Discovering Afro-America

A variety of plants and process were known to both West African and southeastern American [Indian] cultures... Gourds... Served as milk pails along the Gambia River in much the same way calabashes had long provided water buckets beside the Ashley. It is impossible to say whether it was Africans or Indians who showed white planters, around 1700, how to put a gourd on a pole as a birdhouse for martins (that would in turn drive crows from the crops) or who fashioned the first drinking gourd which would become the standard dipper on plantations. The weaving of elaborate baskets, boxes, and mats from various reeds and grasses was familiar to both black and red. "The Mats the Indian Women make," wrote Lawson, "are of Rushes, and about five Foot high, and two Fathom long, and sew'd double, that is, two together." He reported these items to be "very commodious to lay under our Beds, or to sleep on in the Summer Season in the Day-time, and for our Slaves in the Night." The palmetto, symbol of the novel landscape for arriving Europeans, was well known to Africans and Indians for its useful leaf. They made fans and brooms from these leaves and may well have entered into competition with Bermudians who were already exporting baskets and boxes made of woven palmetto. Note: From 'Observations upon the Windward Coast': "They manufacture… fine mats, baskets, hats, ornaments, quivers, arrows, &c. which all prove the taste and ingenuity of the natives." … contains a picture taken in 1909 which shows Alfred Graham, an ex-slave who had learned to weave baskets as a boy in Africa, teaching these traditional techniques of basketry to his grandson. South Carolina's strong basket-weaving tradition, still plainly visible along the roadsides near the coast, undoubtedly represents an early fusion of Negro and Indian skills. Note: "Many of them were expert basket-makers for which on every plantation there was a demand. Some of the men were excllent coopers, and the "piggins" and buckets used on the plantations were mostly made there. The usual drinking vessel for the negroes was a gourd--otherwise called a calabash. This grew on vines which ran along every garden fence. The vine, being an annual, died at the end of the summer, and the calabashes were allowed to dry on the vine. The smaller ones took the place of cups, etc., and the larger ones were used as pails for water or to hold grain and other things. Before use they had to be boiled a long time to extract the bitterness."