AFRICANS IN PRE-COLUMBIAN AMERICA:
THE POLITICS OF HISTORICAL EXCAVATION
Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer
Department of Political Science
Coordinator of Programs and Undergraduate Studies
Center for Africana Studies
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21208, USA
Fwhayes3@jhu.edu
Paper prepared for presentation at the Seminar, “African Presence
In Pre-Columbian Societies of the Americas,” University of Belize,
Belmopan City, Belize, Central America, September 7, 2011.
1
I want to thank Dr. Theodore Aranda and Provost Ismael Hoare for inviting me to
participate in this important seminar, “African Presence in Pre-Columbian Societies of the
Americas.” When he initially called last semester, I was quite surprised when he mentioned an
article I had written nearly 40 years ago. I wanted to know how he found it. I was so honored,
but knew I could not come to Belize at that time. We continued to communicate, and the result
is that I am here at the University of Belize today. I am more than pleased to join you in this
groundbreaking conversation.
As an undergraduate student at North Carolina Central University in the early 1960s, I
took African and Black American history courses with Professor Caulbert A. Jones. He had
been a professor there since the 1930s, and was revered by generations of NCCU students who
had studied with him regardless of their majors. During his African history lectures, Jones raised
a number of questions that stimulated my interest. For instance, when discussing the “scramble
for Africa,” he once asked whether the United States was represented at the 1884-1885 Berlin
Conference, at which various imperialist nations from Western Europe decided which African
territories they would appropriate and partition. Western European nations were nearly going to
war over what African nations they wanted to control; hence, German Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck organized the conference to prevent further intra-European conflict. The result was the
indiscriminate division of African nations into numerous European-carved states. But Professor
Jones did not answer his question. Years later, as a graduate student in African Studies at
UCLA, I researched and wrote a paper on the Berlin Conference and, in the process, discovered
that the United States was represented at the gathering. Under the banner of Manifest Destiny,
the US was itself a major imperialist state, taking possession of Mexican, Caribbean territories,
2
Hawaiian territories. Professor Jones was the kind of professor who had a lasting effect on his
students.
While a graduate student at UCLA in the late-1960s, I also was an intellectual-activist in
the movement for Black Power and Black Studies, serving as the president of the Black Student
Union from April to November 1968. One of the organization’s goals was the establishment of
Black Studies at the university, which resulted in the formation of the Center for African
American Studies at UCLA in 1970. Black Studies emerged on the US academic scene in order
the challenge and go beyond conventional white studies—the dominant, racist educational
perspective that largely ignored or distorted the history and lived experiences of people from
Africa, African America, and the Caribbean. [I still remember a white elementary school teacher
in Los Angeles, who pointed at me one day in class and said viciously: “You’re a Negro; you
have no history.”] Many students in my generation, who issued the demand for Black Studies in
the late-1960s and 1970s, called for a new interpretation of Africa and the African Diaspora. We
demanded the study of Black people anew, beyond the Eurocentric perspective that represented
Europeans and their descendants as superior and Africans and the descendants as inferior. We
saw this great intellectual challenge as our mission. We also were students of the revolutionary
Caribbean psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, who declared in his monumental book, The Wretched of the
Earth: “Each generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray
it.”1 This how a radical Black student movement set in motion the rise of an academic field of
study!2
Another issue that Professor Jones hinted at was the possibility that Africans had visited
the Americas long before Columbus and his crew invaded and conquered parts of the Caribbean
in 1492. During this shocking revelation, Professor Jones mentioned philologist Leo Wiener’s
3
important three-volume study, Africa and the Discovery of America.3 Here was another question
that gnawed at my intellectual consciousness. In 1970, I began reading Wiener’s study. Further
research resulted in the publication of my first article, “The African Presence in America before
Columbus.”4
Since the 1970s and publication of my article, the study of the African Diaspora has
become a major subject of scholarly interest in the developing field of Africana Studies.
However, in the historical investigation of the Americas, or the Atlantic Diaspora, this area of
study generally traces in beginning back to the colonial era, for instance Africans in colonial
Mexico.5
Contemporary Black scholars have an enormous challenge. One of their prime tasks
needs to be the research, resurrection, and dissemination of information about the long
suppressed contributions of African peoples (in Africa and the Diaspora) have made toward the
advancement of world civilizations.
It is transparent from extant studies that traditional
academic disciplines, mainly the social sciences, have given a distorted representation of the
African experience. Eurocentrism has been so pervasive that social scientists, commenting on
the African experience and reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden,”
have until recent times characterized Black people as” half-devil and half-child,”6 waiting in the
darkness of ignorance before the coming of the European to bring the “light” of western
civilization and culture.
Additionally, most western scholars until recently have falsely maintained that Africa
made little substantial contribution to the evolution of world civilization. For instance, modern
European scholars praised ancient Greece as the original foundation of world culture, the
development of the arts and sciences, ignoring the fact that ancient Greek scholars themselves
4
asserted that the development of Greece was strongly influenced by ancient African culture. It
must not be overlooked that the ancient Greeks did not carry culture and learning to Africa, but
located them there.7 Generally speaking, little of ancient Africa is discussed; significantly,
European imperialism, colonialism, and the Atlantic Slave Trade continue to dominate the
historical narrative of Africa’s encounter with global societies and cultures.
More than anything else, the legacies of enslavement and colonialism have been most
devastating to African peoples, and the traumatic effects of these inhuman institutions linger on.
Perhaps the most painful legacy of European oppression and exploitation has been the systematic
mis-education of Black people in African and the African Diaspora.8 Both Nigerian political
scientist Elechukwu N. Njaka and Black American historian Carter G. Woodson argued that
Blacks have been “educated” or indoctrinate away from their true selves by Europeans
oppressors and their white American descendants so that Blacks actually do not know they are.
Their educational experience was self-alienating.
Unfortunately, we do not know, he answered!
Who are/were they, Njaka asked?
He argued that Blacks had undergone a
perpendicular education. Indoctrinated by this educational method, which has prevented Blacks
from relating effectively with themselves and others, Njaka argued that Blacks were instead
pulled away toward the imitation of whites and their culture, thus killing their humanity.9 As an
African nationalist, Njaka viewed the imposition of this educational pattern as injurious, making
Black solidarity difficult to achieve.
On the other hand, he argued that whites provided
themselves a horizontal education that has allowed them generally to get along with each other.
Surely, various difficulties of opinion are exhibited by whites, but there is a common framework
for their overall solidarity.
5
Contemporary Black scholars are thus faced with the problems of overcoming a life of
mis-education, for these intellectuals need to recognize that they, too, have been indoctrinated.
Black scholars, intellectuals, and educators also have the obligation of teaching students and
others to identify and analyze the actions of their oppressors and exploiters with the goal of
contributing to the forward movement and liberation of Blacks from the effects of the process of
systematic dehumanization.
Realizing that the oppressed cannot fully examine, comprehend, and tackle the problems
placed before them by utilizing the conventional academic approaches, theories, analytical
frameworks, and disciplines of their oppressors, the oppressed need to design new theoretical
approaches and even trans-disciplinary engagements.10 For, in the words of the late Caribbean
intellectual warrior Frantz Fanon: “Let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our
muscles and our brains in a new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has
been incapable of bringing into triumphant birth.”11
It is incumbent, then, upon Black scholars, who focus on the global African experience,
to develop other means of examining the entire story of African peoples. Years ago, the
Nigerian scholar, Elechukwu Njaka, suggested a concept that allowed for the study of the growth
and development of the African world in all its multifaceted dimensions. Africanism, he argued,
incorporates a scientific examination of Africans and their descendants in the African Diaspora
in Asia, the Caribbean, the United States of America, Europe, South and Central America.
“Africanism, he wrote, “is both a science and a philosophy aimed at freeing the black man from
bondage to a culture and values which have been forced upon him.”12
Njaka proposed a methodology and theoretical framework for studying the global African
experience that he called Confrontational Systems Analysis, arguing that it allowed for the
6
examination of all the systems brought into play between the oppressor and the oppressed.
“Such a framework affords the opportunity to explore all the facets of the systems involved, the
often ignored antithesis, the necessary and unnecessary reactions, the counter elements
generated, the systems which persist (while having undergone some change), and the favorable
results of such confrontations.”13
This critical approach is of considerable importance, for it encourages the consideration
and exploration of areas of knowledge that have long been ignored. It challenges us to ask
questions about the politics of historical questioning and to assert alternative interpretations. For
example, it is incorrect to claim that Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. 14 More
accurately, he and his European marauders were engaged in the barbaric and violent invasion
and conquest of the Caribbean, which resulted in imperialism, colonialism, slavery, rape, and
annihilating wars. By expropriating the resources and wealth of colonies in the Caribbean,
Western Europe went on to establish itself as the center of the modern world.15
One area of knowledge that has lacked broad scholarly research and popular awareness is
the extent to which African contributed to the growth of pre-Columbian America; those scholars
who have courageously engaged this question largely have been quietly ignored.16 Indeed, there
is scarcely any discussion of this part of the African Diaspora in the curricula of most
universities in the Americas, Europe, or Africa. Hence, it is implied that Africans only traveled
to Asia, Europe, or the Americas as captured slaves. Why is it that historians—even those
interested in the history of the African Diaspora or of the Americas—generally have been so
reluctant to entertain seriously the idea that Africans may have traveled to the Americas and thus
interacted with Native Americans long before the invasion and conquest of Christopher
Columbus? The answer, perhaps, has less to do with the plausibility of this question than with
7
the politics of history writing and with the challenges of imagining Africans as active agents and
global travelers in the ancient world. In the face of the long history of silencing the African past,
we cannot exclude African actors from participating in the production of history or from any of
the sites where that production may take place.17 While the main focus of this paper is on the
African encounter with pre-Columbian American societies, one should be mindful of the early
presence throughout the world.18
The possibility that Africans could have traveled to the Americans long before
Columbus’ voyage should call for no stretch of the imagination, for West Africa is less than
2,000 miles from South America.
In what follows, I shall explore some of the existing
scholarship regarding the extent of the pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas. Hence,
I have titled my comments “Africans in Pre-Columbain America: The Politics of Historical
Excavation.” As will be apparent, this paper demonstrates some irreverence to received ideas,
historical narratives, and alternative sources associated with the study of early American
societies.
Theories regarding the pre-Columbian presence of Africans in the Americas are not new.
Rather, writers and scholars in various times have discussed this possibility. For example, in
1854, at the National Emigration Convention of Colored People, held in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, a statement was issued to the African inhabitants of the United States of America
regarding the necessity for leaving the USA as the only alternative left for them. Within that
statement, which incidentally was signed by Martin R. Delany among others, we find the
following observation:
And among the earliest and most numerous class, who found their way to the new
world, were those of the African race. And it has been ascertained to our minds
beyond a doubt, that when the continent was discovered, there were found in the
West Indies and Central America, tribes of the black race, fine looking people,
8
having the usual characteristics of color and hair, identifying them as being
originally of the African race.19
From this statement, it is clear that some Black Americans in the mid-nineteenth century
knew that Africans were present in the Americas before the coming of Columbus. Seventeen
years later (1871), in a volume, entitled Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology,
John D. Baldwin stated:
“It is not difficult to believe that communities of Phoenician or
Ethiopian race were established all around the Mediterranean, and even beyond the Strait of
Gibraltar, in ages quite as old as Egypt or Chaldea, and that they had communication with
America before Tyre or Sidon was built.”20
By 1900, the notion that Africans had traveled to the Americas had moved beyond the
stage of speculation. It was now definite that Africans had made contact with the Americas.
Peter DeRoo, in his History of America before Columbus, was quite firm in acknowledging the
fact that Africans had settled in the western hemisphere and made contact with Native
Americans. He asserted:
Yet a better proof of ancient Negro arrivals is the fact of Negro colonies found by
the Spanish and Portuguese discoverers on the eastern coasts of South and Central
America. Mendoza encountered a tribe of Negroes, and Balboa, when on his
famous expeditions of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, met in the old province
Quareca, at only two days’ travel from the Gulf of Darien, with a settlement of
Negroes….21
In 1920, Leo Wiener, a Harvard University philologist, produced a pioneering
examination of the existence of Africans in the Americas prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus, which appeared as volume one of Africa and the Discovery of America. He later
published volumes two and three in 1922. While doing an investigation of Native American
languages, Wiener learned to his amazement that there was a substantial African influence on
these languages. After further research he was led to conclude that much of the American
9
archaeological work done on both Africans and Native Americans was erroneous. Commenting
on his findings, Wiener stated:
In the first volume, I show that Negroes have had a far greater influence upon
American civilization than has heretofore been suspected. In the second volume I
shall chiefly study the African fetishism, which even with the elaborate books on
the subject, is woefully misunderstood, and I shall show by documentary evidence
to what extraordinary extent the Indian medicine-man owes his evolution to the
African medicine-man.22
His third volume is concerned with an examination of African social and religious
influences on pre-Columbian American societies. Arguing that West Africans made numerous
voyages to the Americas before Columbus, Wiener noted that,
The presence of Negroes with their trading masters in America before Columbus
is proved by the representation of Negroes in American sculpture and design, by
the occurrence of a black nation at Darien early in the XVI century, but more
specifically by Columbus’ emphatic reference to Negro traders from Guinea, who
trafficked in a gold alloy, guanine, of precisely the same composition and bearing
the same name, as frequently referred to by early writers in Africa.23
As additional proof, Wiener noted the presence of West African words for numerous
crops in various Native American languages and suggested that the crops were indigenous to
Africa. Wiener stated:
Indeed, when we turn to the appellations of the sweet potato and yam in America, we find
nothing but African forms. Here as there the two are confounded, and chiefly those names have
survived which Dr. Chanca mentioned in 1494. He called the plant he described, apparently the
sweet potato, both nabi and hage. We see that the first is a phonetic variation of Wolof nyambi,
etc., “yam.”…24
Wiener indicated that the West African penetration of the Americas was varied. He
stated:
There were several foci from which the Negro traders spread in the two Americas.
The eastern part of South America, where the Caribs are mentioned seems to have
10
been reached by them from the West Indies. Another stream, possibly from the
same focus, radiated to the north along reads marked by the presence of mounds,
and reached as far as Canada. The chief cultural influence was exerted by a
Negro colony in Mexico, most likely from Teotihuacan and Tuxtla, who may
have been instrumental in establishing the city of Mexico. From here their
influence pervaded the neighboring tribes and ultimately, directly or indirectly,
reached Peru.25
Another scholar concerned with pre-Columbian African influences in the Americas
strengthened Wiener’s position regarding the African presence in ancient Mexican history. Joel
A. Rogers, the prolific Black writer and student of world civilization, in Africa’s Gift to America,
suggested that, “Africa played a role, perhaps the chief role, in the earliest development of
America—a period that ante-dates Columbus by many centuries, namely Aztec, Maya, and Inca
civilizations. About 500 B.C. or earlier, Africans sailed over to America and continued to do so
until the time of Columbus.26 Additionally, Rogers quoted several Mexican authorities on the
subject:
C. C. Marquez says, “The Negro type is seen in the most ancient Mexican
sculpture….Negroes figure frequently in the most remote traditions.” Riva-Palacio, Mexican
historian, says, “It is indisputable that in very ancient times the Negro race occupied our territory
(Mexico). The Mexicans recall a Negro god, Ixtilton, which means ‘black face.’”27
Archaeological expeditions and findings in Mexico provide empirical evidence regarding
the position set forth in this essay. In his authoritative study, The Ancient Sun Kingdoms of the
Americas, Victor W. Von Hagen discussed the pre-Aztec civilization known as the Olmecs. Von
Hagen put the existence of the Olmecs between 800 B.C. and 600 A. D., indicating that they
were situated in the south of Mexico near Vera Cruz, Tabasco, and La Venta. Of the Olmecs,
Von Hagen wrote in 1957:
In Aztec mythohistory, the Olmecs were known as “the people who lived I the
direction of the rising sun,” and a glyph history of them shows that their
paradisiacal “wealth” consisted of rubber, pitch, jade, chocolate, and bird feathers.
We do not know what they called themselves.
“Olmec” derives form olli
(rubber)….They traded rubber and they presumably made the rubber balls used
11
for the game called tlachtli….For untold centuries burial mounds and pyramids
built by them lay covered by the jungle; here archaeologists have found carved
jade, sensitively modeled clay figurines “of an unprecedented high artistic
quality,” said Miquel Covarrubias….Only in recent times have the great Olmec
stone heads been unearthed, by Dr. Matthew Sterling. At Tres Zapotes he found
one colossal heave seven feet high, flat-nosed and sensually thick-lipped.28
The huge stone heads of Olmec deities, exhibited an unmistakably African physiognomy,
as can be seen from photographs and drawings of these massive sculptures in books by several
researchers: Africa’s Gift to America by Joel A. Rogers; Mexico: A History in Art by Bradley
Smith; and The Ancient Sun Kingdoms of America by Victor Von Hagen.29 During the last
decade of the 19th century, the first of these gigantic heads was found in Vera Cruz by J. M.
Melgar, who in 1896 published a monograph on his findings.
He asserted: “This cabeza
colossal, as the Mexicans called it, was half buried, but enough of it was visible for an occasional
observant traveler to notice its ‘Ethiopian features’ and the presence of a headdress resembling a
football helmet.”30
Later, in 1902, an Olmec artifact was found near the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of
Mexico. The jade figurine contained a date on it corresponding to 98 B. C. Interested in this
finding, Matthew Sterling, an American archaeologist of director of the Bureau of American
Ethnology, was to lead nine expeditions into the Mexican Gulf coast commencing in 1938, at
which time he found five colossal heads in La Venta in the State of Tabasco, five to nine feet
high and weighing as much as 20 to 30 tons each.31
In 1946, Sterling carried out another expedition in the San Lorenzo plateau, an area in
southeastern Vera Cruz. Once more the huge stone heads were found, all of which again
contained African facial features.
During the spring of 1967, Michael Coe, of Yale University, led an expedition to San
Lorenzo in southeast Mexico. As did Sterling, Coe located numerous Olmec artifacts, which
12
again included a giant stone head, as well as altars and pyramids. Coe suggested that the Olmecs
were the earliest Mayans, and had declined by the rise of the Aztecs.32
From the preceding discussion there should be little doubt that Africans arrived in the
Americas long before Columbus’ invasion; rather, the evidence indicates that they had an
extensive influence on early American cultures: social, religious, and artistic.
In 1970, a
masterful study of pre-Columbian art in Latin America revealed that the African presence was
profound. Although acknowledging the presence of Asiatic influences in pre-Columbian art,
Alexander von Wuthenau, in The Art of Terracotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South
America, was quite firm about the pervasive African influence. Describing photographs of
ancient Olmec figurines contained in his book, von Wuthenau stated: “The two Negroid heads on
page 48 are quite conspicuous. They prove that this racial type can be found nearly everywhere
in ancient America.”33 Likewise, it should be kept in mind that Africans held positions of
considerable importance in ancient American societies. It would thus be flying in the face of
truth to deny the African presence in pre-Columbian America. Von Wuthenau commented
further: “The Negroid element is the exception, but is well proven by the large Olmec stone
monuments as well as the terracotta items and therefore cannot be excluded from pre-Columbian
history of the Americas. Furthermore, it is precisely the Negroid representations which often
indicate personalities of high position, who can unhesitatingly be compared to the outstanding
Negroes who served as models for great works of art in Egypt and in Nigeria.”34
It might be asked: if Africans were not present in the Americas before Columbus’s
invasion, why the typically African physiognomy on the Olmec monuments and artifacts?
Surely, the concrete evidence should remove all doubt. Von Wuthenau concluded:
It is a contradiction to the most elementary logic and to all artistic experience that
an Indian could depict in a masterful way the head of a Negro without missing a
13
sing racial characteristic, unless he had actually seen such a person. The types of
people depicted must have lived in America…The Negroid element is well
proven by the large Olmec stone monuments as well as the terracotta items and
therefore cannot be excluded from the pre-Columbian history of the Americas.35
In the 1960s, new studies emerged discussing the high level of culture and maritime skill
of West Africans, which provided additional credence to the assertions made by Wiener, Rogers,
von Wuthenau and others, that Africans braved the roaring waters of the Atlantic Ocean and
established relationships with Native Americans more than one thousand years ago. Harold G.
Lawrence, in an article entitled, “African Explorers of the New World,” asserted emphatically,
“We can now positively state that the Mandingoes of the Mali and Songhay Empires, and
possibly other Africans, crossed the Atlantic to carry on trade with the Western Hemisphere
Indians and further succeeded in establishing colonies throughout the Americas.”36 Due to
diplomatic relations with Morocco the Malian emperor Sakura (1285-1300 A.D.), learned of
advanced maritime techniques and the spherical character of the earth. Various Arab (perhaps
Arab-Moorish) writers, some of whom were Abdulfeda, Idrisi, Masudi, Abu Zaid, and Istakhri,
developed geographies and formulated astronomical theories.37
Lawrence indicated that the fourteenth-century Malian King Abubakari II, curious about
the Arab theories about the round shape of the earth and voyages around globe, sent a fleet of
400 ships into the Atlantic Ocean, informing the captains not to return until they had found land
or run out of supplies. After a considerable time had passed, one ship returned, its captain telling
King Abubakari that they had perished in violent waters. Abubakari then led a fleet of some
2,000 ships into the Atlantic. Before departing, the king conferred temporary authority to the
hands of his brother, Mansa Musa, certain that he would return. Unfortunately, Abubakari never
did.38
14
In a 1970 article, entitled “Negro Contributors to the Exploration of the Globe,” Ronald
W. Davis used Arabic and French sources to corroborate Lawrence’s account of Malian voyages
into the Atlantic Ocean in search of land.39 According to Davis, Mansa Musa, who had by the
early 1320s conquered new territories and integrated the older provinces into the Mali Empire,
gained lasting international fame primarily because of the lavish hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) he
led in 1324. Arriving in Cairo and receiving considerable attention and recognition, as would be
expected, Mansa Musa was asked about his succession to the throne. He thus told of his
predecessor’s speculation about the outer reaches of the Atlantic Ocean and his sending a fleet.
Davis’ account is thus very similar to that of Lawrence.
Commenting on Mansa Musa’s
narrative, Davis stated, “It is difficult to accept the proposition that Musa simply invented this
story.”40
Elsewhere, Davis asserted:
We know that Mali, although essentially an inland empire, did have an outlet to
the sea in the Senegambia region during parts of the fourteenth century. There is
no better point of departure for the Americas than this particular portion of the
African coast, for here expeditions may take advantage of the Northeast trade
winds, which blow steadily and evenly almost year round in a vast arc skirting the
northwest coast of Africa and curving toward the great eastern bulge of South
America. Columbus himself, for reason not yet certain, chose to drop from Spain
to latitudes comparable to those of Senegambia before starting the ocean
crossing.41
We might be a little more certain about Columbus’ reasons if we consult J. A. Rogers,
who wrote: “it is even possible that Columbus had heard of the New World from Africans
brought to Spain and Portugal in his time. Furthermore, Columbus spent some time in West
Africa just before he left Spain for America.”42
15
Basil Davidson, the late journalist turned historian of Africa, in The Lost Cities of Africa,
supplied further evidence, showing that West African seamen made trans-Atlantic voyages well
before and during the reign of Mansa Musa. He commented:
Omari, in the tenth chapter of his Masalik al-absad, reproduces a story which
suggests that Atlantic voyages were made by mariners of West Africa in the times
of the Emperor KanKan Musa of Mali; and which roundly states that the
predecessors of KanKan Musa embarked on the Atlantic with “two thousand
ships” and sailed westward and disappeared…yet Mali had outlets on the Atlantic
seaboard, while North African Mariners evidently knew of the Azores several
centuries before the voyage of Columbus.43
Probably one of the most engrossing historical examinations of ancient African history
and the extent of the pre-Columbian existence of Africans in the Americas was undertaken by
John G. Jackson. In his enlightening book, Introduction to African Civilizations, the author spent
a chapter discussing African cultural influences in ancient America. Utilizing a plethora of
sources, Jackson traced the African presence in the Americas as far back as three thousand years.
Citing several authorities, Jackson demonstrated that the African influences in ancient American
religious systems were profound. For instance, examining the African religious influence on the
Mayans, Jackson quoted the following from ancient American scholar A. Hyatt Verrill:
The great cities of the Mayan Empire were deserted, many were completely lost
and hidden in the rank jungle and forest growth of the tropics, and the existing
Indians had little more than vague traditions and legends regarding their origin
and their past. Yet they worshipped their old gods, using the ancient temples for
their ceremonials where the Chilams or priests performed the rites….Even today,
many of the Indians of Central and South America secretly venerate or worship
the gods of their forefathers. The Mayan tribes are no exception, although often
the ancient Mayan dieties and rites and the Christian rituals and saints are almost
inextricably confused.
In the little church at Esquipultas, Guatemala, is the image of the Black
Christ to which thousands of Indians journey annually from all parts of Central
America, and even from Mexico and South America. The spot has become a
shrine or Mecca for the Indians, and for hundreds, even thousands of miles, they
travel to the obscure Guatemalan village carrying with them all of their
possessions in order to have them sanctified at the famous church. To all outward
intents and purposes they are Christians making a pilgrimage to a Christian
16
church in order to worship before a figure of Christ. No doubt many if not most
of them actually are sincere in believing this to be the case. But, as a matter of
fact, the underlying cause, the real urge that leads them to the spot is the
ineradicable faith in their ancient gods and religion. The very fact that the image
is black has a symbolic significance which can be traced directly to the ancient
religions and mythologies…and, delving deeper into the details of the annual
pilgrimage and the shrine, we find evidences of the observance of the Mayan
religion numerous. The Indians who care for the church and the image are of the
Mayan priest clan or caste. Many of the ceremonies, rites and festivals of the
pilgrims are obviously of ancient Mayan origin, and the little santos or images
which the devout Indians bring to the church to be sanctified, and which serve as
their own household gods, are figures of the ancient Indian deities. Moreover,
among many of the Indians, the black Christ is referred to in private as Ekchuah
or as Hunabku (the former, the Mayan god of merchants, husband-men and
travelers; the latter, the God-father or supreme deity of the Mayas), often prefixed
with the Spanish Cristo (Christ), as Cristo Ekchuah or as Cristo Hunabku. [Old
Civilizations of the New World, pp. 143-46, by A. Hyatt Verrill].44
Lawrence also corroborated this account when he wrote:
An examination of ancient Indian religions yields additional information of he
condition of early Africans in the Americas. Several Indian nations, such as the
Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas, worshipped black gods along with their other deities,
and the Mayan religion particularly exemplifies the high esteem in which the
Negroes were held. Among the black deities, Quetzalcoatl, the serpent god and
Messiah, and Ek-ahua (Ekechuah), the trader-god and war captain, are the most
revealing. Their surviving portraits show them, black and wooly haired, to have
been unmistakably Negro.45
The above should be no cause for alarm, for, as earlier mentioned, in many ancient societies
throughout the world there have been at times representations of black religious symbols—
Krishna, the god of ancient India was black.46
Finally, in his seminal work, They Came before Columbus, Ivan Van Sertima confirmed
the claims by earlier scholars that Africans had traveled to the Americas long before Columbus.
He argued, with substantial concrete evidence, that Nubian-Egyptian travelers visited the
Americas, particularly Tres Zapotes, La Venta, and Vera Cruz. Van Sertima wrote:
This, then, is the case for contact between Egypt and the New World in the 800700 B. C. period, a period in which the blacks of Nubia had gained ascendancy
over the Egyptian empire and appeared according to carbon-14 datings, in the
17
Olmec world of Mexico as monumental figures, venerated and revered. These are
some of the important influences this alien crew of shipwrecks left upon the face
of ancient American culture…
All the features of Egyptian culture noted above were duplicated in the
Nubian-Egyptian culture complex of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.
This
phenomenon of separate yet parallel identity emerges with a great clarity when
the historical and archaeological data of the period are closely examined. The
master-colonial relationship between Egypt and Nubia had ceased. Nubia became
the inheritor and custodian of a culture which took as much from black Africa as
black Africa was later to take from it. Nubia was so much a part of Egypt that, as
Professors Steindorff and Steele have pointed out [When Egypt Ruled the East],
“it tenaciously held fast to Egyptian culture in later times when Egypt herself
succumbed to foreign influences. When the Greeks came into the valley of the
Nile in the seventh century B. C. it was Nubia which was considered the seat of
orthodox Egyptian character.”47
As did previous scholars, Van Sertima cited credible evidence to establish West African
Mandingo voyages to the America circa 1310/1311 A.D. This included eyewitness reports from
nearly a dozen Europeans, even Columbus himself, metallurgical, linguistic, botanical,
navigational, oceanographic, skeletal, epigraphic cartographic, oral, documented, iconographic
evidence.
Thus he replicated the stories of Mali’s great wealth, power, and geographic
expansiveness, as the largest empire in the medieval world. Van Sertima recounted the story of
the trans-Atlantic expedition led by Mali emperor Abubakar II in 1311.
Abubakari the Second never looked back. He never returned to the court of
Niani. This time he had a special boat built for himself, with a pempi on the poop
deck shaded by the bird-emblazoned parasol. He would commandeer the new
expedition himself, keeping in touch with the captains of the fleet by means of the
talking drum. Thus, in 1311 he conferred the power of the regency on his brother
Kankan Musa, on the understanding that Kankan was to assume the throne if,
after a reasonable lapse of time, the king did not return. Then one day, dressed in
a flowing white robe and a jeweled turban, he took leave of Mali and set out with
his fleet down the Senegal, heading west across the Atlantic, never to return. He
took his griot and half his history with him.48
Later in his text, Van Sertima maintained that Mandingo merchants from Mali did indeed
arrive in medieval Mexico, and they had an impact on local Mexican culture. As evidence of
cultural impact, or confluence of cultures, he discussed similarities between Mandingo and
18
Mexican cultures. Some of the similarities included languages; religious symbols, rituals of
worship, and festivals; coats of arms on shields of warriors; and burial mounds.
Let me summarize by stating that the importance of this paper is its argument for the
necessity of exploring a significant theme in the history of Africa and its African Diaspora in the
Americas. Although this surely is not a new theme, it remains one that scarcely is discussed by
contemporary scholars who study the Africa and the African Diaspora. This theme, Africans in
pre-Columbian American societies, remains relatively new because the dimension of the African
Diaspora presented here generally has not been considered as significant and, consequently, has
been excluded or overlooked by historians of Africa and the Americas. Indeed, scholars who
examine the African Diaspora in the Americas generally commence with the 15th-century
invasion and conquest of Columbus and/or the later 16th-century trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. For
example, the important recent historical studies of Africans in colonial Mexico still leave
silenced the considerable interaction between early Africans and ancient and medieval American
societies. This pattern of scholarship is similar to the historical silencing of the impact of ancient
East Africa (Egypt) on ancient Greece.
In each instance, African agency—the active
involvement of African people in the formation and development of ancient world
civilizations—remains historically silenced and invisible.
Although some research already has been done on the impact of Africa on ancient
American societies, it is obvious that more extensive investigations need to be undertaken.
However, if the idea that the Norsemen might have arrived in America can be entertained on the
flimsy bases of myth and a few scattered artifacts, then it can be positively concluded, in view of
a far more abundant volume of information and evidence, that Africans arrived in the Americas
19
long before Columbus and established relationships with, and had a substantial and profound
influence upon, native peoples in the Americas.
The investigation, resurrection, and dissemination of knowledge about the early voluntary
dispersal of Africans throughout the world—that is, the African Diaspora in the ancient and
medieval world—should help to destroy the myth Europeans and their white American
descendants have constructed and encouraged that world civilizations developed without any
substantial or significant African influences. The examination of the pre-Columbian African
presence in early American societies will provide a most important link between, and broaden
our understanding of, the African past and the history of the African Diaspora. It is incumbent
upon Africanist scholars to acknowledge that Africa’s initial contact with the Americas was not
through the slave trade and enslavement at some arbitrary dates in the 1500s or 1600s A. D. A
more accurate account of Africa’s long and pronounced influence on ancient and medieval
American societies and their cultures needs to be projected and articulated. It is a travesty of
scholarship that college and university courses dealing with African and world history continue
to ignore the pre-Colombian encounters between Africa and the Americas. Moreover, it needs to
be recognized that the continued instruction to secondary and elementary school children that
Columbus “discovered” America serves no enlightened purpose and should be curtailed. Indeed,
a more accurate historical narrative of Columbus’ encounter with the Americas should portray
his arrival not as discovery, but as invasion and conquest. For the coming of Columbus and his
marauders, seeking the wealth of the Americas, opened up the Western Hemisphere to
imperialism, colonialism, and chattel slavery.
What is required today more than ever before in Africana Studies is a Scholarship of
Indictment. There is a need not only to challenge and correct Eurocentric or racist studies of
20
African and world history, but also to indict the West for its world-historical atrocities. Rather
than bringing civilization to non-western societies and cultures, Western Europe brought
violence, greed, death, destruction, rape, and ruin. Oppression and exploitation have been the
markers of Western Europe, as this barbaric civilization stole from more than it contributed to
human development in, and the forward movement of, societies in Africa, Asia, and the
Americas. Long ago, the US writer Richard Wright set forth an indictment of Europe in his
book, entitled White Man, Listen! Wright screamed:
Buttressed by their belief that their God had entrusted the earth into their keeping,
drunk with power and possibility, waxing rich through trade in commodities,
human and nonhuman, with awesome naval and merchant marines at their
disposal, their countries filled with human debris anxious for any adventures,
psychologically armed with new facts, white Western Christian civilization during
the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, with a long slow,
and bloody explosion, hurled itself upon the sprawling masses of colored
humanity in Asia and Africa.49
The study of the early African Diaspora should not only indict the West for its violent
encounters with African peoples—invasion, conquest, and enslavement—but should also move
the discussion about the global African experience well beyond these traumatic experiences.
This scholarship will give African people and their descendants in the Americas and elsewhere a
sense of identity and pride in themselves, their people and their history, which will enable them
to deal effectively with the present and envision futures of human possibilities. Every serious
Africanist scholar should constantly seek truth, and this enterprise necessitates several things: the
reappraisal and reconstruction of traditional academic approaches to African studies (for
example, I have suggested Confrontational Systems Analysis and a Scholarship of Indictment),
the implementation of creative means for the attainment of knowledge about the African
experience (for example, interdisciplinary research), the vision to excavate that part of the
21
African past that has been silenced, and the confidence to recognize these academic pursuits as
necessary and important scholarship.
1
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1963), p. 167.
For a discussion of these dynamics, see Fabio Rojas, From Black Power to Black Studies: How
a Radical Social Movement became an Academic Discipline (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University, 2007).
3 Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America (Philadelphia: Innes and Sons, 1922), 3
Volumes.
4 Floyd W. Hayes, III, “The African Presence in America before Columbus,” 22 Black World,
(1973): 4-22.
5 See Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and AfroCreole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003);
Bennett, Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2009); Ben Vinson, III, Bearing Arms for his Majesty: The Free-Colored Militia in
Colonial Mexico (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). Also see Patrick Manning,
The African Diaspora: A History through Culture (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2009); and John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the New World,
1400-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
6 Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” in Robin W. Winks, British Imperialism: Gold,
God, Glory (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 59.
7 Noted historian Will Durant, in The Life of Greece, has written the following:
“It was the belief of most Greeks that many elements of their civilization had
come to them from Egypt; their legends ascribed the foundations of several Greek
cities to men who, like Cadmus and Danaus, had come from Egypt, or had
brought Egyptian culture to Greece….From the seventh century [B.C.] onward
many famous Greeks—Thales, Pythagoras, Solon, Plato, and Democritus may
serve as examples—visited Egypt, and were much impressed by the fullness and
antiquity of its culture. “You Greeks,” said an Egyptian priest to Solon, “are mere
children, talkative and vain, and knowing nothing of the past.” When Hecataeus
of Miletus boasted to the Egyptian priests that he could trace his ancestry through
fifteen generations to a god, they quietly showed him, in their sanctuaries, the
statues of 345 high priests, each the son of the preceding, making 345 generations
since the gods had reigned on earth. From the Egyptian cults of Isis and Osiris, in
the belief of Greek scholars like Herodotus and Plutarch, came the Orphic
doctrine of a judgment after death, and the resurrection ritual of Demeter and
Persephone of Eleusis. Probably in Egypt, Thales of Miletus learned geometry,
and Rheocus and Theodorus of Samos picked up the art of hallow casting in
bronze; in Egypt the Greeks acquired new skills in pottery, textiles, metalworking, and ivory….[I]t was presumably his acquaintance with Egyptian and
Babylonian astronomy that enabled Thales to predict an eclipse of the sun.”[Will
Durant, The Life in Greece (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 68-69.]
2
22
Arguing that there was no such thing as ancient Greek philosophy, George G. M.
James presented substantial evidence to demonstrate that major classical Greek
thinkers received their education in ancient Egypt. He wrote:
“The immigration of Greeks to Egypt for the purpose of their education, began as
a result of the Persian invasion (525 B.C.), and continued until the Greeks gained
possession of that land and access to the Royal Library, through the conquest of
Alexander the Great….Concerning the fact that Egypt was the greatest education
centre of the ancient world which also visited by the Greeks, reference must again
be made to Plato in the Timaeus who tells us that Greek aspirants to wisdom
visited Egypt for initiation, and that the priests of Sais used to refer to them as
children in the Mysteries.” [James, Stolen Legacy: The Greeks were not the
Authors of Greek Philosophy, but the People of North Africa, Commonly called
the Egyptians (New York: Philosophical Library, 1954), p. 42.]
Philosophy and religion have been closely related historically, and significant
scholarship points to the influence of ancient Egypt on Greece. Accordingly,
while early Greeks learned philosophy in ancient Egypt, they also were influenced
by Egyptian religious symbols. Godfrey Higgins, an early 19th-century
archaeologist, humanist, and social reformer, completed a massive study of
ancient civilizations in 1836. Concerning the Greeks, Higgins had this to say:
“In my search into the origin of the ancient Druids, I continually found, at last,
that my labours terminated with something black. Thus the oracles at Dodona,
and of Apollo at Delphi, were founded by black doves. Doves are not often, I
believe never really black. Osiris and his bull were black, all the Gods and
Goddesses of Greece were black: at least this was the case with Jupiter, Bacchus,
Hercules, Apollo, Ammon. The Goddesses Venus, Isis, Necati, Diane, Juno,
Metis, Ceres, Cybile, are black.” [Higgins, Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw
Aside the Veil of the Saitic Isis, or an Inquiry into the Origin of Language,
Nations and Religions (New York: University Books, Inc., new edition, 1965),
Volume I, pp. 137-138.]
Moreover, Aristotle himself acknowledged that “the history of Egypt attests to the
antiquity of all political institutions. The Egyptians are generally accounted the
oldest people on earth; and they have always had a body of law and a system of
politics. [This may teach us a lesson.] We ought to take over and use what has
already been adequately expressed before us….” [Ernest Baker, (ed. and trans.),
The Politics of Aristotle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 304.]
Furthermore, it should be noted that ancient Greeks (and Romans) were
influenced by other areas in Africa, i.e., Carthage. For example, see Robert
Bauval & Thomas Brophy, Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient
Egypt (Rochester: Bear and Company); Yosef ben-Jochannan, Black Man of the
Nile (New York: Alkebu-Lan Books Associates, 1972); ben-Jochannan, Africa:
Mother of Western Civilization (New York: Alkebu-Lan Books Associates, 1971);
Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization:
23
Volume I, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1987); Ernle Bradford, Hannibal (London: Macmillan
London Limited, 1981); Richard Miles, Carthage Must be Destroyed: The Rise
and Fall of an Ancient Civilization (New York: Viking, 2010); Robert L.
O’Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman
Republic (New York: Random House, 2010); David Soren, Aicha Ben Abed Ben
Khader, and Hedi Slim, Carthage: Uncovering the Mysteries and Splendors of
Ancient Tunisia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).
8 For a sustained argument, see Elechukwu N. Njaka, “Africanism,” Issue #1, A Quarterly
Journal of Opinion (African Studies Association, 1971); Carter G. Woodson, MisEducation of the Negro (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, Inc., 1933).
9 Elechukwu N. Njaka, “African Nations Versus European-Carved Countries in Africa,” paper
presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Denver, Colorado,
1971.
10 For a penetrating critique of the limitations of traditional academic disciplines, see Lewis R.
Gordon, Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Boulder: Paradigm
Publishers, 2006).
