct the grid. In fact, some houses in

the area still sport a small garden in the

front, something unheard of in the rest of

the city.

A bohÌo was more than just a shelter;

it was a womb-like milieu that provided

comfort by means of privacy. The type

experimented with minimalist architectural ideas and its unique personality was

the result of importing the African architectural experience into the domain of

the native house. At a later stage, other

African elements were introduced, such

as the emphasis on the long axis and

special decorations on the main faÁade.

When these traditions fused with other

ideas (such as the Anglo-American

grille), the unique Puerto Rican house

came to be. Most examples of the hut

type are long gone but their architectural

influence is still with us in every solidly

closed window and in every housing

subdivision street used as a batey by

children and grownups alike. 

On Things Unseen 

Not all things are visible; there are

things unseen regarding African impact

to architectural culture. Because they

are absent, we lack traditional physical

evidence. Contemporary Deconstructivist ideas point out that society is guided by phonocentrism. This attitude is

extremely partial to physical things. As a

result, we believe that physicality represents truth and reality. As we grapple

with this idea we construct binaries,

such as: male/female, Black/White,

being/not being, presence/absence,

among others. As Derrida has masterfully explained, these binary oppositions

favor the ìgroundlyî term, the one that

supposedly articulates the fundamentals.

Hence, woman is everything a man 

is not.

Unfortunately, phonocentrism also

affects historic preservation stances. For

example, we usually ascribe cultural significance to things we can see or, at the

most intangible, to places directly related

to events we define as significant; in

other words, sites that physically represent the historic happenings. If we do

some soul searching, we realize that we

are really in the business of preserving

tangibles. Yet tangibles are a trap that

causes us to believe that only ìreal

thingsî matter. This is particularly the

case regarding architecture. We all fall

into this trap. I for one, on many occasions, define architecture to my students

using Heideggerís dwelling concept that,

naturally, requires presence. However, is

cultural significance exclusively tied to

the presence of an object or a sign?

Unfortunately, most of the time, our

answer to this question is yes. That is

the reason why the Underground

Railroad does not qualify as a cultural

resource: we do not have a string of

ìthingsî we can see that relate to it.

Curiously, because of our architectural

phonocentrism, even when we can see,

we might not understand. Ruins such as

these have a paradigmatic presence in

most Puerto Rican haciendas. While

their name: barracas, barracones or

beneficiados should alert us, most specialists miss the point regarding the cultural significance of these structures.

These places are more than just ruins of

storage areas. They are also domestic

artifacts, for slaves lived here. The

absence of traditional domestic architectural personality clouds our understanding. More importantly, understood as

mere storage areas and not as slavesí

dwellings, there seems to be no urgent

need to preserve the half dozen that still

remain.

We interpret presence as substance

and existence. To further complicate the

issue, presence sets the following

claims: first, that truth lies behind all

appearances; second, that architectural

artifacts represent the spirit of an age;

and third, that individual artistic emotion

is palpably present in each constructed

building. Interpreted in this fashion,

these architectural artifacts are understood as symbols of commercials ventures, as examples of specific construction techniquesÖas everything excepted

as the homes of slaves.

Architecture is a physical artifact, like

speech, yet it is also a symbol of a mental experience. Architectural ìrealityî is

constructed of more than just stones

and bricks. There exist supplemental

components, like the genus loci, to mention just one. As preservationists working

with the past for the future, we have a

cultural exigency: we must question traditional thinking, dislodge its certitudes,

and disrupt its quest for an undivided

point of view. How can we do this? Letís

accept Derridaís recommendation and

privilege feelings over physicality, not

being over being, absence over presence. If not we might be in danger of forgetting the importance some artifacts

have in themselves and, most importantly, one of our cultureís most fascinating

and elusive histories: the relationship

between the object we call a house and

Puerto Ricans of African descent. 

Conclusion 

Buildings are a necessity of the metaphysics of presence. Hence their historical significance for they carry full presence. However, our human cultural 

heritage is formed not only of thoughts

141

Por La Encendida Calle Antillana:

African Impact on Puerto Rican Domestic Architecture
expressed physically but also of emotions. Regarding African influence and

Puerto Rican architecture I believe in

privileging absence over presence.

Some structures are more than just 

barracones sitting in planted fields.

