Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:06:18.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Yoruba and Orisha Worship in Trinidad and British Guinea: 1838–1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

David V. Trotman
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The search for the African origins of contemporary socio-cultural forms found in black populations in the South Atlantic region is a well-established scholarly pursuit. Most scholars have argued that certain institutions and ideas brought from Africa were retained over time and survived in more or less recognizable form. It is further argued that specific institutions can be directly linked to the importation of Africans from specific areas in Africa. Although in the debate on Africanisms many writers have also argued the contrary, the emphasis in the scholarship has been on demonstrating the degree to which Africans in the diaspora managed to retain these socio-cultural institutions (Frazier, 1939; Herskovits, 1968).

Two major omissions fault the published scholarship on the subject: first, the lack of details of the process by which Africans retained, reinterpreted, or abandoned these institutions; and second, given similar circumstances of transfer, an explanation of the varying degrees of faithfulness to the original institutions in different areas. In other words, the lack of survival, though equally interesting and potentially intellectually rewarding, is a neglected aspect of the scholarship.

The case of Yoruba religious ideas is an example of this bias. Yoruba religion apparently remained “so faithful to its ancestral traditions” that it is one of the most frequently cited examples of an African survival. The scholarship on the topic is rather extensive, but none of it is historically or ethnologically sophisticated. Attempts have been made to explain its persistence in some areas by reference to the late arrival of a large number of Yoruba as victims of the slave trade: it is argued that “both the strength of the continuities and their relative lack of modification probably are related to recency of migration and to the presence [in Trinidad] or nearness [in Cuba] of freedom” (Mintz and Price, 1973).

