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William Sheppard the Missionary to the right Charles Studd to the left Chauncey Maples to the far right
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Taíno Indians, a subgroup of the Arawakan Indians (a group of American Indians in northeastern South America), inhabited the Greater Antilles (comprising Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola [Haiti and the Dominican Republic], and Puerto Rico) in the Caribbean Sea at the time when Christopher Columbus' arrived to the New World.
The Taíno culture impressed both the Spanish (who observed it) and modern sociologists. The Arawakan achievements included construction of ceremonial ball parks whose boundaries were marked by upright stone dolmens, development of a universal language, and creation of a complicated religious cosmology. There was a hierarchy of deities who inhabited the sky; Yocahu was the supreme Creator. Another god, Jurakán, was perpetually angry and ruled the power of the hurricane. Other mythological figures were the gods Zemi and Maboya. The zemis, a god of both sexes, were represented by icons in the form of human and animal figures, and collars made of wood, stone, bones, and human remains. Taíno Indians believed that being in the good graces of their zemis protected them from disease, hurricanes, or disaster in war. They therefore served cassava (manioc) bread as well as beverages and tobacco to their zemis as propitiatory offerings. Maboyas, on the other hand, was a nocturnal deity who destroyed the crops and was feared by all the natives, to the extent that elaborate sacrifices were offered to placate him.
Myths and traditions were perpetuated through ceremonial dances (areytos), drumbeats, oral traditions, and a ceremonial ball game played between opposing teams (of 10 to 30 players per team) with a rubber ball; winning this game was thought to bring a good harvest and strong, healthy children.
The Taíno Indians lived in theocratic kingdoms and had a hierarchically arranged chiefs or caciques. The Taínos were divided in three social classes: the naborias (work class), the nitaínos or sub-chiefs and noblemen which includes the bohiques or priests and medicine men and the caciques or chiefs, each village or yucayeque had one.
At the time Juan Ponce de León took possession of the Island, there were about twenty villages or yucayeques, Cacique Agüeybana, was chief of the Taínos. He lived at Guánica, the largest Indian village in the island, on the Guayanilla River. The rank of each cacique apparently was established along democratic lines; his importance in the tribe being determined by the size of his clan, rather than its war-making strength. There was no aristocracy of lineage, nor were their titles other than those given to individuals to distinguish their services to the clan.
Their complexion were bronze-colored, average stature, dark, flowing, coarse hair, and large and slightly oblique dark eyes. Men generally went naked or wore a breech cloth, called nagua, single women walked around naked and married women an apron to over their genitals, made of cotton or palm fibers. The length of which was a sign of rank. Both sexes painted themselves on special occasions; they wore earrings, nose rings, and necklaces, which were sometimes made of gold. Taíno crafts were few; some pottery and baskets were made, and stone, marble and wood were worked skillfully.
Skilled at agriculture and hunting, then Taínos were also good sailors, fishermen, canoe makers, and navigators. Their main crops were cassava, garlic, potatoes, yautías, mamey, guava, and anón. They had no calendar or writing system, and could count only up to twenty, using their hands and feet. Their personal possessions consisted of wooden stools with four legs and carved backs, hammocks made of cotton cloth or string for sleeping, clay and wooden bowls for mixing and serving food, calabashes or gourds for drinking water and bailing out boats, and their most prized possessions, large dugout canoes, for transportation, fishing, and water sports.
Caciques lived in rectangular huts, called caneyes, located in the center of the village facing the batey. The naborias lived in round huts, called bohios. The construction of both types of building was the same: wooden frames, topped by straw, with earthen floor, and scant interior furnishing. But the buildings were strong enough to resist hurricanes. Its believed that Taíno settlements ranged from single families to groups of 3,000 people.
About 100 years before the Spanish invasion, the Taínos were challenged by an invading South American tribe - the Caribs . Fierce, warlike, sadistic, and adept at using poison-tipped arrows, they raided Taíno settlements for slaves (especially females) and bodies for the completion of their rites of cannibalism. Some ethnologists argue that the preeminence of the Taínos, shaken by the attacks of the Caribs, was already jeopardized by the time of the Spanish occupation. In fact, it was Caribs who fought the most effectively against the Europeans, their behavior probably led the Europeans to unfairly attribute warlike tendencies to all of the island's tribes. A dynamic tension between the Taínos and the Caribs certainly existed when the Christopher Columbus landed on Puerto Rico.
When the Spanish settlers first came in 1508, since there is no reliable documentation, anthropologists estimate their numbers to have been between 20,000 and 50,000, but maltreatment, disease, flight, and unsuccessful rebellion had diminished their number to 4,000 by 1515; in 1544 a bishop counted only 60, but these too were soon lost.
At their arrival the Spaniards expected the Taíno Indians to acknowledge the sovereignty of the king of Spain by payment of gold tribute, to work and supply provisions of food and to observe Christian ways. The Taínos rebelled most notably in 1511, when several caciques (Indian leaders) conspired to oust the Spaniards. They were joined in this uprising by their traditional enemies, the Caribs. Their weapons, however, were no match against Spanish horses and firearms and the revolt was soon ended brutally by the Spanish forces of Governor Juan Ponce de León.
In order to understand Puerto Rico's prehistoric era, it is important to know that the Taínos, far more than the Caribs, contributed greatly to the everyday life and language that evolved during the Spanish occupation. Taíno place names are still used for such towns as Utuado, Mayagüez, Caguas, and Humacao, among others.
Many Taíno implements and techniques were copied directly by the Europeans, including the bohío (straw hut) and the hamaca (hammock), the musical instrument known as the maracas, and the method of making cassava bread. Many Taino words persist in the Puerto Rican vocabulary of today. Names of plants, trees and fruits includes: maní, leren, ají, yuca, mamey, pajuil, pitajaya, cupey, tabonuco and ceiba. Names of fish, animals and birds includes: mucaro, guaraguao, iguana, cobo, carey, jicotea, guabina, manati, buruquena and juey. As well as other objects and instruments: güiro, bohío, batey, caney, hamaca, nasa, petate, coy, barbacoa, batea, cabuya, casabe and canoa. Other words were passed not only into Spanish, but also into English, such as huracan (hurricane) and hamaca (hammock). Also, many Taíno superstitions and legends were adopted and adapted by the Spanish and still influence the Puerto Rican imagination.
Books
The Indigenous People of the Caribbean
In Defense of the Indians : The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolome de las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapas
The Tainos: Rise & Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus
Other Resources
Arawaks
Cacicazgos del Siglo 16
Caciques, Nobles, and their Regalia
Indigenous Puerto Rico: DNA evidence upsets established history
The Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation
The New Old World - Antilles: Living Beyond the Myth.
Tainos
Irving Rouse (1992). The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the people who greeted Columbus. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300056966.
Ricardo Alegría (April 1951). "The Ball Game Played by the Aborigines of the Antilles". American Antiquity 16 (4): 348–352. doi:10.2307/276984.
Guitar, Lynne. 2000. "Criollos: The Birth of a Dynamic New Indo - Afro - European People and Culture on Hispaniola." KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology, 1(1): 1-17 http://www.kacike.org/LynneGuitar.html
Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival. Edited by Maximilian C. Forte. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.centrelink.org/resurgence/index.html
DeRLAS. Some important research contributions of Genetics to the study of Population History and Anthropology in Puerto Rico. Newark, Delaware: Delaware Review of Latin American Studies. August 15, 2000.
The Role of Cohoba in Taíno Shamanism Constantino M. Torres in Eleusis No. 1 (1998)
Shamanic Inebriants in South American Archaeology: Recent lnvestigations Constantino M. Torres in Eleusis No. 5 (2001)
Tinker, T & Freeland, M. 2008. "Thief, Slave Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population Decline." (pp=25-50). Retrieved from Academic Search Premier Database on September 23, 2008.
TAINOS: Alive and well in Puerto Rico and the United States?. http://www.prdream.com/wordpress/?p=212
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Taíno
Island Thresholds, Peabody Essex Museum’s interactive feature, showcases the work of Caribbean artists and their exploration of culture and identity.
Taino Diccionary, A dictionary of words of the indigenous peoples of caribbean from the encyclopedia "Clásicos de Puerto Rico, second edition, publisher, Ediciones Latinoamericanas. S.A., 1972" compiled by Puerto Rican historian Dr. Cayetano Coll y Toste of the "Real Academia de la Historia". Provided by the Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation of Boriken (Puerto Rico).
Charles Studd
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Charles StuddEngland (Eng)
Charles Thomas Studd, often known as C. T. Studd, was born 2 December 1860, Spratton, Northamptonshire, England, and died 16 July 1931, Ibambi, Belgian Congo.
In 1888 he married Priscilla Stewart, and their marriage produced four daughters (Grace, Dorothy, Edith & Pauline) and two sons, who died in infancy.
Studd is remembered both as a cricketer and missionary. As a cricketer he played for England in the famous 1882 match won by Australia which was the origins of Ashes. As a British Protestant Christian missionary to China he was part of the Cambridge Seven, and later was responsible for setting up the Heart of Africa Mission which became the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (now WEC International).
Contents[hide]
1 His faith
2 Missionary work
2.1 The Cambridge Seven
3 Cricketing career
3.1 Studd and the Ashes, 1882
4 Studd's Daughters
5 Studd family and related articles
6 References
7 Further reading
8 See also
9 External links
//
[edit] His faith
Studd's wealthy father Edward Studd became a Christian during a Moody-Sankey campaign in England, and a visiting preacher to the Studd household converted C.T. and his three brothers to the faith while they were students at Eton. According to his conversion narrative, the preacher asked him if he believed God's promises, and as Charles' answer was not convincing enough, the guest pressed the point. Charles later recalled the moment:
"I got down on my knees and I did say 'thank you' to God. And right then and there joy and peace came into my soul. I knew then what it was to be 'born again,' and the Bible which had been so dry to me before, became everything."
Studd continued from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1883.[1] In 1884 after his brother George was taken seriously ill Charles was confronted by the question, "What is all the fame and flattery worth ... when a man comes to face eternity?" He had to admit that since his conversion six years earlier he had been in "an unhappy backslidden state." As a result of the experience he said, "I know that cricket would not last, and honour would not last, and nothing in this world would last, but it was worth while living for the world to come."
Studd emphasised the life of faith, believing that God would provide for a Christian's needs. His father died while he was in China, and he gave away his inheritance of £29,000, specifying £5,000 to be used for the Moody Bible Institute, £5,000 for George Muller mission work and his orphans, £5,000 for George Holland's work with England's poor in Whitechapel, and £5,000 to Commissioner Booth Tucker for the Salvation Army in India.
Studd believed that God's purposes could be confirmed through providential coincidences, such as a sum of money being donated spontaneously at just the right moment. He encouraged Christians to take risks in planning missionary ventures, trusting in God to provide. His spirituality was intense, and he mostly read only the Bible. Another work that influenced him was The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. Although he believed that God sometimes healed physical illnesses through prayer and the anointing of oil, he also accepted that some ailments were chronic, and in his last years he regularly took morphine, causing some controversy. Studd also believed in plain speaking and muscular Christianity, and his call for Christians embrace a "Don't Care a Damn" (DCD) attitude to worldly things caused some scandal. He believed that missionary work was urgent, and that those who were unevangelised would be condemned to hell.
Studd wrote several books, including "The Chocolate Soldier" and "Christ's Etcetera's".
[edit] Missionary work
Studd began as an evangelist, and among those he influenced were Wilfred Grenfell and Frederick Brotherton Meyer.
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As a result of his brother's illness and the effect it had upon him, he decided to pursue his faith through missionary work in China and was one of the "Cambridge Seven" who offered themselves to Hudson Taylor for missionary service at the China Inland Mission, leaving for there in February 1885. Of his missionary work he said,
Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
While in China he married Priscilla, in a ceremony performed by a Chinese pastor, and four daughters were born. Studd believed that God had given him daughters to educate the Chinese about the value of baby girls.
On returning to England he was invited to visit America where his brother Kynaston had recently arranged meetings which had led to the formation of the Student Volunteer Movement. He also here influenced John Mott
Between 1900-1906 Studd was pastor of a church at Ootacamund in Southern India and although it was a different situation to the pioneer missionary work he had undertaken in China, his ministry was marked by numerous conversions amongst the British officials and the local community. However, on his return home Studd met a German missionary named Karl Kumm, and he became concerned about the large parts of Africa that had never been reached with the Gospel. In 1910 he went to the Sudan and was concerned by the lack of Christian faith in central Africa. Out of this concern Studd was led to set up the Heart of Africa Mission. His speaking on the subject inspired Howard Morrill (Bishop of China, and later Archbishop of Sydney), Arthur Pitts-Pitts (of the Church Missionary Society in Kenya), and Graham Brown (Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem). As an HQ for the venture, the Studds chose 17 Highland Road in Upper Norwood, South London. Like Hudson-Taylor, Studd believed that funds for the work should not be directly solicited. Finances were often tenuous. However, he enjoyed the support of Lord Radstock.
Against medical advice, Studd first visited the Belgian Congo in 1913 in the company of Alfred Buxton, and he established four mission stations in an area then inhabited by eight different tribes. Studd returned to England when Priscilla fell ill, but when he returned to the Congo in 1916 she had recovered sufficiently to undertake the expansion of the mission into the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade with workers in South America, Central Asia and the Middle East as well as Africa. Supported by his wife's work at home, Studd built up an extensive missionary outreach based on his centre at Ibambi. Priscilla made a short visit to the Congo in 1928. That was the last time they met; she died the following year. Studd was joined in his work by his daughter Pauline and son-in-law Norman Grubb, and his grandson Noel Grubb, who died on his first birthday, is buried at Nala. Studd's daughter Edith married Buxton.
In 1931, still labouring for the Lord at Ibambi at the age of seventy, Charles Studd died from untreated gallstones, but his vision for China, India and Africa was maintained by Norman Grubb, who took charge of WEC. His last years, however, were marked by controversy; some missionaries dissented from his methods and leadership style, and several either left or were dismissed. Studd's use of morphine - including supplies which may not have been declared at customs - also scandalised some.
In total he spent some fifteen years in China and six in India on his missionary work and then he devoted the rest of his life to spreading the Gospel message in Africa, founding the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (now WEC International). To this day, his name remains linked with the evangelisation of the Congo Basin, and in 1930 he was made a Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Lion by the King of the Belgians. His biography, by Norman Grubb, was exceptionally popular, and some of his own writings are still in print [2].
[edit] The Cambridge Seven
The seven Cambridge students who became missionaries (known as the Cambridge Seven) to China were:
C. T. Studd
Montagu Beauchamp
S. P. Smith
A. T. Polhill-Turner
D. E. Hoste
C. H. Polhill-Turner
W. W. Cassells
[edit] Cricketing career
Studd gained fame as a cricketer representing England's Cambridge University as a Gentlemen of India, Middlesex at Cricket. Charles was the youngest and most famous of The Studd Brothers. By the time he was sixteen he had started to excel at cricket and at nineteen was captain of his team at Eton College; after school he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was also recognised as an outstanding cricketer.
[edit] Studd and the Ashes, 1882
Studd played in the original Test against Australia where the Ashes were first named and was one of the last two batsman in. When Studd went in, England needed a mere ten runs to win. However, an eccentric performance by his batting partner Ted Peate led to the match being lost.
A week later, the relevant edition of the Sporting Times included a mock obituary which has assumed iconic status:
IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE
OF ENGLISH CRICKET
WHICH DIED AT THE OVAL, 29th AUGUST, 1882,
DEEPLY LAMENTED BY A LARGE CIRCLE OF
SORROWING FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
R.I.P.
N.B.-THE BODY WILL BE CREMATED AND THE
ASHES TAKEN TO AUSTRALIA.
Studd's fame lives on though through the inscription preserved on the Ashes urn to this day, which reads,
When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.
[edit] Studd's Daughters
Grace Studd married Martin Sutton, and, after his death, David Munro (who converted to Christianity only later)
Dorothy Studd married the Rev Gilbert A Barclay
Edith Studd married Alfred Buxton
Pauline Studd married Norman Grubb
[edit] Studd family and related articles
The Studd Brothers
Kynaston Studd
George Studd
Peter Malden Studd
Priscilla Studd
[edit] References
^ Studd, Charles Thomas in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
C.T. Studd: Cricketer and Pioneer by Norman Grubb ISBN 0-7188-3028-8
Faith on Fire: Norman Grubb and the building of WEC by Stewart Dinnen ISBN 1-8579-2321-9
[edit] Further reading
Historical Bibliography of the China Inland Mission
[edit] See also
List of China Inland Mission missionaries in China
19th Century Protestant Missions in China
Christianity in China
Norman Grubb
[edit] External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charles Studd
Works by C. T. Studd at Project Gutenberg
CT Studd Cricket Records
Cricinfo page on Charles Studd
CricketArchive page on Charles Studd
OMF International (formerly China Inland Mission and Overseas Missionary Fellowship)
WEC International (Formerly Heart of Africa Mission)
Joseph Booth (born 1851, Derby, England, to 1932) was an English Baptist missionary in British Central Africa (present-day Malawi).
He first came to Africa in 1892 along with his wife and daughters, and established the Zambezi Industrial Mission at Mitsidi, close to Blantyre and the Nyasa Industrial Mission. He recruited locals to plant coffee, and within a year had over 30,000 acres (120 km²) being worked. This was part of his desire to have Africa be for the native Africans instead of Europeans, a view unpopular with most other missionaries of the time.