Whenever I see places like this, I

think of battlefields. We preserve battlefields because for several hours something considered important happened

there. These ruins are landmarks just

like battlefields. In these places, in every

cotton, coffee or sugar row, a battle was

fought every hour of every day, every

week, every year, for several centuries.

The battle was for something sacred:

individual dignity and freedom. They are

truly battlefields of honor where both

blood and sweat were spent. Because of

this, they are a paradigmatic place of

societyís cultural memory. 

Por la encendida calle antillana

va Tembandumba de la Quimbamba

Flor de TortÛla, rosa de Uganda,

por ti crepitan bombas y b·mbulas; 

por ti en calendas desenfrenadas

quema la Antilla su sangre Ò·Òiga. 

HaitÌ te ofrece sus calabazas; 

fogoses rones te da Jamaica; 

Cuba te dice: dale mulata!

y Puerto Rico: melao, melamba!

Majestad Negra

-Luis PalÈs Matos

Notes

1. I would like to thank Professors

LaVerne Wells-Bowie and Andrew Chin,

as well as Ms. Toni Lee and Mr. Brian

Joyner for their help and interest in this

paper.

2. The post is called Pied-bois díail.

Jack Berthelot and Martine GaumÈ, Kaz

AntiyÈ Jan Moun RÈtÈ (Paris: Editions

CaribÈennes, 1982), 85.

3. The phrase literally translates into

ìplantingî the wooden structural posts.

4. My friend Arch Gloria M. Ortiz,

State Architect for the Puerto Rico State

Historic Preservation Office, once told

me of a similar experience when visiting

the house of an artisan or santero.

5. John Michael Vlach, Back of the

Big House: The Architecture of

Plantation Slavery (Chapel Hill: The

University of North Carolina Press,

1993), 165.

Bibliography

Selected Sources

Abbad y Lasierra, IÒigo Fray. Historia

Geogr·fica, Civil y Natural de la Isla

de San Juan de Puerto Rico. RÌo

Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial

Universitaria, 1959. 

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of

Space The Classic Look at How We

Experience Intimate Places. Boston:

Beacon Press, 1994. 

Berthelot, Jack and GaumÈ, Martine.

Kaz AntiyÈ Jan Moun RÈtÈ. Paris:

Editions CaribÈennes, 1982. 

Bryan, William S. Our Islands and Their

People, As Seen with Camera and

Pencil, 2 vols. St. Louis, Missouri:

Thompson Publishing Company,

1899. 

Crespo, Rafael A and PabÛn Charneco,

Arleen. Arquitectura, Historia y

Patrimonio. San Juan de Puerto

Rico: State Historic Preservation

Office, 1995. 

De CÛrdova, Pedro Tom·s. Memorias

Geogr·ficas, HistÛricas, EconÛmicas

y EstadÌsticas de la Isla de Puerto

Rico. San Juan de Puerto Rico:

Editorial CoquÌ, 1968. 

de Hostos, Adolfo. Historia de San Juan

Ciudad Murada. San Juan de Puerto

Rico: Instituto de Cultura

PuertorriqueÒa, 1979. 

DÌaz Soler, Luis M. Historia de la esclavitud negra en Puerto Rico. San Juan

de Puerto Rico: Editorial de la

Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2000.

Dinwiddie, William. Puerto Rico Its

Conditions and Possibilities. New

York: Harper & Brothers Publishers,

1899. 

Dripps, R. D. The First House Myth,

Paradigm, and the Task of

Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The

MIT Press, 1999. 

Fern·ndez MÈndez, Eugenio. CrÛnicas

de Puerto Rico Desde la Conquista

Hasta Nuestros DÌas (1493-1955).

RÌo Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial

Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1976. 

óóó. The Book of Porto Rico. San

Juan de Puerto Rico: El Libro Azul

Publishing, 1923. 

Lang, Jon. Creating Architectural

History: The Role of Behavioral

Sciences in Environmental Design.

New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold

Company, 1987. 

Leach, Neil (ed). Rethinking Architecture

A Reader in Cultural Theory. New

York: Routledge, 1999. 

Ledr ̇, AndrÈ Pierre. Viaje a la Isla de

Puerto Rico en El AÒo 1797. San

Juan de Puerto Rico: Imprenta Militar

de J. Gonz·lez, 1863. 

Lowenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade

and the Spoils of History. Penguin

Books, Ltd., 1977.

óóó. The Past is a Foreign Country.

Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the

University of Cambridge, 1985. 

142

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Morales CarriÛn, Arturo. Puerto Rico, 

A Political and Cultural History. New

York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc,

1983. 

PabÛn Charneco, Arleen. Una Promesa

Inconclusa: Apuntes ArquitectÛnicos

y Culturales en torno al Hospital de

Nuestra SeÒora de la ConcepciÛn 

el Grande. San Juan de Puerto Rico:

State Historic Preservation Office,

1999. 

óóó. ìThe Conquest of Suburbia:

Interpreting 20th Century Puerto

Rican Architecture TransCulturization Patterns.î Tallahassee,

FL: MSS, 2000. 

óóó. ìUrbis-suburbia Displacement:

Deconstruction of a Traditional Binary

Relationship.î Tallahassee, Florida:

MSS, 2000. 

óóó. ìA cada familia una casaÖThe

Puerto Rican UrbanizaciÛn

Experience An Interpretative Analysis

of Fort Buchananís Urbanizaciones.î

San Juan de Puerto Rico: MSS,

1999. 

PabÛn Charneco, Arleen and Eduardo A.

Regis. Gu·nica: El Origen de su

Memoria. San Juan de Puerto Rico:

State Historic Preservation Office,

1996. 

PicÛ, Fernando. Historia General de

Puerto Rico. Rep ̇blica Dominicana:

Ediciones Hurac·n, Inc, 1986. 

Puerto Rico Reconstruction

Administration. Puerto Rico A Guide

to the Island of Boriquen. New York:

The University Society, Inc, 1940. 

QuiÒones, JosÈ Marcial. Un poco de historia colonial (Incluye de 1850-1890).

Barcelona: I.G. Pareja, 1978. 

Robinson, Albert Gardner. The Puerto

Rico of Today Pen Pictures of the

People and the Country. New York:

Charles Scribnerís Sons, 1899. 

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Escapism. Baltimore, MD:

The John Hopkins University Press,

1998.

Ubedo y Delgado, Manuel. Isla de

Puerto Rico Estudio HistÛrico,

Geogr·fico y EstadÌstico de la

Misma. San Juan de Puerto Rico,

1878.

Vlach, John Michael. Back of the Big

House The Architecture of Plantation

Slavery. Chapel Hill: The University

of North Carolina Press, 1993. 

143

Por La Encendida Calle Antillana:

African Impact on Puerto Rican Domestic Architecture
144

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
New Yorkís African Burial Ground Complex 

in Diasporic Perspective

Warren R. Perry, et al

Session Five:

AFRICAN BURIAL GROUND PANEL:

DISCOVERY, PRESERVATION,

AND MEMORIALIZATION

145
146

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
The purpose of this paper is to

describe this mortuary complex

and to place it in a Diasporic

perspective. This means integrating

findings from the skeletal research,

demography, ethnographic, historical,

and archaeological research to pose

questions about the eighteenth century

African community in New York.

The African Burial Ground needs to be placed in

both global and local contexts. Globally, the trade in

African captives involves a variety of African and

European people of different social, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and areas, no doubt with diverse

notions of socio-cultural roles and proper burial

practices. Locally, New York City was always a

polyglot town, with the Dutch, English, Huguenot,

Native, and African peoples most prominent, but

including numerous other minorities as well. Thus,

the mortuary complex at the African Burial Ground

is the product of mortuary rituals and burial ceremonies that had symbolic and social significance to

their African funeral traditions as well as traditions

of other cultural groups in contact with these

African communities. 

We assume that the material culture found in

colonial contexts acquire meaning only in a particular socio-cultural contexts. Indeed, most categories

of material culture involving a similar range of

objects, were used by Europeans, Africans, and

Native Americans, though often in quite different

ways. We refer to this condition as multivalency.

Multivalency exists when an object or set of objects

takes on very different meanings for different social

groups, with dominating groups often totally ignorant of the meaning system of subordinated groups.

The multivalent function of these objects is suggested by their archaeological context. The daunting task of analyzing and interpreting the 

archaeological materials from the African Burial

Ground is to capture these meanings and their

social relations, and to discover alternative understandings and practices associated with them.

