On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas Author(s): John K.

Thornton Reviewed work(s): Source: The Americas, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Jan., 1988), pp. 261-278 Published by: Academy of American Franciscan History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1006906 . Accessed: 05/02/2012 18:28
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Academy of American Franciscan History is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Americas.

http://www.jstor.org

ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO:

AFRICAN CHRISTIANITY
IN AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS

to Christianity the New Worldwhich have mixed, to one degree or in another, African religious forms with Christianity.'The process has been studied in greatest depth by sociologists, such as Roger Bastide, anthropologistslike Melville Herskovitts2or art historianssuch as Robert Farris Thompson.3 Although the most devoted of the scholars concerned with this have not been historians,and much of the basic researchhas been in currentpractices ratherthan historic origins of African and Afro-New World religions, all scholars share some vision of the historicalprocess. In this vision African and Europeanreligions and world views meshed in a past which is far beyond the memory of modern informantsand probably dates back to the early days of Afro-European contacts. have assumed that Generally, most approachesto culturalamalgamation the process took place in the Americas, with slaves arrivingdirectly from Africa, carrying with them memories of their own religion, meeting a soon ciety which insisted with greateror less determination converting them to Christianity. Ultimately, however, the emergence of Afro-Christian practices representedeither the failure of the Europeansto Christianizethe slaves fully, or alternativelyas a defiantresistanceon the partof the slaves to forced conversion to the religion of their masters and oppressors. Thus the degree of the survival of African beliefs and the nature of modern Christianityamong Americanpeople of African descent is seen as a direct result of the effectiveness of the attemptto altertheirbasic religious beliefs. The shortage of interested priests, inability to control the inner lives of
1 Perhaps the most subtle of these approachesis Roger Bastide, in many works, but especially in African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration Civilizations (trans. Helen of Sebba, Baltimore and London, 1978), originally publishedin Frenchin 1960. 2 See, among others, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York, 1941). 3 Thompson also has a large bibliography,see Flash of the Spirit:Africanand Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York, 1983).

Scholars

have long taken interest in the conversion of African slaves

261

262

OF ON THETRAIL VOODOO

slaves, and power of African religious concepts are all viewed as deterrents to the realization of full conversion. This paper will approach the problem from a different angle, and suggest a modified view of the development of New World religions that blended African and Christian elements. Instead of looking solely at the New World situation, I will focus on the religious developments in the New World as an outgrowth of the prior conversion of a portion of Africa, and the development there of an African variant of Christianity. The development of an African Catholic Church (for Protestants played almost no role in its development, which largely preceeded the Reformation in any case) took place especially in the Central African Kingdom of Kongo,4 but also in a number of other places along the West African coast. It provided the philosophical underpinnings which clergy in the African ports and the New World largely took whole and disseminated among those slaves who were not already cognizant of African Christianity. The clergy in America, overworked and lacking opportunities to engage in substantial teaching in any case, found African Christianity acceptable, while Africans who came from non-Chris-

tian parts of Africa found it comprehensibleand adaptedit easily. Much of

the philosophy that underlies the "syncretic" or "mixed" religious cults of the New World can be traced to African Christianity, and even much of the action taken by American clergy to suppress some types of religious practice among slaves came from African Christianity. CHRISTIANITY OF THEDEVELOPMENT AFRICAN

In this regard, it is essential to outline the developmentof Christianityin Africa from the fifteenth century onwards, for much of the early evangelization of Africa preceeded European voyages to America by as much as half a century, and the initial conversion of Kongo took place the year

before Columbus set out from Spain. Of course, the Portuguesemonarchs who led the Europeanexpansion into Africa in the mid-fifteenthcentury placed converting local people among their priorities, and thus made some efforts to effect conversion."There were a numberof attemptsto win Africans to Christianityby both royal agents and private individuals, right from the very start of the contacts. Alvise da Mosto, a Venetian sailor in Portuguese service, and one of the first Europeansto make sustainedcon4 I have examined Kongo's conversion and the developmentof the Churchtherein JohnK. Thornton, "The Development of an African Catholic Churchin the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491-1750," Journal of African History 25 (1984):147-67. 5 See Gomes Eannes de Zurara,Cronica dos feitos da Guind (ca. 1447), cap. 8. There are many editions of this work, the best being that of Lisbon, 1978.

