Items

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  Manioc (Cassava) Processing, Brazil, 1840s

  Men and women slaves pressing, grating, and washing the manioc; a white overseer with a whip looks on. Kidder (p. 243) describes the scene as follows: The process of preparation . . . was first to boil [the roots], then remove the rind, after which the pieces were held by the hand in contact with a circular grater turned by water power. The pulverized material was then placed in sacks, several of which, thus filled, were constantly subject to the action of a screw-press for the expulsion of the poisonous liquid. The masses, thus solidified by pressure, were beaten fine in mortars. The substance was then transferred to open ovens, or concave plates, heated beneath, where it was constantly and rapidly stirred until quite dry. The ... farinha [flour] is found upon every Brazilian table, and forms a great variety of healthy and palatable dishes.
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  Exterior of Kitchen, Sierra Leone , 1856

  Kitchen is made of wattle-and-daub with a thatched roof; grain being pounded with a wooden pestle and mortar. The scene is near Freetown.See also illustration, Interior of Kitchen, Sierra Leone , image reference ILN435c.
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  Untitled Image (West African Life and Slave Trading with Europeans)

  This image shows woman pounding corn with mortar and pestle in front of a thatched house (coscou). On the right, a European was buying two African men with leg irons (commerce des esclaves). In the background, European ships and a canoe with paddlers standing up (comme les Negres rament de bout). The 1699 Amsterdam edition contains a similar, albeit derivative copy, of this image (facing p. 16).
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  Untitled Image (Woman Pounding Cassava)

  This watercolour shows the back of a woman who is wearing sandals and pounding cassava/manioc in a wooden mortar with a pestle in a yard before a thatched-roof house. William Berryman was an English artist who lived in Jamaica for eight years between 1808 and 1816. He produced about 300 pencil drawings and watercolour of people, landscape, settlements, and flora in the island's southern parishes and the general region surrounding Kingston. Several other Berryman works are reproduced in T. Barringer, G. Forrester, B. Martinez-Ruiz, et al., Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and his Worlds (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art in association with Yale University Press, 2007).
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  Intérieur de cuisine

  "Kitchen Interior" (caption translation). This engraving shows a man pounding a mortar, while a woman sits in front of a fire. Benoit described how "the kitchen is located about 15 or 20 steps behind the master's house, and is furnished with all the necessary utensils as well as an oven to bake bread" (p. 30). 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.
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  Untitled Image (Ceremonial Procession)

  This small procession in the Kwanza North region shows several people carrying various material objects, including a bow and arrow, a small chest containing sacred objects, and a mortar and pestle. There is also a musician playing the marimba/balafon. Antonio Cavazzi (b. 1621) was an Italian priest who from 1654 to 1667 joined the Capuchin mission in what is today northern Angola; after a visit to Europe, he returned to the Kingdom of Kongo, where he remained from 1672 to 1677. He died in Genoa in 1678. Cavazzi made this and other watercolors, the originals of which are in his manuscript, held in a private collection in Modena, Italy (see also Cavazzi for other images on this website). Bassani reproduces the full set of 33 watercolors of which only 8 are reproduced on this website. Cavazzi's drawings must be among the earliest known eyewitness sketches of African life by a European; they can be contrasted to, for example, the fanciful depictions found in Dapper or by the De Bry brothers (see, Dapper and De Bry on this website. Thanks to Joseph Miller for his assistance in interpreting this image.
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  Músgu Chief

  This village scene shows a Musgu chief in regalia with his horse in the foreground. Other villagers cook and pound grain with mortar and pestle in the background. Musgu are located to the south of Lake Chad in the Central Savanna. Barth described his arrival there in late 1851 (p. 264). Heinrich Barth (1821–1865) was a German explorer and scholar of North Africa. He spoke Arabic, Fulani, Hausa and Kanuri, meaning he carefully documented the details of the cultures he visited. He traveled through the Western and Central Savana region between 1850 and 1855, which he published in a three-volume account in both English and German. In 1853, Barth and Ali Babba bin Bello, the Sultan of Sokoto, negotiated an extensive trade agreement.
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  Mount Pattèh from Bàngadeh

  This engraving shows conical thatched houses, canoes on a river, woman with mortar and pestle and other household utensils. This scene takes place at a riverside settlement at the Niger and Benue confluence in the Bight of Biafra hinterland. On a contemporary map accompanying this illustration, "Mount Bàngadeh," likely in the Gbedege forest reserve, was plotted on the northeast banks of the confluence, while Mount Patti is on the western side of the Niger River. William Allen (1792–1864) was an English naval officer and explorer. He took part in the Niger expedition to map the course of the river.
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  Native Manufacturers at Iddah