Historic Background 

of the African Burial Ground

We suspect that the cemetery was in use during at

least part of the seventeenth century, although the

first document mentioning the African Burial Ground

dates to 1712. This early reference is a letter written by Chaplain John Sharpe in which he complains about ìthe Heathenish rites performed at the

grave.î Later, Europeans living on the northern

boundaries of the city complained about the loud

nighttime ceremonial drumming and chanting that

was taking place at the cemetery. Thus, it seems

that New Yorkís African Burial Ground community

did to some degree control their own rituals and

symbolism around their mortuary activities.

The Location of the

Cemetery

Few Africans in colonial New York lived in houses

of their own. Almost all enslaved Africans lived within the domicile of Europeans. Thus, Caribbean type

courtyard burials or African-type house floor burials

were impossible. The spatial and social placement

of the cemetery on the landscape of colonial New

York afforded a relatively private setting for the performance of mortuary rites, and sacred space outside the town. This is consistent with mortuary

practices in some societies in western and central

Africa.

In early New York, community-formation among

Africans from diverse backgrounds required getting

together away from their households, in a separate

place from Europeans. The occasion of the funeral

and the location of the cemetery, therefore, would

have been particularly important in providing space

Session Five:

African Burial

Ground Panel

New York's African Burial Ground Mortuary

Complex in Diasporic Perspective

Warren R. Perry, Jean Howson, and Ruth Mathis

147
for creating, expressing, and reproducing a creolized African identity, which

emerged within a context of colonial

captivity.

The Collect Pond area, located north

of the cityís main residential area

throughout the seventeenth and much of

the eighteenth centuries, was no doubt

familiar to Africans who labored in the

noxious industries there and on farms in

the northern part of the island.

Furthermore, the cemetery was located

near the farms granted to Africans by

the Dutch West India Company during

the 1640s. 

Mortuary Patterns at

the African Burial

Ground

The program of spatial analysis of the

African Burial Ground is concerned with

establishing ìarchaeological context.î

Key to understanding the spatial relationships at the Burial Ground is our

stratigraphic analysis. We are trying to

establish temporal sequences of burials

by looking at their relationships in vertical and horizontal space, to see what

kinds of differences correspond to earlier

and later burials. These differences may

be reflected in changes in health patterns, quality of life, places of origin,

demography, or mortuary practices.

One of the most important analyses

that we have begun is of coffin style.

94% of the peopled buried in the excavated portion of the African Burial

Ground were in coffins, a total of 401,

while 26 individuals were interred without coffins. With this large a number of

coffin burials, it will be possible to develop a typology. Variability in coffins

should be related to several factors:

changes in coffin style and construction

techniques over time, differences among

colonial New Yorkís artisans (whether

African or European) who built the

coffins, differences in cost, and differences in beliefs about what was proper

for burial.

We will be inventorying the coffin

hardware, and at the same time we will

continue using the field records and

drawings to determine shapes and

sizes, and sometimes construction

details. The development of a useful

typology is still ahead, but promises to

be an important means for both describing the Burial Ground and interpreting its

variability.

So far we have distinguished three

basic coffin shapes: hexagonal, tapered,

and rectangular. There are 34% of the

total burial population whose coffin

shapes remain indeterminate. Of the

254 coffins with discernable shapes,

10% are tapered, 13% are rectangular,

and 77% are hexagonal. 

Although individuals of all ages and

both sexes are distributed throughout

the Burial Ground, those individuals not

interred in coffins appear to be gender

and age specific and not randomly distributed. For instance, children and

infants appear to, rarely if ever, be

buried under adults. Because stratigraphic analysis is very problematic, we

must emphasize that our discussions

are very preliminary as to numbers and

these numbers may change as research

continues.

The scanty documentation indicates

that various kinds of coffin decoration

were available. Though we know the

range of prices that Africans would have

had to pay to have coffins built at one

shop, African artisans may have priced

their wares differently for specific

kingroups, fraternal organization members or secret burial societies. It is likely

that some Africans would have donated

their labor in preparing coffins for family,

community members, or the family

would have collected from mourners.

Coffin hardware is the most common

artifact category found at the Burial

Ground. Decorative coffin hardware was

rare for any ethnic group before 1830 in

North America and represented ìhigh

statusî mortuary adornment. At the

African Burial Ground there are a total of

seven burials with decorative coffin

hardware.

