Colonoware Vessel Fragment with Dogtooth Motif

African American

Dean Hall Plantation,

South Carolina, Post-1820

Earthenware

On Loan from the DuPont Company Collection from their Cooper River site, Moncks Corner, South Carolina, 40322:3:21

Kongo people

Lower Congo, DRC

Early 20th century

Terracotta

Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium, EO.0.0.5033

For several decades archaeologists examining sites where enslaved Africans and their descendants have worked and lived, have determined new ways to interpret materials left behind. A number of sites demonstrate purposeful placement of materials beneath floors in efforts to control forces that might make a difference in the lives of those who lived or worked there. Such deposits were placed in the mansions of wealthy Europeans in colonial Annapolis as well as in modest cabins where Africans or their descendants lived. They have been discovered in the Chesapeake area, the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and as far west as Texas.

Charles Carroll House excavation, Annapolis, Maryland

1790–1800

Pearlware, stone, pins, quartz, bone disks

Charles Carroll House Collection
In the Charles Carroll House, a bundle was buried in the late 18th century in the room where an enslaved African woman lived. Containing a dozen rock crystals, polished pebbles, white disks, and common pins, the bundle had been covered by a bowl base. Such contents compare well with the types of ingredients used to create minkisi in the Kongo region. The discovery of the bundle led to a search for similar remains of Central African religious practices in Annapolis, where at least ten other sites dating from 1720 to 1920 have been discovered.

Cache

James Brice House excavation, Annapolis, Maryland

1860–1900

Various materials (porcelain doll, buttons, bone, shell)

Historic Annapolis Foundation

Materials placed under the floor in a kitchen in the Brice House suggest intentional positioning to align the accumulations with the cardinal points. This created a ritual space not unlike those the Kongo called dikenga or diyowa. The northern deposit in the Brice House contained, among other objects, doll parts, and the southern had feathers. An accumulation to the east contained a pierced coin, while the place where the western deposit would have lain had been destroyed during a renovation. The point of intersection revealed several caches buried over time, containing a small bottle, shells, buttons, matchsticks, a Civil War Union button, a holster boss, over fifty glass buttons and beads, scraps of red fabric, a root ball, polished black stones, and three coins dating from 1870-1900.

New Orleans, Louisiana

18th century

Metal, glass, wood

State of Louisiana

Medallion

New Orleans, Louisiana

18th century

Metal, glass

State of Louisiana
New Orleans’s first burial ground was excavated in 1984. The most notable burial was that of a man who was likely born in Africa and sent to Louisiana in his youth. Two of his lower incisors bear decorative notching not unlike that in Kongo. Great care taken in his burial suggests he was a man of position. A jewel-set rosary was wrapped around his hands, two saint medals attached to it. A metal and glass medallion lay nearby. The medals represent St. Andrew and St. Camillus of Lellis, patron of doctors and nurses.

St. Christopher Medal (replica)

Fort Mose, St. Augustine, Florida

n.d. (reproduction, 2013)

Silver alloy

On Loan from the Frederick E. Williams Irrevocable Trust
Kongos were among those who lived at Fort Mose, an African fortification guarding the north side of St. Augustine. A medal was discovered on the site, which on the front has an image of St. Christopher carrying the infant Jesus. A navigator’s compass is on the back. St. Christopher may have been an apt patron for Africans who crossed swamps and estuaries to get to Catholic Florida from British Carolina. The compass may have been read as a familiar symbol, presenting overlapping crosses that had cosmological meaning for Kongolese.

Kongo Influence on African American Music

The music and dance traditions that Kongo people brought with them during the transatlantic slave trade have formed the core of many African American performance genres. Areas in the southeastern United States, particularly New Orleans and the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, were crucibles for blending Kongo rhythms with other African and European musical forms.

Kongo-derived dances also influenced dance forms including the Charleston, patting juba, hambone, second-line, shake babe, shimmy, tango and the stepping traditions of Greek fraternities and sororities. These and other Kongo-derived art forms were quintessential in shaping both African American culture and American culture as a whole.

The Gullah people of the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina create coiled grass baskets that clearly reflect their African origins. The coiled technique of sewing bundles of grasses together in a continuous coil came with West and Central Africans brought to America, primarily as workers on rice plantations.

