Marronage, Medicine, and Mythology: Narrating Obeah in the 19th Century | Collection Review

Good afternoon and welcome everyone and thank you for joining us. My name is Deja Brock and I am the Public Programs and Marketing Manager here at the Library Company of Philadelphia. If you are too familiar with us, thank you for stopping by. The Library Company is America's oldest cultural institution founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731. We are an independent research library concentrating on American society and culture from the 17th through the 19th centuries. We're free and open to the public and we have an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, prints, photographs, and works of art. You can learn more about us by visiting www.librarycompany.org. Today's event format is webinar style. This means that you can see and hear us but we cannot see or hear you. If you have any questions please put them in the Q&A option at the bottom of your screen and we will leave a few minutes at the end to get to them. Today's collection review, Marronage Medicine and Mythology Narrating Obeah in the 19th Century is led by Ainsley Nguyen-Aikens. Ainsley joined the Library Company staff in June of 2020. Originally from Richmond, Virginia, they moved to Philly after earning their bachelor's in African-American studies from Wesleyan University. Before joining the Library Company, they archived the Anita Cornwell papers at the William Way LGBT Archives and worked with the Children's Literature Research Collection at the Free Library. They are currently an IMLS fellow at Drexel University working on a community-based librarianship project to support police-free library-backed schools. Ainsley, thank you for being here. Thank you, Deja. Let me just go ahead and share my screen. So, hi everyone. As Deja mentioned, my name is Ainsley Nguyen-Aikens. I use they-them pronouns and welcome to my first collection review for the Library Company. Before we begin, I want to emphasize that this collection review is about colonial accounts of Obeah. Please understand the way Obeah is actually practiced and viewed in community is not what is represented in these materials. This is meant to clarify the history of how the practice was racialized, criminalized, and exploited by the white west Indian planter class and their counterparts in Europe and the U.S. A content warning that the materials included do contain violent and racist narratives and this is all actually what we will be examining to expose how Obeah was viewed. These few materials are not representative of the Library Company's complete holdings and I hope that my presentation will help potential researchers engage in generative discussions about accurately portraying colonialism and imperialism in special collections. So, let's start with a little background on the usage of the word Obeah in special collections. If the term is unfamiliar or one invokes thoughts of revenge rituals and shady figures, know that this is for a reason. Almost every reference you'll find to Obeah in popular culture portrays it as laughable, unscientific, black magic, sacrilegious, or demonic. There's also a stereotype that Obe men and Obe women are con artists. It might be hard for anyone doing a short search on the topic to distinguish truth from myth when even the Library of Congress categorically misrepresents Obeah's origins. It is given a subheading of cults, a variant of roots or hoodoo, and linked in relation to witchcraft. Ultimately, the summation of Obeah is inaccurate. It's arguable that conflating Obeah with witchcraft without social context erases its blackness and leads researchers astray. Furthermore, giving it a variant of roots displaces Obeah geographically and obscures Obeah's actual variations in areas of practice. So, when you go to do your in-depth research about Obeah, you'll probably find various spellings and pronunciations according to the region of origin. A significant portion of what you'll find will also be about how Obeah has been outlawed with draconian punishment in at least 22 regions of the Caribbean. These rules still haven't been repealed in some areas. The flags of Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, and Guyana are included to show you just a few areas where Obeah has a history. So, the first laws against Obeah came from the British West Indies. Tacky's Rebellion, one of the most significant uprisings of enslaved people in Jamaica, began in May of 1760. The anti-Obeah legislation was signed into law by Other territories followed suit over the next several decades, using similar language as the crown, if not copied word for word. So, this brings us to our holdings here at the Library Company. Starting with the Treatise on Sugar in 1799, ending with Jamaica as it is in 1903, the materials I've chosen cover 104 years of publishing on Obeah, just over a century. It's worth mentioning that the trial of a slave in Burbese takes place in what we now know as Guyana, and Obeah, or Witchcraft in the West Indies, is written about Granada. However, all four of these other pieces, the Treatise on Sugar, Three-Fingered Jack, The Grateful Negro from Popular Tales, and Jamaica as it is, are all centered on Jamaica. So, clearly it is significant. So, let's take a look at our earliest volume, a Treatise