JOHNTHORNTON

263

tact with Africans in West Africa, spent considerabletime in a debate with the ruler of the Senegalese Kingdom of Jolof in 1455-56 over the relative merits of Christianity and Islam.6 Since Islam had already developed a strong presence in West Africa, Moslem figures representedthe most importantcompetition. This is illustratedin the Portugueseambassador Diogo Gomes' startling success with a ruler on the Gambia river in 1462. After hearing a debate between Gomes and a Moslem "bishop" in the ruler's presence, the African king determinedthat he "believed in only the Living God, and there was no other God but the one in which the Infante Dom Henrique [the Navigator] believed." He wanted baptismimmediately, but Gomes, being a laymancould not satisfy him, althoughhe promisedto send a priest.' The interestthat African rulers showed in Christianity,even when under Moslem influence, encouraged the Portuguesekings to continue their efforts, and by the end of the fifteenth century, according to the German visitor HeironymusMiinzer, they had invited many noble West Africans to come and live in the court in Lisbon, being taught "in our rites and laws," in hopes of sending them back to Guinea as missionaries.8It was through such channels that the Portugueseking managedto convert a pretenderto the throne of Jolof in 1488, though this and other attemptsto win a clear victory against the Moslems in Africa bore no long range fruit.9 Nevertheless, the strategydid pay off in Kongo where there was no Moslem competition, whose conversion in 1491 was the crowning achievementof nearly half a century of missionaryefforts in western Africa.'0 Dramaticand formalconversionsof rulers, and by extension, theirstates, were rareand relatively insignificantafterthe Kongo episode. The kingdom of Warriin modern Nigeria was converted in the late sixteenthcentury by
6 Alvise da Mosto, "Novo Mondo" variorumedition of four recensions in Tullia Gasparrini-Leporace (ed.), Le navigazione atlantiche di Alvise da Mosto (Milan, 1966), pp. 56-8. This title for the work is taken from one of the fifteenth centuryrecensions. 7 Diogo Gomes, "De Prima Inuentione Guinee" (ca. 1490) in Valentim Fernandes, "Descrigh de Cepta e sua costa," (MS of circa 1506-1509), mod. ed. Ant6nio Baiio, O Manuscrito 'ValentimFernandes' (Lisbon, 1940), fols. 279-79v. 8 HeironynmousMiinzer, "De Inventione Africae Maritimaeet Occidentalis . . . " (23 November 1494), revised edition with Portuguesetranslation,Ant6nio Brisio (ed.) MonumentaMissionariaAfricana (2d series, 5 vols., Lisbon, 1958-81) 1: 247, 249-50. 9 On his career and fate, see Avelino Teixiera da Mota, "D. Joho Bemoim e a expedigio portuguesa ao Senegal em 1489," Boletim Cultural da Guind Portuguesa 26 (1971): 63-111. Also issued as a separataby the Agrupamentode Estudos de Cartografia de Lisboa, series separata63 Antiga, Secqgo (Lisbon, 1971). 'o The events are described in one independentsource, Rui da Pina, "Chronicadel Rei D. Joham Segundo . . . "(ca. 1505), revised edition in Brisio, Monumenta, 1st series, (14 volumes, Lisbon, 1952-85) 1: 56-9.

264

ON THETRAIL VOODOO OF

Augustiniansfrom the Portugueseisland colony of Sao Tome in the Gulf of Guinea." Jesuits workingfrom a base in island colonies of the Cape Verdes made similar conversions among the rulers of Sierra Leone in the early seventeenthcentury, following the ardentrequestof several rulers made to the bishop of Cape Verde, Ant6nio Velho Tinoco in 1574.12 More significant, perhaps, were the conversions of many African rulers in and around the emerging Portuguesecolony in Angola, founded in 1575, and a seat of regular missionary activity in the surroundingareas. However, the Portuguese in Angola often linked conversionto acceptanceof Portuguesesovereignty. Many of the independentstates accepted or rejectedclerical ministrationsand baptismsdependingon their relations with Portugal.13 The general shortageof missionarypriests thatplagued these efforts, and the reluctance of many African rulers, especially those of major states, to accept formal conversion and baptismhas generallycaused scholarsto proclaim the efforts of Portugalas being fruitless.14 While this is not a completely fair judgment in the light of Portugueseefforts and success in Central Africa, and the fact that many scholars overlook their West African successes, there were certainly large areas of West Africa that had no formal Christianpopulation. However, the conception that Christianideas spread only by formal acceptance of Christianitythrough baptism or the exortations of ordained missionaries greatly underestimatesthe degree to which Christianitywas propagatedin westernAfrica, or the developmentof African interestin Christianityshaped by Portugueseinfluences. In fact, lay people from the two Portuguesecolonies in West Africa (the islands of Sao Tome and Principeon one side, and the Cape Verdes on the other) regularlyengaged in informalmissionaryactivity in the coastal areas where they tradedand frequentlyresided. The tradingcommunitieson the coasts, in particular,were importantin spreadingChristianideas. Although the development of Portuguesesettlementson the Atlantic coast of Africa
" Alan Ryder, "Missionary Activity in the Kingdom of Warri to the Early Nineteenth Century," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2 (1960): 1-26. 12 The original report, writtensometime around 1585, "Relagio da Gente que vive desde o Cabo dos na Mastos t6 Magrabomba Costa da Guin6," fols. 352-3, publishedas an appendixin Avelino Teixeira da Mota E.H. Hair (eds. and trans.), Descrigdo da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guind do Cabo Verde Guer(1625) by Andr6 Donelha (Lisbon, 1977), pp. 331-57. Early Jesuit work is describedin Fernto reiro, Relagam annual das cousas que fizeram os Padres da Companhiade Jesus nas partes da India Oriental etc (Lisbon, 1611, republishedin 3 vols. with modernizedspelling by ArturViegas, Coimbra, 1930-42), passim. Otherdocumentationhas been publishedin Brisio, Monumenta,ser. 2, vols. 3-5. 13The most detailed survey now is GrazianoSaccardo[da Leguzzano], Congo e Angola con la storia dell'antica missione dei Cappuccini(3 vols., Venice, 1982-3). See '14 the comments of C.R. Boxer in The ChurchMilitant and Iberian Expansion (Bloomington, 1982)