He made a trip to Britain and the United States in 1897, taking along household employee John Chilembwe. Chilembwe stayed in Virginia to study, while Booth returned in 1899 and established a new mission to the south of Blantyre. Booth continued his pro-African efforts, proposing that the colony revert to local control in 20 years, and that at least five percent of the natives should receive higher education. These views did not go over well with the colonial administration, and commissioner Alfred Sharpe threatened to deport Booth for his "seditious remarks".
After an unrelated dispute with his coreligionists, Booth went to South Africa in 1902. In 1907 he was officially barred from returning to the Blantyre colony, and eventually moved back to England, where he died some years later. His daughter Emily Booth would later write of their experiences in Africa.
[edit] References
Owen J. M. Kalinga and Cynthia A. Crosby, Historical Dictionary of Malawi, 3rd ed. (Scarecrow Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8108-3481-2) pp. 40-41
Langworthy, Harry, "Africa for the African". The Life of Joseph Booth, (Blantyre: CLAIM, 1996, ISBN 99908-16-03-4)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Booth"
Charles Mackenzie (bishop)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other people with this name, see Charles Mackenzie.
Charles Frederick Mackenzie
Bishop
Born
1825, Portmore, Peeblesshire, Scotland
Died
31 January 1862, Africa
Venerated in
Anglican Communion
Feast
31 January
Charles Frederick Frazier Mackenzie (1825-62) was a Church of England bishop of Central Africa. He is commemorated in some Anglican Church Calendars.
Contents[hide]
1 Life
2 See also
3 References
4 External links
//
[edit] Life
He was born at Portmore, Peeblesshire, Scotland, the ninth son of Colin Mackenzie and Elizabeth Forbes[1]. He was educated at Bishop Wearmouth school and Edinburgh Academy, and entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1844. He migrated to Caius College, where he graduated B. A. as Second Wrangler in 1848, and became a Fellow of Caius.[2] In 1855, he went to Natal with Bishop Colenso and served as Archdeacon. They worked among the English settlers till 1859. In 1860, Mackenzie became head of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa and he was consecrated bishop in St George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on 1 January 1861. Following Dr David Livingstone's request to Cambridge, Bishop Mackenzie took on the position of being the first missionary bishop in Nyasaland (now Malawi).
Moving from Cape Town, Bishop Mackenzie sailed up the Zambezi and Shire rivers with a small group to start work. He arrived at Chibisa’s village in June 1861 with the goal to establish a mission station at Magomero, near Zomba. He directly opposed the slave trade causing the enmity of the Yao. Bishop Mackenzie worked among the people of the Manganja country until January 1862 when he went on a supplies trip together with a few members of his party. The boat they were travelling on sank and as their medical supplies were lost, Bishop Mackenzie’s malaria could not be treated. He died of Blackwater fever on 31 January 1862. Dr Livingstone erected a cross over his grave.
An International school in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, is named after him.
[edit] See also
Church of the Province of Central Africa
[edit] References
^ Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Mackenzies, Inverness, 1894
^ Mackenzie, Charles Frederick in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
Goodwin, Life, (second edition, Cambridge, 1865)
This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
[edit] External links
History of the Anglican Church in Malawi
Taino Indians
http://mousemedicine.blogspot.com/2009/12/we-didnt-start-fire.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Christian_missionaries_in_Africa
When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Bishop Desmond Tutu (b. 1931) spiritual leader,activist, writer
Bishop Desmond Tutu (b. 1931) spiritual leader,activist, writer
http://www.topuertorico.org/reference/taino.shtml
christopher columbus landed in hispaniola in december 1492, during the first of his four voyages to america. the arrival of columbus and subsequent conquering spaniards decimated the taínos, the island's indigenous people by introducing infectious diseases to which they had no immunity. santa domingo. november 2003
christopher columbus landed in hispaniola in december 1492, during the first of his four voyages to america. the arrival of columbus and subsequent conquering spaniards decimated the taínos, the island's indigenous people by introducing infectious diseases to which they had no immunity. santa domingo. november 2003
Taíno Indians, a subgroup of the Arawakan Indians (a group of American Indians in northeastern South America), inhabited the Greater Antilles (comprising Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola [Haiti and the Dominican Republic], and Puerto Rico) in the Caribbean Sea at the time when Christopher Columbus' arrived to the New World.
The Taíno culture impressed both the Spanish (who observed it) and modern sociologists. The Arawakan achievements included construction of ceremonial ball parks whose boundaries were marked by upright stone dolmens, development of a universal language, and creation of a complicated religious cosmology. There was a hierarchy of deities who inhabited the sky; Yocahu was the supreme Creator. Another god, Jurakán, was perpetually angry and ruled the power of the hurricane. Other mythological figures were the gods Zemi and Maboya. The zemis, a god of both sexes, were represented by icons in the form of human and animal figures, and collars made of wood, stone, bones, and human remains. Taíno Indians believed that being in the good graces of their zemis protected them from disease, hurricanes, or disaster in war. They therefore served cassava (manioc) bread as well as beverages and tobacco to their zemis as propitiatory offerings. Maboyas, on the other hand, was a nocturnal deity who destroyed the crops and was feared by all the natives, to the extent that elaborate sacrifices were offered to placate him.
Myths and traditions were perpetuated through ceremonial dances (areytos), drumbeats, oral traditions, and a ceremonial ball game played between opposing teams (of 10 to 30 players per team) with a rubber ball; winning this game was thought to bring a good harvest and strong, healthy children.
The Taíno Indians lived in theocratic kingdoms and had a hierarchically arranged chiefs or caciques. The Taínos were divided in three social classes: the naborias (work class), the nitaínos or sub-chiefs and noblemen which includes the bohiques or priests and medicine men and the caciques or chiefs, each village or yucayeque had one.
At the time Juan Ponce de León took possession of the Island, there were about twenty villages or yucayeques, Cacique Agüeybana, was chief of the Taínos. He lived at Guánica, the largest Indian village in the island, on the Guayanilla River. The rank of each cacique apparently was established along democratic lines; his importance in the tribe being determined by the size of his clan, rather than its war-making strength. There was no aristocracy of lineage, nor were their titles other than those given to individuals to distinguish their services to the clan.
Their complexion were bronze-colored, average stature, dark, flowing, coarse hair, and large and slightly oblique dark eyes. Men generally went naked or wore a breech cloth, called nagua, single women walked around naked and married women an apron to over their genitals, made of cotton or palm fibers. The length of which was a sign of rank. Both sexes painted themselves on special occasions; they wore earrings, nose rings, and necklaces, which were sometimes made of gold. Taíno crafts were few; some pottery and baskets were made, and stone, marble and wood were worked skillfully.
Skilled at agriculture and hunting, then Taínos were also good sailors, fishermen, canoe makers, and navigators. Their main crops were cassava, garlic, potatoes, yautías, mamey, guava, and anón. They had no calendar or writing system, and could count only up to twenty, using their hands and feet. Their personal possessions consisted of wooden stools with four legs and carved backs, hammocks made of cotton cloth or string for sleeping, clay and wooden bowls for mixing and serving food, calabashes or gourds for drinking water and bailing out boats, and their most prized possessions, large dugout canoes, for transportation, fishing, and water sports.
Caciques lived in rectangular huts, called caneyes, located in the center of the village facing the batey. The naborias lived in round huts, called bohios. The construction of both types of building was the same: wooden frames, topped by straw, with earthen floor, and scant interior furnishing. But the buildings were strong enough to resist hurricanes. Its believed that Taíno settlements ranged from single families to groups of 3,000 people.
About 100 years before the Spanish invasion, the Taínos were challenged by an invading South American tribe - the Caribs . Fierce, warlike, sadistic, and adept at using poison-tipped arrows, they raided Taíno settlements for slaves (especially females) and bodies for the completion of their rites of cannibalism. Some ethnologists argue that the preeminence of the Taínos, shaken by the attacks of the Caribs, was already jeopardized by the time of the Spanish occupation. In fact, it was Caribs who fought the most effectively against the Europeans, their behavior probably led the Europeans to unfairly attribute warlike tendencies to all of the island's tribes. A dynamic tension between the Taínos and the Caribs certainly existed when the Christopher Columbus landed on Puerto Rico.
When the Spanish settlers first came in 1508, since there is no reliable documentation, anthropologists estimate their numbers to have been between 20,000 and 50,000, but maltreatment, disease, flight, and unsuccessful rebellion had diminished their number to 4,000 by 1515; in 1544 a bishop counted only 60, but these too were soon lost.
At their arrival the Spaniards expected the Taíno Indians to acknowledge the sovereignty of the king of Spain by payment of gold tribute, to work and supply provisions of food and to observe Christian ways. The Taínos rebelled most notably in 1511, when several caciques (Indian leaders) conspired to oust the Spaniards. They were joined in this uprising by their traditional enemies, the Caribs. Their weapons, however, were no match against Spanish horses and firearms and the revolt was soon ended brutally by the Spanish forces of Governor Juan Ponce de León.
In order to understand Puerto Rico's prehistoric era, it is important to know that the Taínos, far more than the Caribs, contributed greatly to the everyday life and language that evolved during the Spanish occupation. Taíno place names are still used for such towns as Utuado, Mayagüez, Caguas, and Humacao, among others.
Many Taíno implements and techniques were copied directly by the Europeans, including the bohío (straw hut) and the hamaca (hammock), the musical instrument known as the maracas, and the method of making cassava bread. Many Taino words persist in the Puerto Rican vocabulary of today. Names of plants, trees and fruits includes: maní, leren, ají, yuca, mamey, pajuil, pitajaya, cupey, tabonuco and ceiba. Names of fish, animals and birds includes: mucaro, guaraguao, iguana, cobo, carey, jicotea, guabina, manati, buruquena and juey. As well as other objects and instruments: güiro, bohío, batey, caney, hamaca, nasa, petate, coy, barbacoa, batea, cabuya, casabe and canoa. Other words were passed not only into Spanish, but also into English, such as huracan (hurricane) and hamaca (hammock). Also, many Taíno superstitions and legends were adopted and adapted by the Spanish and still influence the Puerto Rican imagination.
Books
The Indigenous People of the Caribbean
In Defense of the Indians : The Defense of the Most Reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolome de las Casas, of the Order of Preachers, Late Bishop of Chiapas
The Tainos: Rise & Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus
Other Resources
Arawaks
Cacicazgos del Siglo 16
Caciques, Nobles, and their Regalia
Indigenous Puerto Rico: DNA evidence upsets established history
The Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation
The New Old World - Antilles: Living Beyond the Myth.
Tainos
Irving Rouse (1992). The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the people who greeted Columbus. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300056966.
Ricardo Alegría (April 1951). "The Ball Game Played by the Aborigines of the Antilles". American Antiquity 16 (4): 348–352. doi:10.2307/276984.
Guitar, Lynne. 2000. "Criollos: The Birth of a Dynamic New Indo - Afro - European People and Culture on Hispaniola." KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology, 1(1): 1-17 http://www.kacike.org/LynneGuitar.html
Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival. Edited by Maximilian C. Forte. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.centrelink.org/resurgence/index.html
DeRLAS. Some important research contributions of Genetics to the study of Population History and Anthropology in Puerto Rico. Newark, Delaware: Delaware Review of Latin American Studies. August 15, 2000.
The Role of Cohoba in Taíno Shamanism Constantino M. Torres in Eleusis No. 1 (1998)
Shamanic Inebriants in South American Archaeology: Recent lnvestigations Constantino M. Torres in Eleusis No. 5 (2001)
Tinker, T & Freeland, M. 2008. "Thief, Slave Trader, Murderer: Christopher Columbus and Caribbean Population Decline." (pp=25-50). Retrieved from Academic Search Premier Database on September 23, 2008.
TAINOS: Alive and well in Puerto Rico and the United States?. http://www.prdream.com/wordpress/?p=212
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Taíno
Island Thresholds, Peabody Essex Museum’s interactive feature, showcases the work of Caribbean artists and their exploration of culture and identity.
Taino Diccionary, A dictionary of words of the indigenous peoples of caribbean from the encyclopedia "Clásicos de Puerto Rico, second edition, publisher, Ediciones Latinoamericanas. S.A., 1972" compiled by Puerto Rican historian Dr. Cayetano Coll y Toste of the "Real Academia de la Historia". Provided by the Jatibonicu Taino Tribal Nation of Boriken (Puerto Rico).
This article is about the indigenous peoples of Bahamas, Antilles, and Lesser Antilles. For other indigenous peoples see Indigenous peoples (disambiguation)
For other uses, see Taino (disambiguation).
Reconstruction of a Taíno village in Cuba
The Taínos were pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. It is believed that the seafaring Taínos are relatives of the Arawakan people of South America. Their language is a member of the Maipurean linguistic family, which ranges from South America across the Caribbean.
At the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492, there were five Taíno chiefdoms and territories on Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic), each led by a principal Cacique (chieftain), to whom tribute was paid. As the hereditary head chief of Taíno tribes, the cacique was paid significant tribute. Caciques enjoyed the privilege of wearing golden pendants called guanin, living in square bohíos instead of the round ones the villagers inhabited, and sitting on wooden stools when receiving guests. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the largest Taíno population centers may have contained over 3,000 people each. The Taínos were historically enemies of the neighboring Carib tribes, another group with origins in South America who lived principally in the Lesser Antilles.[1] The relationship between the two groups has been the subject of much study.
For much of the 15th century, the Taíno tribe was being driven to the northeast in the Caribbean (out of what is now South America) because of raids by Caribs. Many Carib women spoke Taíno because of the large number of female Taíno captives among them.[2]
By the 18th century, Taíno society had been devastated by introduced diseases such as smallpox, as well as other problems like intermarriages and forced assimilation into the plantation economy that Spain imposed in its Caribbean colonies, with its subsequent importation of African slave workers. The first recorded smallpox outbreak in Hispaniola occurred in December 1518 or January 1519.[3] It is argued that there was substantial mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing) as well as several Indian pueblos that survived into the 19th century in Cuba. The Spaniards who first arrived in the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola in 1492, and later in Puerto Rico, did not bring women. They took Taíno women for their wives, which resulted in mestizo children.[4]
Contents[hide]
1 Terminology
2 Origins
3 Culture and lifestyle
4 Language
5 Food and agriculture
6 Technology
7 Religion
8 Spaniards and Taínos
9 Population decline
10 Taíno heritage in modern times
11 The Tainos and Guanches
12 See also
13 Notes
14 References
15 External links
//
[edit] Terminology
The Taíno people or Taíno culture, have been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawaks. Indeed, ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton, called the same group of people "Island Arawak" from the Arawakan word for cassava flour, a staple of the race. From this, the language and the people were eventually called "Arawak". However, modern scholars consider this a mistake. The people who called themselves Arawak lived only in Guyana and Trinidad and their language and culture differ from those of the Taíno.
Throughout time these terms have been used interchangeably by writers, travelers, historians, linguists, and anthropologists. Taíno has been used to mean the Greater Antillean tribes only, those plus the Bahamian tribes, those and the Leeward Islands tribes, or all those excluding the Puerto Rican and Leeward tribes. Island Taíno has been used to refer to those living in the Windward Islands only, those in the northern Caribbean only, or those living in any of the islands. Modern historians, linguists and anthropologists now hold that the term Taíno should refer to all the Taíno/Arawak tribes except for the Caribs. The Caribs are not seen by anthropologists or historians as being the same people, although linguists are still debating whether the Carib language is an Arawakan dialect or creole language — or perhaps a individual language, with an Arawakan pidgin often used to communicate.
Rouse classifies all inhabitants of the Greater Antilles (except the western tip of Cuba), the Bahamian archipelago, and the northern Lesser Antilles as Taínos. He subdivides Taínos into three main groups: Classic Taíno, mostly from Puerto Rico and some from the Dominican Republic; Western Taíno or sub-Taíno, from Jamaica, Cuba (except for the western tip) and the Bahamian archipelago; and Eastern Taíno, from the Virgin Islands to Montserrat.
[edit] Origins
Two schools of thought have emerged regarding the origin of the indigenous people of the West Indies. One group contends that the ancestors of the Taínos came from the center of the Amazon Basin, subsequently moving to the Orinoco valley. From there they reached the West Indies by way of what is now Guyana and Venezuela into Trinidad, proceeding along the Lesser Antilles all the way to Cuba and the Bahamian archipelago. Evidence that supports this theory includes the tracing of the ancestral cultures of these people to the Orinoco Valley and their languages to the Amazon Basin.[5]
The alternate theory, known as the circum-Caribbean theory, contends that the ancestors of the Taínos diffused from the Colombian Andes. Julian H. Steward, this theory's originator, suggested a radiation from the Andes to the West Indies and a parallel radiation into Central America and into the Guianas, Venezuela, and the Amazon Basin.[5]
Taíno culture is believed to have developed in the West Indies. The Taíno believed they had originated from caves in a sacred mountain on Hispaniola.[6]
[edit] Culture and lifestyle
Dujo, a wooden chair crafted by Taínos.
Taíno society was divided into two classes: naborias (commoners) and nitaínos (nobles). These were governed by chiefs known as caciques (who were either male or female), who were advised by priests/healers known as bohiques.[7] Bohiques were extolled for their healing powers and ability to speak with gods and as a result, they granted Taínos permission to engage in important tasks.
Taínos lived in a matrilineal society. When a male heir was not present the inheritance or succession would go to the eldest child (son or daughter) of the deceased’s sister. The Taínos had avunculocal post-marital residence meaning a newly married couple lived in the household of the maternal uncle.
The Taínos were very experienced in agriculture and lived a mainly agrarian lifestyle but also fished and hunted. A frequently worn hair style featured bangs in front and longer hair in back. They sometimes wore gold jewelry, paint, and/or shells. Taíno men sometimes wore short skirts. Taíno women wore a similar garment (nagua) after marriage. Some Taíno practiced polygamy. Men, and sometimes women, might have two or three spouses, and it was noted that some caciques would even marry as many as 30 wives.
