The Origin of Negro Traditions
by Thomas W. Talley
Part 1: Phylon (1940-1956), Vol. 3, No. 4 (4th Qtr., 1942), pp. 371-376
Part 2: Phylon (1940-1956), Vol. 4, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1943), pp. 30-38
[See Talley's book Negro Folk Rhymes in my book collection. Recognized during his lifetime primarily as a chemist, teacher, and administrator at Fisk University, Thomas W. Talley (1870- 1952) was also Tennessee's first African-American folklorist. A native of Bedford County, he began collecting folk songs about 1900, and published many of them in Negro Folk Rhymes in 1922. Later, he compiled the state's first collection of Black folk tales, Negro Traditions. Talley was also a skilled singer and composer.]
The Origin of Negro Traditions
By THOMAS W. TALLEY
I was born and reared among the Negro masses whose educational equipment consisted largely of traditions. They planted, cultivated, cooked, ate, and drank in the traditional way. All men born among such people inherit a love for the past. This must necessarily be so; because, since their traditions are almost their entire source of training, those who love them least know least and fare worst in the battle of life. Born with such a love, I could not help longing to see and to know the dim prehistoric
past.
As my ship of life has moved steadily down the stream of time, and I have become more and better acquainted with its telescopic equipment; I have sought at my leisure through it to secure a vision of the past as well as of the future, because men must know whence they came if they would wisely judge whither they are going. I have felt for some time that
I have seen outlines of the past unrecognized by my fellow travelers; but, because the image in my telescope was not so clear cut as I desired, I have for a long time hesitated to invite others to look at it.
Much of what I shall include in the discussion has not been raised to the rank of tradition by others who have hitherto written on this subject. They have called many of the things, here discussed, myths and legends. I realize quite thoroughly that the terms: myths, legends, and traditions as used today, are not all synonymous. But I have included all these under the term "tradition"f or conveniencei n discussion. What is meant in general by tradition in this treatise is: whatever has been handed down by word or mouth, and was, at one time, conceived to be either a whole or a part truth. I can only hope that the general results obtained may justify this departuref rom recognizeda uthority. I shall not, however, feel entirely obligated rigidly to keep to the term tradition throughout my discussions. I am undertaking to give a message; and I shall freely use such words as I think will make that message clear.
I
So many studies have been made with a view to discovering the elemental sources from which our old myths, legends, and traditions have sprung, and with such limited success, that the average individual is inclined to be unwilling to trouble himself with further discussions along that line. The trouble is, however, not that all are not vitally interested; but that most people have given rise to them. That the matter of the origin of traditions is a matter of large import, no one will deny; because in the
answer as to the elemental origin of traditions probably lies the answer as to the beginnings of all things religious, literary and scientific.
My personal knowledge of Negro traditions has revealed to me that they are the creations of evolution. Among the ante-bellum Negroes of America something occurred, another thing occurred, and still another thing occurred. Thent he massesh avingh eard of these occurrencesg radually wove them perchance into a simple story as of interest - the whole story being so woven as to fit into their preconceived notions of things gained through former observations and experiences. Thus arose many
of their stories and traditions.
But some of their traditions arose in quite another way. When some strange phenomenon presented itself to them the ante-bellum Negroes often formulated a theory to account for its existence, and this theory passed temporarily from mouth to mouth in the same general story-form as the older and better established traditions. It was in reality temporarily a tradition and had within it the possibility of becoming permanent. Each account was a gradually evolved product.
When one goes to study and to trace the line of descent of a product of evolution, there are two ways in which it may be done. One way is to take the most highly evolved product and to trace it back through its various preceding forms to its very first form. The other way is to manage somehow to find out the initial form; and then to trace the development of this initial form through its various successive forms to its highest form.