JOHNTHORNTON

265

outside of one or two very restrictedpoints was technicallyillegal according to Portugueselaw, this was not much of a barrierto the developmentof the communities. The numerous Portuguese communities on the west coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone has often been studied as an interestingexample of Afro-European contact.'5The communitiesin the Gulf of Guinea (from modem Ghanato Nigeria) are much less well known, but the case of importantPortuguesesettlementsin Allada (an African state in the modem Republic of Brnin) in the mid-seventeenthcentury, attestedby early Dutch accounts of the area, suggest that their presence was long standing and probablysimilar to that on the coast opposite the Cape Verdes.16 These communities, which were largely mixed in both race and culture, typically described themselves as "Portuguese" to foreign travellers, and were also accorded the special status within the African societies that was given to Moslem tradingenclaves. This is well illustratedby the comments of an early English travellerto the Gambia river region, RichardJobson, who described both types of commercial communities.'7Christianityand speaking Portuguese were the most importantdistinctive features of the Gambian community and probably of those elsewhere. Missionaries who occasionally visited the coast were regularlyrequiredto marryand baptize these residents, who often went for many years without sacraments.18 But more apropos to our concerns, they also consideredthemselves lay missionaries to the Africans, and in time a sizable communityof Africans who had accepted Christianitydeveloped around their settlements.19 Not in surprisingly,they were occasionally instrumental persuadingan African rulerto invite priests to come and baptizehim. They may well have inspired the rulers of various states of SierraLeone to seek to become Christiansin 157420 Similarly, it was probablyas a result of the promptingof the local Christiancommunityfrom Sao Tom6 thatcaused the rulerof Allada to send
'5 See among others, Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (London, 1970), pp. 71-94. 16 Universitatsbibliotek Leiden, Biblioteca Publica Latina, MS 927, "Aenwijsingese van diversche Beschrijvingen van de Noort-Cust van Africa" (ca. 1654), fol. 12v. The text specifies that "Portuguese" must receive gifts before tradingcan begin. 17 RichardJobson, The Golden Trade (London, 1623), p. 30 andpassim. Colorful details of the life of these communities can be found in a series of contemporary Portuguesedocumentsas well. 18 To take just two examples, Tinoco's visit of 1575 as related in "Relagio," fols. 352-52v in Teixeira da Mota and Hair (eds.), Descrigdo da Serra Leoa, and the French Capuchin, Alexis de Saint-L6's in 1635, published as Relation du Voyage au Cap Verte (Paris, 1637), pp. 13-17. 9 Cf. among others, "Relagio de Lopo Soares de Albergariasobre a Guin6 do Cabo Verde," (ca. 1600), Brisio, Monumenta2d series, 4: 3-5; Saint-L6, Relation, p. 13-14. 20 Cf., BaltasarBarreira Jesuit Provincial, 20 February1606, in to Brisio, Monumenta,2d series, 4: 110-12; "Relagio," fols. 352-52v in Teixeira da Mota and Hair (eds.), Descripgdo.

266

ON THETRAIL OF VOODOO

to Europe for missionaries to baptize him in 1658.21 Even when they were not successful in anything this dramatic, they often preached and considered

it importantto try to spread Christianity.Nicholas Villault, Sieur de Bellfond, a Frenchtravellerwho visited the coast of West Africa in 1667, noted that in general, the Portuguese communities were vigorous, if informal,
missionaries.22

It is probably to say thatin spiteof the lackof missionaries the safe and oftenhalf-hearted in whichthe Portuguese crownpursued religious its way body of Christians policies in Africa,therehad developeda considerable and there,supplemented manymorepeoplewhowerecognizant perhaps by to even even sympathetic Christianity, if notyet willing(orperhaps able)to of of werestrongest, of the sacrament baptism.Suchcommunities partake church in CentralAfrica, where Kongo had an institutionalized course, dissemithe and structure wherethe Portuguese colonyinsured continuous But to and nationof Christianity its subjects neighbors. theycouldalso be found here and there in West Africa, outsideof the officiallyChristian there in of countries Warri modern Leone,wherever Nigeriaandin Sierra was of even if the number formalChristians settlements were Portuguese limited. must bearthe crucialrider,however,thatthe actual These statements was practiceof Christianity highlymixedwith Africanreligions,even in existedand an churches areaslike Kongoand Angolawhereinstitutional was Of establishment operating. course,in theCentral on-goingeducational there who missionaries worked and the Africansituation, Church European or as beingorthodox at muchof thisbroadly Christianity syncretic accepted went beyondwhat of least acceptable. Indeed,theirtoleration syncretism even modern successorsandprobably theirnineteenth-century missionary
practice would allow.23 The Portuguesesettlementsin West Africa (Upper Guinea, Sierra Leone, Allada and elsewhere) also practiced a syncretic form of Christianity, even if they originated from European Christian settlers. Clericaltravellers,like the early seventeenthcenturyJesuit Manuel Alvares often found reason to complain that their practicesmade them just
21 See the basic account of this mission in Carlos de Hinojosos and Atanisio de Salamanca,n.d. (ca. July 1662), in Brisio, Monumenta, ser. 1, vol. 12: 378-85. See the mention also of the local Catholic community in "Journaldu voyage du sieur Delb6e . . . aux Isles, dans la coste de Guyn6e pour l'etablissment du commerce en ces pays, en l'ann6e 1669 ... ," in Clodor6Relation de ce qui s'est passi dans les Isles et Terre-Fermede l'Amerique(Paris, 1671), p. 446. 22 Sieur [Nicholas] Villault, sieur de Bellefondl,A Relation of the Coasts of Africkcalled Guinde(2d ed. London, 1670, first French edition, 1669), pp. 85-6. 23 Thornton, "African Catholic Church."

JOHN THORNTON

267

as "superstitious" as the Africans regularlyparticipatingin African rainmaking ceremonies, seeking advice from oracles and following African
marriage customs.24

