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African Medicine and Magic in the Americas
Robert Voeks
Geographical Review
, Vol. 83, No. 1. (Jan., 1993), pp. 66-78.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0016-7428%28199301%2983%3A1%3C66%3AAMAMIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23
Geographical Review
is currently published by American Geographical Society.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/ags.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgFri Feb 22 18:50:19 2008
 
AFRICAN MEDICINE AND MAGIC IN THE AMERICAS*
ROBERT VOEKS
ABSTRACT.
African-derived ethnomedical systems are visible elements of theNew World cultural landscape. Rejected by Western medicine, African healingsystems have survived and flourished in the Americas since the beginning ofthe slave trade. Historical introduction of African magico-medical systems, thesocial and economic factors that facilitated their survival, and the role of plantgeography in their persistence are examined. Questions of origin, ethnomedicaltypology, religion, and syncretism, magic and power, and collective medicinalplant knowledge are considered.
C
ONQUEST and colonization of the Americas by Europeans were accom-panied by an unprecedented blending of Old World and New Worlddiseases, ethnomedical systems, and plant-based pharmacopoeias. Ro-mantic visions of a salubrious American Eden, free of illness and aging,yielded to the reality of epidemic and premature death. Indigenous peoplessuccumbed in droves to exotic viruses; Mediterranean colonists battled newtropical maladies; and African captives, overworked and underfed, fell preyto both.Colonial physicians, few in number and often self-trained, doled out themedical care then known to late medieval and Renaissance Europe. Barbers,surgeons, bleeders, and priests, whose views of causation ranged from as-trological imbalances to the effects of evil spirits and bad air, responded tothe needs of the growing European population. But neglect by slave ownersand the exorbitant cost of physician services and pharmaceuticals forcedAfrican chattel to tend to their own medical problems. African priests, herbal-ists, and magicians, initiated into their trade before passage to the Americas,pursued their vocation to the extent possible in their new urban or ruralsettings. Firmly established in colonial times, African-based medicine, magic,and their associated plant pharmacopoeias have persisted and in many casesflourished in the Americas.ARRIVAL
ND
SURVIVALThe demographics of the slave trade most clearly delimited where andto what degree African magico-medicalsystems diffused into the New World.Where the volume and duration of slavery were heavy and protracted,African-based ethnomedicine not only survived but also in some cases cameto predominate. Brazil, which absorbed more than four million African im-migrants, retains African religious and medical systems so orthodox that,
'Research funding was provided by the National Geographic Society and the California StateUniversity.
DR.
VOEKS
is an associate professor of geography at California State University, Ful-lerton, California
92634.
Copyright
0
1993
by the American Geographical Society of New York
 
67
FRICAN MEDICINE IN THE AMERICAS
until recently, Nigerian priests undertook pilgrimages to Brazil to rediscoverceremonies long forgotten in Africa. With a total of approximately five mil-lion slaves imported, the old Spanish Main exhibits magico-religioussystemsscarcely different from those in Africa. By contrast, North America, whichreceived only half a million Africans during the entire slave trade (Rawley1981, 428), witnessed minor survival of their ethnomedical systems.Cultural diffusion from Africa to the Americas was indirectly fostered bythe insufferable conditions of plantation existence. Treatment of slaves variedamong owners, ranging from benign paternalism to sadism. Where condi-tions were most brutal, high mortality combined with sub-replacement-levelfertility to generate a constant demand for fresh captives. In the Dutch colonyof Surinam, 300,000 Africans arrived between 1668 and 1823, but scarcely50,000 descendants survived at the end of that period (Price 1976). In Rio deJaneiro, even after three centuries of sustained slave traffic, more than 73percent of the 1832 slave population was African born (Karasch 1987). InLatin America, at least, the captive labor force was numerically dominatedby slaves born not in the Americas but in Africa. Included among the ranksof these newly arrived laborers were priests, magicians, and herbalists, whofrequently retained, even as slaves, a measure of their previous status. This,in turn, facilitated the survival of a social hierarchy, necessary to the existenceof a shaman class, and reinforced the collective knowledge of Africaneth-nomedicine among the resident black population.The religious division between Protestantism in British North Americaand Roman Catholicism in Latin America also contributed to the degree ofcultural retention. Whereas the simpler ritual of Protestant sects conflictedwith the complexities of African religion (Camara 1988,304), Roman Catholicliturgy had some structural similarities with African religions: ancestor wor-ship, elaborate ritual and offerings, and, most importantly, polytheism. ForRoman Catholics polytheism meant devotion to the hagiology of saints; forAfricans, faith in the power of a pantheon of deities. Additionally, the RomanCatholic Church maintained an implicit policy of tolerance toward paganrituals and deities that was not shared by the Protestant sects. Convertingheathens to the one true religion was best effected not by destroying theiricons and suppressing their ceremonies but rather by slowly replacing themwith Roman Catholic symbols and rituals (Ribeiro 1958). In this way, Africanscould continue to perform pagan rites, now disguised as Roman Catholicliturgy, and to honor their own gods, now concealed by the names of RomanCatholic saints. To this day, the African deityBabalu-Ay6 is associated withSt. Lazarus, Obatalh with Jesus Christ, and Yemayh with the Virgin Mother.If the path to cultural retention was cleared by social and economic forcesbeyond their control, Africans nevertheless were responsible for the survivalof their religions in the New World. Resisting domination by their owners,slaves throughout the Americas fled to the hinterlands and formed theirown communities. Maroon societies, such as those founded in Jamaica and
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JHMcCormack

This is a very useful article as I am currently researching bush medicine and it's history in the Bahamas, especially San Salvador Island

reply08 / 26 / 2009
JHMcCormack

I didn't see your reply until recently. In my research so far on San Salvador Island most of the knowledge appears to have been learned by trial and error, though in two instances people were led to a certain plant in dreams. Finding the conceptual and spiritual origins of their medicine has been challenging. Often the blends of plants must be in odd numbers - curious about the origin of this.

09 / 11 / 2009
Samosisimo

I am glad you have found the article useful. I am the grandson of a traditional healer who never took aprentices & the craft died with her. Ethnobotany has always been an interst of my as a way of honoring her memory.

08 / 29 / 2009
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