“First History: Negro Christian” (caption translation). Poma de Ayala described in the image “Devout black Christians from the stock of unacculturated black slaves from Africa ('Guinea') say the rosary before an image of the Virgin Mary.” Felipe Huaman Poma de Ayala (1535–c. 1616), also known as Guamán Poma or Wamán Poma, was a Quechua nobleman from southern Peru known for chronicling the ill treatment of indigenous groups in the Andes after the Spanish conquest. He wrote this over 1,200-page manuscript between 1600 and 1615. It included 398 full-page drawings - seven of which depict enslaved Africans. The original manuscript is in the Danish Royal Library, Copenhagen and a complete digital facsimile, which includes the drawings, is available The Guaman Poma website. The title translations we use are taken from the website. The drawing is in Chapter 25, image 275, of the original manuscript. See also Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524-1650 (Stanford University Press, 1974), passim, for the historical context of this drawing.

This photograph shows a buried skeleton extended on its back in situ with copper bracelets on each arm and a pipe bowl on the pelvic area. Handler suspects this individual was possibly an Obeah medicine man and likely from the Voltaic region. For full view of skeleton see image Newton001. For more detail on the items found on this person see images Newton002-Newton007.

This engraving depicts post-mortem divination practices with the remains of the deceased being used to determine the causes of death, among other questions. In this case, the entire body was used for divination. Phillippo provides a detailed but very ethnocentric description of the West African custom of carrying the corpse. James Mursell Phillippo (1798-1879) was an English Baptist missionary in Jamaica who campaigned for the abolition of slavery. He lived in Jamaica from 1823 until his death in Spanish Town, with periods lobbying in England for funds to support his abolitionist work in the Caribbean. He led the founding of several Free Villages, having gained funds to grant freedmen and their families plots of land for farming independent of planter control. He also wrote and published three books about Jamaica.

"View of the Orange Cemetery in Paramaribo, Outside the City" (caption translation). The image shows a priest, the gravedigger, enslaved men and women in mourning. Barely visible in the background is a funeral procession with participants dressed in white. Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782-1854) was a Belgian artist, who visited the Dutch colony of Suriname on his own initiative for several months in 1831. He stayed in Paramaribo, but visited plantations, maroon communities and indigenous villages inland.

"Funeral Convoy of a Quality Person, Preceded and Followed by Negro Slaves" (caption translation). The funeral procession for an important/wealthy European involved slaves, who hold umbrellas over the chief mourners. "When a rich person dies," Benoit writes, "his coffin is carried by a dozen blacks. Family and friends follow, dressed in black. Their heads are covered with a sort of hat that entirely hides their face; a black veil is attached to the coffin and the slaves who walk behind each one carry a large green umbrella over the heads of the persons who accompany the coffin" (p. 23). Benoit (1782-1854), a Belgian artist, visited Suriname around 1831 and apparently stayed for several months. The 100 lithographs in his book (hand colored in the John Carter Brown copy), accompanied by textual descriptions of varying detail, are derived from drawings he made during his visit, which included time in Paramaribo, the capital, as well as trips into the interior visiting Maroons and Amerindians. Forty of his lithographs, with our translations from the French text, are shown on this website.

"The Mama-Snekie, or Water-Mama, Doing His Conjurations" (caption translation). This lithograph shows a female diviner kneeling before a bowl holding a stick in the air, while a man stands and watches the ceremony. According to Benoit, "using her spiritual powers, a healer is helping to cure a child who is not present. After engaging in certain ritualistic behaviors, she gives the mother, who stands before her, a herbal decoction, made in the pot in front of her; the mother is told to drink the decoction several times and then is given some herbs which she is to give her child. These healers, who are regarded as oracles by the Negroes, are usually older black women who are called Mama Snekie, Mother of Serpents, or Water Mama." Benoit observed one of these women at work, and describes the scene he witnessed, including the furnishings of her house. Although his description is relatively brief and sparse in ethnographic detail, it nonetheless represents a rather unique first-hand account of an African-type spiritual practitioner. Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782-1854) was a Belgian artist, who visited the Dutch colony of Suriname on his own initiative for several months in 1831. He stayed in Paramaribo, but visited plantations, maroon communities and indigenous villages inland.