For all this, however, the churchwas willing to toleratesyncretism. We can gauge the degree to which the Churchwas willing to tolerateit in the West Africanregion by examiningthe catechismprepared Spain in 1658, in and accepted by the Inquisition, for the Capuchinmission to Allada. This catechism allows the generic Fon word for god, "Vodu" (Voodoo in the New World) to be identifiedwith the ChristianGod, and more importantly, allows the term "Lisa" to be used to refer to Jesus Christ.25 the modern In cosmology of Allada, Lisa, a white male figure,is linked with a god named Mawu, a black female, to form a paireddeity (whose explanationwould not be terriblydissimilarto Catholic attemptsto explain the three-in-onenature of the Western ChristianTrinity). Thus, the Churchwas willing to accept the Allada conception of deity as being on a par with that of Christianity, and left the door open for other such "translations," which, as we know from the modem study of Voodoo in the New World, pairedAfrican gods with Christiansaints. Moreover, as the missionaries to Allada themselves noted, they were willing to describethemselves as "vodonu''-a termused locally for priest or spirit medium. Further,these missionaries were perfectly awareof the equivalenceof theirown termsto local ones.26Thus, we can only assume that the Churchwas willing to go quite far in West Africa. In Central Africa, the earlier catechism and literaturereveals similar attitudes. For example, the Kikongo termNzambi a Mpungu(HighestNzambi) was used to translateGod, where Nzambi ("Zombie" in the New World) refers to an ancestoror other diety. Similarly, priestsreferredto themselves as "nganga"-a word used locally for a spirit medium or priest just as vodonu was used in Allada.27
24 See Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia, Lisbon, MS, Manuel Alvares, "Etiopia Menor e Descrilio Geografica da Provincia de Serra Leoa" (1616), fols. 15v-16, 25-25v, 65v, (my thanks to P.E.H. Hair for lending me his copy of the transcript of this MS made by Luis de Matos and Avelino Teixeira da Mota) and Hinojosos and Salamanca in Brfisio, Monumenta ser. 1, vol. 12, pp. 379-80 among others. 25 The catechism is reprinted in facsimile with a transcription, partial linguistic interpretation and analysis in Henri Labouret and Paul Rivet, Le royaume d'Ardra et son ivangdlisaton au XVII sidcle (Paris, 1929). See pp. 31-5 for the significance of terms in the modern religion of the area. 26 Much of the spiritual practice and considerable observation about local religion is found in Jose de Naxera, Espejo mystico en que el Hombre Interior se mira (Madrid, 1672), pp. 35-6, 96. For use of the terms in the catechism, see Labouret and Rivet, Rovaume de Ardra, p. 4. 27 Thornton, "Development," pp. 156-7. For the definition of Nzambi in modern Kongo cosmology, see Wyatt MacGaffey, Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Bakongo of Lower Zaire (Chicago, 1986), pp. 75-76.

268

ON THETRAIL OF VOODOO

IN CHRISTIANITYTHENEWWORLD AFRICAN

In view of this, it would hardly be surprisingthat a certain number of slaves arriving in the New World were baptized Christians, and another quite sizable group would have fairly strong ideas about Christiandoctrine and be generally in favor of it, even if slave shippersand owners showed no interestin convertingthe slaves at all. This was particularly true, of course, of slaves from Kongo, where Christianitywas so well established. The FrenchJesuit Jean Mongin, working on St. Christophein 1678-82 reported One inventory of slaves in French Guyenne this rathermatter-of-factly.28 made by the captainand travellerJean Goupy des Maretsin 1690 noted that all the Kongo slaves on the estate were Christians,having been "baptized by the Portuguese in Angola."29 But this description is somewhat misleading, for the slaves were probably acquired, considerably to the north of modern Angola from an area outside Portuguese control by a Dutch ship whose captain and crew would not have baptized them. Their baptisms must have been performed either by the secular clergy of the Kongo church or the numerous Italian Capuchin missionaries who worked in Kongo in the late seventeenth century.30 One of these Italian Capuchins, Dionigio Carli da Piacenza, received some advance warning of the deep respect that the Kongolese had for their order when he stopped in Pernambuco, Brazil, in 1667 on his way to Kongo. There, while walking down the street, he was greeted with deep reverence by a Kongolese woman, who, he discovered, had been baptized by the Capuchins in Kongo.31 Central African Christians were found in North America as well as in the Caribbean or South America. An anonymous writer, describing the origins of the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 noted that in that area there "are a people brought from the Kingdom of Angola. . .many thousands of the Negroes there profess the Roman Catholic Religion."32 This presence of Angolan Catholics provided, according to the author, opportunity for the Spanish of Florida to entice them to run away or rebel from the English masters in the Carolinas.
28 Jean Mongin g une personne de condition du Languedoc, St. Christophe,May 1682, in Marcel Chatillon (ed.) "L'6vangeIlisationdes esclaves au XVIIe sibcle. Lettresdu R.P. Jean Mongin," Bulletin du Socidtdd'histoire de la Guadeloupe60-62 (1984): 86. 29 Jean Goupy des Ma.tts, published in Gabriel Debien, "Les Origines des esclaves des Antilles," Bulletin de lInstitute Foundamentalede l'AfriqueNoire, ser. B, 26 (1964): 178-80, 182. 3oFor a thorough examination of the Capuchin mission, see Saccardo, Congo e Angola. For the religious and political situationin Kongo at the time, see John Thornton,The Kingdomof Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (Madison, 1983), pp. 84-96. di nell'inclita cittcd Venetia(Bassano, 1687), p.23. 31 Dionigio Carli da Piacenza, II Moro trasportato 32 Anonymous, "An Account of the Negroe Insurrectionin South Carolina," (1739) in Allen D. Candler, William J. Northern(eds.) Colonial Records of the State of Georgia (Atlanta, 1904-16, reprintedNew York, 1972) vol. 22, pt. 2, p. 233.

