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 ON THE TRAIL OF VOODOO:
AFRICAN
CHRISTIANITY IN AFRICA AND THE AMERICAS

Scholars have long taken interest in the conversion of African slaves

to Christianityin the New Worldwhich have mixed, to one degree or
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-Europeancontacts.
Generally, most approachesto culturalamalgamationhave assumed that
the process took place in the Americas, with slaves arrivingdirectly from
Africa, carrying with them memories of their own religion, meeting a so-
ciety which insisted with greateror less determinationon 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 Interpenetrationof Civilizations (trans. Helen
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).

261
262 ON THETRAILOFVOODOO

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 develop-
ment there of an African variant of Christianity. The development of an
African Catholic Church (for Protestants played almost no role in its devel-
opment, 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 prac-
tice among slaves came from African Christianity.

OFAFRICANCHRISTIANITY
THEDEVELOPMENT

In this regard, it is essential to outline the developmentof Christianityin

Africa from the fifteenth century onwards, for much of the early evangeli-
zation 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 Af-
ricans 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 sustainedcon-

4 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 im-
portantcompetition. This is illustratedin the PortugueseambassadorDiogo
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 ef-
forts, 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 Neverthe-
less, the strategydid pay off in Kongo where there was no Moslem compe-
tition, 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-Le-

porace (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 'ValentimFer-
nandes' (Lisbon, 1940), fols. 279-79v.
8 HeironynmousMiinzer, "De Inventione Africae Maritimaeet Occidentalis . . . " (23 November
1494), revised edition with Portuguesetranslation,Ant6nio Brisio (ed.) MonumentaMissionariaAfri-
cana (2d series, 5 vols., Lisbon, 1958-81) 1: 247, 249-50.
9 On his career and fate, see Avelino Teixiera da Mota, "D. JohoBemoim 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 CartografiaAntiga, de Lisboa, series separata63
(Lisbon, 1971). Secqgo
'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 THETRAILOF VOODOO

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 signifi-
cant, 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 Portu-
guese in Angola often linked conversionto acceptanceof Portuguesesover-
eignty. Many of the independentstates accepted or rejectedclerical minis-
trationsand 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 pro-
claim the efforts of Portugalas being fruitless.14 While this is not a com-
pletely fair judgment in the light of Portugueseefforts and success in Cen-
tral 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

Mastos t6 Magrabombana 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
(1625) by Andr6 Donelha (Lisbon, 1977), pp. 331-57. Early Jesuit work is describedin Guer-
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).
'14See 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 interestingex-
ample of Afro-Europeancontact.'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
surprisingly,they were occasionally instrumentalin 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 UniversitatsbibliotekLeiden, Biblioteca Publica Latina, MS 927, "Aenwijsingese van diversche

Beschrijvingen van de Noort-Cust van Africa" (ca. 1654), fol. 12v. The text specifies that "Portu-
guese" 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 contemporaryPortuguesedocumentsas 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., BaltasarBarreirato Jesuit Provincial, 20 February1606, in
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 Bell-
fond, 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 probablysafe to say thatin spiteof the lackof missionariesandthe
oftenhalf-hearted way in whichthe Portuguesecrownpursuedits religious
policies in Africa,therehad developeda considerablebody of Christians
there,supplemented by manymorepeoplewhowerecognizantandperhaps
even sympathetic evenif notyet willing(orperhapsable)to
to Christianity,
partake of the sacrament of baptism.Suchcommunitieswerestrongest,of
course, in Central Africa, where Kongo had an institutionalizedchurch
structureandwherethe Portuguesecolonyinsuredthe continuousdissemi-
nationof Christianity to its subjectsandneighbors.But theycouldalso be
found here and there in West Africa, outsideof the officiallyChristian
countriesof Warriin modernNigeriaandin SierraLeone,whereverthere
were Portuguesesettlementseven if the numberof formalChristianswas
limited.
These statementsmust bearthe crucialrider,however,thatthe actual
practiceof Christianitywas highlymixedwith Africanreligions,even in
areaslike Kongoand Angolawhereinstitutionalchurchesexistedand an
on-goingeducationalestablishment wasoperating.Of course,in theCentral
Africansituation,the ChurchandEuropeanmissionarieswho workedthere
acceptedmuchof thisbroadlysyncreticChristianity as beingorthodoxor at
least acceptable.Indeed,theirtolerationof syncretismwent beyondwhat
theirnineteenth-centurysuccessorsandprobablyeven modernmissionary
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'etab-
lissment 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 rain-

making 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 catechismpreparedin Spain in 1658,
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.25In the modern
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 per-
fectly 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 atti-
tudes. 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 De-