Permit me to illustrate what I mean. We are all well acquainted with the Nautilus of which Oliver Wendell Holmes has so beautifully written in his poem, "The Chambered Nautilus". It sprangf rom and belongs to the family of the Nautiloids of geological times. Dana, in speaking of the family to which it belongs, says: "The Nautiloid, which commenced with
a straight body and a shell no longer than the little finger, and was continued in curved and coiled forms, reached its maximum in the Carboniferous; is continued to the present, but only in two or three species of Nautilus; and these are the last of the Tetrabranchiates."[9]
Now it is perfectly clear in the case of the Nautilus, where all the forms have been found, that in order to establish on sure grounds the line of descent and the origin of the Nautilus family, one might begin with the most highly developed curved form or vice versa. But if in trying to find the origin of the Nautilus one should begin and compare it with the other highest one time coexistent forms of Goniaties and Ammonites ['Dana, Manual of Geology, p. 869.] he would get much interesting information indeed, but would probably learn little or nothing concerning its origin.
Or, to take yet a more familiar illustration; if one sought to know the origin of vertebrates and in order to know this proceeded to compare the hand of a man with the wing of a bird and the fin of a fish - all high coexistent vertebrate forms -he would indeed find much similarity and many points of interest; but he would learn little or nothing of their origin. He would need to trace the individual lines of ancestry of man, bird, and fish either by descent or ascent in order to find the point of origin
of either high form.
The great writers of the past, as I have before said, who have sought to know the origin of myths and traditions have done so by comparing them with each other. The writer of this treatise has endeavored to take the common biological method of following the line of descent to get at
the origin of myths and traditions. His theory has been made in conformity
with this method of procedure.
II
ThoughI thinkt he Negro traditionsu nique and characteristicin themselves, I have always especially regarded them as of value for furnishing material to be used as a basis of a general study of all traditions, through which study some possible new fact might be added to the world's treasure of knowledge.
Those who have troubled themselves to know of Negro folk productions, after reading Nights with Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris, will possibly wonder how it happens that I was able at this late date to offer a new collection of Negro folk-lore - entirely passed over by him. The explanation is quite simple: the "Brer Rabbit" stories of Mr. Harris were looked upon by Negroes with few exceptions as fiction pure and simple.
The Negro folk-lore accounts which I have recorded, on the contrary were looked upon by the large common masses of Negroes as a sort of
half and half admixture of fact and fiction. Though very different from
the old Greek and Roman stories concerning their gods, they stood in
semi-relation to the Negro mind as these old myths stood to the Greek
and Roman mind. There were, of course, among the ante-bellum Negroes
a few who had advanced to such a degree in thought that they placed no
credence in these traditions; but they were the exceptions and not the rule.
When Mr. Harris therefore asked ante-bellum American Negroes for
stories, he got their stories. He received very, very few of their traditions;
and he received these in a very fragmentary way. Those which he did
receive and partially record as they were told by Negroes are: "A Ghost
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PHYLON
Story", "The Story of the Deluge and How It Came About", "A Plantation
Witch"," Jack-my-lantern",W hyt he Negro Is Black",a nd "The Cunning
Snake". Mr. Harris did not seem to have known, however, that these
stories were placed in a very different class from the "Brer Rabbit" stories
by the Negro people.
The real Negro traditions were practically never told by these people
as a source of amusement pure and simple. Whenever a little group of
them met and some of the crowd told of some mysterious experience
through which he had passed, or when some one of their number spoke
of some phenomenonq ueert o him; it was then that a Negro traditionw as
reproducede ither as a reminiscenceo r as somethingc alculatedt o furnish
a theory in explanation of the matter under discussion.
Let us examine a few Negro traditions. They furnish many points of
interest. First, when one reads "How the Bear Lost His Judgeship", he is
presented with the theory that all animals lived in peace and harmony
but after a time first the snake and then the bear began to eat the others
and this carnivoroush abit contractedb y them led to the habit of the other
animals hiding their young in the woods.
It is rather remarkable that this traditional story, otherwise the very
embodimenot f nonsense,i s in harmonyw ith our biological and geological
sciences which indicate that all animals were probably originally herbivorous-
the carnivoroush abit being acquiredd uringt he processo f their
evolution. Of course the Negro tradition abounds in absurdities; for along
with this theory, in which a modern scientific man might almost believe,
there is a theory that the sun and the moon are living individuals, were
at one time married, had the stars for their children, had a family disagreementw,
ere separated,a nd thereforen ow travel across the sky apart.
Even this part of the story might serve to call to one's mind a possible
crude primitive nebular hypothesis similar to that given to the world by
La Place. This tradition was commonly known among the boys of my
childhood and though no attention was paid especially to that part dealing
with the sun and the moon and the stars, the story was considered as having
a grain of truth in that part where explanation was offered as to how it
came about that animals began to hide their young. Of course nobodynot
even we little children - thought of the story as true in minute detail.
We laughed at the comic scenes quite as much as those who would take
no stock in the traditions at all.
Second, when one reads the tradition "Why the Buzzard Is Black",
he mysteriously walks the paths of the ridiculous from the beginning to
end. When he is through, however, and stops to wonder why one could
ever think that the snake could paint his body with spots, he is struck
with the possibility (if he could cut out all the nonsense) that, since very
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NEGRO TRADITIONS
youngb uzzardsa re of a light, grey color, there are biologicall aws holding
out the possibility that the primeval buzzard might have been of a very
light color. Then with a knowledge that the spots on snakes are there
largely as a protective mimicry, and with a knowledge that the protective
mimicry is withoutd oubta n acquiredc haracteristic;w e concludet hat all
snakes were probably originally plain in color. Then we are allowed
logically to raise the question in our minds as to whether or not primitive
men may not have seen snakes evolve from the state of uniformity in
color to a state of the variegated in color; and may they not have advanced
such theories as the one found here in explanation of the change - such
explanations being finally handed down by word of mouth as a part of
their traditions.
Third, as I have recorded," The Devil's Daughters"- aboundingi n
superstitiona nd conjuration-belief-s and have made note of the points:
(a) that Jack worked seven days in order to get the Devil's daughter for
a wife, (b) that the Devil tried to cheat him and foist upon him another
woman, (c) that he finally got the daughter that he loved, and (d) that
Jack afterwardsm anagedt o get nearly all his father-in-law'sp roperty;
I have not been able to dissociate some parts of it altogether from the
Biblical narrative concerning Jacob working for Laban seven years and
the events attendantu pon it.
Fourth,i n the traditiono f "Cotton-eyedJo e" we learn thath e hollowed
out a coffinf rom the trunko f a tree in which to bury his child. This point
would present nothing of especial interest but for certain anthropological
discoveries.
In 1842, in Blount County, Alabama, James Newman and a party of
hunters entered a cave. Its entrance was small and well concealed. When
they were inside, they found that one of its spacious compartmentsh ad
been used by prehistoric men, partly civilized, as a burial ground.
I now quote from the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution
They found eight or ten wooden coffins of black and white walnut,
hollowed or cut out of the solid after the fashion of the "dugout" canoe.
The coffins were sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where they have
been restored as far as possible and are now exhibited in the department
of prehistoric anthropology.... In proximity to the coffins were twelve
or fifteen human skulls, and also a large number of human bones ....
There were five or six wooden trays.... Scattered about but near the
skeletons and coffins were found the following objects: about 200 pounds
of galena, some of the larger pieces being rudely grooved, similar to
the aboriginal stone axes and mauls, as though for war clubs - cassetetes;
a number of arrow and spear heads and other relics; a small copper
hatchet, a copper chisel about five inches long and about twenty
2June 30, 1892, p. 451.
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PHYLON
coppero rnamentsm, osto f theseh avings mallh oles drilleda s thoughf or
suspension; six or seven large shells (Fulgar Carica); some shell disks
and beads and pieces of wooden matting. ... One of the copper chisels
and some of the galena were in one of the coffins.2
Here we have, as authentic anthropological history, a case of prehistoric
man, in the Bronze Age of development, burying his dead in a
"dugout" coffin. Possibly those who have not troubled themselves much to
think about traditions would naturally ask what possible connection things
seemingly so distantly related could have to each other. I shall tell you.
I couple the "Cotton-eyed Joe" tradition with this anthropological discovery.
I spent the first years of my life among people who told to each
other their traditions and who also formulated traditions. When Negroes
told to each other a given tradition, the general plot remained constant;
but it was common for an individual to vary portions of the narrative to
fit in with other traditions which he might have picked up here and there.
The various versions of a tradition therefore corresponded much to what
we have in case of revised editions of school text books. Individuals, while
keeping largely to the old, endeavored to so incorporate the new as to
make it fit in with whatever might seem more reasonable.
I know quite well that, when I speak of those who from time to time
fashioned and remoulded the Negro traditions, attempting to conform
them to reason, it is enough to make the most kindly disposed laugh in
derision. Yet such was the case. These plain simple hearted people were
as earnest in their way, in their endeavor to ascertain truth, as are the
best college-trained men. The college man has all the recorded knowledge
of the past and the largest facilities for observation as a promise for his
conclusions and theories of life. The Negro had only mythical narratives
and his limited personal observations upon which he might base his conclusions
and theories of life.
The Negro saw or thought he saw something very mysterious in nature,
or he passed through a status of mind mysterious to him; he then crudely
described these things to others, unintentionally magnifying them in order
to make an impression; and the mysterious experience or observation,
coupled with the magnified account, begat a tradition. Others, having
heard this tradition, and themselves having had experiences apparently
similar, incorporated their own experiences into it and thus enlarged it.
The tradition, then thus started, went on and on, being enlarged, revised,
and sometimes entirely recast.
[To be continued in PHYLON Vol. IV, No. 1]
By THOMAS W. TALLEY
The Origin of Negro Traditions'
The tradition of "The Courting Old Woman," is a clear illustration
of the thought which I would impart here. Such traditions are what we
might aptly term historical myths. I would not for once intimate that I
think them history at all. I do not mean to say that there was ever an
individual white old maiden mistress of slaves who passed through the
many comic episodes described in this Negro tradition. But I do mean to
say that there were those who were silly in their courtship, and that the
Negro slaves met from time to time and swapped jokes about their ridiculous
actions; and bye and bye this swapping of jokes gave rise to the
tradition of the white courting old maiden mistress.
I have pointed out this tradition of "The Courting Old Woman" by way
of illustration because one cannot fail to see, when he has read it, that
it can well carry the trademark "Made in America." One may ask why
a tradition at all in such cases? The answer is that primitive peoples
receive all their knowledge of the past through traditions. The traditions
to be handed down take on the story form both because it approaches in
form human conversation and also because it is a form which clings tenaciously
in the memory.
Now, turning our attention once more directly to the tradition of
"Cotton-eyed Joe"; we find in it a story decidedly of American slave life.
It even brings in an account of the old custom of house-slave servants
exchanging plates with each other at the table in order to insure against
poisoning through the jealousy of a slave fellow-servant. But along with
it comes the statement that Cotton-eyed Joe's child was buried in a coffin
made by hollowing out the log from a trunk of a tree.
If we assume that the Negroes at all times in the past had their same
accustomed habits of enlarging, revising and recasting their traditions as
they did in the days when the masses gradually formulated the tradition
of "The Courting Old Woman," then we can reasonably come to the conclusion
that the tradition concerning Cotton-eyed Joe started by hollowing
out the logs from trees. The anthropological discoveries in Alabama which
I have discussed declare that this time was in the Bronze Age when men
hunted with weapons of stone and fought with clubs of galena but wrought
native copper into chisels and personal ornaments.
1Concluded from Phylon, Vol. III, Fourth Quarter.
[30]
NEGRO TRADITIONS
In this same tradition, another Negro named Sol is supposedly changed
into the first Weeping Willow. This would make it look as if the tradition
also passed through the hands of a people of a generation who, like the
inventors of the stories of the Arabian Nights, without qualm of thought
or of conscience, introduced incidents involving the "change of a woman
into a dog or a man into a horse." To make a long story short, the tradition
of Cotton-eyedJ oe appears to have originatedi n some form away back
in the Bronze Age of prehistoric times and to have traveled down through
the ages to the early seventies in the last century when I heard it as a mere
child after its multitudinousr evisionsa nd recastingse xtendingo ver thousands
and possibly over millions of years.
Perhaps some one might be inclined to reject this view on the ground
that the whole tradition is apparently of slave origin. I beg to remind him
that slavery has existed in Africa, whence the Negro came, even among
the savage tribes, from the very earliest times of our knowledge of that
continent. However all this may be, Africa has ever been not only the
land of the slave trafficb ut also of slavery. Slavery has not yet altogether
disappeared from all the native tribes in that dark continent. With these
facts before us, thereo ughtt o be no troublei n recognizingt he possibilityo f
the coming of a slave tradition from Africa to America and its being recast
to fit in with general American conditions.
Such traditions as these find a parallel in the life histories of certain
animals that, as they develop from the embryonic state to maturity, pass
through all the forms of their ancestry as found in geological history.
The old form of the animal occasionally lingers in some parts of the body
as a kind of fossil-like form in the present day descendant. In like manner
I conceive the fossils lingering in traditions to point out the forces to
which they have been subjected in their ancestry and some of the forms
through which they have passed. I realize that this conception may appear
rather far-fetched to the reader at this stage of our discussion.
Lest some one should think the conception fanciful that the Negro, in
adopting the new and revising toward the higher, customarily included
some of the old (however crude) in the new, I shall give an example or
two of concrete evidence, well known to those who have studied his song
productions, which bear out my view.
The Jubilee songs represent in their thoughts the Negro's highest
crystalizedi deal whenh e firstp assed over from heathenismt o Christianity.
In their words may be found therefore his best form of thought and composition
during a period when he passed from an older to a newer ideal.
I now quote two stanzas from the Jubilee song "I Won't Stop Praying"
1. OldS atanis a liar anda conj'ert,o o,
If youd on'tm indh e'llc onjurey ou.
31
2. The Bible is our engineer,
It points the way to Heaven so clear.
In the second stanza of this song, we see the Negro accepting the Bible
as his new guiding star. His new vision is clearly and unmistakably expressed;
and in expressing that vision he calls into service by way of illustration
the engineer of our modern railroad. All this is just what we should
naturally expect.
But I invite the reader now to look at the first stanza. The idea expressed
there that Satan is a conjurer is brought over from the Negro's
native beliefs and is incorporated right in the midst of his new Christian
song. The ideal set forth in this stanza is in keeping with the conception
of the Devil as set forth in our Negro tradition published in another volume
under the title of "The Devil's Daughters." There is nothing Christian in
the conception at all. Let us examine two stanzas of another Jubilee song.
This song is called "Going Up"
Oh saints and sinners will you go?
I'm going up to Heaven to see my robe.
Going to see my robe and try it on
'Tis brighter than the glittering sun.
This stanza is thoroughly harmonious with all Christian thought and almost
at once recalls the beautiful words of our Bible - "Then shall the righteous
shine forth like the sun in their Heavenly Father's realm." But let us now
read another stanza
I'll tell you what I love the best,
It is the shouting Methodist.
We shout so loud the Devil look,
And he gets away with his cloven foot.
The thought expressed in this stanza to the effect that the Devil has a cloven
foot does not come from our Bible. It is a fossil of Negro pagan thought
grafted on to his new religion and points out whence he came in religion.
Would you know the Negro's primitive thought of the Devil's appearance,
read the following words quoted from "Jacky-my-lantern" recorded by
Joel Chandler Harris in "Nights With Uncle Remus," where he is described
as having come up to get a certain wicked drunken blacksmith.
It reads as follows
De Bad Man, honey; de Old Boy hisself right fresh from de ridjun
w'at you hear Miss Sally readin' 'bout. He done hide his hawns en his
tail, en his hoofs, an he come dress up like w'ite folks. He tuck off his
hat en he bow, en den he tell de blacksmif who he is, en dat he done
come atter 'im.
The Negro carried the foregoing primitive thoughts of the Devil over
into his Christian verse. The second stanza quoted of the Jubilee song,
"Going Up," shows this. This same thing happened in the tradition of
"Cotton-eyed Joe." This tradition, true to American slave life in its gen
32 PHYLON
NEGRO TRADITIONS
eral make up, at the same time carries fossils of the Bronze Age and other
periods of time through which the ancestral Negro passed.
I have called such traditions as that of "Cotton-eyedJ oe" historic
traditions, not at all because they are historically correct in point of fact,
but because they are the primitive man's unconscious instinctive effort to
formulate and hand down a record of the past somewhat paralleling our
effort to record and transmit as history the true story of the past.
There is this large difference between the methods by which the two
varieties of history are formulated. The primitive man narrates his current
history by a magnified word of mouth, without any thought whatever as
to its bearing on the welfare of coming generations. Each man receiving
the tradition revises it without scruple, enough to make it fit in with his
own experiences; and as a result we have a kind of historic tradition full
of contradictionsa nd absurdities.
The civilized man, on the contrary, carefully weighs the possible net
effects of his recorded experiences on the coming generations. He commits
his carefully prepared accounts not to men for safe keeping but to stone
inscriptions and printed pages, which cannot automatically change their
records over night; and thus we have real history, or at least what we think
to be real history.
The traditions of the historic type found in my collection are: "De
Wull-er-de-wust" (Will o' the Wisp), "The Courting Old Woman," "Cotton-
eyed Joe," "The Slave in the Moon," "The Parrot Overseer," and
"Riddle Them Right."
I next call attention to a second type of Negro tradition which I call
the theory tradition. All the traditions, found in my collection of "Negro
Traditions," which do not fall under the heading of historic tradition are
largely of this second type. I shall choose for their discussion the one
among them which I consider the simplest in form. It is the tradition
entitled "Why the Irishman Is a Railroad Section Boss."
We all know quite well how the people of the world have for a long
time made the Irishman the butt of their jokes and the object of many of
their witticisms. The American Negro slave heard these witticisms from
time to time as they passed here and there from mouth to mouth. The
Negro, therefore, knowing practically nothing of the Irishman, permitted
him to become a kind of living joke in his primitive slave mind.
When these American Negroes came out of slavery they went to work
in large numbers as section hands on the various railroads of the South.
When they were there what should they find to their great surprise but a
large number of Irishmen employed as "bosses" or foremen of the work
in railroad repairing. To the average Negro of that day, with little other
information than jokes and stories, this was a matter for some thought.
His reasoning on the matter was very simple; namely, that men learned
33
PHYLON
things in only one of three ways - by experience, by observation, or by
instruction. Now, they did not see Irishmen or any other white men working
or being instructed how to work at that time as common laborers on
sections of railroads. Thus they concluded that these Irishmen, being
white, must have learned their jobs by observation. Putting, therefore,
the jokes together concerning the Irishman which were the common property
of the masses - the jokes being contorted to suit Negro fancy -
they wove their theory tradition, "Why the Irishman Is a Railroad Section
Boss." The general theory set forth in the story is very simple. It is a supposition
that the Irishman came to this country looking for something
better in life. He failed everywhere simply because he was an awkward
blunderer. But while blundering and looking for a better field, he continuously
walked on the railroad (a place where people commonly walked
in olden days in the country places of the South in order to escape walking
on the muddy dirt roads). By tramping on the railroad for a long time,
he learned everything about it and thus became qualified through observation
to become director of railroad section labor.
Of course such a theory is the height of the ridiculous to the intelligent
man who knowst he mathematicsp, hysics and economicso f railroad construction.
But how about the man who does not know that such a thing as
civil engineering exists?
This tradition did not last on the popular tongue for a very long time
because the Freedmen in a short while, through contact with the Irishman,
learned him to be anything else than a living joke. Such a tradition, to
my mind, in its constitutioni s a type along which a large numbero f traditions
have been built. They are the unconscious instinctive efforts of
primitive men to lay the foundations of science.
We find this primitive instinctive method followed, in a modified way,
even by our present day scientific men. We find them explaining the
phenomena of light on the theory of an existence of a luminiferous ether.
They explain chemical reactions with an atomic theory. They have a
quantum theory, to explain atomic, molecular, and radiant energy, and
many other theories too numerous to mention. They advance and hold
these theories because they seem to reasonably explain all the phenomena
under consideration.
Strange as it may sound, to those not acquainted with them, primitive
men did this same thing. The tradition of the Irishman, though silly, is
illustrative of this.
Men of science once placed credence in the phlogiston theory but they
dropped it when they found it false. The Negro had this same practice
where he found a theory tradition false. The popularity of the tradition
concerning the Irishman was short-lived.
34
NEGRO TRADITIONS
The scientists still speak occasionally in their books of the phlogiston
theory as a matter of interest and not of fact. The theory tradition makers
practiced this same principle. When they found a theory tradition false
(like that concerning the Irishman), they dropped it as not containing
even a grain of truth, but still occasionally related it as a matter of pastime.
The other Negro theory traditions are not so simple and clear in their
meaning as the one which we have just discussed, with the exception of the
tradition, "Why the White Overseers of Negro Slaves Had Little Sense."
This theory - that the white overseers had little sense - was a simple
clear theory, though a mistaken one. It is a kind of reflection, in a way,
of the image of the little Negro song recorded by me in "Negro Folk
Rhymes," whose first stanza reads
My name's Ran, I wuks in de san';
But I'd ruther be a Nigger dan a po' w'ite man.
It may sound strange but it is nevertheless true that the average Negro
who emerged from slavery felt that the poor white man (whom he in
privatec alled "Cracker,"" Hill-Billy,"" Poo'-Achans,"" Rakes,"" Trash,"
etc.), fromw homa nte-bellumo verseersl argely came, was a man of another
species altogether from the aristocratic Southern "blue-blood." This
furnished the foundation for the absurd Negro tradition.
Eacht heoryt raditionh as in it pointsw orthyo f consideration;b ut since
many of the points of all are akin in principle, it is probably unnecessary
to discuss them further individually.
I want, however, to call attention to the fact that the American Negro
and the African held in common the habit of making theory traditions.
I do this to show that the Negro did not get this habit through contact with
civilization. It is the common habit of primitive men.
Let us look at the tradition "The Dog's Habits." As one reads it he
will find that first of all it is a tradition which supposedly tells of the
origin of the little Negro song "Old Molly Hare." Along with the origin
of the song, this tradition sets forth also the mythical origin of many of
the dog's habits. Among other things, we are supposedly told how the dog
came to have the barking habit.
In ordern ow to bring out clearly the point underc onsiderationI, shall
quote concerning the native African from William H. Sheppard's book,
Presbyterian Pioneers in the Congo. Sheppard himself was one of those
pioneers. The reference reads as follows
The dogs look like an ordinary cur, with little hair on them, and
they never bark or bite. I asked the people to explain why their dogs
didn't bark. So they told me that once they did bark, but long ago the
dogs and leopards had a big fight, and after that the leopards were very
mad, so the mothers of the little dogs told them not to bark any more,
and they hadn't barked since. The natives tie wooden bells around
35
their dogs to know where they are. Every man knows the sound of his
bell just as we know the bark of our dog.3
The Negro in Africa (where dogs do not bark) wove a theory tradition
in explanation of why his dog did not bark. He evidently had the tradition
that they had once barked. As we look at their tradition, it seems rather
clear that some of their ancestral generations owned dogs which barked;
and that these dogs lost their habit by what is known in biology as retrograde
development.
When the African was transportedt o America, and found dogs with
the barking habit, he either renewed his old theory in explanation of the
barking habit or wove a new one to account for it. But be this as it may,
the point which I would stress with the reader is that the Negro brought
the habit of making theory tradition along with him when he came from
Africa.
III
I have to this point in my writing discussed the American Negro in
his relation to his traditions. I believe the working and the method of the
primitive mind among all peoples to be largely the same. Thus I have
presented the foregoing discussion as probably picturing the general principles
which obtained in the formulating of the various traditions which
have obtained among all primitive peoples.
I have alreadyp lainly intimatedt hatI feel suret hatt he Negrot raditions
severally, at the moment or time of their making, were conceived by their
makerst o be basedu ponr eal truth. I say this with a full consciousnesst hat
no more absurd traditions probably ever existed. Believing this, I likewise
believe thatt he traditionso f all racesw ereb aseda t the earliestt ime of their
making upon what was conceived to be Truth.
This conclusion being reached, I must face the question as to whether
or not the American Negroes, who had been in contact with civilization for
more than two hundred and fifty years, at the time of their liberation were
fair representativeos f real primitivem en. For if they were not representative,
my conclusionw ould be false; if representativet,h en my conclusion
ought to be logical.
I believe that the American Negroes who emerged from slavery were
representativeo f primitivem en for the following reasons
1. They made traditions like primitive men.
2. They by preference made their own secular and religious songs -
the words in both classes of songs showing here and there the retention
of their old primitive African ideals.
3. When freedom had come and they carried their lunches to the
fields where they worked, they commonly left their table knives
and forks at home. When eating time came they took out their
3Sheppard, Presbyterian Pioneers in the Congo,
p. 98.
36 PHYLON
NEGRO TRADITIONS
jack-knives and whittled out crude wooden spoon-like paddles
with which they ate in the regular primitive way.
4. The masses used gourds as drinking vessels by preference when
regular dippers could be bought for five cents. Numbers of families
raised a large round spherical variety of gourd which they used
by preference instead of ordinary water buckets. Recently I have
been told by Superintendent Malcolm, who has under his charge
the native schools in Natal, South Africa, that this sort of use of
gourds still persists there.
5. Many of them pierced shells and small coins, placed them on a
string, and wore them about their necks and wrists in the regular
primitive fashion. Many of the things thus worn were worn as
"good luck" charms.
6. Large numbers of them wore various charms to ward off disease
and ill-luck.
7. It was common to see them wade into creeks and "grabble" for
fish under the rocks lying on the bottom. What I mean by "grabbling"
is that they ran their hands under the rocks, felt for the
fish, and pulled them out.
8. In trapping they commonly placed crude wooden triggers underneath
a wide but moderately thin stone; using it as a "deadfall"
to mash and kill entrapped large game, instead of using a steeltrap
which might have been bought at that time for a few cents.
9. When robins came South in large numbers during their winter
migration, the Negro, instead of hunting them with guns, made
cedar torches and went to their roosts at night. There they blinded
the birds with the torch-lights and knocked them off their roosts
with sticks by the bags-full.
10. There was also among them a prevalent custom of taking the long
round bones from cooked meat and breaking them in order to get
and eat the marrow. This custom of breaking the bones for the
marrow is in thorough accord with the custom which we know
to have prevailed among prehistoric men of geological history,
whose bone heaps left from their feasts speak eloquently of the
prevalence of this same custom.
I think these things are enough to indicate that the Negro retained up
to the time of his liberation from slavery the impress of the habits of the
most primitive peoples of the past; and his general mental status must not
have been very far removed from that of all others of the world who have
woven myths and traditions.
Were these tradition-making Negroes normal men? They certainly
were normal. They were no idle dreamers possessed with some sort of
inexplicable madness of a kind that many of our best scholars have assumed
men to be possessed of when they made the great body of the world's
traditions.
At the time of their emancipation they had already through their years
of unrequited skilled and unskilled labor enriched the Southland. When
the great Civil War came on, they ran away by the tens of thousands to
37
PHYLON
the Northern army and made some of the best and bravest soldiers that
the world has ever known. Within a score of years after they had received
their freedom,N egro representativessa t as elected membersi n the highest
legislative bodies of our country. I do not say that there were not other
men superiori n attainmento them at thatt ime. I say these thingst o point
out that these Negroes who made myths, legends, and traditions were just
ordinary unlettered men; and were possessed with no sort of peculiar
mental status assumed by scholars to have existed in a hypothetical mythmaking
age of development. The whole study of Negro traditions shows
the supposition that men, when possessed with a kind of semi-madness,
deliberatelym adeu p and propagatedt raditionsi s all wrong.
Black Drums
Across the Dark Continent sound the never-silent drums:
the base of all the music, the focus of every dance;
the talking drums, the wireless of the unmapped jungle;
the tomtoms sending favored women into trance,
and tiny tambours carried or worn by the black dancers.
Drums beat for masked ones who become the walking fetish,
the drummerst hemselvesa utomatonst, he fetish of rhythm.
Moon-maskedG oli flail the beast skins on their backs.
To doleful chanting,d rumsa nd a blind man's one-stringedf iddle,
nude black girls hung with red beads undulate in the torchlight.
Long narrow drums storm the rhythm for the thunder fetish dance.
Young men naked under raffia skirts, Do dancers
of Yammossanbrod,a nces o sacredn o womanm uste ver see it,
spring and jump to the beat of the tambours in their hands.
Boule dancers leap in savagery controlled by the drums.
Once I heard a mulatto rumba drummer from Cuba
with the jungle still in his veins drum out a terrifying heartbeat,
so tremendous and frightening a pulse that men without a drop to drink
buried their faces in their trembling arms and I think they wept.
And a black drummer beat out the madness of Africa leashed
within a dinner jacket; the crescendo rose and the white teeth champed
in the black, black face. And the dancers, sent to stillness,
stood as if their feet were roots, with their heads turned
like sunflowers to the sun, toward the black man and his drums.
IRMA WASSALL