JOHNTHORNTON

269

The Moravian missionary, Oldendorp, working on Saint Thomas in the mid-eighteenthcentury was also impressed by the devotion of his Kongo parishionerswho had, in his opinion, a good knowledge of the Christian
faith.33

Of course, many slaves from other regions would be baptized as well, more cause for concern. Even althoughthose baptismsgave contemporaries if the Dutch merchantswho transported slaves to the Caribbeanin the seventeenth century showed no desire to convert or baptize the slaves, the Iberianpowers always did. Ever since the early days of the Atlantic slave trade, Papal Bulls and royal orders requiredthat slaves be given religious instruction,and baptizedas quickly as possible afterpurchase,a task which ships' captainscould perform.34 The Portuguesereligious establishmentattempted to organize this system of religious instructionfrom their various colonial posts in Africa, either on the islands of Sio Tom6 or the Cape Verdes, where many ships making the crossing were requiredto stop, or at Luandain Angola. Here, an attemptwas made to insurethatslaves received some Christianinstruction, although the personnel and time to do it were limited. Not surprisingly, this instructionwas often inadequateor skipped, and scholars who believed that this was the slaves' first introductionto Christianity have generally felt that it was unlikely to be very effective.35 This impressionis strengthenedby the complaintsmade in the late sixteenthand early seventeenthcenturiesby SpanishJesuits that their Portuguesecompatriots in Africa were not providingadequatereligious instruction.Alonso de Sandoval, one of the Jesuit priests in charge of slave instructionat Cartathis gena in the early seventeenthcentury, articulated complaintfully in his read book on the conversion of Africans in America, published in widely 1627, including many documents from Jesuit sources in other parts of America to supporthis claims.36However, such complaintsmade by Spaniards in America against the Portugueseconcerningthe slave trademust be
33Oldendorp, Geschichte des Missionen der Evangelischen Briider auf den Inseln S. Thomas, S. Croix und S. Jan (Barby, 1777), partial English translationin Soi-Daniel W. Brown, "From the Tongues of Africa: A PartialTranslationof Oldendorp'sInterviews," Plantation Society 2 (1983): 51. 34Ordenagoes do Senhor D. Manuel, Book IV, title 99, 24 March 1514; and Pope Leo X, Eximiae devotionis, 7 August 1513 and Praeclaraetuae, 10 January1516, all in Brisio, Monumenta,ser. 2, 2: 63, 69, 115-17. 35 See the observationsof FrederickBowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1560-1650 (Stanford, 1974), pp. 235-6.
36 Alonso de Sandoval, Naturaleza, policia segrada i profana . . . de todos Etiopes . . . (Seville,

1627), modernedition, ed. Angel Valtierra,InstaurandaEtiopia Salute: El mundodel esclavitudnegra en America (Bogoti, 1957), pp. 347-72.

270

ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO

taken with a grainof salt, in view of the serious attemptsby variousSpanish interests to take over the slave tradefrom Portugalduringthe period of the union of the crowns.37For all that, however, their inquiries seem to be diligent and some of their allegations well founded. On the other hand, the presence of large numbersof African Christians among the embarkedslaves made the hastily performedbaptismsnot quite as ludicrous as it appearsfrom a cursory reading of the Jesuit documents. Thus, Sandoval made it his business to inquire of the slaves he met in
Cartagena as to their knowledge of Christianity. While the results of this inquiry might appear scandalous to one expecting all the slaves to be adequately instructed upon their arrival in America, they are not as bad as a modern reader of the report might expect. Thus, we can hardly be surprised that Sandoval found almost all the Central African slaves were adequately instructed by the time they arrived, and nearly half of those passing through Cape Verde. Only the slaves arriving from the Gulf of Guinea, and presumably passing through Sio Tom6, were almost never adequately instructed,38 although one should note that in the 1620s when he wrote, this area was just beginning to export slaves in quantity and a strong organization was just forming.39 One reason why scholars have generally been suspicious of the ability of the Portuguese to provide an adequate religious instruction to slaves in Africa or the Atlantic islands before shipment to America is the difficulty that they would face in dealing with the wide variety of African languages, and the impossibility of adequately explaining Christian cosmology to Africans in such a short time. In fact, however, African Christianity and African Christians played a major role in making this possible, both in the Atlantic ports and in the Americas. Slaves were instructed, not by European clergy, but by African Christians who knew their languages and cosmologies intimately, and moreover had already developed formulae to convert one system to the other along the lines pioneered in Central Africa.

Certainly, it must have been African catechists who provided the main
instruction to the slaves embarking for the transatlantic journey and not the clergy. Rather, the clergy was present simply to perform the one role that,
37Bowser, African Slave, pp. 36-38. 38 Sandoval, Instauranda (ed. Valtierra), pp. 372-77, 380. Jean Mongin made a similar survey in 1682, but was somewhat more pessimistic about the results, though even he agreed on the issue of CentralAfricans. Mongin to personnede condition, 1682, pp. 86-7. 39One can judge the percentageof slaves from the Gulf of Guinea region by examining the table of ethnic origins in Bowser, African Slave, pp. 41-44 (drawn largely from bills of sale on the Lima market).