One such burial with tacks on the

inside of the coffin is Burial 176 a 22-25

year-old man buried in a tapered coffin

with six secure distinct inverted bail coffin handles (1720-50) that could have

been used to carry the coffin. Each handle had a wrought iron escutcheon plate

screwed to the coffin and had unique

chevrons or backed arrow motifs. Similar

motifs have been found on coffin hardware from eighteenth century English

coffins. There were two on each sideboard, and one each at the headboard

and footboard. Research into the hardware used in the manufacture and decoration of coffins is in the early stages of

analysis.

Burial in coffins, then, may represent

an Akan practice which became widespread in colonial New Yorkís broader

African community; or a belief that those

buried here were ultimately going to be

taken home and therefore were not

placed directly in the ground; or active

resistance on the part of New Yorkís

enslaved Africans, who insisted their

enslavers pay for (but not attend or participate in) decent funerals.

Most interments without coffins (23)

are males and are found north of a

series of postholes aligned along an

east-west axis in the central part of the

excavated portion of the burial ground.

These coffin-less burials appear to be

oriented to one another in a series of

three to four north-south columns.

Of the African Burial Ground burials

without coffins, it appears that variations

in the grave cut exist. Five male burials

148

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
are cut with an oblong boundary. The

remaining burials with no coffins have

grave cuts that are rectangular or

square in shape. This may be the result

of excavation methods, but we cannot

rule out the possibility of these being

intentional grave cuts made during 

interment.

Multiple Burials

The analysis of sequential relationships

within and among groups of graves is

underway. Although most of the grave

shafts contained a single coffin or individual, we do have a number of cases of

multiple burials. By multiple burials we

mean more than one individual buried in

the same grave cut, or as in the case of

some women and children, in the same

coffin. 

Unlike the coffin-less burials none of

these burials, however, is separated

from the general burial population. Most

are women interred with men or either

children. However, we have one case of

a child wearing a necklace of beads, is

interred within the same grave shaft as a

30 year-old man but in separate coffins. 

This may be indicative of a fatherchild, or uncle, nephew, bond, a social

relationship often ignored by European

investigators, but culturally significant

among Africans. Too often, we as western scholars ignore the relationships of

African and African-American men to

children, and often impose matrifocal

models of kinship onto data pertaining to

African Americans. Here, it is important

to bear in mind that gender is as much

about men as it is about women.

In African Diasporic cemeteries the

variation in burial orientation seems to

be minimal. At the African Burial Ground

there appears to have been a standard

form of internment. All burials are

extended in the supine (face up) position

and most, 98%, are oriented east-west

with heads lying west and feet east.

There are also a number of individuals

whose heads are facing east as well as

a small number of individuals whose

bodies are oriented north south. The

great majority have the orientation, 

with possible seasonal shifting with the 

sunset.

Although supine, head lying west and

feet facing east, orientation is typical of

Christian burials and traditional African

American burials these positions and 

orientations are also common in African

mortuary practices. These patterns may

also reflect Muslim burials. 

A few grave markers were recorded

at the site, but only in the far western

area, where excavation revealed the former ground surface. Since that surface

was not encountered over most of the

excavated burial ground, we do not

know what sorts of markers or grave

goods were placed on most graves. A

total of seven grave markers were

recovered at the African Burial Ground.

Four are stone grave markers (like that

shown in the slide) that seem to be

made of local Manhattan schist. 

There are others like these arches of

river cobbles in which individual graves

were outlined. This was very rare at the

site, where in most cases the graves

overlapped each other. 

There is associated with one 35

year-old man, a cedar grave board/

marker with five nails attaching it to the

coffin. Wooden grave or head boards

are found on eighteenth through twentieth century African descendent and Euro

American cemeteries throughout the

United States.

Placement of items at grave sites or

on coffins at the time of interment is at

least suggested by the presence of 

pottery on at least one coffin and shells

on some others.

Funerary Practices

Preparation of the dead for interment

would not have involved outsiders (the

ìlayers out of the deadî as in the nineteenth century). Perhaps family or

households members? Perhaps the

work of women in particular. Children

were wrapped in winding sheets or

dressed in shrouds, fastened with pins. 