Taínos lived in metropolises called yucayeques, which varied in size depending on the location; those in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola being the largest and those in the Bahamas being the smallest. In the center of a typical village was a plaza used for various social activities such as games, festivals, religious rituals, and public ceremonies. These plazas had many shapes including oval, rectangular, or narrow and elongated. Ceremonies where the deeds of the ancestors were celebrated, called areitos, were performed here.[8] Often, the general population lived in large circular buildings (bohios), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. These houses would surround the central plaza and could hold 10-15 families. The cacique and his family would live in rectangular buildings (caney) of similar construction, with wooden porches. Taíno home furnishings included cotton hammocks (hamaca), mats made of palms, wooden chairs (dujo) with woven seats, platforms, and cradles for children.
Caguana Ceremonial ball court (batey), outlined with stones.
The Taínos played a ceremonial ball game called batos. The game was played between opposing teams consisting of 10 to 30 players per team using a solid rubber ball. Normally, the teams were composed of only men, but occasionally women played the game as well.[9] The Classic Taínos played in the village's center plaza or on especially designed rectangular ball courts called batey. Batey is believed to have been used for conflict resolution between communities; the most elaborate ball courts are found at chiefdoms' boundaries.[10] Often, chiefs made wagers on the possible outcome of a game.[9]
[edit] Language
Taínos spoke a Maipurean language but lacked a written language. Some of the words used by them such as barbacoa ("barbecue"), hamaca ("hammock"), kanoa ("canoe"), tabaco ("tobacco"), yuca, batata ("potato"), and Juracán ("hurricane") have been incorporated into the Spanish and English languages.
[edit] Food and agriculture
Cassava (yuca) roots, the Taínos' main crop
Taíno staples included vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish. Large animals were absent from the fauna of the West Indies, but small animals such as hutias, earthworms, lizards, turtles, birds, and other mammals were eaten. Manatees were speared and fish were caught in nets, speared, poisoned, trapped in weirs, or caught with hook and line. Wild parrots were decoyed with domesticated birds and iguanas were extracted from trees and other vegetation. Taínos stored live animals until they were ready to be consumed, fish and turtles were stored in weirs, and hutias and dogs were stored in corrals.[11]
Taíno groups in the more developed islands, such as Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, relied more on agriculture. Fields for important root crops, such as the staple yuca, were prepared by heaping up mounds of soil, called conucos, which improved soil drainage and fertility as well as delaying erosion, and allowing for longer storage of crops in the ground. Less important crops such as corn were faised in simple clearings created by slash and burn technique. Typically, conucos were three feet high and nine feet in circumference and were arranged in rows.[12] The primary root crop was yuca/cassava, a woody shrub cultivated for its edible and starchy tuberous root. It was planted using a coa, a kind of hoe made completely out of wood. Women squeezed the poisonous variety of "cassava" to extract the toxic juices preparatory to grinding the roots into flour for baking bread. Batata (sweet potato) was the next most important root crop.[12]
Contrary to mainland practices, corn was not ground into flour and baked into bread. Instead, it was eaten off the cob. A possible explanation for this is that corn bread becomes moldy faster than cassava bread in the high humidity of the West Indies. Taínos grew squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, and pineapples. Tobacco, calabashes (West Indian pumpkins) and cotton were grown around the houses. Other fruits and vegetables, such as palm nuts, guavas, and Zamia roots, were collected from the wild.[12]
[edit] Technology
Taínos used cotton and palm extensively for fishing nets and ropes. Their dugout canoes (kanoa) were made in various sizes, which could hold from two to 150 people. An average sized canoe would hold about 15—20 people. They used bows and arrows, and sometimes put various poisons on their arrowheads. For warfare, they employed the use of a wooden war club, which they called a macana, that was about one inch thick and was similar to the coco macaque.
[edit] Religion
Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemís or cemís. Cemís are gods, spirits, or ancestors. The major Taíno gods are Yúcahu and Atabey. Yúcahu,[13] which means spirit of cassava, was the god of cassava (the Taínos main crop) and the sea. Atabey,[14] mother of Yúcahu, was the goddess of fresh waters and fertility.[11]
The minor Taíno gods related to growing of cassava, the process of life, creation and death. Baibrama was a minor god worshiped for his assistance in growing cassava and curing people from its poisonous juice. Boinayel and his twin brother Márohu were the gods of rain and fair weather respectively.[15] Guabancex was the goddess of storms (hurricanes). Juracán is often identified as the god of storms but juracán only means hurricane in the Taíno language. Guabancex had two assistants: Guataubá, a messenger who created hurricane winds, and Coatrisquie, who created floodwaters.[16] Maquetaurie Guayaba or Maketaori Guayaba was the god of Coaybay, the land of the dead. Opiyelguabirán', a dog-shaped god, watched over the dead. Deminán Caracaracol, a male cultural hero from which the Taíno believed to descend, was worshipped as a cemí.[15] Macocael was a cultural hero worshipped as a god who had failed to guard the mountain from which human beings arose and was punished by being turned into stone or a bird or reptile depending on how one interprets the myth.
Rock petroglyph overlayed with chalk in the Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Center in Utuado, Puerto Rico.
Cemí was also the name of the physical representations of the gods. These representations came in many forms and materials and could be found in a variety of settings. The majority of cemís were crafted from wood but stone, bone, shell, pottery, and cotton were also used.[17] Cemí petroglyphs were carved on rocks in streams, ball courts, and on stalagmites in caves. Cemí pictographs were found on secular objects such as pottery, and on tattoos. Yucahú, the god of cassava, was represented with a three-pointed cemí which could be found in conucos to increase the yield of cassava. Wood and stone cemís have been found in caves in Hispaniola and Jamaica.[18] Cemís are sometimes represented by toads, turtles, snakes, and various abstract and human-like faces. Some of the carved cemís include a small table or tray which is believed to be a receptacle for hallucinogenic snuff called cohoba prepared from the beans of a species of Piptadenia tree. These trays have been found with ornately carved snuff tubes. Before certain ceremonies Taínos would purify themselves, either by inducing vomiting with a swallowing stick or by fasting.[19] After serving communal bread, first to the cemi, then to the cacique, and then to the common people, the village epic would be sung to the accompanyment of maraca and other instruments.
Taínos also employed body modification as an expression of their faith. The higher the piercing or tattoo on the body, the closer to their gods. Men usually wore decorative tattoos and the women usually had piercings.
One Taíno oral tradition explains that the sun and moon come out of caves. Another story tells of people who once lived in caves and only came out at night, because it was believed that the sun would transform them. The Taíno believed themselves descended from the union of Deminaán Caracaracol and a female turtle. The origin of the oceans is described in the story of a huge flood which occurred when a father murdered his son (who was about to murder the father), and then put his bones into a gourd or calabash. These bones then turned to fish and the gourd broke and all the water of the world came pouring out.
Taínos believed that the souls of the dead go to Coaybay, the underworld, and there they rest by day, and when night comes they assume the form of bats and eat the fruit "guayaba".
[edit] Spaniards and Taínos
Chief Agüeybana greeting Juan Ponce de León in Puerto Rico
Columbus and his crew, landing on an island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 were the first Europeans to encounter the Taíno people. Columbus wrote:
They traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will..they took great delight in pleasing us..They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal..Your highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people ..They love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing.[20]
At this time, the neighbors of the Taínos were the Guanahatabeys in the western tip of Cuba, and the Island-Caribs in the Lesser Antilles from Guadaloupe to Grenada. The Taínos called the island Guanahaní which Columbus renamed as San Salvador (Spanish for "Holy Savior"). It was Columbus who called the Taíno "Indians", an identification that has grown to encompass all the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. A group of Taíno people accompanied Columbus on his return voyage back to Spain.[21]
On Columbus' second voyage, he began to require tribute from the Taínos in Hispaniola. Each adult over 14 years of age was expected to deliver a hawks bell full of gold every three months, or when this was lacking, twenty five pounds of spun cotton. If this tribute was not observed, the Taínos had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death.[22] This also gave way to a service requirement called encomienda. Under this system, Taínos were required to work for a Spanish land owner for most of the year, which left little time to tend to their own community affairs.
In 1511, several caciques in Puerto Rico, such as Agüeybaná, Urayoán, Guarionex, and Orocobix, allied with the Caribs and tried to oust the Spaniards. The revolt was pacified by the forces of Governor Juan Ponce de León. Hatuey, a Taíno chieftain who had fled from Hispaniola to Cuba with 400 natives to unite the Cuban natives, was burned at the stake on February 2, 1512. In Hispaniola, a Taíno chieftain named Enriquillo mobilized over 3,000 remaining Taíno in a successful rebellion in the 1530s. These Taíno were accorded land and a charter from the royal administration.
[edit] Population decline
Early population estimates of Hispaniola, probably the most populous island inhabited by Taínos, range from 100,000 to 1,000,000 people. The maximum estimates for Jamaica and Puerto Rico are 600,000 people.[23] The Spanish priest Bartolomé de Las Casas (who was living in the Dominican Republic at the time) wrote in his 1561 multivolume History of the Indies:[24]
There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived in 1508], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?
Researchers today doubt Las Casas's figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration. For example, Anderson Córdova estimates a maximum of 500,000 people inhabiting the island.[25] The Taíno population estimates range all over, from a few hundred thousand up to 8,000,000.[26] They were not immune to Old World diseases, notably smallpox.[27] Many of them were worked to death in the mines and fields, put to death in harsh put-downs of revolts or committed suicide (throwing themselves out of the cliffs or consuming manioc leaves) to escape their cruel new masters.
In thirty years, between 80% and 90% of the population died.[28][29] Because of the increased number of people (Spanish) on the island, there was a higher demand for food from the Taíno method of plantation which was being converted to Spanish methods. Because so many Taíno were put into slavery, they had little time for community affairs, and the supply of food became so low in 1495 and 1496 that famine occurred and combined with diseases like smallpox to which the Taíno had no immunity. This took a staggering death toll. By 1507 their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. By 1531 the number was down to 600.[30] Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.[31][32][33]
[edit] Taíno heritage in modern times
Many people still identify themselves as descendants of the Taínos, and most notably among the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, both on the islands and on the United States' mainland. The concept of living Taíno has been proved controversial, as the historical canon has for so long declared the Taíno to be extinct.[34]
Some scholars, such as Jalil Sued Badillo, an ethnohistorian at the University of Puerto Rico, assert that the official Spanish historical record speak of the disappearance of the Taínos. Certainly there are no full blood Taíno people alive today, but recent research does point towards a large mestizo population.
Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican historian documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women, and, over time, these mestizo descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tri-racial Creole culture. 1514 census records reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the Dominican Republic had Taíno wives.[34] Ethnohistorian Lynne Guitar writes that Taínos were declared extinct in Spanish documents as early as the 16th century; however Taíno Indians kept appearing in wills and legal records in the ensuing years.[34]
Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. Pedro J. Ferbel Azacarate writes that Taínos and Africans lived in isolated Maroon communities, evolving into a rural population with predominantly Taíno cultural influences. Ferbel documents that even contemporary rural Dominicans retain Taíno linguistic features, agricultural practices, foodways, medicine, fishing practices, technology, architecture, oral history, and religious views. However, these cultural traits are often looked down upon by urbanites as being backwards.[34] "It's surprising just how many Taino traditions, customs, and practices have been continued," says David Cintron, who wrote his graduate thesis on the Taíno revitalization movement. "We simply take for granted that these are Puerto Rican or Cuban practices and never realize that they are Taino."[35]
A recent study conducted in Puerto Rico suggests that over 61% of the population possess Amerindian mtDNA.[36] However, this study does not specify tribes, and Natives from many tribes were brought to the Greater Antilles in the Indian slave trade. Juan Carlos Martinez, a biology professor at the University of Puerto Rico who conducted his own mtDNA studies, says, "Our results suggest that our genetic inheritance of indigenous origin can't be very low and could be even higher than the inheritance from the other two races (Caucasoid and Negroid)."[37]
Heritage groups, such as the Jatibonicu Taíno Tribal Nation of Boriken, Puerto Rico (1970), the Taíno Nation of the Antilles (1993) and the United Confederation of Taíno People (1998), have been established to foster Taíno culture. However it is controversial as to whether these Heritage Groups represent Taino Culture accurately. Many aspects of Taino culture has been lost to time and or blended with Spaniard and African culture on the Caribbean Islands. Peoples who claim to be of native descent in the islands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Eastern Cuba attempt to maintain some form of cultural connection with their historic identities. Antonio de Moya, a Dominican educator, wrote in 1993, "the [Indian] genocide is the big lie of our history... the Dominican Taínos continue to live, 500 years after European contact."[38]
[edit] The Tainos and Guanches
A group of Puerto Rican university students conducted a survey of mitochondrial DNA that has delivered outstanding, they discovered that the current population of Puerto Rico has a high genetic component Taino (native Puerto Rican) and Guanche (Canary aboriginal, especially the drawings of the island of Tenerife).[39]
For other uses, see Taino (disambiguation).
Reconstruction of a Taíno village in Cuba
The Taínos were pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. It is believed that the seafaring Taínos are relatives of the Arawakan people of South America. Their language is a member of the Maipurean linguistic family, which ranges from South America across the Caribbean.
At the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492, there were five Taíno chiefdoms and territories on Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic), each led by a principal Cacique (chieftain), to whom tribute was paid. As the hereditary head chief of Taíno tribes, the cacique was paid significant tribute. Caciques enjoyed the privilege of wearing golden pendants called guanin, living in square bohíos instead of the round ones the villagers inhabited, and sitting on wooden stools when receiving guests. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the largest Taíno population centers may have contained over 3,000 people each. The Taínos were historically enemies of the neighboring Carib tribes, another group with origins in South America who lived principally in the Lesser Antilles.[1] The relationship between the two groups has been the subject of much study.
For much of the 15th century, the Taíno tribe was being driven to the northeast in the Caribbean (out of what is now South America) because of raids by Caribs. Many Carib women spoke Taíno because of the large number of female Taíno captives among them.[2]
By the 18th century, Taíno society had been devastated by introduced diseases such as smallpox, as well as other problems like intermarriages and forced assimilation into the plantation economy that Spain imposed in its Caribbean colonies, with its subsequent importation of African slave workers. The first recorded smallpox outbreak in Hispaniola occurred in December 1518 or January 1519.[3] It is argued that there was substantial mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing) as well as several Indian pueblos that survived into the 19th century in Cuba. The Spaniards who first arrived in the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola in 1492, and later in Puerto Rico, did not bring women. They took Taíno women for their wives, which resulted in mestizo children.[4]
Contents[hide]
1 Terminology
2 Origins
3 Culture and lifestyle
4 Language
5 Food and agriculture
6 Technology
7 Religion
8 Spaniards and Taínos
9 Population decline
10 Taíno heritage in modern times
11 The Tainos and Guanches
12 See also
13 Notes
14 References
15 External links
//
[edit] Terminology
The Taíno people or Taíno culture, have been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawaks. Indeed, ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton, called the same group of people "Island Arawak" from the Arawakan word for cassava flour, a staple of the race. From this, the language and the people were eventually called "Arawak". However, modern scholars consider this a mistake. The people who called themselves Arawak lived only in Guyana and Trinidad and their language and culture differ from those of the Taíno.
Throughout time these terms have been used interchangeably by writers, travelers, historians, linguists, and anthropologists. Taíno has been used to mean the Greater Antillean tribes only, those plus the Bahamian tribes, those and the Leeward Islands tribes, or all those excluding the Puerto Rican and Leeward tribes. Island Taíno has been used to refer to those living in the Windward Islands only, those in the northern Caribbean only, or those living in any of the islands. Modern historians, linguists and anthropologists now hold that the term Taíno should refer to all the Taíno/Arawak tribes except for the Caribs. The Caribs are not seen by anthropologists or historians as being the same people, although linguists are still debating whether the Carib language is an Arawakan dialect or creole language — or perhaps a individual language, with an Arawakan pidgin often used to communicate.
Rouse classifies all inhabitants of the Greater Antilles (except the western tip of Cuba), the Bahamian archipelago, and the northern Lesser Antilles as Taínos. He subdivides Taínos into three main groups: Classic Taíno, mostly from Puerto Rico and some from the Dominican Republic; Western Taíno or sub-Taíno, from Jamaica, Cuba (except for the western tip) and the Bahamian archipelago; and Eastern Taíno, from the Virgin Islands to Montserrat.
[edit] Origins
Two schools of thought have emerged regarding the origin of the indigenous people of the West Indies. One group contends that the ancestors of the Taínos came from the center of the Amazon Basin, subsequently moving to the Orinoco valley. From there they reached the West Indies by way of what is now Guyana and Venezuela into Trinidad, proceeding along the Lesser Antilles all the way to Cuba and the Bahamian archipelago. Evidence that supports this theory includes the tracing of the ancestral cultures of these people to the Orinoco Valley and their languages to the Amazon Basin.[5]
The alternate theory, known as the circum-Caribbean theory, contends that the ancestors of the Taínos diffused from the Colombian Andes. Julian H. Steward, this theory's originator, suggested a radiation from the Andes to the West Indies and a parallel radiation into Central America and into the Guianas, Venezuela, and the Amazon Basin.[5]
Taíno culture is believed to have developed in the West Indies. The Taíno believed they had originated from caves in a sacred mountain on Hispaniola.[6]
[edit] Culture and lifestyle
Dujo, a wooden chair crafted by Taínos.