on Sugar. It definitely looks its age on all 195 pages, and the front board is barely hung on by a thread. Still, I'd say this is one of the most instrumental pieces in understanding narratives on Obeah. This study on sugar was authored by Benjamin Moseley, who spent 18 years in Jamaica as Surgeon General, and undoubtedly was accumulating wealth as the sugar industry was rapidly expanded by the growth of slave labor. On the flyleaf, you'll see an inscription of the name John Foggin, I might not be pronouncing that correctly, who was a librarian at the American Philosophical Society, known to Benjamin Franklin and a wine merchant who was sent to Jamaica early in life to start his career. A reminder that wine has, and in the 19th century, used to have a lot more sugar. You'll also find a nod to Benjamin Rush or Philadelphia, immediately following the study segment on our topic, Obeah. Obeah appears in relation to a bacterial disease, the yaws, which can cause severe disability if left untreated. It could spread amongst enslaved people since they were kept in close quarters and didn't usually have the right to basic human needs or hygienic provisions. Moseley says the method for treating the yaws was to separate the infected person in a distant hut in order to bathe, heal, and prevent further spread. Then goes on to say that this rarely happened because patients either died or were mutilated in exile, allowing robbers and fugitives as company, while growing more perverse in morality and succumbing to the wickedness of Obeah. This piece is instrumental in seeing how Obeah becomes characterized and criminalized throughout the so-called New World. The footnote circled at the bottom of page 170 explains the supposed origins of Obeah, creating a standard for authors to come. Moseley likens Obeah to the raising of the dead from the Bible and goes on to insult the Negro race as ignorant with Obeah and gambling being the only tools with which they can apply logic. Then he lists some of the materials used in practice. When we look at this with an understanding that a treatise on sugar was likely distributed among other influential merchants and men of science and philosophy, shaping international trade and the exchange of ideas, we can understand how integral Moseley's work might have been in shaping the sugar industry and the race-making of Africans. I also say this because a treatise on sugar is directly referenced in at least three other materials in the review. They use similar language on describing Obeah, Africans, and Black people as criminal, ignorant, dirty, diseased, and prone to malice by an inherent ancient status. This book is bound to be significant to any scholar studying mercantilism, food, medicine, wine, and, of course, race. So 23 years later comes the trial of a slave in Berbice for the crime of Obeah and murder. From what I've read, it's not possible to know whether there was explicit anti-Obeah legislation in Berbice by 1823, but there was a declaration against Obeah by the governor. The story of the crime is in the subtitle that an enslaved woman, Madeleine, was beaten to death with her body hidden by Willem, the Obe man in this case, with the help of his accomplices. This folio was broken down into the deposition, examinations, sentencing, and executions or condemnations, which are listed in the index. The murder of this woman and the violence she endured before her death is a horrendous tragedy, and at the same time, the whole premise of the trial was not to beget justice. In the eyes of the law, enslaved people were considered property, with lives that were replaceable. At least 1,800 enslaved people were slaughtered in the Berbice uprising of 1763, just 60 years prior to this trial. A little over a third of the colony's enslaved population then. They were replaced with thousands more slaves over the ensuing decades. The issue was not murder or brutality inflicted against Madeleine, but it was the fact that her body, considered property, had been stolen and that an Obe man had amassed a following that challenged the will of the planters. Furthermore, Berbice, formerly a Dutch colony, was ceded to the British and in the process of uniting with other territories during the time of this trial. In this realm, the legal proceedings could also be considered a charter to show power in the presence of the British. Surely this folio would be of interest to any scholar studying African, Dutch, British relations, or Afro-diasporic rituals. As you can see in the examples, the trial brings up the Menjimama dance and the drink set with Obe. My understanding is that the Menjimama dance, also known as the Mookski dance, is a water deity dance and setting the drinks with Obe, I understand, to be a type of spell that one would drink. You can see those at the top of the page and bottom. So Obe, or a three-fingered jack, might ring a bell to some. It was more widely distributed as a folktale, with Jack being cast as a hero or a complete terror, depending on which version of the story you hear. In Earl's Tale, he's a tragic hero. Our earliest edition of this book is actually dated 1804. The edition I've used here was published in 1830, and our last copy was published in 1842. This is an epistolary novel, meaning it's written as a series of letters. William Earl narrates everything