Commonalities Between Slave Quilts and African Textiles - Coursework Example

Running Head: COMMONALITIES BETWEEN SLAVE QUILTS AND AFRICAN TEXTILES Commonalities between Slave Quilts and African Textiles By Quilting was a common task and function of slaves before the American Civil War. Quilt-making is a traditional art and craft handed by one slave generation to another. Women slaves were made to quilt even before they were out of childhood, most of whom worked for their masters. The big plantations employed slaves whose primary functions were to sew and quilt for the members of the household. These quilts of elaborate appliqué and unmistakable designs were painstakingly labored by these slaves. They reflected leisure and refinement with long hours put into them. The work reflected designs and color of the African tradition although the women quilters were banned from using their own religion and language. During the abolitionist period, the quilts designs began to reflect abolitionist causes and images associated with the movement (Kriger & Connah 2006). On the other hand, African textiles, whether hand-woven or factory-made, are unmistakable in their representation of the cultural and traditional ethnicity of the region. Through the passing of time, African textiles have incorporated and imbibed foreign influences, yet they have retained the essential features of visual preferences unique only to the region and its people. Despite the adoption of innovation in African textile-making, continuity of the traditional designs is preserved resulting in a distinct and patented African look. A comparison between traditional prototypes of slave quilts and designs of African textiles that have endured to this day reveal traces of commonalities. History of Slave Quiltmaking and African Textiles Slave Quilts. In the United States, the simple art and craft of quilt-making surprisingly conceals a rich historical, social, cultural and political background that goes back even before the country earned its independence. In the slave era of pre-civil war US, big plantations existed where African slaves worked on the land under the watchful eyes of their masters. Each plantation had their own weaving room or shed which served as the areas where slaves, usually women, were trained to sew, embroider, make lace and do needlework. The products of these endeavors were used not only to clothe the masters’ households but also served as extra income for the masters. In addition, women slaves quilted for their family use. Bedcovers are the usual pieces made in quilting but since slaves replaced them only after they were totally rendered unusable by the wear and tear of prolonged use, none of these quilted pieces made before 1773 survived to this day. In addition, cloth was very expensive before the Industrial Revolution. The oldest surviving slave quilt was from the Beaver Dam plantation in Hanover County in Virginia and it is made up of bits and pieces of fabric unlike most 18th century surviving quilts which are made of imported expensive cloth (Patton 1998 p. 38). Slave quilts used to be dismissed as being a reflection of the preferences and ideas of the slaves’ mistresses and therefore were not deemed as wholly African-American works of art. However, slaves actually made two kinds of quilt works: one, for their mistresses’ households which possibly reflected to a large extent the preferences and ideas of their mistresses, and; second, for their own households and families, which naturally reflected their tastes and personal designs, during Sundays and holidays. During these moments, slave quilting parties were held where women slaves gathered together in designated areas and tell stories about their lives in the plantations while they work at the same time with their needlework or quilt-work (Bobo, Hudley & Michelle 2004 pp 296-297). As a matter of fact, although the use of African languages and religions were banned in plantations, women slaves were able to use quilt-work to propagate and express these aspects in their lives. In Georgia, for example, missionaries were unable to stop the spread of African religion because the slaves were able to hide their practice of them in plain sight. Religious rituals were expressed in forms and places that the missionaries least expected. These religious expressions were channeled in quilts. An example of this was the former slave Harriet Powers’ Fig. 1 Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt (1898) Bible quilt (Fig. 1). The quilt echoed the parables and stories in the Bible, a fact which escaped the notice of the missionaries and mistresses. Harriet Powers’ Bible quilt is said to be a combination of the Dahomean and Bakongo ethnic religious influences and traditional symbols of Africa (Stuckey 1987 p. 91). Likewise, quilts were used by slaves to communicate to each other during the abolition era after the US Civil War. In 1998, two authors published a book which claimed that slaves used these quilts to secretly give information to fellow slaves who were fugitives to warn them of impending dangers or help them escape to the north. The book called Hidden In Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad were authored by Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard. The authors claimed that the slaves