Taíno society was divided into two classes: naborias (commoners) and nitaínos (nobles). These were governed by chiefs known as caciques (who were either male or female), who were advised by priests/healers known as bohiques.[7] Bohiques were extolled for their healing powers and ability to speak with gods and as a result, they granted Taínos permission to engage in important tasks.
Taínos lived in a matrilineal society. When a male heir was not present the inheritance or succession would go to the eldest child (son or daughter) of the deceased’s sister. The Taínos had avunculocal post-marital residence meaning a newly married couple lived in the household of the maternal uncle.
The Taínos were very experienced in agriculture and lived a mainly agrarian lifestyle but also fished and hunted. A frequently worn hair style featured bangs in front and longer hair in back. They sometimes wore gold jewelry, paint, and/or shells. Taíno men sometimes wore short skirts. Taíno women wore a similar garment (nagua) after marriage. Some Taíno practiced polygamy. Men, and sometimes women, might have two or three spouses, and it was noted that some caciques would even marry as many as 30 wives.
Taínos lived in metropolises called yucayeques, which varied in size depending on the location; those in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola being the largest and those in the Bahamas being the smallest. In the center of a typical village was a plaza used for various social activities such as games, festivals, religious rituals, and public ceremonies. These plazas had many shapes including oval, rectangular, or narrow and elongated. Ceremonies where the deeds of the ancestors were celebrated, called areitos, were performed here.[8] Often, the general population lived in large circular buildings (bohios), constructed with wooden poles, woven straw, and palm leaves. These houses would surround the central plaza and could hold 10-15 families. The cacique and his family would live in rectangular buildings (caney) of similar construction, with wooden porches. Taíno home furnishings included cotton hammocks (hamaca), mats made of palms, wooden chairs (dujo) with woven seats, platforms, and cradles for children.
Caguana Ceremonial ball court (batey), outlined with stones.
The Taínos played a ceremonial ball game called batos. The game was played between opposing teams consisting of 10 to 30 players per team using a solid rubber ball. Normally, the teams were composed of only men, but occasionally women played the game as well.[9] The Classic Taínos played in the village's center plaza or on especially designed rectangular ball courts called batey. Batey is believed to have been used for conflict resolution between communities; the most elaborate ball courts are found at chiefdoms' boundaries.[10] Often, chiefs made wagers on the possible outcome of a game.[9]
[edit] Language
Taínos spoke a Maipurean language but lacked a written language. Some of the words used by them such as barbacoa ("barbecue"), hamaca ("hammock"), kanoa ("canoe"), tabaco ("tobacco"), yuca, batata ("potato"), and Juracán ("hurricane") have been incorporated into the Spanish and English languages.
[edit] Food and agriculture
Cassava (yuca) roots, the Taínos' main crop
Taíno staples included vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish. Large animals were absent from the fauna of the West Indies, but small animals such as hutias, earthworms, lizards, turtles, birds, and other mammals were eaten. Manatees were speared and fish were caught in nets, speared, poisoned, trapped in weirs, or caught with hook and line. Wild parrots were decoyed with domesticated birds and iguanas were extracted from trees and other vegetation. Taínos stored live animals until they were ready to be consumed, fish and turtles were stored in weirs, and hutias and dogs were stored in corrals.[11]
Taíno groups in the more developed islands, such as Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, relied more on agriculture. Fields for important root crops, such as the staple yuca, were prepared by heaping up mounds of soil, called conucos, which improved soil drainage and fertility as well as delaying erosion, and allowing for longer storage of crops in the ground. Less important crops such as corn were faised in simple clearings created by slash and burn technique. Typically, conucos were three feet high and nine feet in circumference and were arranged in rows.[12] The primary root crop was yuca/cassava, a woody shrub cultivated for its edible and starchy tuberous root. It was planted using a coa, a kind of hoe made completely out of wood. Women squeezed the poisonous variety of "cassava" to extract the toxic juices preparatory to grinding the roots into flour for baking bread. Batata (sweet potato) was the next most important root crop.[12]
Contrary to mainland practices, corn was not ground into flour and baked into bread. Instead, it was eaten off the cob. A possible explanation for this is that corn bread becomes moldy faster than cassava bread in the high humidity of the West Indies. Taínos grew squash, beans, peppers, peanuts, and pineapples. Tobacco, calabashes (West Indian pumpkins) and cotton were grown around the houses. Other fruits and vegetables, such as palm nuts, guavas, and Zamia roots, were collected from the wild.[12]
[edit] Technology
Taínos used cotton and palm extensively for fishing nets and ropes. Their dugout canoes (kanoa) were made in various sizes, which could hold from two to 150 people. An average sized canoe would hold about 15—20 people. They used bows and arrows, and sometimes put various poisons on their arrowheads. For warfare, they employed the use of a wooden war club, which they called a macana, that was about one inch thick and was similar to the coco macaque.
[edit] Religion
Taíno religion centered on the worship of zemís or cemís. Cemís are gods, spirits, or ancestors. The major Taíno gods are Yúcahu and Atabey. Yúcahu,[13] which means spirit of cassava, was the god of cassava (the Taínos main crop) and the sea. Atabey,[14] mother of Yúcahu, was the goddess of fresh waters and fertility.[11]
The minor Taíno gods related to growing of cassava, the process of life, creation and death. Baibrama was a minor god worshiped for his assistance in growing cassava and curing people from its poisonous juice. Boinayel and his twin brother Márohu were the gods of rain and fair weather respectively.[15] Guabancex was the goddess of storms (hurricanes). Juracán is often identified as the god of storms but juracán only means hurricane in the Taíno language. Guabancex had two assistants: Guataubá, a messenger who created hurricane winds, and Coatrisquie, who created floodwaters.[16] Maquetaurie Guayaba or Maketaori Guayaba was the god of Coaybay, the land of the dead. Opiyelguabirán', a dog-shaped god, watched over the dead. Deminán Caracaracol, a male cultural hero from which the Taíno believed to descend, was worshipped as a cemí.[15] Macocael was a cultural hero worshipped as a god who had failed to guard the mountain from which human beings arose and was punished by being turned into stone or a bird or reptile depending on how one interprets the myth.
Rock petroglyph overlayed with chalk in the Caguana Indigenous Ceremonial Center in Utuado, Puerto Rico.
Cemí was also the name of the physical representations of the gods. These representations came in many forms and materials and could be found in a variety of settings. The majority of cemís were crafted from wood but stone, bone, shell, pottery, and cotton were also used.[17] Cemí petroglyphs were carved on rocks in streams, ball courts, and on stalagmites in caves. Cemí pictographs were found on secular objects such as pottery, and on tattoos. Yucahú, the god of cassava, was represented with a three-pointed cemí which could be found in conucos to increase the yield of cassava. Wood and stone cemís have been found in caves in Hispaniola and Jamaica.[18] Cemís are sometimes represented by toads, turtles, snakes, and various abstract and human-like faces. Some of the carved cemís include a small table or tray which is believed to be a receptacle for hallucinogenic snuff called cohoba prepared from the beans of a species of Piptadenia tree. These trays have been found with ornately carved snuff tubes. Before certain ceremonies Taínos would purify themselves, either by inducing vomiting with a swallowing stick or by fasting.[19] After serving communal bread, first to the cemi, then to the cacique, and then to the common people, the village epic would be sung to the accompanyment of maraca and other instruments.
Taínos also employed body modification as an expression of their faith. The higher the piercing or tattoo on the body, the closer to their gods. Men usually wore decorative tattoos and the women usually had piercings.
One Taíno oral tradition explains that the sun and moon come out of caves. Another story tells of people who once lived in caves and only came out at night, because it was believed that the sun would transform them. The Taíno believed themselves descended from the union of Deminaán Caracaracol and a female turtle. The origin of the oceans is described in the story of a huge flood which occurred when a father murdered his son (who was about to murder the father), and then put his bones into a gourd or calabash. These bones then turned to fish and the gourd broke and all the water of the world came pouring out.
Taínos believed that the souls of the dead go to Coaybay, the underworld, and there they rest by day, and when night comes they assume the form of bats and eat the fruit "guayaba".
[edit] Spaniards and Taínos
Chief Agüeybana greeting Juan Ponce de León in Puerto Rico
Columbus and his crew, landing on an island in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492 were the first Europeans to encounter the Taíno people. Columbus wrote:
They traded with us and gave us everything they had, with good will..they took great delight in pleasing us..They are very gentle and without knowledge of what is evil; nor do they murder or steal..Your highness may believe that in all the world there can be no better people ..They love their neighbours as themselves, and they have the sweetest talk in the world, and are gentle and always laughing.[20]
At this time, the neighbors of the Taínos were the Guanahatabeys in the western tip of Cuba, and the Island-Caribs in the Lesser Antilles from Guadaloupe to Grenada. The Taínos called the island Guanahaní which Columbus renamed as San Salvador (Spanish for "Holy Savior"). It was Columbus who called the Taíno "Indians", an identification that has grown to encompass all the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. A group of Taíno people accompanied Columbus on his return voyage back to Spain.[21]
On Columbus' second voyage, he began to require tribute from the Taínos in Hispaniola. Each adult over 14 years of age was expected to deliver a hawks bell full of gold every three months, or when this was lacking, twenty five pounds of spun cotton. If this tribute was not observed, the Taínos had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death.[22] This also gave way to a service requirement called encomienda. Under this system, Taínos were required to work for a Spanish land owner for most of the year, which left little time to tend to their own community affairs.
In 1511, several caciques in Puerto Rico, such as Agüeybaná, Urayoán, Guarionex, and Orocobix, allied with the Caribs and tried to oust the Spaniards. The revolt was pacified by the forces of Governor Juan Ponce de León. Hatuey, a Taíno chieftain who had fled from Hispaniola to Cuba with 400 natives to unite the Cuban natives, was burned at the stake on February 2, 1512. In Hispaniola, a Taíno chieftain named Enriquillo mobilized over 3,000 remaining Taíno in a successful rebellion in the 1530s. These Taíno were accorded land and a charter from the royal administration.
[edit] Population decline
Early population estimates of Hispaniola, probably the most populous island inhabited by Taínos, range from 100,000 to 1,000,000 people. The maximum estimates for Jamaica and Puerto Rico are 600,000 people.[23] The Spanish priest Bartolomé de Las Casas (who was living in the Dominican Republic at the time) wrote in his 1561 multivolume History of the Indies:[24]
There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived in 1508], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?
Researchers today doubt Las Casas's figures for the pre-contact levels of the Taíno population, considering them an exaggeration. For example, Anderson Córdova estimates a maximum of 500,000 people inhabiting the island.[25] The Taíno population estimates range all over, from a few hundred thousand up to 8,000,000.[26] They were not immune to Old World diseases, notably smallpox.[27] Many of them were worked to death in the mines and fields, put to death in harsh put-downs of revolts or committed suicide (throwing themselves out of the cliffs or consuming manioc leaves) to escape their cruel new masters.
In thirty years, between 80% and 90% of the population died.[28][29] Because of the increased number of people (Spanish) on the island, there was a higher demand for food from the Taíno method of plantation which was being converted to Spanish methods. Because so many Taíno were put into slavery, they had little time for community affairs, and the supply of food became so low in 1495 and 1496 that famine occurred and combined with diseases like smallpox to which the Taíno had no immunity. This took a staggering death toll. By 1507 their numbers had shrunk to 60,000. By 1531 the number was down to 600.[30] Scholars now believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemic disease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives.[31][32][33]
[edit] Taíno heritage in modern times
Many people still identify themselves as descendants of the Taínos, and most notably among the Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, both on the islands and on the United States' mainland. The concept of living Taíno has been proved controversial, as the historical canon has for so long declared the Taíno to be extinct.[34]
Some scholars, such as Jalil Sued Badillo, an ethnohistorian at the University of Puerto Rico, assert that the official Spanish historical record speak of the disappearance of the Taínos. Certainly there are no full blood Taíno people alive today, but recent research does point towards a large mestizo population.
Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican historian documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women, and, over time, these mestizo descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tri-racial Creole culture. 1514 census records reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the Dominican Republic had Taíno wives.[34] Ethnohistorian Lynne Guitar writes that Taínos were declared extinct in Spanish documents as early as the 16th century; however Taíno Indians kept appearing in wills and legal records in the ensuing years.[34]
Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. Pedro J. Ferbel Azacarate writes that Taínos and Africans lived in isolated Maroon communities, evolving into a rural population with predominantly Taíno cultural influences. Ferbel documents that even contemporary rural Dominicans retain Taíno linguistic features, agricultural practices, foodways, medicine, fishing practices, technology, architecture, oral history, and religious views. However, these cultural traits are often looked down upon by urbanites as being backwards.[34] "It's surprising just how many Taino traditions, customs, and practices have been continued," says David Cintron, who wrote his graduate thesis on the Taíno revitalization movement. "We simply take for granted that these are Puerto Rican or Cuban practices and never realize that they are Taino."[35]
A recent study conducted in Puerto Rico suggests that over 61% of the population possess Amerindian mtDNA.[36] However, this study does not specify tribes, and Natives from many tribes were brought to the Greater Antilles in the Indian slave trade. Juan Carlos Martinez, a biology professor at the University of Puerto Rico who conducted his own mtDNA studies, says, "Our results suggest that our genetic inheritance of indigenous origin can't be very low and could be even higher than the inheritance from the other two races (Caucasoid and Negroid)."[37]
Heritage groups, such as the Jatibonicu Taíno Tribal Nation of Boriken, Puerto Rico (1970), the Taíno Nation of the Antilles (1993) and the United Confederation of Taíno People (1998), have been established to foster Taíno culture. However it is controversial as to whether these Heritage Groups represent Taino Culture accurately. Many aspects of Taino culture has been lost to time and or blended with Spaniard and African culture on the Caribbean Islands. Peoples who claim to be of native descent in the islands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Eastern Cuba attempt to maintain some form of cultural connection with their historic identities. Antonio de Moya, a Dominican educator, wrote in 1993, "the [Indian] genocide is the big lie of our history... the Dominican Taínos continue to live, 500 years after European contact."[38]
[edit] The Tainos and Guanches
A group of Puerto Rican university students conducted a survey of mitochondrial DNA that has delivered outstanding, they discovered that the current population of Puerto Rico has a high genetic component Taino (native Puerto Rican) and Guanche (Canary aboriginal, especially the drawings of the island of Tenerife).[39]
Maria Fearing
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Maria Fearing was born in slavery near Gainesville, Alabama in 1838. She worked as a house servant in the home of William and Amanda Winston. After the end of slavery, she learned to read and write at the age of 33. She went on to graduate from the Freedman's Bureau School in Talladega, Alabama and qualified as a teacher. After a successful career as a teacher in Anniston, she accompanied William Henry Sheppard to Africa in 1894 as a Presbyterian missionary. Rejected by the church due to her age, she initially financed her mission primarily through funds from the sale of her home. For twenty years, she worked in the Congo as a teacher and Bible translator. She also bought many people out of slavery in the Congo. Her most famous achievement was the establishment of the Pantops Home for Girls in Luebo, Congo. She was known as mama wa Mputu, which means "Mother from far away". Despite the church's skepticism, Fearing outlasted many of her colleagues in Africa and only retired from missionary service in 1915 due to age restrictions. She taught school in Selma, Alabama until her death in 1937 at the age of 99.
After her death, her fame was spread to many Alabama schoolchildren, both white and black, through the inclusion of her life story in Alabama history textbooks during the turbulent days of the 1960s. She was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000.
[edit] External links
http://www.archives.state.al.us/afro/maria.html
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is an orphan, as few or no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from related articles; suggestions are available. (June 2008)
This article does not cite any references or sources.Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2008)
Maria Fearing was born in slavery near Gainesville, Alabama in 1838. She worked as a house servant in the home of William and Amanda Winston. After the end of slavery, she learned to read and write at the age of 33. She went on to graduate from the Freedman's Bureau School in Talladega, Alabama and qualified as a teacher. After a successful career as a teacher in Anniston, she accompanied William Henry Sheppard to Africa in 1894 as a Presbyterian missionary. Rejected by the church due to her age, she initially financed her mission primarily through funds from the sale of her home. For twenty years, she worked in the Congo as a teacher and Bible translator. She also bought many people out of slavery in the Congo. Her most famous achievement was the establishment of the Pantops Home for Girls in Luebo, Congo. She was known as mama wa Mputu, which means "Mother from far away". Despite the church's skepticism, Fearing outlasted many of her colleagues in Africa and only retired from missionary service in 1915 due to age restrictions. She taught school in Selma, Alabama until her death in 1937 at the age of 99.
After her death, her fame was spread to many Alabama schoolchildren, both white and black, through the inclusion of her life story in Alabama history textbooks during the turbulent days of the 1960s. She was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000.
[edit] External links
http://www.archives.state.al.us/afro/maria.html
Fernando de la Fuente de la Fuente
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Brother Fernando de la Fuente de la Fuente (16 December 1943 – 31 October 1996) was a Spanish Marist Brother and missionary who was one of four Marist Brothers martyred at the Nyamirangwe refugee camp, Zaire. Together with the brothers of his community who were assassinated, Brother Miguel Ángel Isla Lucio, Brother Servando Mayor García, and Brother Julio Rodríguez Jorge, Brother Fernando is commemorated in Marist circles as one of The Martyrs of Bugobe.
[edit] Early life and works
Brother Fernando was born on 16 December 1943 in Burgos, Spain to Sigismundo and Primitiva de la Fuente de la Fuente. In September 1956 he entered the Juniorate of the Marist Brothers in Valladolid, making his novitiate in Liérganes in 1960, taking his first vows on 2 July 1962 and continuing his formation in Chile where he accomplished important work in education and catechesis as teacher and principal in several Marist Colleges in that country of the Andes from 1982 to 1995. He was teacher in the Instituto O'Higgins in Rancagua, from 1977 to 1982. He had also worked as a formator and a member of the Chilean Provincial council.
[edit] Life in Zaire
The Marist Brothers had had a strong presence in east-central Africa, particularly Rwanda, where they had been 1952. However, with the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in August 1994, the General Assembly and the District Council of the Brothers of Rwanda took the decision to have a renewed presence among the Rwandans to assist in the nation's rebuilding. Within the country, three communities which centred their mission on the schools were reopened. Six Brothers formed a new community at the service of the refugees outside the country. In view of the escalating difficulties faced by the refugees and the Rwandan Brothers themselves, the community was reinforced with three non-African Brothers. But as the inter-racial tensions persisted, it was decided to withdraw the Rwandan Brothers from the Bugobe community.
To aid the mission of the Rwandan Brothers, Brother Fernando offered to participate as an expression of missionary solidarity. He was accepted and left in December 1995 to serve the mission. After two months in Belgium, at the Centre for the Formation of French-speaking Missionaries, he went to Zaire, to the refugee camp of Nyamirangwe (Bugobe), in February 1996.
[edit] Assassination
The brothers were assassinated on 31 October 1996 around eight o'clock in the evening. They were apparently shot. The perpetrators of the crime were a group of the Officers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (APR), who murdered the Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa two days before and the Rwandan and Burundian refugees in the refugee camp Nyamirangwe. The four bodies were recovered from the waste-water tank on 14 November and have been interred at the brothers' novitiate house in Nyangezi.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_de_la_Fuente_de_la_Fuente"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article does not cite any references or sources.Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)
Brother Fernando de la Fuente de la Fuente (16 December 1943 – 31 October 1996) was a Spanish Marist Brother and missionary who was one of four Marist Brothers martyred at the Nyamirangwe refugee camp, Zaire. Together with the brothers of his community who were assassinated, Brother Miguel Ángel Isla Lucio, Brother Servando Mayor García, and Brother Julio Rodríguez Jorge, Brother Fernando is commemorated in Marist circles as one of The Martyrs of Bugobe.
[edit] Early life and works
Brother Fernando was born on 16 December 1943 in Burgos, Spain to Sigismundo and Primitiva de la Fuente de la Fuente. In September 1956 he entered the Juniorate of the Marist Brothers in Valladolid, making his novitiate in Liérganes in 1960, taking his first vows on 2 July 1962 and continuing his formation in Chile where he accomplished important work in education and catechesis as teacher and principal in several Marist Colleges in that country of the Andes from 1982 to 1995. He was teacher in the Instituto O'Higgins in Rancagua, from 1977 to 1982. He had also worked as a formator and a member of the Chilean Provincial council.
[edit] Life in Zaire
The Marist Brothers had had a strong presence in east-central Africa, particularly Rwanda, where they had been 1952. However, with the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in August 1994, the General Assembly and the District Council of the Brothers of Rwanda took the decision to have a renewed presence among the Rwandans to assist in the nation's rebuilding. Within the country, three communities which centred their mission on the schools were reopened. Six Brothers formed a new community at the service of the refugees outside the country. In view of the escalating difficulties faced by the refugees and the Rwandan Brothers themselves, the community was reinforced with three non-African Brothers. But as the inter-racial tensions persisted, it was decided to withdraw the Rwandan Brothers from the Bugobe community.
To aid the mission of the Rwandan Brothers, Brother Fernando offered to participate as an expression of missionary solidarity. He was accepted and left in December 1995 to serve the mission. After two months in Belgium, at the Centre for the Formation of French-speaking Missionaries, he went to Zaire, to the refugee camp of Nyamirangwe (Bugobe), in February 1996.
[edit] Assassination
The brothers were assassinated on 31 October 1996 around eight o'clock in the evening. They were apparently shot. The perpetrators of the crime were a group of the Officers of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (APR), who murdered the Archbishop Christophe Munzihirwa two days before and the Rwandan and Burundian refugees in the refugee camp Nyamirangwe. The four bodies were recovered from the waste-water tank on 14 November and have been interred at the brothers' novitiate house in Nyangezi.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernando_de_la_Fuente_de_la_Fuente"
Millard Dean Fuller (January 3, 1935 – February 3, 2009)[1] was the founder and former president of Habitat for Humanity International, a nonprofit organization known globally for building houses for those in need, and the founder and former president of The Fuller Center for Housing. Fuller was widely regarded as the leader of the modern-day movement for affordable housing and had been honored for his work in the United States and abroad.
Contents[hide]
1 Personal life
2 The Housing Movement
2.1 Koinonia Farm
2.2 Zaire
2.3 Habitat for Humanity
3 Recognition
4 Bibliography
5 References
6 External links
//
[edit] Personal life
Fuller was born in Lanett, Alabama, on January 3, 1935, to Render and Estin Cook Fuller. Render was employed by Lanett Bleachery and Dye Works and Estin was a homemaker. Estin died in 1938 at age 27 and Render was remarried in 1941 to Eunice Stephens. Render became self-employed with a small grocery store, ice cream shop and cattle farming. Fuller had two half-brothers by stepmother Eunice, Nick and Doyle. Nick died in 2006.
Fuller majored in economics at Auburn University (’57) and received a law degree from the University of Alabama (’60). He married Linda Caldwell of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1959. A successful businessman and lawyer, Fuller became a self-made millionaire by age 29.[2] In 1968, after giving up their wealth to refocus their lives on Christian service, Fuller and his wife, Linda, moved with their children to an interracial farming community in southwest Georgia. Koinonia Farm, founded by Clarence Jordan in 1942, became home to the Fuller family for five years until they moved to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) as missionaries in 1973 with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).[3]
Upon returning to the United States, the Fullers began a Christian ministry at Koinonia Farm building simple, decent houses for low-income families in their community using volunteer labor and donations, and requiring repayment only of the cost of the materials used. No interest was charged, as it is with traditional mortgages, and no profit was made. These same principles guided the Fullers in expanding this ministry, called Partnership Housing, into a larger scale ministry known as Habitat for Humanity International. That vision was expanded in 2005 in the founding of a new non-profit housing organization, The Fuller Center for Housing.
[edit] The Housing Movement
[edit] Koinonia Farm
In 1965, the Fuller family visited friends at Koinonia Farm during a family vacation. After spending several hours with the intentional community’s founder, Clarence Jordan, Millard and Linda decided to stay and began a relationship with Jordan that ultimately led to the creation of Habitat for Humanity.
Jordan espoused an expression of Christianity which motivated him and the Fullers to seek ways to express God’s love to their poorer neighbors. Koinonia Farm became Koinonia Partners in 1968 as the small community undertook several new projects, the primary focus of which was Partnership Housing. Believing that what the poor needed was capital, not charity[4], Jordan and Millard Fuller, along with other members of the Koinonia community, planned to develop a revolving “Fund for Humanity” which would take in donations that would be used to purchase building materials. Volunteer laborers would construct simple, decent houses along with the families who would eventually own the houses. The homeowners would then repay the cost of the materials to the Fund for Humanity at 0% interest. In this way, the work was not a give-away program and the funds repaid were then used to begin work on additional houses.
[edit] Zaire
Fuller moved his family to Zaire in 1973 to implement the ideals of Partnership Housing in the African context. Again, as missionaries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Fullers began work in Mbandaka, a city of extreme poverty in the western part of the country. Among other projects, Fuller developed and oversaw what would be the first step in the international housing ministry. Undeveloped land in the center of Mbandaka was given by the government for the purpose of building a 100-house development. The units were constructed and sold to families using the Fund for Humanity and additional projects were planned before the Fullers returned to the United States in 1976.
[edit] Habitat for Humanity
The possibility of utilizing the Fund for Humanity to address housing needs in the United States on a broader scale began in San Antonio, Texas, in 1976. Concerned residents worked with Fuller to develop a program similar to that in Zaire, using volunteer labor to construct affordable, safe houses for needy families in San Antonio’s slums. Soon the idea took hold in Appalachia, and by 1981, just five years from its inception, Habitat for Humanity had affiliates in fourteen states and seven foreign countries.
In early 1984, Millard courted the man who would become Habitat’s most famous volunteer, President Jimmy Carter. A native of Plains, Georgia, just a few miles from Habitat’s headquarters in Americus, Georgia, Carter gave not only his name and reputation to the new non-profit, but his own resources as well. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter would make financial contributions regularly, but most significantly to Habitat, they would develop the Jimmy Carter Work Project, an annual week-long effort of building Habitat homes all over the world. The Carters participated all week at these events which came to attract thousands of volunteers each year.[5]
The Carters’ involvement with Habitat for Humanity propelled the organization to even faster growth. By 2003, Habitat affiliates worldwide had built over 150,000 homes and were active in 92 nations.[6]
Disputes between Fuller and the Habitat International board of directors regarding the direction of the organization came to a head in 2004. He and Linda were fired in March 2005 amid unfounded allegations of inappropriate behavior by him directed toward a female employee and conflicting opinions about future plans for Habitat's expansion.[7] The Habitat board investigated Fuller for sexual harassment but found “insufficient proof of inappropriate conduct.”
Fuller continued his work in the housing movement with the establishment of The Fuller Center for Housing in April 2005.[8] He expanded on the foundation of Habitat by encouraging communities to create “collaborative and innovative partnerships” to address the housing needs of the most needy in communities. He continued to travel extensively, speaking at Habitat affiliates and Fuller Center Covenant Partnerships to raise awareness, funds and volunteers in his effort to eradicate poverty housing from the face of the earth.
[edit] Recognition
Fuller was the recipient of numerous awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. In September 1996, United States President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, and said, "Millard Fuller has done as much to make the dream of homeownership a reality in our country and throughout the world as any living person. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Millard Fuller has literally revolutionized the concept of philanthropy."[9] In October 2005, the Fullers were honored by former President George H. W. Bush and the Points of Light Foundation with a bronze medallion embedded in The Extra Mile national monument in Washington, DC.[10]
[edit] Bibliography
Building Materials for Life, Volume III (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2007). ISBN 978-1573124867.
Building Materials for Life, Volume II (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2004). ISBN 978-1573124201.
Building Materials for Life, Volume I (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2002). ISBN 978-1573124041.
More Than Houses: How Habitat for Humanity Is Transforming Lives and Neighborhoods (Word, Inc., 2000). ISBN 0849937620.
A Simple, Decent Place to Live: The Building Realization of Habitat for Humanity (Word, Inc., 1995). ISBN 978-0849938894.
The Theology of the Hammer (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1994). ISBN 978-1880837924.
The Excitement Is Building (Word Publishing, 1990). ISBN 978-0849907470. Co-authored with Linda Fuller.
No More Shacks!: The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity (Word Publishing, 1986). ISBN 978-0849930508. Co-authored with Diane Scott.
Love in the Mortar Joints (New Century Publishers, Inc., 1980). ISBN 978-0695814441.
Bokotola (New Century Publishers, Inc., 1977). ISBN 978-0809619245.
[edit] References
^ Quinn, Christopher Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller dies, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 03, 2009, retrieved 2009-02-03
^ NP Times / NPT Executive of The Year - Millard Fuller
^ A Brief History of Koinonia
^ Fuller, Millard,Bokotola(NewJersey: New Century Publishers, 1977),18
^ [1]
^ Youngs, Bettie The House That Love Built(Charlottesville: Hapton Roads Publishing Company) 295
^ NP Times / Fuller Forced Out of Habitat For Humanity
^ http://www.fullercenter.org/
^ 1996 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients Ceremony
^ [2]
[edit] External links
NPT Executive of the Year--Millard Fuller
The Fuller Center for Housing official website
MillardFuller.com Millard Fuller Fan Club Website
"Fuller Receives Multiple Honors"
"Habitat for Humanity Founder Honored in Circle City"
"Fuller to receive Servant's Heart Award"
"In Monument-Cluttered District, A Creative Way to Pay Homage"
AP Obituary in the Americus Times-Recorder
Contents[hide]
1 Personal life
2 The Housing Movement
2.1 Koinonia Farm
2.2 Zaire
2.3 Habitat for Humanity
3 Recognition
4 Bibliography
5 References
6 External links
//
[edit] Personal life
Fuller was born in Lanett, Alabama, on January 3, 1935, to Render and Estin Cook Fuller. Render was employed by Lanett Bleachery and Dye Works and Estin was a homemaker. Estin died in 1938 at age 27 and Render was remarried in 1941 to Eunice Stephens. Render became self-employed with a small grocery store, ice cream shop and cattle farming. Fuller had two half-brothers by stepmother Eunice, Nick and Doyle. Nick died in 2006.
Fuller majored in economics at Auburn University (’57) and received a law degree from the University of Alabama (’60). He married Linda Caldwell of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1959. A successful businessman and lawyer, Fuller became a self-made millionaire by age 29.[2] In 1968, after giving up their wealth to refocus their lives on Christian service, Fuller and his wife, Linda, moved with their children to an interracial farming community in southwest Georgia. Koinonia Farm, founded by Clarence Jordan in 1942, became home to the Fuller family for five years until they moved to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) as missionaries in 1973 with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).[3]
Upon returning to the United States, the Fullers began a Christian ministry at Koinonia Farm building simple, decent houses for low-income families in their community using volunteer labor and donations, and requiring repayment only of the cost of the materials used. No interest was charged, as it is with traditional mortgages, and no profit was made. These same principles guided the Fullers in expanding this ministry, called Partnership Housing, into a larger scale ministry known as Habitat for Humanity International. That vision was expanded in 2005 in the founding of a new non-profit housing organization, The Fuller Center for Housing.
[edit] The Housing Movement
[edit] Koinonia Farm
In 1965, the Fuller family visited friends at Koinonia Farm during a family vacation. After spending several hours with the intentional community’s founder, Clarence Jordan, Millard and Linda decided to stay and began a relationship with Jordan that ultimately led to the creation of Habitat for Humanity.
Jordan espoused an expression of Christianity which motivated him and the Fullers to seek ways to express God’s love to their poorer neighbors. Koinonia Farm became Koinonia Partners in 1968 as the small community undertook several new projects, the primary focus of which was Partnership Housing. Believing that what the poor needed was capital, not charity[4], Jordan and Millard Fuller, along with other members of the Koinonia community, planned to develop a revolving “Fund for Humanity” which would take in donations that would be used to purchase building materials. Volunteer laborers would construct simple, decent houses along with the families who would eventually own the houses. The homeowners would then repay the cost of the materials to the Fund for Humanity at 0% interest. In this way, the work was not a give-away program and the funds repaid were then used to begin work on additional houses.
[edit] Zaire
Fuller moved his family to Zaire in 1973 to implement the ideals of Partnership Housing in the African context. Again, as missionaries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Fullers began work in Mbandaka, a city of extreme poverty in the western part of the country. Among other projects, Fuller developed and oversaw what would be the first step in the international housing ministry. Undeveloped land in the center of Mbandaka was given by the government for the purpose of building a 100-house development. The units were constructed and sold to families using the Fund for Humanity and additional projects were planned before the Fullers returned to the United States in 1976.
[edit] Habitat for Humanity
The possibility of utilizing the Fund for Humanity to address housing needs in the United States on a broader scale began in San Antonio, Texas, in 1976. Concerned residents worked with Fuller to develop a program similar to that in Zaire, using volunteer labor to construct affordable, safe houses for needy families in San Antonio’s slums. Soon the idea took hold in Appalachia, and by 1981, just five years from its inception, Habitat for Humanity had affiliates in fourteen states and seven foreign countries.
In early 1984, Millard courted the man who would become Habitat’s most famous volunteer, President Jimmy Carter. A native of Plains, Georgia, just a few miles from Habitat’s headquarters in Americus, Georgia, Carter gave not only his name and reputation to the new non-profit, but his own resources as well. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter would make financial contributions regularly, but most significantly to Habitat, they would develop the Jimmy Carter Work Project, an annual week-long effort of building Habitat homes all over the world. The Carters participated all week at these events which came to attract thousands of volunteers each year.[5]
The Carters’ involvement with Habitat for Humanity propelled the organization to even faster growth. By 2003, Habitat affiliates worldwide had built over 150,000 homes and were active in 92 nations.[6]
Disputes between Fuller and the Habitat International board of directors regarding the direction of the organization came to a head in 2004. He and Linda were fired in March 2005 amid unfounded allegations of inappropriate behavior by him directed toward a female employee and conflicting opinions about future plans for Habitat's expansion.[7] The Habitat board investigated Fuller for sexual harassment but found “insufficient proof of inappropriate conduct.”
Fuller continued his work in the housing movement with the establishment of The Fuller Center for Housing in April 2005.[8] He expanded on the foundation of Habitat by encouraging communities to create “collaborative and innovative partnerships” to address the housing needs of the most needy in communities. He continued to travel extensively, speaking at Habitat affiliates and Fuller Center Covenant Partnerships to raise awareness, funds and volunteers in his effort to eradicate poverty housing from the face of the earth.
[edit] Recognition
Fuller was the recipient of numerous awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. In September 1996, United States President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, and said, "Millard Fuller has done as much to make the dream of homeownership a reality in our country and throughout the world as any living person. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Millard Fuller has literally revolutionized the concept of philanthropy."[9] In October 2005, the Fullers were honored by former President George H. W. Bush and the Points of Light Foundation with a bronze medallion embedded in The Extra Mile national monument in Washington, DC.[10]
[edit] Bibliography
Building Materials for Life, Volume III (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2007). ISBN 978-1573124867.
Building Materials for Life, Volume II (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2004). ISBN 978-1573124201.
Building Materials for Life, Volume I (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 2002). ISBN 978-1573124041.
More Than Houses: How Habitat for Humanity Is Transforming Lives and Neighborhoods (Word, Inc., 2000). ISBN 0849937620.
A Simple, Decent Place to Live: The Building Realization of Habitat for Humanity (Word, Inc., 1995). ISBN 978-0849938894.
The Theology of the Hammer (Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc., 1994). ISBN 978-1880837924.
The Excitement Is Building (Word Publishing, 1990). ISBN 978-0849907470. Co-authored with Linda Fuller.
No More Shacks!: The Daring Vision of Habitat for Humanity (Word Publishing, 1986). ISBN 978-0849930508. Co-authored with Diane Scott.
Love in the Mortar Joints (New Century Publishers, Inc., 1980). ISBN 978-0695814441.
Bokotola (New Century Publishers, Inc., 1977). ISBN 978-0809619245.
[edit] References
^ Quinn, Christopher Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller dies, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 03, 2009, retrieved 2009-02-03
^ NP Times / NPT Executive of The Year - Millard Fuller
^ A Brief History of Koinonia
^ Fuller, Millard,Bokotola(NewJersey: New Century Publishers, 1977),18
^ [1]
^ Youngs, Bettie The House That Love Built(Charlottesville: Hapton Roads Publishing Company) 295
^ NP Times / Fuller Forced Out of Habitat For Humanity
^ http://www.fullercenter.org/
^ 1996 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients Ceremony
^ [2]
[edit] External links
NPT Executive of the Year--Millard Fuller
The Fuller Center for Housing official website
MillardFuller.com Millard Fuller Fan Club Website
"Fuller Receives Multiple Honors"
"Habitat for Humanity Founder Honored in Circle City"
"Fuller to receive Servant's Heart Award"
"In Monument-Cluttered District, A Creative Way to Pay Homage"
AP Obituary in the Americus Times-Recorder
William Henry Sheppard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
William Henry Sheppard
Born
1865Waynesboro, Virginia
Died
Nov. 25, 1927[1] (aged 58)Louisville, Kentucky
Nationality
American
Occupation
Presbyterian missionary
Known for
Missionary work in the Congo and reporting the exploitation of the Congolese by Leopold II of Belgium
Reverend William Henry Sheppard (1865–1927) was one of the earliest African Americans to become a missionary for the Presbyterian Church. He spent 20 years in Africa, primarily in and around the Congo Free State, and is best known for his efforts to publicize the atrocities committed against the Kuba and other Congolese peoples by King Leopold II's Force Publique.
Sheppard's efforts contributed to the contemporary debate on European colonialism and imperialism in the region, particularly amongst those of the African American community.[2] However, it has been noted that he traditionally received little attention in literature on the subject.[3]
Contents[hide]
1 Early life
2 Mission with Lapsley
3 Contact with the Kuba
4 Documentation of Belgian atrocities
5 Legacy
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
//
[edit] Early life
Sheppard was born in Waynesboro, Virginia on March 8, 1865, to William Henry Sheppard, Sr. and Fannie Frances Sheppard (née Martin), a free "dark mulatto", a month before the end of the American Civil War. No records exist to confirm William Sr.'s status as a slave or freedman, but it has been speculated that he may have been among the slaves forced to serve the Confederacy as Union troops marched upon the South.[4] William Sr. was a barber, and the family has been described as the closest to middle class that blacks could have achieved given the time and place.[5] At age twelve, William Jr. became a stable boy for a white family several miles away while continuing to attend school; he remembered his two-year stay fondly and maintained written correspondence with the family for many years. Sheppard next worked as a waiter to put himself through the newly created Hampton Institute, where Booker T. Washington was among his instructors in a program that allowed students to work during the day and attend classes at night.[5] A significant influence on his appreciation for native cultures was the "Curiosity Room", in which the school's founder maintained a collection of Native Hawaiian and Native American works of art.[6] Later in life he would collect artifacts from the Congo, specifically those of the Kuba, and bring them back for this room, as evidenced by his letters home, such as "[i]t was on the first of September, 1890 that William H. Sheppard addressed a letter to General Samuel Armstrong, Hampton, From Stanley Pool, Africa, that he had many artifacts, spears, idols, etc., and he was '...saving them for the Curiosity Room at Hampton'".[7]
After graduation, Sheppard was recommended to Tuscaloosa Theological Institute (now Stillman College, which dedicated its library in Sheppard's honor in 1959[8]) in Alabama. He met Lucy Gantt near the end of his time there and the two became engaged, although they would not marry for ten years. Sheppard cultivated a desire to preach in Africa, but despite the support of Tuscaloosa founder Charles Stillman, the Southern Presbyterian Church had yet to establish its mission in the Congo.[9] He was ordained in 1888 and served as pastor to a church in Atlanta, Georgia, but did not adapt well to the life of an urban black in a heavily segregated area of the Southern United States.[10] After two years of writing to the Presbyterian Foreign Missionary Board in Baltimore, Maryland to inquire about starting a mission in Africa, he became frustrated by the vague rationale of the rejection letters and took a train to Baltimore to ask the chairman in person. The man politely informed Sheppard that the board would not send a black man without a white supervisor.[11]
Samuel Lapsley, an eager but inexperienced white man from a wealthy family, finally enabled Sheppard's journey to Africa. They "inaugurated the unique principle of sending out together, with equal ecclesiastical rights and, as far as possible, in equal numbers, white and colored workers".[12]
[edit] Mission with Lapsley
Sheppard at right
The Lapsley Memorial Church, in the village of Ibanche. It was built after Lapsley died.
Sheppard and Lapsley's activities in Africa were enabled by the very man whose atrocities Sheppard would later attempt to expose. The pair traveled to London in 1890 en route to the Congo; while there, Stanley met General Henry Shelton Sanford, an American ally of King Leopold II and friend of a friend of Lapsley's father. Sanford promised to do "everything in his power" to help the pair, even arranging an audience with King Leopold when Lapsley visited him in Belgium. Neither the secular Sanford nor the Catholic Leopold were interested in the Presbyterians' work; the latter was eager to have them make inroads into his newly acquired territory, both to begin the process of "civilizing" the natives and to legitimize his rule. The missionaries were, however, oblivious of Leopold's true motives.[13]
The pair made their way to Leopoldville, and Sheppard's own writings as well as Lapsley's letters home suggest Sheppard viewed the natives in a markedly different manner from other foreigners. Sheppard was considered as foreign as Lapsley and even acquired the nickname "Mundele N'dom", or "black white man". Despite being of African descent, Sheppard believed in many of the stereotypes of the time regarding Africa and its inhabitants, such as the idea that African natives were uncivilized or savage.[14] Very quickly though his views changed, as exemplified by a journal entry:
I grew very found of the Bakuba and it was reciprocated. They were the finest looking race I had seen in Africa, dignified, graceful, courageous, honest, with an open smiling countenance really hospitable. Their knowledge of weaving, embroidering, wood-carving and smelting was the highest equatorial Africa.[15][14]
The natives' resistance to conversion bothered Lapsley more than Sheppard, as Sheppard viewed himself more as an explorer than a missionary. While Lapsley was on a trip to visit fellow missionary–explorer George Grenfell, Sheppard became familiar with the natives' hunting techniques and language. He even helped to avert a famine by slaying thirty-six hippos.[16] Sheppard contracted malaria 22 times in his first 2 years in Africa.[17]
[edit] Contact with the Kuba
Main article: Kuba Kingdom
Having become versed in Kuba language and culture, Sheppard took a team of men to the edge of Kuba territory in 1892. His original plan was to ask for directions to the next village under the guise of purchasing supplies, but the chief of the village only allowed one of his men to go.[18] Sheppard used a variety of tricks to make his way further into the kingdom, including having a scout follow a group of traders and, most famously, eating so many eggs that the townspeople could no longer supply him and his scout was able to gain access to the next village to find more eggs. Eventually, however, he encountered villagers that would allow him to go no further. While Sheppard was formulating a plan, the king's son, Prince N'toinzide, arrived and arrested Sheppard and his men for trespassing.[19]
King Kot aMweeky, rather than executing Sheppard, told the village that Sheppard was his deceased son. King aMweeky declared Sheppard "Bope Mekabe", which spared the lives of Sheppard and his men.[20] This was a political move on the part of the king; in danger of being overthrown, he encouraged interest in the strangers to direct attention away from himself.[20] During his stay in the village, Sheppard collected artifacts from the people and he eventually secured permission for a Presbyterian mission. The king allowed him to leave on the condition that he return in one year.[21] He would be unable to do so for several years, however, by which time Kot aMweeky had been overthrown by Mishaape, the leader of a rival clan.[22]
[edit] Documentation of Belgian atrocities
Leopold II of Belgium
In the late nineteenth century, King Leopold II started to receive criticism for his treatment of the natives in Congo Free State. In the United States, the main outlet of this criticism was the Presbyterian church. In 1891, Sheppard became involved with William Morrison after Lapsley's death. They would report the crimes they saw, and later, with the help of Roger Casement, would form the Congo Reform Association (CRA), one of the world's first humanitarian organizations.[23]
In January 1908, Sheppard published one of these reports in the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) newsletter, and both he and Morrison were sued for libel against the Kasai Rubber Company (Compagnie de Kasai), a prominent Belgian rubber contractor in the area. When the case went to court in September 1909, the two missionaries had support from the CRA, American Progressives, and their lawyer, Emile Vandervelde, a prominent Belgian socialist.[23] The judge acquitted Sheppard (Morrison had been acquitted earlier on a technicality) on the premise that his editorial had not named the major company, but smaller charter companies instead.[23] However, it is likely that the case was decided in favor of Sheppard as a result of international politics; the U.S., socially in support of the missionaries, had questioned the validity of King Leopold II's rule over the Congo. [23]
Sheppard's reports often portrayed actions by the State that broke laws set by the European nations.[24] In one case, a report published in the Force Publique documented a village found with 300 human skeletons and 81 severed hands, some of them from children.[24] According to his observations, it looked like many had been prepared as food.[24] Many of the documented cases of cruelty or violence were in direct violation of the Berlin Act of 1885, which gave Leopold II control over the Congo as long as he "care[d] for the improvements of their conditions of their moral and material well-being" and "help[ed] in suppressing slavery."[24]
[edit] Legacy
A sample of the Bakuba cloth. Artifacts such as these helped Sheppard learn about the culture of the society, such as the emphasis put on cleanliness.[25]
Sheppard's efforts contributed to the contemporary debate on European colonialism and imperialism in the region, particularly amongst the African American community. However, historians have noted that he has traditionally received little recognition for his contributions.[3]
Over the course of his journeys, Sheppard amassed a sizable collection of Kuba art, much of which he donated to his alma mater. He was possibly the first African American collector of African art.[26] This art collection was notable because it "acquired the art objects in Africa, from Africans at all levels in their society...in the context of their daily existence" and, as a whole, Kuba art is considered "one of the most highly developed of African visual art forms..."[1] The collection as a whole is quite large; from the time of his arrival to Congo Free State in 1890 until his final departure 20 years later in 1910, Sheppard was collecting art and artifacts from the cultures around him.[14]
Sheppard's collection was also useful to ethnologists of the time, because the Kuba culture was not well known by the outside world, or even by those well-versed with African studies. For example, the collection does not feature a large number of carved human figures or any figurine that could be connected to a deity of some sort. This could be taken as evidence that the Kuba had no religion, or had one that was not outwardly expressed through art.[27] On the issue of the collection's scientific value, Jane E. Davis of the Southern Workman journal wrote that "it not only meets the requirements of the ethnologists, but those of the artist as well. Already it has been used by scientists to establish the origins of the culture of the Bakuba tribe".[27]
[edit] See also
George Washington Williams
[edit] Notes
^ a b Cureau (1982), p.342
^ Füllberg-Stolberg (1999), p. 215
^ a b Füllberg-Stolberg (1992), pp. 225-226.
^ Phipps (2002), p. 2.
^ a b Kennedy (2002), pp. 7-10.
^ Phipps (2002), p. 6.
^ Taken from "The Report of the College Museum of Hampton Institute for 1966", reprinted by Cureau (1982), p. 341
^ "Introduction". Stillman College. http://www.stillman.edu/stillman/library/shep2.html. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 11-12.
^ Phipps (2002, pp. 10-11.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 14-15.
^ William Morrison, quoted in Phipps (2002), p. 13.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 21-25.
^ a b c Cureau (1982), p. 344
^ Sheppard (1917), p. 137
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 40-46.
^ Phipps (2002), p. 32.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 83-86.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 86-88.
^ a b Kennedy (2002), p. 89.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 100-101.
^ Kennedy (2002), p. 130.
^ a b c d Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002), p. 24
^ a b c d Cooley (2001) p. 22
^ Sheppard (1917), p. 119
^ Cureau (1982), pp. 45-48.
^ a b Cureau (1982) p. 344
[edit] References
Beitelman, T.J. (Winter 2002). "Changing the Heard of Darkness: Sheppard and Lapsley in the Congo". Alabama Heritage (63). http://www.alabamaheritage.com/Issues/issue63.htm.
Cooley, Thomas (2001). The Ivory Leg in the Ebony Cabinet. Universuity of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1558492844.
Cureau, Harold G. (Winter 1982). "William H. Sheppard: Missionary to the Congo, and Collector of African Art". The Journal of Negro History 67 (4): 340–352. doi:10.2307/2717535.
Füllberg-Stolberg, Katja (1999). "African Americans in Africa: Black Missionaries and the "Congo Atrocities," 1890-1910". in Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates, and Carl Pedersen. Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 215–227. ISBN 0195126416.
Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395759242.
Kennedy, Pagan (2002). Black Livingston: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670030368.
Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges (2002). The Congo from Leopold to Kabila. Zed Books. ISBN 1842770535.
Phipps, William E. (2002). William Sheppard: Congo's African-American Livingstone. Louisvill, Ky.: Geneva Press. ISBN 0664502032.
Sheppard, William H. (1917). Presbyterian Pioneers in Congo. Richmond, Va., Presbyterian committee of publication.
Turner, John G (2006). "A 'Black-White' Missionary on the Imperial Stage: William H. Sheppard and Middle-Class Black Manhood". The Journal of Southern Religion IX. http://jsr.fsu.edu/Volume9/Turner.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
William Henry Sheppard
Born
1865Waynesboro, Virginia
Died
Nov. 25, 1927[1] (aged 58)Louisville, Kentucky
Nationality
American
Occupation
Presbyterian missionary
Known for
Missionary work in the Congo and reporting the exploitation of the Congolese by Leopold II of Belgium
Reverend William Henry Sheppard (1865–1927) was one of the earliest African Americans to become a missionary for the Presbyterian Church. He spent 20 years in Africa, primarily in and around the Congo Free State, and is best known for his efforts to publicize the atrocities committed against the Kuba and other Congolese peoples by King Leopold II's Force Publique.
Sheppard's efforts contributed to the contemporary debate on European colonialism and imperialism in the region, particularly amongst those of the African American community.[2] However, it has been noted that he traditionally received little attention in literature on the subject.[3]
Contents[hide]
1 Early life
2 Mission with Lapsley
3 Contact with the Kuba
4 Documentation of Belgian atrocities
5 Legacy
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
//
[edit] Early life
Sheppard was born in Waynesboro, Virginia on March 8, 1865, to William Henry Sheppard, Sr. and Fannie Frances Sheppard (née Martin), a free "dark mulatto", a month before the end of the American Civil War. No records exist to confirm William Sr.'s status as a slave or freedman, but it has been speculated that he may have been among the slaves forced to serve the Confederacy as Union troops marched upon the South.[4] William Sr. was a barber, and the family has been described as the closest to middle class that blacks could have achieved given the time and place.[5] At age twelve, William Jr. became a stable boy for a white family several miles away while continuing to attend school; he remembered his two-year stay fondly and maintained written correspondence with the family for many years. Sheppard next worked as a waiter to put himself through the newly created Hampton Institute, where Booker T. Washington was among his instructors in a program that allowed students to work during the day and attend classes at night.[5] A significant influence on his appreciation for native cultures was the "Curiosity Room", in which the school's founder maintained a collection of Native Hawaiian and Native American works of art.[6] Later in life he would collect artifacts from the Congo, specifically those of the Kuba, and bring them back for this room, as evidenced by his letters home, such as "[i]t was on the first of September, 1890 that William H. Sheppard addressed a letter to General Samuel Armstrong, Hampton, From Stanley Pool, Africa, that he had many artifacts, spears, idols, etc., and he was '...saving them for the Curiosity Room at Hampton'".[7]
After graduation, Sheppard was recommended to Tuscaloosa Theological Institute (now Stillman College, which dedicated its library in Sheppard's honor in 1959[8]) in Alabama. He met Lucy Gantt near the end of his time there and the two became engaged, although they would not marry for ten years. Sheppard cultivated a desire to preach in Africa, but despite the support of Tuscaloosa founder Charles Stillman, the Southern Presbyterian Church had yet to establish its mission in the Congo.[9] He was ordained in 1888 and served as pastor to a church in Atlanta, Georgia, but did not adapt well to the life of an urban black in a heavily segregated area of the Southern United States.[10] After two years of writing to the Presbyterian Foreign Missionary Board in Baltimore, Maryland to inquire about starting a mission in Africa, he became frustrated by the vague rationale of the rejection letters and took a train to Baltimore to ask the chairman in person. The man politely informed Sheppard that the board would not send a black man without a white supervisor.[11]
Samuel Lapsley, an eager but inexperienced white man from a wealthy family, finally enabled Sheppard's journey to Africa. They "inaugurated the unique principle of sending out together, with equal ecclesiastical rights and, as far as possible, in equal numbers, white and colored workers".[12]
[edit] Mission with Lapsley
Sheppard at right
The Lapsley Memorial Church, in the village of Ibanche. It was built after Lapsley died.