JOHN THORNTON

271

in Christian theology, must be performedby an ordained priest, that is, baptizing the slaves. Hence, the gripping image of the bishop in Angola sitting on his throne in the harbor of Luanda and baptizing hundredsof slaves by aspersionrepresentsnot the priest as instructor,but simply as an administratorof sacraments. The actual work of insuring that the slaves knew what was the significance of the rite was up to catechists who instructedthe slaves on the elements of the faith. This was precisely the role that the ordainedclergy regularlyplayed in the African Church, and was a way of meeting the extreme shortage of ordained clergy faced by the Church in Kongo. Thus, in Kongo, priests were regularlycarriedon tours throughvillages of the country once a year to perform sacraments(particularly baptism, which they performedby the hundreds, occasionally by the thousands), while the real work of maintaining an understandingof the faith was performedby large numbersof catechists, who travelled more frequently, stayed longer and remained at work even when there was no priest or missionary.40 The fact that the catechists were Africans helped to insure that doctrinewas "naturalized"and, of course, contributedto the syncretic natureof the resultinginterpretation of Christianity. We know relatively little about the catechiststhat workedon the African side of the Atlantic outside of Kongo in the Portuguesecolonies. But in any case, those Africans who had not yet been converted by the time they reachedAmerica were greetedby anotherbatchof catechists, who like their African counterparts,performedthe main line functions of converting the slaves, or at least reinforcingthe conversion in Africa. We can know somewhat more of their origins and methods in America, thanks to the inquest conducted into the life of Pedro Claver, the CatalanJesuit priest who managed the Cartagenamission along with Alonso de Sandoval. Since Claver, who died in 1654, long had a reputationfor saintliness during his many years of ministering to the slaves, the authoritiesdecided to conduct an inquest upon his death prepatoryto submittinghim for canonization.41 This inquest, in which a numberof catechists who worked with him testitified, gives us a good idea of the methods employed by catechists in the Jesuit service in Cartagena,and probablyalso those in Jesuit service elsewhere in the Americas. Moreover, it is perhaps a reasonable reflection of the methods of catechists in the whole Atlantic world.
40Thornton, "Development," pp. 164-6. An Italian translationdated 24 January1671 of the original survives in the Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia, Bogoti, cited as "BN Colombia, Claver Inquest." The inquest was convened on 2 April 1658 and headed by the Jesuit Diego RamirezFarifia.
41

272

OF ON THETRAIL VOODOO

Andr6 Sacabuche (perhaps Nsaka Mbuke), the most experienced of Claver's catechists, provideda detailed descriptionof the Jesuit practiceat Cartagena,which was enthusiasticallyseconded by other witnesses and catechists. According to Sacabuche, the Jesuits and their catechists met each ship as it arrived,and were the first to enter it in orderto give baptismafter a quick catechism and then Last Rites to those who were dying. Then, once the slaves had been unloaded, they were gathered in the plaza near the harbor,divided by sex and then into "nations." These nations were ethnolinguistic groups, and each ten slaves from one nation were assigned to a catechist of their own nation, so that they could receive instructionin their own language, or in one likely to be intelligible to them (or ultimately comprehensibleto some of theircountrymenwho might then re-explainit in their language). Claver then stood in their midst on a makeshiftaltardecoratedwith two striking pictures: one showed Christ suffering on the cross with blood flowing from his wounds, while a priest used the blood to baptizeAfricans. The other showed variousPopes, Emperorsand Kings bowing down before the cross. There he preacheda sermon in Spanish and went througha brief discourse on Christiandoctrine with them, while the catechists translated and expanded on it.42 The points of doctrine covered, accordingto Fr. Juan del Valle, one of Claver's other assistants, were drawn from a simplified version of the Christiancatechism approvedby Pedro de Castroy Quifiones, Archbishop of Seville, for use with people from Africa, America and others outside the culture zone.43 The catechists began by teaching European-Mediterranean the slaves the sign of the cross, going to them one by one and often taking up to an hour with the whole group-who showed themselves quick to learn were rewarded with a bit of tobacco, while those those who were slower received "some knock on the head as a penance." This was followed with explanationsof the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, and the Nicene Creed, leading into a ratherlengthy discourse on the natureof the Trinity, complete with a three-headedstaff as a teaching aid. Then, the catechists employed a picture book showing the life of Christ, and other points of doctrine which included a vivid picture of souls burning in Hell while demons torturedthem. Finally, they were given the Laws of God and the and the hierarchyof the Church.44 Church, the Ten Commandments The significance of these teachings (and similar ones undoubtedlygiven
42

BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, Witness 9, AndreaSachabuche,22 October 1658, fols. 102-103. 43Ibid., Witness 1, Fr. Giovanni del Valle, S.J., 18 May 1658, fol. 32v. 44 Ibid., Sachabuche, fols. 103-104.

JOHN THORNTON

273

in Africa or later in their life in America) were largely determined by the sense that the catechist made of them in his act of translating them from Latin, Spanish or Portuguese for the slaves. This sense was, of course, the essence of African Christianity, for which there can be little doubt for those from Central Africa. It would not be hard to find close to the exact words that Sacabuche, an Angolan and probably a speaker of Kimbundu, would have used in the Jesuit-produced catechism in that language published in

Lisbon in 1642, but probably in use in Angola and among Jesuits since about 1630.45Before that, instructionwas likely to have been in Kikongo,
the language of the Kongo Church, for it was Kikongo that was widely regarded as the "Language of Angola," the only African language that Claver himself ever studied.46 Although catechismal literature in Kikongo dates back to the mid-sixteenth century, the Jesuits would surely have used Mateus Cardozo's 1624 catechism, which was published in an American edition, in Lima, the very next year.47 But even without a catechism conveniently produced for the African missions at hand, the slaves who came to serve as catechists would spread the specifically African interpretation of Christianity similar to those of the catechisms from their own African experience. As one might expect, the Jesuits at Cartagena, and surely elsewhere as well, chose as catechists those who were already familiar with Christianity or had some aptitude for languages. Jose Monzolo, a Kongo slave, told the inquest that he had been born a Christian in Nzolo (a province in eastern Kongo) and had learned the catechism as a child in Africa, both in Kikongo and Kinzolo, a dialect of Kikongo, and this was the reason that Claver chose him to be a catechist.48 Such backgrounds would obviously be even more helpful for slaves from those areas where there was no catechismal literature close to hand. Manuel de Capo Verde, for example, was already baptized in his home (the Cape Verde islands) before coming to Cartagena, and presumably could speak languages of Africa as well.49 We can be reasonably sure that Claver's

instruidonos mysteriosde nossa Sancta Fd 45 FranciscoPacconio, Gentio de Angola sufficientemente (ed. Ant6nio do Couto, Lisbon, 1642). Pacconio probably composed the catechism shortly after founding the mission in Ndongo, principalkingdom of the Mbunduspeakingpeople, in 1626. Ant6nio do Couto, who has often been mistaken by bibliographersas the authorof the text, was born in the kingdom of Kongo (and hence had native proficiency in Kikongo) and probablyedited a MS that was long in use. 46 Angel Valtierra,Peter Claver: Saint of the Slaves (trans. Janet Perryand L.J. Woodward, Westminster, Maryland, 1960), p. 116. Bontinck and D. Ndembe Nsasi (ed. and trans.)Le catichisme kikongode 1624: reddition 47 Franqois critique (Brussels, 1978). 48 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, Witness 19, Giuseppe Monzolo, 22 October 1658, fol. 140v. 49 Ibid., Witness 25, Emanuele di Capoverde, fol. 150v.