about Jack's life from pre-birth to death, following the betrayal of his West African parents, who saved a white man only to be betrayed by him and sold into slavery. The letters narrate their brutal shipment across the Atlantic, Jack's childhood and loss, and his devotion to avenge them, fighting for a sense of justice as a noble fugitive who vows to never hurt women or children. His Obe gives him strength, but also becomes his downfall. A three-fingered jack is similar to the Grateful Negro from Maria Edgeworth's popular tales, in that they're both abolitionist tales and in the category of fiction. The Grateful Negro is a story of two very different slave owners, one extremely abusive and the other magically benevolent. Caesar, the so-called Grateful Negro, saves his wife, his master, and the plantation by betraying his lifelong friend who's planning a rebellion. He helps the masters find the location of an evil, crony Obe woman to burn down her hut and dissuade the uprising. Like the other short stories in this novel, the Grateful Negro is meant to be a moralizing tale to the white planters and their posterity. It ends with the more evil slave master facing 50,000 pounds in losses from the uprising on his plantation. He and his wife return to England, poor, miserable, and bitter towards slaves. The last two lines read, they had no consolation in their misfortunes but that of railing at the Our readers, we hope, will think that at least one exception may be made in favor of the Grateful Negro. Despite themes of abolitionism, the story still relies on emphasizing the spiritual, cultural, and general inferiority of Black people. The treachery of the Negro race is only granted exception to the dominated Black subject who's considered to be grateful on her knees or bowing his head. Caesar, as you can see here, bows his head to the master but raises his hand in the left image to the Obie woman, seen here in her hut with bones and other Obie instruments, straw flooring, pots, rags. Researchers interested in this topic may find the stories here resonate with ongoing conversations at the library company about the Jennings painting titled Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences. In both Popular Tales and the Grateful Negro, the footnote technique on Obie is utilized, introducing it with an irreverent manner meant to entertain and intrigue the readers. West African culture and spiritualism is reduced to an occultish tale meant to fascinate Christian readers with knowledge about heathens and far-off places. Perpetuating a narrative that Obie men and women are deformed, evil, ignorant, and enemies of the very people they serve creates an embodiment of Blackness to be shamed, punished, controlled, and executed, which is anti-Black. I mention this to make the effect that this is an example of how abolitionism does not end anti-Blackness. Abolitionism becomes a form of anti-Black racism. With this in mind, we come to Obie, Witchcraft in the West Indies by Hesketh J. Bell and Jamaica as it is by B. Pullen Burry. These are the last materials on our timeline. They provide the most exhaustive accounts of colonial encounters with Obie in the West Indies. I will note that the tone towards Black people in both of these reads as much more outwardly hostile by both authors than our previous materials. This is probably precisely because they are written after slavery has been abolished, at least in writing, in the West Indies. In Witchcraft in the West Indies introduction, Bell mentions the beautiful scenery of these charming colonies while in Jamaica as it is, Burry mentions the charms of tropical scenery. They're both documenting their experiences on the island and an attempt to draw readers to vacation and come for resort, which may provide interest to researchers looking into the development of tourism as it intersects with race. So I've actually decided not to show further text of these books beyond the contents listed here due to the use of frequent slurs and general sentiments that I don't think anyone really needs to hold right now, but I will describe both books. So by the time Witchcraft in the West Indies was published, Hesketh J. Bell worked in the governor's office of Barbados and later the revenue department of Granada. His book gives a very consistent account of everyday colonial interactions with Obie. He degrades beliefs surrounding duppies, which are ghosts, loogaroos, which you could consider a type of energy vampire, and other cultural practices. He also tells many stories related to his interactions with witches or paraphrasing the stories of his friends who were also in positions of colonial power. Jamaica as it is is more broad, mentioning Obie among Jamaican residents as well as the beliefs of the Arawak, Maroons, Indians, and other islands. His chapters are interspersed with discussions of politics, economy, and history. He also has several pictures of the island and its residents. Henry Pullenbury was a medical doctor, but also belonged to a secret society called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was a Masonic or Freemasons cult. So this book may be of interest to researchers analyzing the occult in Anglo witchcraft, but also how this author could on one hand, you know, point out the inferiority of black magic, but on the other hand, he belonged to a cult that tried to scientifically legitimize the paranormal with science. So here you'll see some photographs from Jamaica as it is, which clarifies the stakes of those so-called charms both authors mentioned. Burry includes a copy of a receipt for the sale of a slave girl. We also see a black individual who may have been asked to pose for effect with the old-fashioned sugar mill, a machine with which enslaved Africans were literally worked to death at a rate that sometimes outnumbered births. We also see images of people hauling island products on donkeys and carts. And we remember the exploitations of the United Fruit Company, which began to buy bananas on the island, transport them to Philadelphia, and sell them at 1000% profit starting in the 1870s. And naturally, none of that profit sought to go back to the laborers. So these are also reminders of why Obeah is inextricably bound up with slavery. No matter whether you agree with the myriad effectiveness or beliefs of individual practitioners, it is a fact that Obeah was constructed as dangerous, disdainful, and demonic because Obeah men and women were a major threat to the white planter class in their economy. Obeah became a source of intra-community authority, encouraging rebellion and providing medicine, poison, and conflict resolution. By the time slavery was abolished, the white imperial project had already been accomplished. At the turn of the century, we see how even white believers in the occult thought Obeah was a farce used by Black people to scam other Black people because they thought recently, I'm sorry, that recently freed slaves had only just discovered they had souls. The West Indies is populated with vacation resorts and banana republics as a result, and tales of exotic witchcraft is marketed as part of the appeal. So here are all of the materials mentioned again by call number for your reference. You can also find them all digitally. I have links to the full text of each, which I put in the spreadsheet and shared with Deja. So I think if you've registered, you should be able to get this spreadsheet by email. And I'll also post the link in our chat probably during the Q&A. It's not already there. And if you're still wondering what exactly Obeah is, that's my point. The challenge of its definition, as well as Obeah's many spellings and potential roots, speaks to the realities of the transatlantic slave trade and how enslaved people reconciled West African practices after being forcibly removed from their homelands. From the colonial lens, negative connotations were invented by mythologizing Obeah in relation to the curse of Pam and the necromancy of Samuel in the Bible. These associations were justified by Asante Twi in Gold Coast terms for sorcery and witchcraft, although these words are undoubtedly taken out of cultural context. Contemporary scholars suggest Obeah's linguistic roots relate to neutral or positive terms for herbalist, practitioner, healer, or doctor in pre-colonial West African societies. As hundreds of thousands of Africans were enslaved and consistently shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and during all too familiar forms of violence and also completely unthinkable brutalities, only to be forced into labor and sexual slavery upon arrival at a foreign shore, it became necessary to rely on herbalism and spiritualism as a source of protection, community, and healing. Despite cultural conditioning across the century and laws against Obeah in 22 regions, Obeah was still widely acknowledged in Black West Indian communities in the 19th century and Obeah men and women still practice today. The colonization surrounding common understandings of Obeah is not something to be celebrated, but the survival of the tradition is certainly a history that we can respect. And last but not least, you might have noticed we didn't discuss the image from the flyers. So I found this image in our digital collections after I had already chosen the materials for this collection review, but I thought it would, you know, kind of perfectly encapsulate the themes of medicine, marronage, mythology, and colonial accounts of Obeah. That's an engraving from John Gabriel Stedman's narrative of five years expedition against the revolted Negroes of Suriname. You'll also see some excerpts below from the engraving's description. So marronage or fugitivity after escaping enslavement is represented in the title through his positioning as a rebel armed with firelock and hatchet. Medicine represented in his Obeah amulet, which is supposed to give him strength and gives him, you know, confidence in his own protection and mythology everywhere about the nature and motivations of Black people. You'll also find a link to this image in the spreadsheet. So I invite you all to go view it, sit with it, and reflect on how oppressed people can define knowledge about ourselves when the very concept of having knowledge is produced against us. So thank you all for listening and thank you to all the staff, the library company who helped me along the journey of making this collection review. Thanks so much. I'll stop sharing my screen. Thank you, Ainsley, so much for your presentation. I truly enjoyed it. As Ainsley mentioned, all of the resources I just put inside of the chat, but I'll also be sending it out via