This engraving depicts African-Americans sitting, kneeling, and standing, several with their arms raised, as they listen to a preacher. According to the accompanying text, "this scene is sketched from life, and represents the interior of an African church. . . during a prayer meeting." (p. 208). However, the exact same image captioned "Meeting in the African Church, Cincinnati, Ohio" appeared six years earlier in The Illustrated News from New York, which copied the image from a German publication. See image LOC-A on this website. Frederick Gleason (1817-1896) was a writer and publisher. He co-founded an illustrated periodical called Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion in Boston, Massachusetts in 1851. The publication name was changed to Ballou's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, after the other co-founder, managing editor, writer and publisher, Maturin Murray Ballou (1820–1895), bought out the interest of Gleason in 1855.

This photograph shows a wire bracelet found on a buried skeleton. See image Newton001.

This photograph shows a clay pipe found on the pelvic area of a skeleton. This pipe likely originated from the Voltaic region and probably came to Barbados via the Atlantic slave trade. See image Newton001.

This photograph shows various pieces of a necklace found on a skeleton. This unique archaeological find was a necklace composed of dog's teeth, money cowry shells, fish vertebrae, glass beads; and a large reddish-orange carnelian bead in the center. When excavated the exact pattern of the components of this necklace could be not be ascertained but all items were found on or near the area of the burial's neck. See images Newton001 and Newton005.

This photograph shows a bracelet which was found on the wrists of a buried skeleton. See image Newton001.

This photograph shows a buried skeleton extended on its back in situ with copper bracelets on each arm and a pipe bowl on the pelvic area. Handler suspects this individual was possibly an Obeah medicine man and likely from the Voltaic region. For a close up of the torso see image Newton001a. For more detail on the items found on this person see images Newton002-Newton007.

This photograph shows a coiled bracelet found on the wrists of buried skeleton in Barbados. Handler suspects this individual was possibly an Obeah medicine man and likely from the Voltaic region. See image Newton001.

"View of the establishment of missions in St. John in the island of Antigua in the West Indies" (caption translation). This image shows a Moravian mission station with buildings in the background and people in the foreground. One of a set of four separately published engravings, which were likely compiled by John Henry Lewis Stobwasser, probably the son of Johann Heinrich Stobwasser (1740-1829), who was a Moravian missionary in Antigua from 1812 until 1822.

Engraving titled,

Caption,

Captioned Negro cemetery at Wilmington, numerous headstones are visible. Although several decades after emancipation this cemetery may resemble some during the late ante-bellum period.

A funeral procession, men and women lined up in pairs following the horse/mule-drawn hearse. Although several decades after emanciption, this scene may have bearing on the late ante-bellum period.

Caption, Friedensthal on St. Croix on a Prayer Day. Woodcut engraving of the Moravian Mission Station at Friedensthal, St. Croix. The church is to the left, the living quarters of the missionaries in the background; a Negro hut is shown on the right. Black congregants are seen entering the mission for a religious service. Oldendorp was in the West Indies in 1767-1769. For a modern edition that is copiously indexed, edited by J. J. Bossard and translated into English by A. R. Highfield and V. Barac, see C.G.A. Oldendorp's History of the mission of the evangelical brethren on the Caribbean islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John (Karoma Publishers, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1987).

This photograph shows a carnelian bead, which is an unusual archaeological find from the Caribbean. It was probably manufactured in Cambay, India, and came to Barbados through the Atlantic slave trade via Africa. This bead was associated with other artifacts that at one time had formed a necklace found on a skeleton. See images Newton001 and Newton004.