274

ON THE TRAIL VOODOO OF

choice of catechists from the West Africans would include many who, even if not baptized, were certainly cognizant of Christianity,by virtue of their African background.For example, FranciscoJolofo, for the Jolof Kingdom in modern Senegal, was chosen because he could speak Portuguese and Jolof, Mandingaand Serer upon his arrival,and thus could serve as a cateA chist for slaves from those countries.50 person with this linguistic backalmost surely had travelledwidely in West Africa, probablyin comground mercial ventures, and thus had extensive contacts with the Portuguese tradingcommunities of the coast of Senegal. As such he would have been exposed constantly to their conceptions of Christianity,and even if he had not been baptizedwould have found it easy to take up and explain the tenets of the faith as he had been told in Africa. The Moslems also had tradingnetworksin that area, but often remained Moslems in captivity, as the testimony of Francisco de Jesus, also a Jolof reveals. He was only converted to Christianityafter remainingfaithful to Islam for ten years, in spite of Claver's insistentarguingwith him, when he witnessed Claverperforma strikingact of charityon behalf of a condemned prisoner.5'Given the Moslems' insistence on retainingtheir own faith, we should have no doubt that many of the catechists whose multilingualism was due to participationin commerce from such areas were likely to have been closer to the coastal Christiancommunitiesthan the Moslem ones farther inland. The conceptions of African Christianityfrom the Gulf of Guinea region are well illustratedin the history of the Allada catechism of 1658. Toxonu, king of Allada, sent an ambassador,known as Bans, to Portugalto seek baptism, after, we have argued, being persuadedto convert to Christianity by his Christiansubjects, mostly from Sao Tom6. On the way to Europe, however, Bans stoppedin Cartagena,where the Spanishgovernor,realizing the potential of this contact for Spanish interestsin Africa, divertedhim to Spain (the Spanish king still claiming, throughthe now-dead union of the thrones to be also king of Portugal), and providedhim with an interpreter. This interpreter,whose name is not given in any of the documents, was most likely one of Claver's catechists, who would, of course, have been ideally suited for such a mission.52Thathe was probablyresponsiblefor the catechism is suggested by the fact that the text was approvedand printedin a very short time after his arrivalin Europe. It is unlikely that anyone in

o Ibid., Witness 36, FrancescoJolofo, fol. 177. Ibid., Witness 20, Franciscodi Giesu, fol. 143-143v. '51 52 Hinojosos and Salamanca, Brisio, Monumentaser. 1, vol. 12: 378.

JOHN THORNTON

275

Spain could have provided such a work simply from interviews with an African ambassador in Portuguese creole or through an interpreter.

The interpreter-catechist'sconceptions of Christianity may well have been themselves the product of the Allada Christian community, transwas enslaved, and then enported across to America when the interpreter larged and ultimatelyprintedoverseas. In any case, the catechismreturned to Africa with the Capuchinmissionariesin 1660, where it was immediately
received with great joy. Travellers half a century later were still reporting seeing copies of it in Allada being carefully maintained.53

The catechism, or at least a variant of it, seems to have eventually returnedfrom Africa to America, for in 1708 a PortugueseJesuit, Manuel de Lima, reportedthat he had produceda catechism in the languageof Allada for use in Brazil, probablyas a resultof his experiencein the mission of Sio Tom6 in the late seventeenth century.54Thus, African Christianitycontinued to be used in the instructionof slaves in the New World there as well, formally as well as informally. The significance of the Allada catechism increased, of course, as duringthe course of the seventeenthcentury and the next, slaves from this partof Africa became more and more prominent in the slave communitiesof the New World. This informationcan then allow us to see how African slaves were converted so rapidly in the Americas. They were not given hasty instructionin a complex and foreign religion in a languagethey could barelyunderstand, but ratherthey were told how best to make a syncretic blend of their own tradition and what was "essential" to being a good Christian. The catechisms, from Central Africa (Kikongo and Kimbundu) and from West Africa, provide us with some ideas as to how this synthesis was createdin two fairly distinct African religious cultures, and modern studies of AfroChristian cults emphasize the two distinct elements: a West African one based on the Aja group of languages and cultures (which included Allada and its neighbors, the numerous Yoruba communities and some of the Lower Niger societies), and a Central African one based on Kongo and
Mbundu cultures.5

Perhaps most interesting about this synthesis is that the Churchplayed such an importantrole in promotingAfricanChristianity the Americasas in
53 Labouretand Rivet, Royaumede Ardra, pp. 20-4. 54 Serafim Leite, Hist6ria da Companhiade Jesus no Brasil (10 vols., Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, 1938-50), 7:274. 55Bastide, African Religions, pp. 60-2. The Aja group includes Allada, Yoruba and Dahomey. Kongo and Mbunduwould be contained in Bastide's "Bantu" group.