  This engraving of Idah, the capital of the Igala kingdom, in the Bight of Biafra hinterland shows houses, a mortar and pestle for pounding grain, iron workers with bellows and pits for dying cotton cloth. Allen wrote "nearly all the dwellings of Iddah are circular. . . and are built of clay and small stones intermixed. The roof is conical, made of palm-leaves. . . The overhanging edge of the roof protects from sun and rain. . . The cloth is kept saturated in the pit for a fortnight, and sometimes three weeks, and certainly the colours are most beautiful. . . the swords, spear-heads, arrows, are well tempered and not badly finished. The bellows are merely two wooden cylinders, each with a piston, and a piece of loose hide securely fastened around the handle and the top of the tube; by alternately depressing one and raising the other, a continuous current of air is conveyed through earthen pipes leading the fire" ( p. 318 and 322-23). William Allen (1792–1864) was an English naval officer and explorer. Thomas Richard Heywood Thomson (1813–1876) was an English explorer and naturalist. They took part in the Niger expedition to map the course of the river.
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  Slave Yard at Goree, Senegal, 1805

  Captioned, View of a slave yard at Gorèe, this illustration shows several men, women, and children; a man on the left appears to be having lice picked out of his hair, two women are shown with infants on their backs (one is pounding meal, using a wooden mortar and pestle). The riches of the inhabitants consists of slaves, the Spilsbury writes, each house having a slave yard, with huts for them; among the female slaves are many elegant figures . . . The slaves of both sexes are naked, except the piece of cloth which passes round their loins. The females do all the drudgery , such as beating corn, etc. and their children at their backs: this operation is performed in a wooden mortar, with a large pestle; and to show their agility, the women clap their hands while it flies upwards (p. 12). The author, a surgeon aboard the Favourite, made the various sketches from which the accompanying engravings have been produced . . . the drawings and portraits were made on the spot (pp. iii-iv).
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  Cemetery, Senegambia, 1780s

  Caption, Tombeaux des Sèreres (Serer graves). Villeneuve writes that the Serer build a small house or hut whose interior resembles their own house; a bed is placed within it upon which the corpse is laid. The top of the burial hut is above ground level and is covered with earth to form a mound. They take care, he adds, to put at the foot of the deceased a pipe, some tobacco, a pottery vessel filled with water, and a half of a calabash containing couscous (pp. 126-127. He does not mention the mortar and pestles and bows and arrows visible in the illustration, but traditionally among the Serer these objects marked the graves of women and men, respectively (D. Gamble, The Wolof of Senegambia [London, 1957], p. 102). Villeneuve lived in the Senegal region for about two years in the mid-to-late 1780s. The engravings in his book, he writes, were made from drawings that were mostly done on the spot during his African residence (vol. 1, pp. v-vi). The same illustration appears in color in the English translation of Villeneuve; see Frederic Shoberl (ed.), Africa; containing a description of the manners and customs, with some historical particulars of the Moors of the Zahara . . . (London, 1821), vol. 3, facing p. 88.
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  Pounding Meal with Mortar and Pestle, Senegal, 1805

  Two women, one wearing a long skirt, the other a short one (who also carries an infant on her back) are using long wooden pestles to pound meal in a characteristically West African fashion; conical thatched roofed houses in the background. Captioned, Slaves beating cuscus, the author, a surgeon aboard the Favourite, made this and other sketches from which the accompanying engravings have been produced . . . the drawings and portraits were made on the spot (pp. iii-iv).
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  Indigo Production, French West Indies, 1667

  Titled Indigoterie, this picture shows various phases of the cultivation and processing of indigo as well as illustrating other plants and trees. Captions underneath are linked to numbers in the illustration, and these are sometimes cross-referenced to pages where more details are given. Equipment and procedures used in indigo are shown (6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14). Also depicted are plants (1, 4, 12 [indigo]) and trees (2, 5); the dye plant annatto (rocou) is being crushed in a mortar (3). Enslaved males and females are depicted, as well as a European overseer. Other versions of this illustration can be found in: Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l'Amerique (Paris, 1722, vol. 1, between pp. 168 and 169; also Paris, 1742, vol.1, following p. 268 [see image JCB_35892-10 on this website], and Pierre Pomet, A complete history of drugs (London, 1748, 4th ed.); see image Pomet-92 on this website.
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  Represents Our next door neighbor, A little black girl spinning wool

  The below caption likely reflects the lyrics of a song, "O carry me back, O carry me back, to old Virginia Shore, home Spun, and humani [hominy] block, & corn, this very valuable grain in Virginia and much is raised." On the left, a female was spinning a wheel. A sheep was in the lower left hand corner, and in the center, a man with a large yellow (straw?) hat holding a long-handled hoe and a banner on which is written "Protect and Encourage domestic & native industry." The man on right is pounding corn in a mortar, the hominy block, a common method of pounding grains in West Africa.