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , September 1976 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adamson, Alan. (1972) Sugar without Slaves. New Haven: Yale.Google Scholar
Asiegbu, J.U.J. (1969) Slavery and the Politics of African Liberation, 1787-1861. New York: Africana Publishing.Google Scholar
Bascom, W.R. (1944) “The Sociological Role of the Yoruba Cult Group.” American Anthropologist 46 (January). Memoir No. 63.Google Scholar
Bascom, W.R. (1952) “The Esusu: A Credit Institution among the Yoruba.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 82: 67–70.Google Scholar
Bascom, W.R. (1955) “The Yoruba Lineage.” Africa 25: 235–52.Google Scholar
Bascom, W.R.. (1969) The Yoruba of South Western Nigeria. New York: Hall, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Bascom, W.R.. (1972) Shango in the New World. Texas: African and Afro-American Research Institute.Google Scholar
Bastide, Roger. (1971) African Civilizations in the New World. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Burnley, W.H. (1843) Observations on the Present Condition of the Island of Trinidad. London.Google Scholar
Carr, Andrew T. (1953) “A Rada Community in Trinidad.” Caribbean Quarterly 3 (1): 36–54.Google Scholar
Clarke, Robert. (1843) Sierra Leone: A Description of the Manners and Customs of the Liberated Africans. London.Google Scholar
Crowley, Daniel. (1956) “The Traditional Masques of Carnival.” Caribbean Quarterly 4 (3 and 4): 194–223.Google Scholar
Cruickshank, J. Graham. (1917) “Among the Aku (Yoruba) in Canal No. 1, West Bank Demerara River.” Timehri 3rd Series 4 (21 June): 70–82.Google Scholar
Curtin, Phillip D. (1969) The Atlantic Slave Trade—A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Day, Charles William. (1852) Five Years Residence in the West Indies. London.Google Scholar
Dauxion-Lavaysee, J.F. (1820) A Description of Venezuela, Trinidad, Margarita and Tobago. London.Google Scholar
De Verteuil, L.A.A. (1858) Trinidad: Its Geography, Natural Resources, Administration, Present Condition and Prospects. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elder, J.D. (1969) The Yoruba Ancestor Cult in Gasparillo. Trinidad: University of West Indies, Institute of Social and Economic Research.Google Scholar
Frazier, Franklin. (1939) The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gamble, W.H. (1866) Trinidad: Historical and Descriptive being a Narrative of Nine Years Residence in the Island. London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herskovits, M.J. (1937) “African Gods and Catholic Saints in New World Negro Belief.” American Anthropologist (New Series) 39 (4): 635–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herskovits, M.J. (1968) The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Herskovits, M.J. and Herskovits, F.. (1947) Trinidad Village. New York: Knopf Publishers.Google Scholar
Idowu, E.B. (1961) Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. London: Longmans.Google Scholar
Johnson, Samuel. (1927) A History of the Yoruba. Lagos.Google Scholar
Kirke, Henry. (1898) Twenty-Five Years in British Guiana. London.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, J.H. (1965) A Preface to Modern Nigeria. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Laurence, K.O. (1965) “The Evolution of Long Term Contracts in Trinidad and British Guiana, 1834-1863.” Jamaica Historical Review 5 (May): 9–27.Google Scholar
Laurence, K.O.. (1971) Immigration into the West Indies in the Nineteenth Century. Barbados: Caribbean Universities Press.Google Scholar
Mintz, S.W. and Price, R.. (1973) “An Anthropological Approach to the Study of Afro-American History.” Unpublished paper delivered at the Conference on Creole Societies at the Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Mischel, F. (1957) “African Powers in Trinidad: The Shango Cult.” Anthropological Quarterly 30 (April): 45–59.Google Scholar
Mothon, R.P. (1903) “La Trinidad,” pp. 353–82 in Piolet, J.B. (ed.), La France au Dehors: Les Missions Catholiques Françoises au XIX Siècle 6. Paris. Parliamentary Papers.Google Scholar
Pearse, Andrew. (1956) “Carnival in Nineteenth Century Trinidad.” Caribbean Quarterly 4 (3 and 4): 175–93.Google Scholar
Peel, J.B.Y. (1968) Aladura: A Religious Movement among the Yoruba. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pollak-Eltz, Angelina. (1968) “The Yoruba Religion and its Decline in the Americas.” International Congress of Americanists 38 (pt. 3).Google Scholar
Roberts, G.W. (1954) “Immigration of Africans into the British Caribbean.” Population Studies 8 (March): 235–62.Google Scholar
Roberts, G.W. (1957) The Population of Jamaica. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rodway, James. (1893) History of British Guiana. Georgetown: J. Thompson.Google Scholar
Schwab, W.B. (1955) “Kinship and Lineage among the Yoruba.” Africa 25: 352–74.Google Scholar
Schwab, W.B. (1962) “Continuity and Change in the Yoruba Lineage System.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 96 (2): 590–605.Google Scholar
Sewell, W.S. (1861) The Ordeal of Free Labour in the British West Indies. New York.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. (1965) The Shango Cult in Trinidad. Puerto Rico: Institute of Caribbean Studies.Google Scholar
Smith, M.G. (1965) The Plural Society in the British West Indies. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Raymond. (1962) British Guiana. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Mary Elizabeth. (1974) Jamaica and Voluntary Laborers from Africa, 1840-1865. Gainesville: University of Florida Press.Google Scholar
Trollope, Anthony. (1859) The West Indies and the Spanish Main. London.Google Scholar
Underhill, E.B. (1862) The West Indies: Their Economic and Social Condition. London.Google Scholar
Verger, Pierre. (1966) “The Yoruba High God—A Review of the Sources.” ODU 2 (2): 19–40.Google Scholar
Ward, Edward. (1937) Marriage among the Yoruba. Washington: Catholic University of America, Anthropological Series no. 4.Google Scholar
Warner, M. (1972) “Africans in Nineteenth Century Trinidad.” African Studies Association of the West Indies. Bulletin 5:27–59, and Bulletin 6.Google Scholar
Williams, Eric. (1942) “The British West Indian Slave Trade after its Abolition in 1807.” Journal of Negro History 27 (2) (April): 175–91.Google Scholar
Wood, Donald. (1968) Trinidad in Transition. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar