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Gold Coast
Perhaps sixteen percent of the ancestors of African Americans were captured from this area named the "Gold Coast" by Europeans, today the nation of Ghana. Here we present descriptions of African cultural traditions by three Europeans—a physician, a diplomat, and a commercial agent with slave traders—two of whom drew illustrations to accompany their accounts. First, we read again from the Frenchman Jean Barbot who detailed his visits to people of the Gold Coast in the late 1600s, while an agent with slave trading expeditions (in some descriptions he admittedly incorporated material from others' accounts, whom he cites). From the Englishman John Atkins (see #2: Sierra Leone) we read of the "fetishmen" and use of fetishes, a spiritual practice carried to North America by enslaved peoples and documented in the archaeological excavations of plantation slave quarters (see Supplemental Sites). Finally, we read from the account of Thomas Bowditch, by the British government in 1817 to negotiate with the king of the Ashanti people. Two years later he published A Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (which included his own colored drawings. (He also brought pieces of Ashanti gold work which are still in the collections of the British Museum.)
The next two documents chronicle the lives of Gold Coast Africans after being enslaved. The Portuguese navigator and chronicler Gomes Eannes de Azurara describes witnessing the capture of slaves. Although horrified at the Africans' suffering, he makes no judgment of slavery in his publication, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, ca. 1450. Two hundred years later on the newly colonized island of Barbados, English sugar plantations were dependent on the labor of Africans, primarily transported from the Gold Coast region and including Ashanti and Fante people. One of the English plantation owners, Richard Ligon, describes traditions and beliefs of the enslaved Africans in his 1657 account The True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes. (xx pages.)
Discussion questions
- Compare the tone and emphasis of the five Europeans' descriptions of Africans of the Gold Coast region. What does each man choose to emphasize?
- How does each man's account reflect his purpose for travelling to west Africa?
- How can you identify the Europeans' attitudes toward slavery? toward the African people?
- Considering Atkins's and Bowditch's descriptions of the African leaders, how might the Africans have described the Europeans in their own accounts?
- How does one evaluate the accuracy of European illustrations of African peoples, as in the drawings by Jean Barbot and Thomas Bowditch?
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Framing Questions
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How did Africans live in freedom before enslavement? |
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How did Europeans and African Americans perceive African cultures? |
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What was the experience of capture and enslavement for those who became African Americans? |
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Printing
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Supplemental Sites
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| *PDF file - You will need software on your computer that allows you to read and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this software, you may download it FREE from Adobe's Web site. |
Images:
- Color engraving by Thomas Bowditch captioned "The First Day of the Yam Custom" (detail), in Thomas E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, London: 1819, between p. 274 and p. 275. Reprinted Frank Cass & Co., 1951. Permission pending. Digital image from online collection The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia Library. Permission pending.
- Illustration by Jean Barbot captioned "Heads of Gold Coast men and women" (detail) in D. E. H. Hair, et al., eds. Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712, London: The Hakluyt Society, 1992, between p. 494 and 495. Digital image in online collection The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, A Visual Record, from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia Library. Permission pending.
-Sanko (a musical instrument), bell, drum and two pectoral (chest) ornaments, Ashanti goldwork brought by Thomas Bowditch in 1817 to the British Museum. Collections of the British Museum, London. Permission pending.
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