In Kings County in Brooklyn, New York at the Lott Farmstead Kongo related artifacts were found on the site. The Kongo related artifacts were a Kongo cosmogram engraved onto ceramics and Nkisi bundles that had cemetery dirt and iron nails left by enslaved African Americans. The iron nails researchers suggests were used to prevent whippings from slaveholders. Also, the Kongo cosmogram engravings were used as a crossroads for spiritual rituals by the enslaved African American population in Kings County. Historians suggests Lott Farmstead was a stop on the Underground Railroad for freedom seekers (runaway slaves). The Kongo cosmogram artifacts were used as a form of spiritual protection against slavery and for enslaved peoples protection during their escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad.
In Darrow, Louisiana at the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation historians and archeologists unearthed Kongo and West-Central African practices inside slave cabins. Enslaved Africans in Louisiana conjured the spirits of Kongo ancestors and water spirits by using sea shells. Other charms were found in several slave cabins, such as silver coins, beads, polished stones, bones, and were made into necklaces or worn in their pockets for protection. These artifacts provided examples of African rituals at Ashland Plantation. Slaveholders tried to stop African practices among their slaves, but enslaved African Americans disguised their rituals by using American materials and applying an African interpretation to them and hiding the charms in their pockets and making them into necklaces concealing these practices from their slaveholders.
In Talbot County, Maryland at the Wye House plantation where Frederick Douglass was enslaved in his youth, Kongo related artifacts were found. Enslaved African Americans created items to ward off evil spirits by creating a Hoodoo bundle near the entrances to chimneys which was believed to be where spirits enter. The Hoodoo bundle contained pieces of iron and a horse shoe. Enslaved African Americans put eyelets on shoes and boots to trap spirits. Archeologists also found small carved wooden faces. The wooden carvings had two faces carved into them on both sides which was interpreted to mean an African American conjurer who was a two-headed doctor. Two-headed doctors in Hoodoo means a person who can see into the future, and has knowledge about spirits and things unknown. At Levi Jordan Plantation in Brazoria, Texas near the Gulf Coast, researchers suggests the plantation owner Levi Jordan may have transported captive Africans from Cuba back to his plantation in Texas. These captive Africans practiced a Bantu-Kongo religion in Cuba, and researchers excavated Kongo related artifacts at the site. For example, archeologists found in one of the cabins called the "curer's cabin" remains of an nkisi nkondi with iron wedges driven into the figure to activate its spirit. Researchers found a Kongo bilongo which enslaved African Americans created using materials from white porcelain creating a doll figure.
In the western section of the cabin they found iron kettles and iron chain fragments. Researchers suggests the western section of the cabin was an altar to the Kongo spirit Zarabanda.On a plantation in Kentucky called Locust Grove in Jefferson County, archeologists and historians found amulets made by enslaved African Americans that had the Kongo cosmogram engraved onto coins and beads. Blue beads were found among the artifacts, and in African spirituality blue beads attract protection to the wearer. Enslaved African Americans in Kentucky combined Christian practices with traditional African beliefs.
Brooklyn Museum 22.198 Cane / This cane is from the Arts of Africa collection. Bantu-Kongo people in Central Africa and African Americans in the United States crafted similar canes.The word "goofer" in goofer dust has Kongo origins, it comes from the "Kongo word 'Kufwa' which means to die."The mojo bag in Hoodoo has Bantu-Kongo origins. Mojo bags are called "toby" and the word toby derives from the Kongo word tobe.[62] The word mojo also originated from the Kikongo word mooyo. The word mooyo means that natural ingredients have their own indwelling spirit that can be utilized in mojo bags to bring luck and protection. The mojo bag or conjure bag derived from the Bantu-Kongo minkisi. The Nkisi singular, and Minkisi plural, is when a spirit or spirits inhabit an object created by hand from an individual. These objects can be a bag (mojo bag or conjure bag) gourds, shells, and other containers.
Various items are placed inside a bag to give it a particular spirit or job to do. Mojo bags and minkisis are filled with graveyard dirt, herbs, roots, and other materials by the spiritual healer called Nganga. The spiritual priests in Central Africa became the rootworkers and Hoodoo doctors in African American communities. In the American South, conjure doctors create mojo bags similar to the Ngangas minkisi bags as both are fed offerings with whiskey.[64] Other examples of Kongo origins of the mojo bag is found in the story of Gullah Jack. Gullah Jack was an African from Angola who carried a conjure bag (mojo bag) onto a slave ship leaving Angola for the United States. In South Carolina, Gullah Jack used the spiritual knowledge he had with him from Angola and made conjure bags for other enslaved people for their spiritual protection. Other Bantu-Kongo origins in Hoodoo is making a cross mark (Kongo cosmogram) and stand on it and take an oath. This practice is done in Central Africa and in the United States in African American communities. The Kongo cosmogram is also used as a powerful charm of protection when drawn on the ground, the solar emblems or circles at the end and the arrows are not drawn just the cross marks which looks like an X.
