Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-01-19
THENEGROES OF THE WOODS.
The Life Led by the Africans of Dutch Guiana
How They Obtained Their Freedom
Strange People

Strange People.
Some native Africans were taken to
Panama a while ago to join the thous-
ands of laborers on the canal. These ne
groes, says The New York Sun, became
involved early last month in row with
other canal diggers, and, after fight
with knives and stones, many of the black
men ran off into the woods. The Pana-
ma newspapers say that they threw away
their clothing, abandoned themselves
com pletely to Darbarism and Iawlessness,
and at last accounts the government had
sent force to repress this outbreak of
African savagery.
These negroes evidently prefer the
rude enjoyments of Africa and the lives
of comparative idleness they led there to
handling picks and shovels in the great
ditch. They will hardly be permitted TO
found a savage community on the 18TH
mus, but if they we're removed about
eighteen hundred miles down the Allan
tic coast they would find congenial socie-
ty in the forests of Dutch Guiana, where
thousands of their own race have repro
duced in the western hemisphere the Gus
toms and characteristics of savage
Africa.
On any good map of South America
may be found in Dutch Guiana the names
of a number of savage tribes inhabiting
the wooded and billy uplands of the in
terror. Among them the Auken, Sara
macca, Bekoe, and Bonis are full blooded
negroes, many of whose ancestors were
brought to America nearly two centuries
ago in slave-ships to labor on the coast
plantations of their Dutch masters
Terribly mattreated in the early days of
the colony, many of them took refuge in
the almost inaccessible sOl1tudes of the
forests. Now and then they found means
to tempt their friends still in bondage to
join them in the mountain valleys. The
bondsmen played sorry joke on their
masters in 1712, when Admiral Cassard
attacked the Dutch settlement and hun
dreds of slaves were hurried into the in
terror for conceaiment. Peace soon
came, but there were few negroes to re-
turn to the coast, for they preferred wild
life with their friends near the head
waters of the rivers of Guiana to drudg-
ing their lives away on coffee and tobac
co plantations. So the numbers of self
released Africans gradually increased,
and there their decendents have lived
ever since, as distinct from the Indians
around them as from the whites of the
coast. They have, apparently not grown
in numbers for many years, but there now
are about eight thousand of them. and they
are known as the negroes of the woods.
Their story is perhaps unique in the
history of human migration. 1t is story
of wild savages trans ported across wide
sea to new world where they regained
control of their persons and activities
and reproduced amid new surroundings
| the habitations and customs of their ma
tive country. Dim ira dition alone has
| family preserved the memory of their
| fatherland, but none the less have they
| turned bit Of tropical America into a
semblance of the negro's native home.
Jet black in color, prognathous and
| thick Tipped, they have preserved the pure
negro type, have shown little aptitude
| for improvement, and are very low III
the social scale. Like many an African
missionary, who has fruitlessly toiied his
| life away, the Moravian brethren have la
! bored for years among the negroes of the
woods with little apparent result. In all
essentials they live to-day like those ne
groes on the west coast of Africa, who
have had considerable contact with the
white race.
Their rectangular huts of wood and
thatch, built along the water courses, are
almost exact counterparts of those that
are found on the lower Congo and among
some tribes of the Ogowe river. Like
the great Pahouin tribe of the French
Congo, they divide their huts by thin par
titi0ns into two apartments, one OF
which they use for sleeping and the other
for culinary purposes. Like many Afri-
can tribes, they twist their wool into
many little braids, wear arm and leg or
naments of copper, brass and iron, and
a6orn their necks with strings of beads
| or the teeth of wild animals. Like the
equatorial African, they tattoo their bod
les without the adjunct Of color, which Il
not uncommon among the Indians but il
practiced in Africa by only few tribes
| like the Pahouin. In their villages they
are generally naked, and they wear cot
ton coverings only when they visit the
white settlements, where their scant ct