created different patterns made known and memorized by fellow slaves that were incorporated as patterns into quilts and which would be prominently displayed to warn abolitionists. The slaves were thought to have created seventeen patterns for this purpose (Slave Quilt Exhibit). While actual historical proof of the use of quilts during the abolition era had still to be provided, stories of such kind had been told and handed down from generation to generation. Oral tradition is rich in the stories of how quilts helped and saved abolitionists. Thus, there may be both fact and myth involved in a largely oral tradition of abolitionist quilting. The North Star pattern (Fig.2) of quilts for example, if displayed would indicate as a signal to the abolitionists of an impending danger and to urge them to prepare to escape to the north, where there was the least heat for the movement. The direction of the north is the way to freedom of the abolitionist since the slavery struggle was fiercest in the south and thus any direction for freedom pointed northwise. Fig. 2 The North Star Pattern On the other hand, the Log Cabin pattern (Fig. 2) when displayed would indicate to the abolitionists the existence of an underground safehouse or that there is a need to find a safe place Fig. 3 The Log Cabin Pattern or that a person hanging the quilt is safe to talk or confer with (Quilt Codes 2004). The Jacob’s Ladder or Underground Railroad is a pattern in quilts hang outside stations or secret safehouses to indicate that they were safe to serve as hideaway and that abolitionists on the run could stay there for safety (Fig. 3). Fig. 4 Jacob’s Ladder or Underground Railroad Pattern The Flying Geese (Fig. 4) slave quilt pattern when displayed prominently was meant as a Fig. 5 The Flying Geese Pattern to abolitionists the direction with which to take to take them to safer territories. The design as shown in the figure consists of flying geese going to a certain direction. The pattern worked as a symbolic arrow to the safe area. African Textiles. The hot climatic condition of the African continent made it impossible for any fabric of antiquity to survive. The earliest known African history of textile weaving can be gleaned from the walls of ancient tombs in Egypt. According to the writings on the walls there were two kinds of looms with which fabric were woven in ancient Africa. First was the ground loom which can be operated with no heddle or with single heddle and the second was a vertically mounted single-heddle loom which was either made to lean against a wall or attached to a tree standing. In other parts of the African continent revealed that spindle whorls were employed in Sudan in the ancient past and just recently a red, green and blue tunic and a shawl were excavated in Nigerian burial ground in an area which was a junction of trade and commerce in the past. These pieces of clothing were subjected to dating techniques and were estimated to have come from the second part of the 8th century AD (Duncan 2003). The pit loom used in the East Africa had been established to have originated in the Arab world. Aside from that, the probability that the narrow-strip loom and some of the single-heddle loom had been invented by the Africans themselves as evidenced by the pieces of clothing of the Igbo Ukwu discovered recently and estimated to date back to the 9th century AD. The narrow strip heddle now being used widely in the continent is believed to have originated from the continent itself specifically in Sierra Leona as evidenced by the significant number of fragment of clothings discovered in burial caves in Mali estimated to be dating back to the 11th century AD. The most significant influence to the African textile industry in the ancient times came from traders who frequently traversed the African regions. Most of these traders were Muslims which prompted some writers to associate the African textile industry to the spread of Islam in Africa (Duncan 2003) The Slave Quilts and African Textiles: Commonalities Since women slaves from Africa brought into the United States got the share, as a result of the division of labor, of sewing, embroidering and quilting for the masters’ households, they inadvertently brought with them the cultural, social, and political ethos inherent to them as natives of the African continent and somehow used and applied these knowledge to their work like quilting especially when the quilt pieces were for the personal use of their family. Notwithstanding that they were under the direct supervision of the households’ mistresses, some of these innate knowledge must have somehow filtered into the quilted pieces. It is only fitting to assume that some of features of the slave quilts are shared by African textiles and indeed there are commonalities between the two. Three aspects may be delved into in comparing slave quilts to African textiles: technological traditions; religious symbols in writing systems, and; charm traditions (Peek & Yanka 2004). Technological Traditions. In Africa, the use of strips sewn together to be made into a piece of clothing is not uncommon. Since the 11th century, West Africans commonly made cloths from out of small strips and wove them in portable looms. This construction and design technique was practiced by Africans even when