Sheppard and Lapsley's activities in Africa were enabled by the very man whose atrocities Sheppard would later attempt to expose. The pair traveled to London in 1890 en route to the Congo; while there, Stanley met General Henry Shelton Sanford, an American ally of King Leopold II and friend of a friend of Lapsley's father. Sanford promised to do "everything in his power" to help the pair, even arranging an audience with King Leopold when Lapsley visited him in Belgium. Neither the secular Sanford nor the Catholic Leopold were interested in the Presbyterians' work; the latter was eager to have them make inroads into his newly acquired territory, both to begin the process of "civilizing" the natives and to legitimize his rule. The missionaries were, however, oblivious of Leopold's true motives.[13]
The pair made their way to Leopoldville, and Sheppard's own writings as well as Lapsley's letters home suggest Sheppard viewed the natives in a markedly different manner from other foreigners. Sheppard was considered as foreign as Lapsley and even acquired the nickname "Mundele N'dom", or "black white man". Despite being of African descent, Sheppard believed in many of the stereotypes of the time regarding Africa and its inhabitants, such as the idea that African natives were uncivilized or savage.[14] Very quickly though his views changed, as exemplified by a journal entry:
I grew very found of the Bakuba and it was reciprocated. They were the finest looking race I had seen in Africa, dignified, graceful, courageous, honest, with an open smiling countenance really hospitable. Their knowledge of weaving, embroidering, wood-carving and smelting was the highest equatorial Africa.[15][14]
The natives' resistance to conversion bothered Lapsley more than Sheppard, as Sheppard viewed himself more as an explorer than a missionary. While Lapsley was on a trip to visit fellow missionary–explorer George Grenfell, Sheppard became familiar with the natives' hunting techniques and language. He even helped to avert a famine by slaying thirty-six hippos.[16] Sheppard contracted malaria 22 times in his first 2 years in Africa.[17]
[edit] Contact with the Kuba
Main article: Kuba Kingdom
Having become versed in Kuba language and culture, Sheppard took a team of men to the edge of Kuba territory in 1892. His original plan was to ask for directions to the next village under the guise of purchasing supplies, but the chief of the village only allowed one of his men to go.[18] Sheppard used a variety of tricks to make his way further into the kingdom, including having a scout follow a group of traders and, most famously, eating so many eggs that the townspeople could no longer supply him and his scout was able to gain access to the next village to find more eggs. Eventually, however, he encountered villagers that would allow him to go no further. While Sheppard was formulating a plan, the king's son, Prince N'toinzide, arrived and arrested Sheppard and his men for trespassing.[19]
King Kot aMweeky, rather than executing Sheppard, told the village that Sheppard was his deceased son. King aMweeky declared Sheppard "Bope Mekabe", which spared the lives of Sheppard and his men.[20] This was a political move on the part of the king; in danger of being overthrown, he encouraged interest in the strangers to direct attention away from himself.[20] During his stay in the village, Sheppard collected artifacts from the people and he eventually secured permission for a Presbyterian mission. The king allowed him to leave on the condition that he return in one year.[21] He would be unable to do so for several years, however, by which time Kot aMweeky had been overthrown by Mishaape, the leader of a rival clan.[22]
[edit] Documentation of Belgian atrocities
Leopold II of Belgium
In the late nineteenth century, King Leopold II started to receive criticism for his treatment of the natives in Congo Free State. In the United States, the main outlet of this criticism was the Presbyterian church. In 1891, Sheppard became involved with William Morrison after Lapsley's death. They would report the crimes they saw, and later, with the help of Roger Casement, would form the Congo Reform Association (CRA), one of the world's first humanitarian organizations.[23]
In January 1908, Sheppard published one of these reports in the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) newsletter, and both he and Morrison were sued for libel against the Kasai Rubber Company (Compagnie de Kasai), a prominent Belgian rubber contractor in the area. When the case went to court in September 1909, the two missionaries had support from the CRA, American Progressives, and their lawyer, Emile Vandervelde, a prominent Belgian socialist.[23] The judge acquitted Sheppard (Morrison had been acquitted earlier on a technicality) on the premise that his editorial had not named the major company, but smaller charter companies instead.[23] However, it is likely that the case was decided in favor of Sheppard as a result of international politics; the U.S., socially in support of the missionaries, had questioned the validity of King Leopold II's rule over the Congo. [23]
Sheppard's reports often portrayed actions by the State that broke laws set by the European nations.[24] In one case, a report published in the Force Publique documented a village found with 300 human skeletons and 81 severed hands, some of them from children.[24] According to his observations, it looked like many had been prepared as food.[24] Many of the documented cases of cruelty or violence were in direct violation of the Berlin Act of 1885, which gave Leopold II control over the Congo as long as he "care[d] for the improvements of their conditions of their moral and material well-being" and "help[ed] in suppressing slavery."[24]
[edit] Legacy
A sample of the Bakuba cloth. Artifacts such as these helped Sheppard learn about the culture of the society, such as the emphasis put on cleanliness.[25]
Sheppard's efforts contributed to the contemporary debate on European colonialism and imperialism in the region, particularly amongst the African American community. However, historians have noted that he has traditionally received little recognition for his contributions.[3]
Over the course of his journeys, Sheppard amassed a sizable collection of Kuba art, much of which he donated to his alma mater. He was possibly the first African American collector of African art.[26] This art collection was notable because it "acquired the art objects in Africa, from Africans at all levels in their society...in the context of their daily existence" and, as a whole, Kuba art is considered "one of the most highly developed of African visual art forms..."[1] The collection as a whole is quite large; from the time of his arrival to Congo Free State in 1890 until his final departure 20 years later in 1910, Sheppard was collecting art and artifacts from the cultures around him.[14]
Sheppard's collection was also useful to ethnologists of the time, because the Kuba culture was not well known by the outside world, or even by those well-versed with African studies. For example, the collection does not feature a large number of carved human figures or any figurine that could be connected to a deity of some sort. This could be taken as evidence that the Kuba had no religion, or had one that was not outwardly expressed through art.[27] On the issue of the collection's scientific value, Jane E. Davis of the Southern Workman journal wrote that "it not only meets the requirements of the ethnologists, but those of the artist as well. Already it has been used by scientists to establish the origins of the culture of the Bakuba tribe".[27]
[edit] See also
George Washington Williams
[edit] Notes
^ a b Cureau (1982), p.342
^ Füllberg-Stolberg (1999), p. 215
^ a b Füllberg-Stolberg (1992), pp. 225-226.
^ Phipps (2002), p. 2.
^ a b Kennedy (2002), pp. 7-10.
^ Phipps (2002), p. 6.
^ Taken from "The Report of the College Museum of Hampton Institute for 1966", reprinted by Cureau (1982), p. 341
^ "Introduction". Stillman College. http://www.stillman.edu/stillman/library/shep2.html. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 11-12.
^ Phipps (2002, pp. 10-11.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 14-15.
^ William Morrison, quoted in Phipps (2002), p. 13.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 21-25.
^ a b c Cureau (1982), p. 344
^ Sheppard (1917), p. 137
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 40-46.
^ Phipps (2002), p. 32.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 83-86.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 86-88.
^ a b Kennedy (2002), p. 89.
^ Kennedy (2002), pp. 100-101.
^ Kennedy (2002), p. 130.
^ a b c d Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002), p. 24
^ a b c d Cooley (2001) p. 22
^ Sheppard (1917), p. 119
^ Cureau (1982), pp. 45-48.
^ a b Cureau (1982) p. 344
[edit] References
Beitelman, T.J. (Winter 2002). "Changing the Heard of Darkness: Sheppard and Lapsley in the Congo". Alabama Heritage (63). http://www.alabamaheritage.com/Issues/issue63.htm.
Cooley, Thomas (2001). The Ivory Leg in the Ebony Cabinet. Universuity of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1558492844.
Cureau, Harold G. (Winter 1982). "William H. Sheppard: Missionary to the Congo, and Collector of African Art". The Journal of Negro History 67 (4): 340–352. doi:10.2307/2717535.
Füllberg-Stolberg, Katja (1999). "African Americans in Africa: Black Missionaries and the "Congo Atrocities," 1890-1910". in Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates, and Carl Pedersen. Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 215–227. ISBN 0195126416.
Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395759242.
Kennedy, Pagan (2002). Black Livingston: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo. New York: Viking. ISBN 0670030368.
Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges (2002). The Congo from Leopold to Kabila. Zed Books. ISBN 1842770535.
Phipps, William E. (2002). William Sheppard: Congo's African-American Livingstone. Louisvill, Ky.: Geneva Press. ISBN 0664502032.
Sheppard, William H. (1917). Presbyterian Pioneers in Congo. Richmond, Va., Presbyterian committee of publication.
Turner, John G (2006). "A 'Black-White' Missionary on the Imperial Stage: William H. Sheppard and Middle-Class Black Manhood". The Journal of Southern Religion IX. http://jsr.fsu.edu/Volume9/Turner.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
Charles Studd
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Charles StuddEngland (Eng)
Charles Thomas Studd, often known as C. T. Studd, was born 2 December 1860, Spratton, Northamptonshire, England, and died 16 July 1931, Ibambi, Belgian Congo.
In 1888 he married Priscilla Stewart, and their marriage produced four daughters (Grace, Dorothy, Edith & Pauline) and two sons, who died in infancy.
Studd is remembered both as a cricketer and missionary. As a cricketer he played for England in the famous 1882 match won by Australia which was the origins of Ashes. As a British Protestant Christian missionary to China he was part of the Cambridge Seven, and later was responsible for setting up the Heart of Africa Mission which became the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (now WEC International).
Contents[hide]
1 His faith
2 Missionary work
2.1 The Cambridge Seven
3 Cricketing career
3.1 Studd and the Ashes, 1882
4 Studd's Daughters
5 Studd family and related articles
6 References
7 Further reading
8 See also
9 External links
//
[edit] His faith
Studd's wealthy father Edward Studd became a Christian during a Moody-Sankey campaign in England, and a visiting preacher to the Studd household converted C.T. and his three brothers to the faith while they were students at Eton. According to his conversion narrative, the preacher asked him if he believed God's promises, and as Charles' answer was not convincing enough, the guest pressed the point. Charles later recalled the moment:
"I got down on my knees and I did say 'thank you' to God. And right then and there joy and peace came into my soul. I knew then what it was to be 'born again,' and the Bible which had been so dry to me before, became everything."
Studd continued from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1883.[1] In 1884 after his brother George was taken seriously ill Charles was confronted by the question, "What is all the fame and flattery worth ... when a man comes to face eternity?" He had to admit that since his conversion six years earlier he had been in "an unhappy backslidden state." As a result of the experience he said, "I know that cricket would not last, and honour would not last, and nothing in this world would last, but it was worth while living for the world to come."
Studd emphasised the life of faith, believing that God would provide for a Christian's needs. His father died while he was in China, and he gave away his inheritance of £29,000, specifying £5,000 to be used for the Moody Bible Institute, £5,000 for George Muller mission work and his orphans, £5,000 for George Holland's work with England's poor in Whitechapel, and £5,000 to Commissioner Booth Tucker for the Salvation Army in India.
Studd believed that God's purposes could be confirmed through providential coincidences, such as a sum of money being donated spontaneously at just the right moment. He encouraged Christians to take risks in planning missionary ventures, trusting in God to provide. His spirituality was intense, and he mostly read only the Bible. Another work that influenced him was The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life. Although he believed that God sometimes healed physical illnesses through prayer and the anointing of oil, he also accepted that some ailments were chronic, and in his last years he regularly took morphine, causing some controversy. Studd also believed in plain speaking and muscular Christianity, and his call for Christians embrace a "Don't Care a Damn" (DCD) attitude to worldly things caused some scandal. He believed that missionary work was urgent, and that those who were unevangelised would be condemned to hell.
Studd wrote several books, including "The Chocolate Soldier" and "Christ's Etcetera's".
[edit] Missionary work
Studd began as an evangelist, and among those he influenced were Wilfred Grenfell and Frederick Brotherton Meyer.
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As a result of his brother's illness and the effect it had upon him, he decided to pursue his faith through missionary work in China and was one of the "Cambridge Seven" who offered themselves to Hudson Taylor for missionary service at the China Inland Mission, leaving for there in February 1885. Of his missionary work he said,
Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
While in China he married Priscilla, in a ceremony performed by a Chinese pastor, and four daughters were born. Studd believed that God had given him daughters to educate the Chinese about the value of baby girls.
On returning to England he was invited to visit America where his brother Kynaston had recently arranged meetings which had led to the formation of the Student Volunteer Movement. He also here influenced John Mott
Between 1900-1906 Studd was pastor of a church at Ootacamund in Southern India and although it was a different situation to the pioneer missionary work he had undertaken in China, his ministry was marked by numerous conversions amongst the British officials and the local community. However, on his return home Studd met a German missionary named Karl Kumm, and he became concerned about the large parts of Africa that had never been reached with the Gospel. In 1910 he went to the Sudan and was concerned by the lack of Christian faith in central Africa. Out of this concern Studd was led to set up the Heart of Africa Mission. His speaking on the subject inspired Howard Morrill (Bishop of China, and later Archbishop of Sydney), Arthur Pitts-Pitts (of the Church Missionary Society in Kenya), and Graham Brown (Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem). As an HQ for the venture, the Studds chose 17 Highland Road in Upper Norwood, South London. Like Hudson-Taylor, Studd believed that funds for the work should not be directly solicited. Finances were often tenuous. However, he enjoyed the support of Lord Radstock.
Against medical advice, Studd first visited the Belgian Congo in 1913 in the company of Alfred Buxton, and he established four mission stations in an area then inhabited by eight different tribes. Studd returned to England when Priscilla fell ill, but when he returned to the Congo in 1916 she had recovered sufficiently to undertake the expansion of the mission into the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade with workers in South America, Central Asia and the Middle East as well as Africa. Supported by his wife's work at home, Studd built up an extensive missionary outreach based on his centre at Ibambi. Priscilla made a short visit to the Congo in 1928. That was the last time they met; she died the following year. Studd was joined in his work by his daughter Pauline and son-in-law Norman Grubb, and his grandson Noel Grubb, who died on his first birthday, is buried at Nala. Studd's daughter Edith married Buxton.
In 1931, still labouring for the Lord at Ibambi at the age of seventy, Charles Studd died from untreated gallstones, but his vision for China, India and Africa was maintained by Norman Grubb, who took charge of WEC. His last years, however, were marked by controversy; some missionaries dissented from his methods and leadership style, and several either left or were dismissed. Studd's use of morphine - including supplies which may not have been declared at customs - also scandalised some.
In total he spent some fifteen years in China and six in India on his missionary work and then he devoted the rest of his life to spreading the Gospel message in Africa, founding the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade (now WEC International). To this day, his name remains linked with the evangelisation of the Congo Basin, and in 1930 he was made a Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Lion by the King of the Belgians. His biography, by Norman Grubb, was exceptionally popular, and some of his own writings are still in print [2].
[edit] The Cambridge Seven
The seven Cambridge students who became missionaries (known as the Cambridge Seven) to China were:
C. T. Studd
Montagu Beauchamp
S. P. Smith
A. T. Polhill-Turner
D. E. Hoste
C. H. Polhill-Turner
W. W. Cassells
[edit] Cricketing career
Studd gained fame as a cricketer representing England's Cambridge University as a Gentlemen of India, Middlesex at Cricket. Charles was the youngest and most famous of The Studd Brothers. By the time he was sixteen he had started to excel at cricket and at nineteen was captain of his team at Eton College; after school he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was also recognised as an outstanding cricketer.
[edit] Studd and the Ashes, 1882
Studd played in the original Test against Australia where the Ashes were first named and was one of the last two batsman in. When Studd went in, England needed a mere ten runs to win. However, an eccentric performance by his batting partner Ted Peate led to the match being lost.
A week later, the relevant edition of the Sporting Times included a mock obituary which has assumed iconic status:
IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE
OF ENGLISH CRICKET
WHICH DIED AT THE OVAL, 29th AUGUST, 1882,
DEEPLY LAMENTED BY A LARGE CIRCLE OF
SORROWING FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
R.I.P.
N.B.-THE BODY WILL BE CREMATED AND THE
ASHES TAKEN TO AUSTRALIA.
Studd's fame lives on though through the inscription preserved on the Ashes urn to this day, which reads,
When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.
[edit] Studd's Daughters
Grace Studd married Martin Sutton, and, after his death, David Munro (who converted to Christianity only later)
Dorothy Studd married the Rev Gilbert A Barclay
Edith Studd married Alfred Buxton
Pauline Studd married Norman Grubb
[edit] Studd family and related articles
The Studd Brothers
Kynaston Studd
George Studd
Peter Malden Studd
Priscilla Studd
[edit] References
^ Studd, Charles Thomas in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
C.T. Studd: Cricketer and Pioneer by Norman Grubb ISBN 0-7188-3028-8
Faith on Fire: Norman Grubb and the building of WEC by Stewart Dinnen ISBN 1-8579-2321-9
[edit] Further reading
Historical Bibliography of the China Inland Mission
[edit] See also
List of China Inland Mission missionaries in China
19th Century Protestant Missions in China
Christianity in China
Norman Grubb
[edit] External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Charles Studd
Works by C. T. Studd at Project Gutenberg
CT Studd Cricket Records
Cricinfo page on Charles Studd
CricketArchive page on Charles Studd
OMF International (formerly China Inland Mission and Overseas Missionary Fellowship)
WEC International (Formerly Heart of Africa Mission)
Placide Tempels
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Placide Frans Tempels (1906–1977) was a Belgian missionary who became famous for his book Bantu Philosophy.