Other Bantu-Kongo practices present in Hoodoo are the use of conjure canes. Conjure canes in the United States are decorated with specific objects to conjure specific results and conjure spirits. This practice was brought to the United States during the transatlantic slave trade from Central Africa. Several conjure canes are used today in some African American families. In Central Africa among the Bantu-Kongo, ritual healers are called banganga and use ritual staffs (now called conjure canes in Hoodoo). These ritual staffs of the banganga conjure spirits and healing for people. The banganga healers in Central Africa became the conjure doctors and herbal healers in African American communities in the United States. The Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida collaborated with other world museums to compare African American conjure canes with ritual staffs from Central Africa and found similarities between the two, and other aspects of African American culture that originated from Bantu-Kongo people.
Bakongo spiritual protections influenced African American yard decorations. In Central Africa, Bantu-Kongo people decorated their yards and entrances to doorways with baskets and broken shiny items to protect from evil spirits and thieves. This practice is the origin of the bottle tree in Hoodoo. Throughout the American South in African American neighborhoods, there are some houses that have bottle trees and baskets placed at entrances to doorways for spiritual protection against conjure and evil spirits. An African American man in North Carolina buried a jar under the steps with water and string in it for protection. If someone conjured him the string would turn into a snake. The man interviewed called it inkabera.
Bantu-Kongo burial practices by African Americans were found in Florida. Researchers noticed the similarities of grave sites of African Americans in Florida and those of the Bakongo people in Central Africa. Headstones with a T shape were seen in Black cemeteries and at grave sites in the Kongo region. The T shape headstone peculiar to black cemeteries in north Florida during the 1920s through the 1950s corresponds to the lower half of the Kongo cosmogram that symbolizes the realm of the ancestors and spiritual power. In Bantu-Kongo spirituality the spirit realm is in the color white. African Americans decorated the graves of their family members with white items such as white conch seashells. Seashells represent the watery divide located on the horizontal line of the Kongo cosmogram that is a boundary between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead. By placing seashells on graves, African Americans were creating a boundary (barrier) between the recently deceased and them, keeping the spirit in the realm of the dead below the Kongo cosmogram. The practice of placing seashells on top of graves in African American cemeteries continued beyond the 1950s, and was found in Archer, Florida.
Researchers found other continued Bakongo burial practices in black cemeteries in Florida. In the Kongo region, Bakongo people placed broken objects on top of graves so the recently deceased can travel to the land of the dead. The broken items symbolize the person's connection to the world of the living was broken by their death, and they need to return to the realm of the dead. This practice was found in African American cemeteries in Florida and among the Gullah Geechee people in the Sea Islands in the United States.The conjure practices of African Americans in Georgia was influenced by Bakongo and other West African ethnic groups when a slave ship the Wanderer illegally imported 409 enslaved Africans to Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1858.
Historians from Southern Illinois University in the Africana Studies Department documented about 20 title words from the Kikongo language are in the Gullah language. These title words indicate continued African traditions in hoodoo and conjure. The title words are spiritual in meaning. In Central Africa, spiritual priests and spiritual healers are called Nganga. In the South Carolina Lowcountry among Gullah people a male conjurer is called Nganga. Some Kikongo words have a "N" or "M" in the beginning of the word. However, when Bantu-Kongo people were enslaved in South Carolina the letters N and M were dropped from some of the title names. For example, in Central Africa the word to refer to spiritual mothers is Mama Mbondo. In the South Carolina Lowcountry in African American communities the word for a spiritual mother is Mama Bondo. In addition during slavery, it was documented there was a Kikongo speaking slave community in Charleston, South Carolina.
Yale University professor, Dr. Robert Farris Thompson, has done academic research in Africa and in the United States and traced Hoodoo's (African American conjure) origins to Central Africa's Bantu-Kongo people in his book Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy. Thompson is an African Art historian and found through his study of African Art the origins of African Americans' spiritual practices to certain regions in Africa. Academic historian Albert J. Raboteau in his book, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South, traced the origins of Hoodoo (conjure, rootwork) practices in the United States to West and Central Africa. These origins developed a slave culture in the United States that was social, spiritual, and religious.
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