they went outside of the continent. Previous to that, the strips served as African currency. In many regions in Africa, smaller transactions were paid by these strips of cloths and big transactions by an entire roll of cloth (Clarke 2003; Peek & Yankah 2004). Quilting by the women slaves with the use of blocks of cloths was not therefore uncommon to the slaves having seen and experienced them at home. Fig. 6 Raffia Cloth Squares used in transactions In Africa, large shapes, complex patterns and bright contrasting colors in cloths are associated with prominent and important people. These kinds of patterns must be made recognizable even from afar so that proper and appropriate greetings to the important persons can be made. Bright, contrasting colors are very important to the African people that they import European cloths, unravel them and then weave them into their own local cloths. According to the African textile tradition colors must burn or hit each other (Peek and Yankah 2004). An example is the Kente cloth woven the people of Ghana as shown in Fig. 7 (African Textiles or The Weaving Turtle 1992). As can be observed, slave quilts are characterized by highly contrasting colors with large shapes and patterns. Slave quilters likewise looked for strong contrasting colors when piecing blocks of cloths for quilting as can be seen in Fig. 8. Fig. 7 Kente ceremonial cloth of the Asante people of Ghana Fig. 8 Sample of slave quilt with contrasting colors. In the west of the continent, weavers sometimes choose pieces of cloths with different patterns that may look asymmetrical to each other. However, weavers arrange them in such a manner that the edges of each block fit together and the end result do not necessarily look uncalculated and mismatched (Peek & Yankah). Slave quilts oftentimes were made up of mismatched blocks when observed closely but do not seem so when taken in their entirety as in Fig. 10. Fig. 10 Example of asymmetry in a slave quilt Another feature of the African textiles is women’s weave which can be distinguished from men’s weave by their characteristic wide panels with vertical designs. In Africa, weavings are done by men but women also weave in the comfort of their homes and only for family use. The wide-loom weaving feature can also be seen in slave quilts by the African women slaves who probably transmitted this technique to younger generations of slave quilters (Peek & Yahnka 2004 p 457). Improvisation is a prominent feature in African textiles and this feature is often marked by breaking from the pattern or inserting an out of the mold pattern. It is seen as an expression of talent in the African culture but sometimes a break in the pattern has superstitious undertones as it is believed to be the entry of a spirit or spirit possession. In slave quilts, improvisations were likewise observed by using the technique of asymmetry and random patterns (Peek & Yankah 2004 p 457). Multiple patterning is often employed by African textile weavers especially for fabrics worn by very important people like priests and kings. Only important people are deemed worthy of wearing fabrics with multiple patterns because only a person of wealth and means can Fig 11 King of the Asante people of Ghana wearing an old adinkira cloth afford to wear fabric which consists of complex and many different patterns. In addition to wealth, a person who wears such kind of fabric also represents prestige and power. This is illustrated by the clothing worn by the person in Fig. 11 who is a king of a tribe in Ghana. It can be noted that the cloth he is wearing employs multiple patterning and asymmetrical designs. Aside from aesthetic considerations, a multiple patterned and asymmetrical designed fabric has superstitious significance. To the Africans, this kind of design ensures the warding off of evil spirits on the belief that evil spirits travel in straight lines. A pattern that does not follow a straight linear pattern will eventually confuse bad spirits and protect the person wearing the fabric. This protective patterning was also religiously followed by slaves in making quilts and even by contemporary African-American (Peek and Yahnak 2004 p 458). Fig. 10 likewise shows this kind of patterning in slave quilts. Another African technique in textile making that was reflected in slave quilts is the appliqué technique. The usual and traditional way of constructing together several pieces of clothes is by piecing them but in the appliqué tradition, patterns are cut out in accordance to their shapes and are sewn to a flat piece of cloth. The appliqué tradition is used by the Africans to tell stories of religious, social, cultural and political nature. Cloths with the appliqué technique record events of historical importance and narrate lives of important figures. An example of this is the appliqué cloth made by the Fon people of the Republic of Benin (Peek & Yankah 2004). The slave quilters also used the appliqué technique and the most famous are those made by Harriet Powers illustrated by Figure 1 and Figure 12. In the latter slave quilt, two human figures are shown being surrounded by animals. According to Powers, the quilt tells the story of Cain who is on his way to Nod get himself a wife. Along the way, he saw and met several animals (Americans Quilting History 2001). Fig. 