As early as the eighteenth century, the Gullah made baskets for fanning rice, carrying foodstuffs and utensils, and for storage. After the late nineteenth century, demand for agrarian baskets waned, but the art of basket making was preserved at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, South Carolina.
Since the early twentieth century, baskets have been sold commercially and basket makers have competed for greater visibility in the market by introducing new techniques, materials and designs. This intensive innovation has culminated in the recognition of Gullah basket makers’ artistry both nationally and internationally.
Vegetable Basket

South Carolina

20th century

Bulrush, saw palmetto

Charleston Museum

Early Gullah baskets made for utilitarian purposes included workbaskets used in the home, as well as baskets for bringing in the harvest. Rice was the most important early crop in the Lowcountry, and wide, flat fanner baskets were indispensable for processing the crop. Most fanners were not embellished, thus the fanner with a delicate ring foot may have served another purpose. Steep sided baskets were used for hauling vegetables, flowers and utensils, and carried as a head-load. Cylindrical lidded baskets were used for sewing supplies or storing small items. Early baskets were made primarily from bulrush and other grasses bound with palm strips.

Elizabeth F. Kinlaw

American, born 1951

“In and Out” Basket

2012

Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art: Museum purchase with funds provided by The David A. Cofrin Acquisition Endowment

Bath, Edgefield, South Carolina

Mid-1800s

Alkaline-glazed stoneware

On Loan from the Estate of Mary Elizabeth Sinnott, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center 324314
The first description of face vessels as the creations of African American potters came from a pottery owner in Edgefield, South Carolina in 1862. Earlier, in 1858, a Kongo man named Tahro had been brought to Georgia aboard the illegal slave vessel the Wanderer. Eventually Tahro, renamed as Romeo, came to Edgefield. It is likely that he worked in the Palmetto Fire Brick Works near Bath, a pottery where he may have produced face vessels inspired by Kongo figurative sculptures. The shape of the vessels is similar to a Kongo water jug called mvungu. It is possible that face vessels functioned as Kongo medicine containers, or minkisi. Reportedly, they were placed on graves, mirroring the Kongo tradition of marking graves with figurated wares.

This face vessel is one of the rare examples with writing. The inscription of “Joe Banford” on the top may refer to the person depicted or for whom it was made.

Haitian-Floridian

2012

Cloth, glass, unidentified substances

2013.30
Vodou Medicine Packet (paket kongo)

Haitian-Floridian

20th century

Cloth, feathers, sequins, unidentified substances

HistoryMiami Museum

2005.06.001
Historical links can be demonstrated by objects imported from Haiti to be sold in botanicas in Miami. The bottle as nkisi can be seen as strikingly Kongo. In Vodou, such bottles are designated for specific spirits. The serpent moving up the bottle and the colors indicate that this example is for Damballah, a Fon deity. Each bottle can be accompanied by a bound package made of cloth, ribbons and enclosed materials, which can also be seen as a separate nkisi and referred to as a paket kongo, recognizing its Kongo roots.

Although the word Vodou derives from the Fon word for deity, vodun, it is a syncretic religion with Fon, Ewe, Yoruba, Kongo and European Catholic contributions. The blending of Roman Catholic Christianity and Kongo religious traditions that took place in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kongo was carried across the Atlantic and absorbed into Vodou as it developed in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue and independent Haiti.

Cuban-Floridian

20th century

Iron, wood, medicinal substances

HistoryMiami Museum

1987.024
Practitioners of Palo Monte, the Cuban variation of Kongo religion, acknowledge a High God, Nzambi. But the spirits of the dead and other spirits are called upon. Objects containing power-infused materials are placed in special containers, nganga, the focus of the initiate’s practice. Each spirit is associated with that sacred object in which sacred earth, sticks, a human skull, bones and other objects were placed. The individual develops a relationship with the spirit through carefully tending the container, accumulating power through caring for the many objects placed in it over time.

Different spirits have different types of ngangas. The nganga for Sarabanda, the spirit associated with iron and metal, is fashioned from an iron pot with three legs, which is eventually filled with sticks, a skull, bones, railroad spikes and other powerful materials and substances. Although Sarabanda is the spirit of work and strength, he is also associated with destruction and accidents.