scrilio 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

INTHENEWWORLD
AFRICANCHRISTIANITY
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 particularlytrue, of course,
of slaves from Kongo, where Christianitywas so well established. The
FrenchJesuit Jean Mongin, working on St. Christophein 1678-82 reported
this rathermatter-of-factly.28One inventory of slaves in French Guyenne
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 mis-
leading, 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 pro-
fess 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," Bul-
letin 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 Venetia(Bassano, 1687), p.23.
31 Dionigio Carli da Piacenza, II Moro trasportatonell'inclita cittcd
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, re-
printedNew 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,
althoughthose baptismsgave contemporariesmore cause for concern. Even
if the Dutch merchantswho transportedslaves to the Caribbeanin the sev-
enteenth 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 establishmentat-
tempted 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 Chris-
tianity 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 Portuguesecompa-
triots in Africa were not providingadequatereligious instruction.Alonso de
Sandoval, one of the Jesuit priests in charge of slave instructionat Carta-
gena in the early seventeenthcentury, articulatedthis complaintfully in his
widely read book on the conversion of Africans in America, published in
1627, including many documents from Jesuit sources in other parts of
America to supporthis claims.36However, such complaintsmade by Span-
iards 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 (Stan-
ford, 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 ade-
quately 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 presum-
ably 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 Af-
ricans in such a short time. In fact, however, African Christianity and Af-
rican 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 cosmo-
logies 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 in-
structedthe 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(particularlybaptism, which they performedby the
hundreds, occasionally by the thousands), while the real work of main-
taining 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 cate-
chists 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 some-
what more of their origins and methods in America, thanks to the inquest
conducted into the life of Pedro Claver, the CatalanJesuit priest who man-
aged 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.41This
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.

41An 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.
272 ON THETRAILOFVOODOO

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 ca-
techists. 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 ethno-
linguistic 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
European-Mediterranean culture zone.43 The catechists began by teaching
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 fol-
lowed 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
Church, the Ten Commandmentsand the hierarchyof the Church.44
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 mis-
sions at hand, the slaves who came to serve as catechists would spread the
specifically African interpretation of Christianity similar to those of the cat-
echisms from their own African experience. As one might expect, the Je-
suits at Cartagena, and surely elsewhere as well, chose as catechists those
who were already familiar with Christianity or had some aptitude for lan-
guages. 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

45 FranciscoPacconio, Gentio de Angola sufficientementeinstruidonos mysteriosde nossa Sancta Fd

(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, West-
minster, Maryland, 1960), p. 116.
47 Bontinck and D. Ndembe Nsasi (ed. and trans.)Le catichisme kikongode 1624: reddition
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 THETRAILOFVOODOO

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 cate-
chist for slaves from those countries.50A person with this linguistic back-
groundalmost surely had travelledwidely in West Africa, probablyin com-
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 far-
ther 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, trans-
ported across to America when the interpreterwas enslaved, and then en-
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 re-
turnedfrom 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 Christianitycon-
tinued to be used in the instructionof slaves in the New World there as
well, formally as well as informally. The significance of the Allada cate-
chism increased, of course, as duringthe course of the seventeenthcentury
and the next, slaves from this partof Africa became more and more promi-
nent in the slave communitiesof the New World.
This informationcan then allow us to see how African slaves were con-
verted 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 cate-
chisms, 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 Afro-
Christian 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 promotingAfricanChristianityin the Americasas

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 metropol-

itan 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 ac-
cepting African Christianityas orthodox, the Jesuits were a conscientious
order in this regard. We must accept that in America as in Africa, the reli-
gious blend was consciously and knowingly accepted as being legitimate.

"FETISHISM" AND AFRICANCHRISTIANITY

Of course, Christianclergy did suppress a considerableamount of Af-

rican practice, some of it apparentlyreligious, in the Americas, includinga
good deal of the sort of nocturnaldancing and funeralcelebrationwhich is
often taken as typical of Afro-Christiancults today, and is often perceived
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 develop-
ment of African Christianityin the Americas.
In fact, however, this behaviorand the suppressionof "fetishism" in the
New World was an extension of AfricanChristianityas well. In Kongo, for
example, priests regularly struggledagainst "fetishers," who were appar-
ently practicing the pre-Christianreligion, even if at times they employed
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 supernat-
ural.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 con-
tacting the Devil. This contact made the person attemptingsupernatural
mediation a witch, (in Portuguesea feiticeiro, or as modernwriterson Af-
rican 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 popu-
lation that was historicallynon-Christian,but his understandingof Christian
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 sup-
pression of local religion, but in terms of the suppressionof witchcraft.
Thus, nocturnaldances, or the various fortune-tellingand healing activi-
ties that one can find Africans accused of in New World Inquisitiontexts,60
were suppressed, not because they representedremnantsof the old African
religion which was being attacked,but because their practitionerswere in-
tervening with the supernaturalas non-ordainedlay people. Since Africans
generallyunderstoodthat mediationwith the supernaturalmight 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 lev-
eled 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 main-
taining power and control was common in Africa as well.
This is confirmed by considerabletestimony from SierraLeone and sur-
rounding 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,
their old understandingof the structureof the universe and the place of the
gods and other divine beings in it. Its most importantdemandwas that they
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 reli-
gions 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 JOHNK. 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.