email along with the recording of today's presentation. And let's see if there are any questions. Okay, so we have a question from an anonymous attendee, but they say, thank you, Ainsley. How did you choose OBEA to focus on for this collection review? So as was mentioned sort of in the intro, I have a background in African-American studies, and that was one of the things that drew me to the library company is their extensive programs in African-American history. So one of the first things I did when I started working there was go through our other resources page, which we're currently kind of reconstructing, but I went through all the African-American collections and searched for the word Negress to see what would come up about Black women. And that's when I first saw the trial of a slave in Burbese for the crime of OBEA. I didn't know what that meant. So that's why I did more research into it and saw our holdings on it. That's awesome. And thank you for bringing it to our audience and shedding the light on the topic. This question, this next question is from Lynn Brooks. Lynn says, a theatrical work, OBEA or Three-Fingered Jack, was a much performed work in early 19th century U.S. theater. Are you familiar with it? And how does it relate to the material you covered? I was not aware that it was a performance. That's actually really interesting to know, and it makes me think too. Can you repeat what century? Of course. Yeah, yeah, I'll reread it. So she asks, a theatrical work, OBEA or Three-Fingered Jack, was a much performed work in early 19th century U.S. theater. Are you familiar with it? And then the second half is, how does it relate to the material you covered? Okay, yeah. So the part about 19th century is making me too wonder if it was performed in blackface. Naturally, for the time period, that thought comes up. Three-Fingered Jack, as it relates, I think, to harkening back to the theme of abolitionism and how that was still anti-black. And so OBEA was sort of instrumentalized as a tool of that anti-blackness. So much mythology put on it. That's really interesting. Thank you for letting me know about the plays. I'm going to look into that. Yeah, I'll definitely have to check that out as well. Oh, someone else asked. This question is from Regina Robinson. Regina asks, thank you for being here, Regina. She asks, was OBEA practiced differently or the same by women and men? So I can't answer that exactly because I don't know. You know, we only have these colonial narratives to go on. But what we can see, or what I've seen from those, is that not really was that documented as a difference based on gender. Pretty much there were the same sort of tools that would be found in the huts of OBEA men and women, such as bones, parrot beaks, pots filled with grape dirt or different types of just things that could be collected. Because we have to remember, too, you know, these are enslaved people. They can't just go by, you know. So it's no matter the gender, people are still collecting those sort of common materials that were around them. Thank you. All right. Well, if there aren't any other questions, I'll give people a few more seconds if they need to, to drop their questions in the chat. Oh, here we are. Yay. Okay. So this one, forgive me for my pronunciation. This question is from Haywat Tadesi from Dalhousie University. They said, thank you for this talk. I was wondering if you caught any instances where these authors admitted to white people using OBEA. I know a few instances from Thomas Thistlewood's diaries, a slave owner in 18th century Jamaica, when he alluded to being treated by enslaved women. So this is reminding me of OBEA, a witchcraft in the West Indies by Bell. That actually begins with a story about how the friend he's staying with is having plantains being thieved from his plantation. And so he gets an OBEA man to come and set OBEA on the edges of the plantation and around the trees in order to prevent stealing. And it also comes up, I'm forgetting exactly where, but I know there are a couple of allusions to how OBEA is considered the black magic and Christianity is considered the white magic and how OBEA men and women would try to set OBEA on masters or poison them. And if it didn't work, there was this thought that, oh, OBEA can't be used on white people. So that's really interesting. Thank you. So this next question is from Michelle Flamer. Michelle asks, there is a plan to recatalog the African-American collection to better reflect what it is much of, to better reflect what it is. Much of what is cataloged as Afro-American does not reflect African-American culture, but instead white racist ideologies. Just curious as a scholar, what are your thoughts about this? It's something that I'm sitting with and thinking about and a conversation that's also happening at the library company and in a lot of collections. I feel like it's a challenge definitely because on one hand, sometimes the act of putting out these diversity and equity initiatives to recatalog more guilted in, I'm sorry, is more rooted in white guilt and liability politics than it actually is about transformational change. But with that said, with the input of the people that are directly impacted by collections that reflect racist stereotypes or histories about them or violence, it's a thought process