276

ON THETRAIL OF VOODOO

well as in Africa. It is hardly surprisingwhen the Inquisitionand metropolitan Church authorities approved texts of catechisms that the ideas and blending of religion contained in them would be accepted in the mission field. The catechists did not fool an intolerantEuropeanclergy into accepting African Christianityas orthodox, the Jesuits were a conscientious order in this regard. We must accept that in America as in Africa, the religious blend was consciously and knowingly accepted as being legitimate.
"FETISHISM" AND AFRICANCHRISTIANITY

Of course, Christianclergy did suppress a considerableamount of African practice, some of it apparently religious, in the Americas, includinga good deal of the sort of nocturnaldancing and funeralcelebrationwhich is cults today, and is often perceived often taken as typical of Afro-Christian in the popularmedia as the essence of Voodoo. To take just one example, Claver was constantly on the lookout to suppress such activities which he felt were tinged with "fetishisms" or the slaves' old "heathen days." He would seize their drums and force them to pay fines to recover them, and often broughta whip with him to break them up.56 Surely a clerical group that opposed such culturalmixing activities would also oppose the development of African Christianityin the Americas. In fact, however, this behaviorand the suppressionof "fetishism" in the as New World was an extension of AfricanChristianity well. In Kongo, for example, priests regularly struggledagainst "fetishers," who were apparreligion, even if at times they employed ently practicing the pre-Christian Christiansymbols and prayed to saints. But this struggle was not based on an attack on the cosmology of the Kongolese, but ratheron the clergy's insistence that only an ordained priest could mediate with the supernatural.57 As the sixteenth century Spanish demonologist Pedro Ciruelo explained it, no matterhow serious and deep the Christianconviction of those who claimed the power to mediate with God or other membersof the Heavenly Host might be, if they tried to reach them they would only succeed in contacting the Devil. This contact made the person attemptingsupernatural mediation a witch, (in Portuguesea feiticeiro, or as modernwriterson African religion would say, a "fetisher") regardlessof whetherthey contacted the Devil willingly or not, and regardlessof whetherthey signed a Diabolic
56 BN Colombia, Claver Inquest, del Valle, fol. 40.

57Thornton, "Development," pp. 157-58.

JOHNTHORNTON

277

contract.The Devil or his demons might even grantthem the miraclesin his power, but no member of the Divine party would allow it.58 Cireulo's writing was directedagainst the Ritual Magicians, or various kinds of faith healers, astrologersand the like of early modernEuropeand not at a population that was historicallynon-Christian, his understanding Christian but of dogma was appliedjust as rigorouslyin African Christianity. This is clearly the approachthe clergy used in Africa even outside the traditional Christian areas like Kongo. Manuel Alvares, a Jesuit who worked for many years in Sierra Leone in the early seventeenth century wrote a detailed descriptionof local religion which systematicallyexplored demonology as developed by Cireulo to explain it.59 He clearly saw the adherenceto Christianityin this newly convertedarea not in terms of suppression of local religion, but in terms of the suppressionof witchcraft. Thus, nocturnaldances, or the various fortune-tellingand healing activities that one can find Africans accused of in New World Inquisitiontexts,60 were suppressed, not because they representedremnantsof the old African were inreligion which was being attacked,but because their practitioners as tervening with the supernatural non-ordainedlay people. Since Africans generallyunderstoodthat mediationwith the supernatural might be done for evil ends (the normalAfricanconceptionof witchcraft,since these religions did not possess the kind of God-Devil dualityof early modernChristianity), they could understandthe suppression of such activities in the name of witchcraft eradication. They could accept this type of suppression on a theoreticallevel, even if they might disagree with the specific charges leveled in a specific incident, or, moreover even if they harboredsuspicions that the accusationswere more concernedwith power and control than with genuine witchcrafteradication. Such use of religion for purposes of maintaining power and control was common in Africa as well. This is confirmed by considerabletestimony from SierraLeone and surrounding areas in seventeenth century materials, where the suppressionof witchcraft by local authorities often involved sham trials, which were widely perceived as such by the local people. Missionaries who reported these trials saw them as directlylinked to judicial enslavementof the guilty
58 Pedro Ciruelo, Reprouacion de las supersticionesy hechizerias (Seville, 1530), mod. ed. Alva Ebersole from Salamancaedition of 1547 (Valencia, 1978), pp. 67-72 and passim. 59Biblioteca da Sociedade de Geografia, Lisbon, MS, Alvares, "Etiopia Menor," Book 2, Caps. 19-24. 60 See the detailed examinationof the records of the Mexican Inquisitionin Colin Palmer, Slaves of the WhiteGod: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (Cambridge,Mass., 1976).

278

ON THETRAIL OF VOODOO

and thus linked to the Atlantic slave trade.61 If those enslaved also saw them as a part of the enslavement process, they could hardly have been shocked

to see the same rationaleapplied in America by the ultimate recipients of the slaves. African Christianityallowed the Africans to retain their old cosmology, of their old understanding the structureof the universe and the place of the and other divine beings in it. Its most importantdemandwas that they gods only use ordainedpriests in theirattemptsto appealto the Divine, or benefit from the knowledge that such gods might give them. Thus, one must look not to the imperfectionsof religious instructionor to the insistence of the slaves that they hold on to their old religion to find the roots of modern Afro-Christiancults in America. One must look instead to the complex historical trans-Atlanticinteractions between European and African religions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries-an interaction, much more syncretic and tolerantthan one might imagine, which gave us African Christianity. Millersville University
Millersville, Pennsylvania K. JOHN THORNTON

61 See, among others, BaltasarBarreira,"Dos Escravos que saem de Cabo Verde" (1606), Brisio, Monumenta, 2d series, 4: 195-6 and Andr6 Alvares de Almada, "TratadoBreve dos Rios de Guin6" (1594) in ibid. 3: 263, 295, 332. For Americantestimony, see Mongin to personnede condition, May 1682, p.77.