11 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), p. 253.
12 Njaka, “Africanism,” p. 12.
13 Njaka, “Africanism.”
14 J. H. Parry and P. M. Sherlock, A Short History of the West Indies (London: Macmillan and
Co., Ltd., 1963).
15 Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the Myth of
Modernity (New York: Continuum, 1995); Djelal Kadir, Columbus and the End of the
Earth: Europe’s Rhetoric as Conquering Ideology (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992); C. L. R. James, “The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slavery: Some
Interpretations of Their Significance in the Development of the United States and the
Western World,” in Floyd W. Hayes, III (ed.) A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African
American Studies, Third Edition (Lanham, MD: Collegiate Press/The Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group, 2000), pp. 58-96.
16 Professional scholars and historians generally continue to recognize the pioneering work of
Leo Wiener, Africans and the Discovery of America (Philadelphia: Innes and Sons, 3
Volumes, 1922) or J. A. Rogers, Africa’s Gift to America (New York: Futuro Press, Inc.,
1961).
17 See Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1995).
18 For example, see Joseph Harris, The African Presence in Asia (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1971); John G. Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations (New
York: University Books, Inc., 1970); Sir Henry Johnston, The Negro in the New World
(New York: Johnson Corporation Reprint, 1969); Yu M. Kobishchanow, “On the
Problem of Sea Voyages of Ancient Africans in the Indian Ocean,” Journal of African
History, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1965, pp. 137-141; Stanley Lane-Poole, The Story of the Moors in
Spain (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1886); J. A. Rogers, Sex and Race (New York: J. A.
Rogers, 1967); Rogers, Nature Knows no Color Line (New York: J. A. Rogers, 1952);
George Shepperson, “The African Abroad or the African Diaspora,” in T. O. Ranger (ed.)
24
Emerging Themes in African History (Evanston: Northwestern University Press/East
African Publishing House, 1968), pp. 152-153; Sir Percy Sykes, A History of Persia
(London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1963), see Chapter 4; “Says Nakhis Now Have
Culture 2000 Years Old,” New York Times, November 26, 1933, p. 8E.
19 John H. Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick (eds.), Black Nationalism in America
(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1970), p. 100.
20 John D. Baldwin, Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology (New York: Harper
and Brothers, Publishers, 1871), p. 12.
21 Peter DeRoo, History of America Before Columbus (Philadelphia: J B. Lippincott Company,
1900), Volume I, p. 341.
22 Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, Volume I, p. i.
23 Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, Volume III, p. 365.
24 Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, Volume I, p. 262.
25 Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, Volume III, p. 365.
26 Rogers, Africa’s Gift to America, p. 14.
27 Rogers, Africa’s Gift to America, p. 15.
28 Victor W. Von Hagen, The Ancient Sun Kingdoms of America (New York: The World
Publishing Co., 1957), p. 48, italics added.
29 Rogers, Africa’s Gift to America, pp. 26-28. See also Bradley Smith, Mexico: A History in Art
(Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1968), pp. 38-39; and the front cover of
Science Digest, September 1967.
30 Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations, p. 238.
31 Jeanne Reinert, “Secrets of the People of the Jaguar,” Science Digest, September 1967, pp. 89.
32 Reinert, “Secrets of the People of the Jaguar,” pp. 10-11.
33 Alexander von Wuthenau, The Art of Terracotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South
America (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1979), p. 79.
34 Von Wuthenau, The Art of Terracotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South America,
p. 187, italics added.
35 Von Wuthenau, The Art of Terracotta Pottery in Pre-Columbian Central and South America,
p.
36 Harold G. Lawrence, “African Explorers of the New World,” The Crisis, June-July 1962, p.
322.
37 Lawrence, “African Explorers of the New World,” pp. 322-323.
It also needs to be
remembered that the Almoravid or Moorish invasion of Andalusia in the 9th century laid
the foundation for the emergence of modern Spain. Arab-Moorish scholars there
preserved the wisdom and knowledge of the arts, sciences, and philosophies of ancient
Egypt, Greece, and Rome, thus enabling West Europe to advance out of the “Dark Ages.”
See Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations; J. C. deGraft-Johnson, African Glory:
The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations (New York: Walker and Company, 1966),
Chapters 7 and 8; J. O. Hunwick, “Islam in West Africa, A. D. 1000-1800,” in J. F. Ade
Ajayi and Ian Espie (eds.) A Thousand Years of West African History (Ibadan: Ibadan
University Press, 1965), pp. 113-130; Lane-Poole, The Story of the Moors in Spain; Peter
25
Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramids (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers,
1971).
38 Lawrence, “African Explorers of the New World,” p. 23.
39 Ronald W. Davis, “Negro Contributions to the Explorations of the Globe,” in Joseph S.
Roucek and Thomas Kiernan (eds.) The Negro Impact in Western Civilization (New
York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1970).
40 Davis, “Negro Contributions to the Explorations of the Globe,” p. 42.
41 Davis, “Negro Contributions to the Explorations of the Globe,” p. 43.
42 Rogers, Africa’s Gift to America, p. 17.
43 Basil Davidson, The Lost Cities of Africa ( Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1959), p. 74.
44 Jackson, Introduction to African Civilizations, Chapter 6.
45 Lawrence, “African Explorers of the New World,” p. 326.
46 James G. Frazier, Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion, 3rd Edition,
2 Volumes (New York: University Books, 1961); Frazier, The Golden Bough, Part IV
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966); Yosef ben-Jochannan, African Origins of Major
“Western Religions,” (New York: Alkebu-Lan Books Associates, 1970); Harris, The
African Presence in Asia; Higgins, Annacalypis; Rogers, Sex and Race, pp. 265-283.
47 Ivan Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus (New York: Random House, Inc., 1976), pp.
173-174.
48 Van Sertima, They Came before Columbus, pp. 47-48.
49 Richard Wright, White Man, Listen! (Garden City: Anchor Books/Doubleday & Company,
Inc., 1964), p. 1.
26