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The Origin of Jazz
| Article
# : |
10339 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1986 |
6,490 Words |
| Author
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Lowell D. Holmes
Lowell D. Holmes is professor and chairman of the Department
of Anthropology at Wichita State University. |
They came, by and large, from kingdoms along the hot and humid Guinea Coast of West Africa--the area stretching from the Senegal River in the north to the Bight of Benin and south as far as the mouth of the Congo. Their tribal identities were Ashanti, Fanti, Hausa, Yoruba, Ibo, Dahomey, and a hundred other foreign-sounding names we find recorded on slave ship manifests. Mostly, they were captives taken in tribal wars, then sold to Arab middlemen who marched them shackled and in single file to the sea,. There, in ports called Bonny and Calabar, Yankee slave ships loaded them for the "middle passage" to ports in the Caribbean and along the Gulf of Mexico and southeast coasts of North America.
The ships often carried as many as 250 Africans. The men were chained two by two--ankle and wrist--in such cramped quarters that there was no room even to sit upright during the entire voyage. Women and children were sometimes allowed to go on deck for short periods. There the women were often sexually abused by members of the crew. Some captains were "loose packers," preferring fewer slaves and therefore more live deliveries. "Tight packers" argued that if you start with more you are likely to arrive with more, in spite of the extremely high mortality rate. But regardless of method; the profits were enormous--$40,000 on the average for a ninety-day voyage. Then there were further profits in the New World when the slaves were exchanged for sugar and tobacco, which was then delivered to European brokers in England, France, Portugal, and Spain.
The "good Christians" who bought the slaves to work the plantations and farms of the West Indies and American colonies rationalized their purchase and bondage of these human beings as acts of mercy--the
... (1996 of 39895 Characters)
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