12 Harriet Powers’ story of Cain Religious Symbols in Writings. African scripts are often found in paintings and even textiles of Africans. In Surinam, women embroidered scripts into the loin cloths and capes of their men while the men painted them on houses and other areas as these writings were deemed protection from bad spirits. When African slaves were taken to Haiti in the 17th and 18th centuries, their religions were mixed with the Haiti religion and there, African scripts appeared. However, after the declaration of independence of Haiti, Africans came to New Orleans and their religion spread throughout the US. Thus, the protective writings also spread and appeared in the US. During the abolition movement, many of these writings were used as coded messages in the underground railroad by incorporating them in slave quilts. Check designs are a popular African pattern applied in textiles which African slaves adopted in quiltmaking in the US. This is also true with cross patterns which are common in African fabric weaving. The origin of this pattern is the Yoruba belief in sacred crossroads or the symbol of the four points of the sun subscribed by the Kongo. The Kongo cosmogram eventually evolved into circular designs and pin-wheel patterns (Fig. 13 and 14) Fig. 13 Wagon Wheel Fig. 14 Crossroads Charm Traditions. Africans are known for their penchant for charms used in various aspects of their lives. These charms are made usually by priests and priestesses, spirit-diviners and folk artists for people who want resolutions to their emotional, physical, spiritual, political problems and other needs. Some of these charms include necklaces, armbands, belts, cloth charms, Vodun dolls, Mojo or a spell or hex which is employed to lift a spell or to protect from evil forces. In slave quilts, these charms take the form of patterns like the Nine Patch, Log Cabin and other designs which include small red squares that looked like Mojo. Slave quilts thus served two purposes for the slaves: for decoration or utility, and; as charm for protection against evil spirits. Conclusion Slave quilts share some commonalities with African textiles. This is not really surprising considering that the slaves were imported from and brought in to the US from the African continent. The original slave quilters who were the first slaves to do the task of quilting for the plantation necessarily quilted, consciously and unconsciously, bringing into their task their rich cultural and ethnical traditions. This became more manifest with the quilts they did for their personal and family use. The proofs to this commonality which the slave quilts share with African textiles can be revealed by a close scrutiny of the cultural, social, political and economic traditions existing and established in Africa before the first of the slaves were brought in to the United States and a subsequent comparison and scrutiny of the many features and characteristics of slave quilts. Specifically, African traditions in the technology of textile-making, religious symbols in the writing style and charms use are relevant in this study. With respect to the manner and methods observed by traditional Africans in making their textiles, it is noticeable that the use of strips of cloths sewn and constructed together to make a whole piece of clothing or apparel was not uncommon to them. This corresponds to the method with which quilts are made which is by piecing many blocks of cloth together to create a whole piece. The implication is that quilting was not really an entirely new exercise to the slaves. Moreover, Africans also employed other techniques such as appliqué which can also be found in slave quilting. Other proofs pointing to commonality also exist between African textiles and slave quilts such as religious symbols in writings primarily used by the slave quilters during the abolition movement to assist abolitionists to escape and flee to the north or warn them of impending dangers. Other proofs include the use of charms, an aspect of which African tribes are very well known for. Such charms are found as well in various slave quilts. References African Textiles or the Weaving Turtle (1992). http://www.ottone2.addr.com/aftex_web/at.htm Americas Quilting History (2001). http://www.womenfolk.com/quilting_history/abolitionist.htm Bobo, Jacqueline & Hudley, Cynthia & Michel, Claudine. (2004). The Black Studies Reader. Routledge, p. 296 Clarke, Duncan. (2003). African Textiles Introduction 5. History. http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/africantextintro5.htm Kriger, Colleen E., Connah, Graham. (2006). Quilt History. Cloth in West African History. Rowman Altamira, p.\ Patton, Sharon F. (1998). African-American Art: the evolution of a Black aesthetic Timeline. Oxford University Press, p 36 Peek, Philip M. & Yankah, Kwesi. (2004). African Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis, p. 454 Quilt Codes. (2004). Owen’s Black Sound History. http://www.osblackhistory.com/quiltcodes.php Slave Quilt Exhibit.NSA. CIA http://www.nsa.gov/MUSEUM/museu00033.cfm. Stuckey, Sterling (1987). Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black. Oxford University Press, p 91 Underground Quiltcode (2004). Phoenix Mill Women Museum. http://www.phoenixmillwomensmuseum.net/quiltcode.htm Read More