From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom

Three: The Power Within: The Conjurer as Folk Hero

T H RE E The Power Within: The Conjurer as Folk Hero He [the African priest or medicine-man] appeared early on the plantation and found his function as the healer of the sick, the interpreter of the unknown, the comforter of the sorrowing, the supernatural avenger of wrong, and the one who rudely but picturesquely expressed the longing and disappointment of a stolen and oppressed people.' W.E.B. Du Bois Throughout the period of black chattel slavery in the United States, slaveholders and observers of slavery noted the existence of individuals whom enslaved Africans regarded with a kind of religious awe. Referred to by enslaved Africans variously as conjurers, hoodooers, rootworkers, and two-heads, these individuals commanded a great deal of respect from fellow Africans who enshrined them as folk heroes and recalled their deeds in oral narratives generally referred to as conjure tales. Unlike the fictive animal trickster whose existence as a folk hero in folktales went virtually unrecorded in the written records of whites during slavery, conjurers were frequently mentioned by whites who regarded their influence over enslaved Africans as a challenge to their own authority and designs: On every large plantation of Negroes there is one among them who holds great sway over the minds and opinions of the rest; to him they look as the oracle-and this same oracle is, in ninetynine cases the most consummate villain and hypocrite on the premise. It is more likely that he has seen sundry miraculous visions , equal to those of John on the Isle of Patmos; angels have talked with him, etc., etc. The influence of such a negro is incalculable . He steals his master's pigs, and is still an object com- 66/ The Conjurer as Folk Hero manding the peculiar regard of Heaven, and why may not his disciples ?" While few whites professed belief in the "alleged" magical or supernatural powers that enslaved Africans attributed to conjurers, they nevertheless acknowledged conjurers' real ability to influence slave behavior and frequently expressed concern over its implications for their own well-being: On certain occasions they have been made to believe that while they carried about their persons some charm with which they had been furnished, they were invulnerable. They have, on certain other occasions, been made to believe that they were under a protection that rendered them invincible. That they might go any where and do any thing they pleased, and it would be impossible for them to be discovered or known; in fine, to will was to do-safely, successfully. They have been known to be so perfectly and fearfully under the influence of some leader or conjurer that they have not dared disobey him in the least particular; nor to disclose their own intended or perpetrated crimes, in view of inevitable death itself; notwithstanding all other influences brought to bear upon them." Whites often viewed the respect that enslaved Africans accorded the conjurer not only as a threat to their authority and physical wellbeing but also as a clear affront to the enlightened Christian values that they attempted to instill in their chattel. The threat in the latter instance issued primarily from the white view of conjuration as a retention of African values among their slaves-a system of values that whites viewed as dangerous because of associations with "Pagan darkness , idolatry and superstition" emanating from a savage African past." While many slaveholders undoubtedly accepted the practice of conjuration among enslaved Africans as innocent superstitious behavior and used it to confirm their view of them as naive children, Eugene Genovese argues that "most [whites] feared the effects of strange beliefs on their slaves and tried to suppress them. Plantation papers usually mention voodoo, conjure, and superstition as something to be abhorred and punished, and the blacks similarly reported their masters' hostility.l" Despite the efforts of slaveholders to eradicate the practice of conjuration , students of African American folklore and culture in the years following emancipation documented the persistence of beliefs The Conjurer as Folk Hero /67 in the powers of conjurers. For instance,]ulien A. Hall, an early collector of black folklore, asserted that Beliefs of the negro race in regard to 'conjuring' and 'tricking' were brought from Africa by the first comers and continue in full force to this day, notwithstanding the negro is a freedman and living amongst the white people of the United States, who are probably as practical...