Offering Pot for Palo Mayombe, tinaja

Cuban-Floridian

20th century

Ceramic, medicinal substances

HistoryMiami Museum

1987.024
Palo spirits use distinctive types of ngangas. That for Baluande, a spirit associated with water and fertility, is a clay pot. That for Chola Wengue, the spirit of rivers, wealth, seduction and pleasures and the protector of women, is also made of clay. The pot, called a tinaja, is colored, each spirit requiring a different hue. The container here is likely for Chola Wengue, whose nganga is yellow.

African Americans have commemorated deceased family members using a diverse array of found and constructed objects placed on graves or kept in the home. Graves are frequently adorned with seashells, personal objects such as clocks, lamps, glass bottles, figurines, crockery and materials related to the deceased’s faith or occupation.

Georgia

Wood, glass, paint, floral materials

On Loan from a private collection
This African American grave adornment from Georgia has several elements that link it to Kongo funerary practices. The white interior suggests the whiteness Kongos associate with the ancestral realm, mpemba. The cross made from twisted tree branches is Christian inspired, but the encircled cross with each arm accentuated by a rosette mimics the Kongo dikenga, a cruciform symbol which marks the four points of passage of human life from birth to adulthood to death, and the afterlife. The painted silver ends of the cross, like other shiny objects placed on graves, recall the Kongo practice of embedding shiny objects inside medicine bundles to invoke ancestral spiritual presence and power.

Memory Jar

American

Hand-built clay with encrusted shards and found objects

On Loan from the High Museum of Art, Museum Purchase with funds from the Decorative Arts Acquisition Trust, 1997.37
Memory Jar

American

Ceramic bottle, plaster, found objects

On Loan from Renée Stout
In Georgia, an 1880 report of a clay jar covered with items associated with the deceased, then placed on a grave, was the first documentation of African American use of so-called memory jars as grave adornments. The creation and use of memory jars is rooted in the Kongo funerary practice of placing ceramic vessels and items used by the deceased on gravesites. The two jars displayed here, coated with plaster and embedded with seashells, ceramics, glass and other objects, demonstrate the linkage to Kongo displays. One jar also bears an inscription To The Emmett Cole/Funeral Home. /Presented By./B.Y.M.B’S of/North Broad Baptist/ Church./ Rome, Georgia, suggesting it belonged to one of the church’s congregants.

Kongo and Contemporary Art

Many artists presently working in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and North America mine Kongo history, philosophy, religion, and iconography to create new art. They may be attracted to Kongo culture because they share its heritage, identify with the territory as an ancestral homeland or think of it as part of their national identity. Others look to African art in general for inspiration, finding suitable forms or fitting iconography in Kongo sources. Each form of appropriation is complex and may be traced to the early period of colonialism when African material culture was introduced into the West.

José Bedia (Cuban, lives in Miami, born 1959)

Acrylic stain and oil pastel on canvas

Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ackland Fund 2001.2
Bedia depicts a human figure morphing into a turtle, the horizontal bands on its undershell filled with linear drawings suggestive of firmas. Many elements important to Palo are indicated – the anvil, the nganga, the knife. The circular form of the undershell filled with such symbolic images is suggestive of the cauldron itself. Color spots on the outlines of the bodies suggest glowing stars in a constellation. One turtle-like body seems to be in our plane, the other as if seen beneath water. Is this suggestive of one in our world and the other beneath the kalunga line, which separated our space from the spirit world?
Edouard Duval-Carrié (Haitian, lives in Miami, born 1954)

La Traversée (The Crossing), 1996

Oil on canvas in artist’s frame, Bass Museum, Gift of Sanford A. Rubenstein

Metal, fabric, glass and organic materials, Collection of the artist

Found objects (Victorian era clock with figure, glass top table) wood, glass, bronze, silk, organic materials, rhinestones, glass beads, mirror, paint; Collection of the artist and Hemphill Fine Arts

Steve Bandoma (Congolese, born 1981)

Watercolor/mixed media on paper, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art: Museum purchase, funds provided by the David A. Cofrin Acquisition Endowment, 2012.61.1

Watercolor, ink and paper collage, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art: Museum purchase, funds provided by the David A. Cofrin Acquisition Endowment 2012.61.2

Mixed media, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art: Museum purchase, funds provided by the Ruth P. Phillips Endowment, with additional funds provided by the Caroline Julier and James G. Richardson Acquisition Fund. 2013.44