Many adults were also wrapped or

shrouded, but some, men in particular,

were dressed in clothing. 

Buttons, including matched and

unmatched sets, were found on a few

individuals and are apparently associated exclusively with adult males. Buttons,

like beads, can be strung as pendants,

or used in charms, and we need to consider all possibilities. A total of six metal

buttons were recovered from Burial Six,

an adult male, two of which have naval

motifs. Without precise information on

the location of the buttons we cannot

say for certain that the buttons represented a jacket. Thus, these buttons

were most likely salvaged from reused

clothing and do not appear to represent

an individual buried in uniform. In addition to rigorously examining every object

associated with each burial we also

have to examine the exact placement of

buttons within the coffin. For instance,

some of the buttons recovered appear to

have been used as amulets in necklaces

or in strings of beads. 

Shroud pins do not need to be identified; they need to be recorded as to their

exact location if at all possible, since this

can tell us about which individuals were

wrapped, and how. Different ways of

treating the dead, including details about

how they wrapped or shrouded, may

reflect ethnic or religious differences (for

instance, culture-specific views about

the destination of spirits of children who

149

New York's African Burial Ground Mortuary Complex 

in Diasporic Perspective
die), or such differences may reflect

change over time, or other factors such

as relative poverty and the like.

So far, there are a total of 271 individuals, representing of the total population, that have been examined for evidence of shroud pins and/or textiles. Of

these individuals believed to be wearing

shrouds 70 representing are children or

infants, 22 representing are women and

19 are men. There are another ten persons representing .04% whose sex are

indeterminate. Six individuals, of the

sampled burial population have shroud

pins and/or shroud cloth and buttons. Of

these individuals, only one is a woman,

while five are men. This suggests that at

least some people (mostly men) were

buried with both shrouds and clothing.

Conclusions

The African Burial Ground mortuary

complex argues for a distinct suite of

practices that can be separated from

European norms. We are looking for

patterns of behavior that, on the one

hand, can be differentiated from

European behavior and suggest a distinct conception of the cosmos. On the

other hand, to point to aspects of these

patterns that suggest African influenceó

or alternatively the genesis of new and

distinct African American worldviews. At

a rudimentary level, there are simple

comparisons between specific artifacts,

traits, or characteristics found in New

York and in west and central Africa.

While such continuities are important to

demonstrate, the real significance lies in

the occurrence of suites of characteristics, beginning with the distinctive 

features of the Burial Ground as a whole

and with the combination of features

found in individual burials, such as

Burial 340.

The exciting thing is that at the

African Burial Ground we are starting to

put together such a mosaic of features.

At least in some instances, there are

suites of artifacts and attributesóa view

that appears different from that represented in European burials. This is far

more exciting than whether or not a particular pipe, bead, or practice originated

in Africa. It also avoids these tangential

debates as to whether or not this or that

feature is ìAfricanî. Research will continue to explore the various west and central African mortuary practices and funeral customs as well as Native American,

and European mortuary practices in

order to explain the mortuary complex

witnessed at the African Burial Ground.

150

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape
Abimbola O. Asojo is an associate professor in

the College of Architecture at the University of

Oklahoma. She earned a M.S. in Architecture:

Computing and Design, from University of East

London, and a M.S. in Architecture from Obafemi

Awolowo University, Nigeria. Professor Asojo has

presented and written articles on architecture and

cultural heritage, including ìA Design Algorithm

After Le Corbusier,î for the Association of

Collegiate Schools of Architecture Technology conference, and ìA Spiritual Celebration of Cultural

Heritage,î (with Katharine Leigh) in Traditional

Dwellings and Settlements Review.

Audrey Brown, an Ethnographer for the

Archaeology & Ethnography Program, National

Park Service, earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from

American University, and a Ph.D. in Education in

Nursing, from Columbia University. Among her publications, Dr. Brown has contributed a chapter,

ìWomen & Ritual Authority in Afro-American Baptist

churches of Florida,î to How Sweet the Sound: The

Spirit of African American History (New York:

Harcourt Brace Publishers, 2000).