that will take community in order to figure out what should be done and how things should be recataloged. Yeah, yeah, for sure. This next question is from an anonymous attendee. They ask, are there more ephemeral traces of Obeah in the collection beyond these published sources? Actually, so while I was doing this project, I saw a reference in, I think it was Jamaica as it is to a history of Jamaica from 1794. So that is one book that didn't make it into this because it's not actually cataloged as Obeah in our collection. I only just heard about it a few days ago. Other than that, I know we do have a scroll somewhere that has similar inscription as what we saw in a treatise on sugar where Obeah is described as an ancient Egyptian demon of sorts. If you ever ask that question, you can send me an email. I can send you a link to that material I'm talking about. And I'll put Ainsley's email in the chat for you all. So our next question is from Karen Jordan. And Karen asks, do Islanders practice Obeah today and also in the US? Yeah, so Obeah is not a personal tradition of my family or my ancestors. So it's not something that I've really encountered in the US outside of some searching that I actually did like on Facebook and social media when I started this project. But there are people that practice it in North America and all over the world. It's related to Ifa and Yoruban traditions. So it all has to do with Afro diasporic histories and cultures are sort of everywhere depending on how people moved. Right, right. This next question is from Catherine. Oh, I'm sorry. The Benjamin, I believe. Do you know to what extent Obeah was practiced in the United States outside of Catholic New Orleans, Louisiana? That is not something I know. And it's something that I'm also still trying to get more information on. As you saw in the Library of Congress definition, Obeah is linked to Southern states. So I'm sure there are materials and other collections that give some account of why it's linked to that specific geographical area. But there's nothing that I currently know of that I could trace. This next question is from Richard White. How much of the Obeah fear was not about the magic, although about leadership and resistance? I'm sorry, Richard, if I messed your question up. But yeah, that looks like what he means. Okay, about leadership and resistance. Before a lot of rebellions, Obeah was set on people that were going to be leading the uprisings. It was spread through plantations to give them a sense of courage, a sense of protection, a sense of invincibility. So that is instrumental in what Obeah is, or at least in these narratives that we have of it. And that can't be extracted from the magical elements of it. They're sort of one and the same. It's all a part of it. Right. Do you have any suggestions for searching your collection digitally on topics like Obeah and Marronage? So what I did was, like I said, I searched for the word negress, black. It's not the language I would use to describe myself and Black people today. But when you're thinking from the standpoint of 17th, 18th, 19th century, kind of have to look at a lot of those different terms and put them into collections and sort of see what you can get. Maybe combine that with sugar, for instance, or different industries that were on plantations, bananas, coconuts, that sort of thing, just to kind of see any sort of results. Definitely takes some time, I'll tell you that. But it's there, fine. All right, well, let me see. I think we have a couple comments that we can address. Asabi Rich said, I'm going to quote you on the impactful question of how can knowledge about ourselves be trusted when the knowledge, the knowledge is in quotes, is written against us. Insight to make us think and be more critical of whatever is put out there. So that was a comment from Asabi Rich. And, all right. Well, it doesn't seem as though, well, we have one, oh, another question. Another question. Oh, okay, you put it in here too. All right, it's the same comment. All right, well, if that is all of our questions, then we will go ahead and finish. Thank you all so much for joining us. Ainsley, thank you so much for your presentation. Thank you everyone for coming and hearing me speak. I'll say one last thing. This book was very instrumental. It's called Energy Power, The Criminalization of Obeah in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1750 through 2011. So if anyone wants more information on that, I would heavily, heavily recommend it. Yeah, and is that book in your, I'm sorry, is it in the resource list? It is not actually, but I'll put it in there. Yeah, when you put it in there, I'll send it out to you guys. So you all will have the link to that book as well. So thank you all again for being here. Thank you so much for joining us. This event was recorded and it will get sent to you via email along with any additional resources. I invite you to join us next week for Body and Soul, a conversation with Jessica Johnson about slavery, gender and the Atlantic world. This event will take place on Wednesday, February 17th at 5.30 PM Eastern Standard Time. You can learn more about our upcoming events by visiting www.librarycompany.org slash calendar. Thank you again for being here and have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye.