Across The Atlantic
The new environment only served to emphasize the enslaved's connection to water. In Guiana, for example, slaves had to fight back swamp waters on the plantations they worked. She was first mentioned in Dutch Guiana in the 1740s in the journal of an anonymous colonist:
| “ | It sometimes happens that one or the other of the black slaves either imagines truthfully, or out of rascality pretends to have seen and heard an apparition or ghost which they call water mama, which ghost would have ordered them not to work on such or such a day, but to spend it as a holy day for offering with the blood of a white hen, to sprinkle this or that at the water-side and more of that monkey-business, adding in such cases that if they do not obey this order, shortly Watermama will make their child or husband etc. die or harm them otherwise. | ” |
Slaves worshipped the spirit by dancing and then falling into a trancelike state. In the 1770s, the Dutch rulers outlawed the ritual dances associated with the spirit. The governor, J. Nepveu, wrote that
| “ | the Papa, Nago, Arada and other slaves who commonly are brought here under the name Fida slaves, have introduced certain devilish practices into their dancing, which they have transposed to all other slaves; when a certain rhythm is played... they are possessed by their god, which is generally called Watramama. | ” |
Native Americans of the colony adopted Watermama from the slaves and merged her with their own water spirits.
By the 19th century, an influx of enslaved Africans from other regions had relegated Watermama to a position in the pantheon of the deities of the Surinamese Winti religion. When Winti was outlawed in the 1970s, her religious practices lost some of their importance in Suriname. Furthermore, a relative lack of freedom compared to their African brethren prevented the homgenisation that occurred with the Mami Wata cult across the Atlantic.
Read more about this topic: Mami Wata
Famous quotes containing the word atlantic:
“Boys hide in lunging cubes
Crouching to explode,
Beyond the Atlantic skies,
With cheerful cries
Their barking tubes
Upon the German toad.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)