Kenneth L. Brown is a professor of Anthropology

at the University of Houston. He received his Ph.D.

and Masterís degree in Anthropology, from

Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Brown has published extensively on African American archaeological and anthropological matters, including

ìStructural Continuity in an African-American Slave

and Tenant Community,î in Historical Archaeology,

and ìHistorical Archaeology and the Public: Some

Thoughts on the Archaeologistís Responsibility,î in

The Proceedings of the American Genealogical

Society.

Joe Lewis Caldwell is an associate professor and

Department Chair of History at the University of

New Orleans. He received his Masterís in History

from Atlanta University and his Ph.D. from Tulane

University. Dr. Caldwellís work has focused on

African Americans in Louisiana, presenting ìThe

Development of Black Secondary Education in

Louisiana Beyond the Corporate Limits of New

Orleans, 1896-1954,î at the Louisiana Historical

Association Meeting in Alexandria; and contributing

to A Historical Dictionary of Civil Rights on the

United States, Charles D. Lowery and John F.

Marszlek, eds. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,

1992).

Judith Carney is a professor in the Department of

Geography at UCLA. She completed her Masterís

and Ph.D. studies at the University of California,

Berkeley. Professor Carneyís publications include

several articles and a forthcoming book, Black

Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the

Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2001).

Candice Goucher is the coordinator of Liberal Arts,

as well as a professor of History, at Washington

State University, Vancouver. She has a Ph.D. in

African History from UCLA, and a Masterís degree

in African Art History and Archaeology from

Columbia University. Dr. Goucherís publications

include In the Balance: A Thematic Global History

(with L. Walton and C. LeGuin), New York: McGraw

Hill, 1997; and ìGender and Technology in African

Ironmaking,î in The Culture of African Iron

Production (Gainesville: University of Florida Press,

1996).

Presenters

Places of 

Cultural Memory:

African Reflections

on the American

Landscape

Biographies

151
Barbara J. Heath serves as the Director

of Archaeology for Thomas Jeffersonís

Poplar Forest in Forest, Virginia. She

has a Ph.D. from the University of

Pennsylvania in American Civilization

and a B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish

from the College of William and Mary.

Dr. Heath is author of Hidden Lives: The

Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas

Jeffersonís Poplar Forest (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999).

Ralph B. Johnson, professor of

Architecture and Director of the Center

for the Conservation of Architectural and

Cultural Heritage, has been affiliated

with Florida Atlantic University since

1980, with appointments at the

University of Miami and the University of

Florida. He has Masterís degrees in

Architecture and City Planning from

Yale, and serves on the Fort Lauderdale

Historic Preservation Board.

coleman a. jordan is an assistant professor of Architecture at the University of

Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has a

Masterís degree in Architecture from

Clemson University, and has studied

and worked extensively, both domestically and abroad, most notably in

Ghana. His publications include, ìFree

Your Mind: Constructing the process of

Reconciling Irreconcilable Differencesî in

Legacy + Aspirations: Considering the

Future of Architectural Education,

Proceedings of the 87th Annual Meeting

and Technology Conference of the

ACSA. 

Annette I. Kashif is an adjunct professor of African Literature at Florida

Southern College. She earned her Ph.D.

in Linguistics from Howard University,

M.A. in Reading from Atlanta University,

and B. A. in Language Arts from the

University of Florida. She has presented

numerous scholarly papers, including

ìClassical African Language Structures

Throughout Africa and the Diaspora,î

ìFemale Register in African Cinema,î

and ìA Socio-onomastic Study of ByName Africanisms in Three African

American In-Groups.î

Arleen PabÛn splits her time as a professor of Architecture at Florida A&M

University and the University of Puerto

Rico. Dr. PabÛn has a Ph. D. from

Northwestern University and a J. D. from

the University of Puerto Rico. She has

worked extensively in both the public

and private sectors, and served as State

Historical Preservation Officer of Puerto

Rico.

Warren Perry is an associate professor

of Archaeology at Central Connecticut

State University and serves as Associate

Director for Archaeology, the African

Burial Ground Project.

Richard Westmacott has been a professor in the School of Environmental

Design at the University of Georgia

since 1977. He has a Masterís in

Landscape Architecture from University

of Pennsylvania, and has published

extensively on gardens and rural landscapes. His writings include ìThe

Garden of Welcome: The African

American Influence,î in The Southern

Heirloom Garden (Taylor Publishing,

Co., 1995).

152

Places of Cultural Memory:

African Reflections on the American Landscape