Caption, Negro superstition, the Doo di Doo bush, or which is the thief. Bridgens describes this scene, which passed under the eye of the author, as a kind of ordeal . . . among the Negroes, for extorting a confession of guilt from persons suspected of theft or other crime .. . . The injured party communicates his suspicions to the Dadie (as the reputed sorcerer is called), who appoints a time for the trial. A refusal of the suspected person to accept the challenge is considered an admission of guilt . . . . The Dadie twists a band out of the branches of a common shrub, at intervals sprinkling salt on it, and accompanying the operation with some incantation . . . . thus formed, it is passed round the neck of the supposed culprit, who is then called upon to clear himself by oath of the imputed crime. The Negroes . . . . believe that if they perjure themselves .. . the band would remain immovably twisted round the neck, and, by gradually tightening itself, ring from the party an acknowledgment of his guilt . . . . the sketch here given was taken from a scene which passed under the eye of the author (Bridgens). The ordeal described by Bridgens is clearly based on African oath-taking practices, and the so-called Dadie was an obeah man. Throughout the British Caribbean during the period of slavery (and afterward), obeah practitioners were sought to help discover lost or stolen objects and identify the persons responsible for alleged theft (see Jerome Handler and Kenneth Bilby, Enacting Power, the criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean [university of the West Indies Press, 2012]; the image is discussed on pp. 34-36). The Library of Congress has a black/white copy as well as a colored lithograph, shown here; in other copies of the Bridgens book, the image is in black/white. A sculptor, furniture designer and architect, Richard Bridgens was born in England in 1785, but in 1826 he moved to Trinidad where his wife had inherited a sugar plantation, St. Clair. Although he occasionally returned to England, he ultimately lived in Trinidad for seven years and died in Port of Spain in 1846. Bridgens' book contains 27 plates, thirteen of which are shown on this website. The plates were based on drawings made from life and were done between 1825, when Bridgens arrived in Trinidad, and 1836, when his book was published. Although his work is undated, the title page of a copy held by the Beinecke Rare Book Room at Yale University has a front cover with a publication date of 1836, the date usually assigned to this work by major libraries whose copies lack a title page. Bridgens' racist perspectives on enslaved Africans and his defense of slavery are discussed in T. Barringer, G. Forrester, and B. Martinez-Ruiz, Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds (Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 460-461. Bridgensí life is discussed extensively along with discussion of his drawings and presentation of many details on slave life in Trinidad in Judy Raymond, The Colour of Shadows: Images of Caribbean Slavery (Coconut Beach, Florida: Caribbean Studies Press, 2016). Raymondís book, which is an essential source for any study of Bridgens, also includes a number of unpublished sketches of Trinidadian slave life. See also Brian Austen, Richard Hicks Bridgens (Oxford Art Online/Grove Art Online).

Moravian (United Brethren) congregation of blacks with white ministers, shows congregation witnessing the ceremony in which newly baptized slaves prostrated themselves and were then embraced by their previously converted fellows. Caption (translated): Excorcism-Baptism of the Negroes. A) the pastor leading the ceremony; B) the deacons who assist him; C) three [male] baptismal candidates; D) four female baptismal candidates; E) the Negro congregation. The geographical area is not identified in the illustration, but it was St. Thomas (see Jon Sensbach, Rebeccaís Revival [Harvard Univ. Press, 2005], p. 97).

Caption, an old-time midnight slave funeral, casket being carried to gravesite; scene lit by torches. In those portions of the South where the plantations were largest, and the slaves most numerous, they were very fond of burying their dead at night, and as near midnight as possible (Pierson,p. 284).

A slave preaching to a congregation of slaves and the plantation owner and his family. The preacher was a house slave who could read but not write. This illustration is from a sketch made in a rude chapel erected for the slaves on this cotton plantation, near Port Royal, South Carolina. The Methodist persuasion is the one which finds most favour among the slaves in the Southern as well as among the free Negroes in the Northern States ( p. 574).

Published earlier in Edward King, The Great South . . . profusely illustrated from original sketches by J. Wells Champney (Hartford, Conn., 1875), p. 520. King (pp. 521-522) identifies this scene as taking place on a Sunday in a log cabin in Clarksville, Georgia.