[edit] Life
Tempels was born in Berlaar, Belgium, on 18 February 1906. Born Frans Tempels, he took the name "Placide" on his entry into a Franciscan seminary in 1924. After his ordination to the presthood in 1930 he taught for a short time in Belgium before being posted to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1933. He stayed there for twenty-nine years, broken by only two short stays back in Belgium. In April 1962 he returned to live in a Franciscan monastery in Berlaar, where he died on 9 October 1977.
[edit] Bantu Philosophy
Though neither African nor a philosopher, Tempels had a huge influence on African philosophy through the publication in 1945 of his book La philosophie bantoue (published in English translation in 1959) as Bantu Philosophy).
Main article: Bantu Philosophy
[edit] External links
Placide Tempels — Website in French (with option of English navigation); includes the full text of Bantu Philosophy, plus on-line critical readings
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Placide Frans Tempels (1906–1977) was a Belgian missionary who became famous for his book Bantu Philosophy.
[edit] Life
Tempels was born in Berlaar, Belgium, on 18 February 1906. Born Frans Tempels, he took the name "Placide" on his entry into a Franciscan seminary in 1924. After his ordination to the presthood in 1930 he taught for a short time in Belgium before being posted to the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1933. He stayed there for twenty-nine years, broken by only two short stays back in Belgium. In April 1962 he returned to live in a Franciscan monastery in Berlaar, where he died on 9 October 1977.
[edit] Bantu Philosophy
Though neither African nor a philosopher, Tempels had a huge influence on African philosophy through the publication in 1945 of his book La philosophie bantoue (published in English translation in 1959) as Bantu Philosophy).
Main article: Bantu Philosophy
[edit] External links
Placide Tempels — Website in French (with option of English navigation); includes the full text of Bantu Philosophy, plus on-line critical readings
Joseph Booth (born 1851, Derby, England, to 1932) was an English Baptist missionary in British Central Africa (present-day Malawi).
He first came to Africa in 1892 along with his wife and daughters, and established the Zambezi Industrial Mission at Mitsidi, close to Blantyre and the Nyasa Industrial Mission. He recruited locals to plant coffee, and within a year had over 30,000 acres (120 km²) being worked. This was part of his desire to have Africa be for the native Africans instead of Europeans, a view unpopular with most other missionaries of the time.
He made a trip to Britain and the United States in 1897, taking along household employee John Chilembwe. Chilembwe stayed in Virginia to study, while Booth returned in 1899 and established a new mission to the south of Blantyre. Booth continued his pro-African efforts, proposing that the colony revert to local control in 20 years, and that at least five percent of the natives should receive higher education. These views did not go over well with the colonial administration, and commissioner Alfred Sharpe threatened to deport Booth for his "seditious remarks".
After an unrelated dispute with his coreligionists, Booth went to South Africa in 1902. In 1907 he was officially barred from returning to the Blantyre colony, and eventually moved back to England, where he died some years later. His daughter Emily Booth would later write of their experiences in Africa.
[edit] References
Owen J. M. Kalinga and Cynthia A. Crosby, Historical Dictionary of Malawi, 3rd ed. (Scarecrow Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8108-3481-2) pp. 40-41
Langworthy, Harry, "Africa for the African". The Life of Joseph Booth, (Blantyre: CLAIM, 1996, ISBN 99908-16-03-4)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Booth"
Elliott Kanem Kamwana
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Elliott Kanem Kamwana (1872–1956) was a Malawi Christian leader who introduced the Watch Tower Movement into central Africa.
Starting in 1899 Kamwana lead a mass Presbyterian revival connected with the Free Church of Scotland mission in Malawi. He was then baptized an Adventist by Joseph Booth. He joined the Jehovah's Witnesses while in South Africa in 1909 and then returned to Malawi and worked to establish that faith in the country. In 1909 he was preaching the milennium would began in 1914. Soon over 10,000 people had been baptized Jehovah's Witnesses under his direction. The British disliked this and excilled Kamwana to South Africa. He then managed to move to Mozambique where he preached along the Zambezi River. In 1914 the Portuguese kicked him out and he returned to Malawi.
Due to the pacifist beliefs of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Kamwana was blamed for low recruiting rates in Malawi and was imprisoned in the Seychelles during World War I to prevent him from spreading his religion that included rejection of military service.
Kamwana finally returned to Malawi in 1937 and led the Watchtower Society there until his death in the 1950s.
[edit] References
Dictionary of African Historical Biography, p. 100
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Kanem_Kamwana"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Elliott Kanem Kamwana (1872–1956) was a Malawi Christian leader who introduced the Watch Tower Movement into central Africa.
Starting in 1899 Kamwana lead a mass Presbyterian revival connected with the Free Church of Scotland mission in Malawi. He was then baptized an Adventist by Joseph Booth. He joined the Jehovah's Witnesses while in South Africa in 1909 and then returned to Malawi and worked to establish that faith in the country. In 1909 he was preaching the milennium would began in 1914. Soon over 10,000 people had been baptized Jehovah's Witnesses under his direction. The British disliked this and excilled Kamwana to South Africa. He then managed to move to Mozambique where he preached along the Zambezi River. In 1914 the Portuguese kicked him out and he returned to Malawi.
Due to the pacifist beliefs of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Kamwana was blamed for low recruiting rates in Malawi and was imprisoned in the Seychelles during World War I to prevent him from spreading his religion that included rejection of military service.
Kamwana finally returned to Malawi in 1937 and led the Watchtower Society there until his death in the 1950s.
[edit] References
Dictionary of African Historical Biography, p. 100
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Kanem_Kamwana"
Charles Mackenzie (bishop)
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For other people with this name, see Charles Mackenzie.
Charles Frederick Mackenzie
Bishop
Born
1825, Portmore, Peeblesshire, Scotland
Died
31 January 1862, Africa
Venerated in
Anglican Communion
Feast
31 January
Charles Frederick Frazier Mackenzie (1825-62) was a Church of England bishop of Central Africa. He is commemorated in some Anglican Church Calendars.
Contents[hide]
1 Life
2 See also
3 References
4 External links
//
[edit] Life
He was born at Portmore, Peeblesshire, Scotland, the ninth son of Colin Mackenzie and Elizabeth Forbes[1]. He was educated at Bishop Wearmouth school and Edinburgh Academy, and entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1844. He migrated to Caius College, where he graduated B. A. as Second Wrangler in 1848, and became a Fellow of Caius.[2] In 1855, he went to Natal with Bishop Colenso and served as Archdeacon. They worked among the English settlers till 1859. In 1860, Mackenzie became head of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa and he was consecrated bishop in St George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on 1 January 1861. Following Dr David Livingstone's request to Cambridge, Bishop Mackenzie took on the position of being the first missionary bishop in Nyasaland (now Malawi).
Moving from Cape Town, Bishop Mackenzie sailed up the Zambezi and Shire rivers with a small group to start work. He arrived at Chibisa’s village in June 1861 with the goal to establish a mission station at Magomero, near Zomba. He directly opposed the slave trade causing the enmity of the Yao. Bishop Mackenzie worked among the people of the Manganja country until January 1862 when he went on a supplies trip together with a few members of his party. The boat they were travelling on sank and as their medical supplies were lost, Bishop Mackenzie’s malaria could not be treated. He died of Blackwater fever on 31 January 1862. Dr Livingstone erected a cross over his grave.
An International school in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, is named after him.
[edit] See also
Church of the Province of Central Africa
[edit] References
^ Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Mackenzies, Inverness, 1894
^ Mackenzie, Charles Frederick in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
Goodwin, Life, (second edition, Cambridge, 1865)
This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
[edit] External links
History of the Anglican Church in Malawi
Chauncy Maples
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This article is about the Anglican missionary and sixth Bishop of Nyasaland. For the ship named after him, see SS Chauncy Maples.
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Missionary agenciesAmerican BoardAfrica Inland MissionBaptist Missionary SocietyBerlin Missionary SocietyCongo-Balolo MissionChurch Missionary SocietyHeart of Africa MissionLivingstone Inland MissionLondon Missionary SocietyMission AfricaParis Evangelical Missionary SocietyRhenish Missionary SocietySPGWEC International
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Chauncy Maples was a British clergyman and Anglican missionary who became Bishop of Likoma in East Africa.[1][2]. Born in 1852, Maples had sailed for Zanzibar in 1876 where he set up clinics and schools for released slaves. Ten years later he founded the Anglican Mission on Likoma Island[3]. In 1896, Maples received the recognition he undoubtedly deserved[4] when he was consecrated as the sixth Bishop of Nyasaland[5]. A man of the cloth, while on the way to take up his duties, his boat capsized during a storm on the lake and he drowned[6] because of the weight of his cassock.
In recognition of his role in East Africa, in 1901 the ship SS Chauncy Maples, the first steamship on Lake Malawi, was named after him.
[edit] Missionary work
Archdeacon Chauncy Maples (on the left) with fellow missionary Rev W. P. Johnson in 1895
Missionaries brought to Africa far more than religion and the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) had a very clear vision for their £9,000 investment. The ship had three overt tasks-–-to give the lake a hospital ship, a missionary school and an emergency refuge from Arab slave traders. In reality, the goals were of more global importance; as one of the Mission’s founding supporters, the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce,[7] had made clear, the prime task was ‘the work of civilising commerce, the extinction of the slave-trade and, if possible, the colonisation of Africa’. Although work in the field of health was conducted out of the conviction that western medicine was good for Africans, it was not an entirely altruistic program. The missionaries were to reflect the emerging Victorian view of Africa and African peoples, that African thought and behaviour needed radical change if they were to be converted to western values. Like missionary work in other parts of Africa, it was viewed as a key means to prove the power and mystery of the Christian message.[8] Looking back, there is evidence of a lack of missionary sensitivity to many aspects of African culture, the injustices of early colonial land policies, the low priority given to theological education, and the slowness to ordain African clergy.[9] But much as missionaries must be viewed as principally propagators of basic religion, their work in introducing ideas of western medicine and technology undoubtedly had a profound impact on the foundations of modern public health in the region. By 1965, the churches provided around 45 per cent of all hospital beds in Malawi.
The SS Chauncy Maples at anchor on Lake Nyasa, four years after her launch
Some of the missionaries who spent time on the ship recognised the ironic nature of elements of their work.[10] The Rev George Wilson recorded in his diary[11] that, ‘Wherever a European goes he seems to carry some subtle power of change; whether it be the government official, the missionary, the planter or the trader, each is working for change, whether he knows it or not. This is a matter of great anxiety to all who love Africans, for I cannot feel at all certain that this change must necessarily be for the better.’ However, most commentators would have accepted that radical change was now an urgent requirement, as was made clear by the Rev Robert Keable[12], a missionary in Zanzibar; "We walked into the partially walled compound or court representing the slave-market, a bona fide affair, not like the caravanserai which used to be fitted up and furnished by the Cairene Dragoman for the inspection of curious tourists. A wooden cage, about twenty feet square, often contained some one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, who every day were 'knocked down' to the highest bidder in the public place."
Lake Malawi was remote, even by African standards, and initial progress with medical provision at Likoma was erratic. The programme had been introduced in 1894, during the brief stay of a UMCA physician. His replacement was the Rev John Hine; although also a qualified doctor, he was ultimately little interested in this aspect of his duties and when he was appointed Bishop in 1896, he chose to concentrate on spiritual rather than health-related matters. It was the coincident arrival of both the Chauncy Maples and Dr Robert Howard that produced a radical change in the level and quality of medical provision to the lake-side inhabitants. Howard quickly laid down the foundation of a robust health system, with the SS Chauncy Maples playing a central role. By the 1930s many stations, including those on the periphery, had health clinics run by missionary nurses or by African assistants. With the advantage of details on local diseases gathered by other doctors in the area, mainly from the Scottish missions, Dr. Howard adopted an anti-malaria strategy, and in conjunction with colleagues at Blantyre mission, embarked on an anti-smallpox vaccination program. The personal cost was high--in the gardens of St. Michael's church at Blantyre, the city named after Livingstone's birthplace in Scotland, is a memorial plaque to fourteen members of the Nyasaland Mission who died in the service of the Church of Scotland's African missions. The dates of death given on the plaque range from 1890 to 1919. A passage from the Bible reads: "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."
[edit] References
^ Dictionary of African Christian Biography[1]
^ Maples, Ellen (1897) Chauncy Maples: Pioneer Missionary in East Central Africa for Nineteen Years. London: Longmans[2]
^ Maples, Chauncy (1880) Masasi and the Rovuma District in East Africa. London: Royal Geographical Society
^ Maples, Chauncy (1899) Journals and Papers of Chauncy Maples, Late Bishop of Likoma, Lake Nyasa. London: Longmans [3]
^ Hermitage-Day, E. (1901) Chauncy Maples, Second Bishop of Likoma, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1901
^ Frere, Gertrude (1902) Where Black Meets White: the Little History of the UMCA. Westminster: Office of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa[4])
^ Oxford and Cambridge Mission to Central Africa (1859) Meeting at Cambridge, Tuesday, November 1, 1859. London: Odhams
^ Good, Charles M., Jr (2004) The Steamer Parish: the Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier. University of Chicago Press [5][6]
^ Sindima, Harvey J. (1992) The Legacy of Scottish Missionaries in Malawi. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press ISBN 0773495746
^ Good, Charles M., Jr (2004) The Steamer Parish
^ Wilson, George Herbert (1925) A Missionary’s Life in Nyasaland. Westminster: Universities Mission to Central Africa ([7])
^ Keable, Robert (1914) Darkness or Light: Illustrating the Theory and Practice of Missions. Westminster: Universities' Mission to Central Africa
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncy_Maples"
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This article is about the Anglican missionary and sixth Bishop of Nyasaland. For the ship named after him, see SS Chauncy Maples.
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Chauncy Maples was a British clergyman and Anglican missionary who became Bishop of Likoma in East Africa.[1][2]. Born in 1852, Maples had sailed for Zanzibar in 1876 where he set up clinics and schools for released slaves. Ten years later he founded the Anglican Mission on Likoma Island[3]. In 1896, Maples received the recognition he undoubtedly deserved[4] when he was consecrated as the sixth Bishop of Nyasaland[5]. A man of the cloth, while on the way to take up his duties, his boat capsized during a storm on the lake and he drowned[6] because of the weight of his cassock.
In recognition of his role in East Africa, in 1901 the ship SS Chauncy Maples, the first steamship on Lake Malawi, was named after him.
[edit] Missionary work
Archdeacon Chauncy Maples (on the left) with fellow missionary Rev W. P. Johnson in 1895
Missionaries brought to Africa far more than religion and the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) had a very clear vision for their £9,000 investment. The ship had three overt tasks-–-to give the lake a hospital ship, a missionary school and an emergency refuge from Arab slave traders. In reality, the goals were of more global importance; as one of the Mission’s founding supporters, the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce,[7] had made clear, the prime task was ‘the work of civilising commerce, the extinction of the slave-trade and, if possible, the colonisation of Africa’. Although work in the field of health was conducted out of the conviction that western medicine was good for Africans, it was not an entirely altruistic program. The missionaries were to reflect the emerging Victorian view of Africa and African peoples, that African thought and behaviour needed radical change if they were to be converted to western values. Like missionary work in other parts of Africa, it was viewed as a key means to prove the power and mystery of the Christian message.[8] Looking back, there is evidence of a lack of missionary sensitivity to many aspects of African culture, the injustices of early colonial land policies, the low priority given to theological education, and the slowness to ordain African clergy.[9] But much as missionaries must be viewed as principally propagators of basic religion, their work in introducing ideas of western medicine and technology undoubtedly had a profound impact on the foundations of modern public health in the region. By 1965, the churches provided around 45 per cent of all hospital beds in Malawi.
The SS Chauncy Maples at anchor on Lake Nyasa, four years after her launch
Some of the missionaries who spent time on the ship recognised the ironic nature of elements of their work.[10] The Rev George Wilson recorded in his diary[11] that, ‘Wherever a European goes he seems to carry some subtle power of change; whether it be the government official, the missionary, the planter or the trader, each is working for change, whether he knows it or not. This is a matter of great anxiety to all who love Africans, for I cannot feel at all certain that this change must necessarily be for the better.’ However, most commentators would have accepted that radical change was now an urgent requirement, as was made clear by the Rev Robert Keable[12], a missionary in Zanzibar; "We walked into the partially walled compound or court representing the slave-market, a bona fide affair, not like the caravanserai which used to be fitted up and furnished by the Cairene Dragoman for the inspection of curious tourists. A wooden cage, about twenty feet square, often contained some one hundred and fifty men, women, and children, who every day were 'knocked down' to the highest bidder in the public place."
Lake Malawi was remote, even by African standards, and initial progress with medical provision at Likoma was erratic. The programme had been introduced in 1894, during the brief stay of a UMCA physician. His replacement was the Rev John Hine; although also a qualified doctor, he was ultimately little interested in this aspect of his duties and when he was appointed Bishop in 1896, he chose to concentrate on spiritual rather than health-related matters. It was the coincident arrival of both the Chauncy Maples and Dr Robert Howard that produced a radical change in the level and quality of medical provision to the lake-side inhabitants. Howard quickly laid down the foundation of a robust health system, with the SS Chauncy Maples playing a central role. By the 1930s many stations, including those on the periphery, had health clinics run by missionary nurses or by African assistants. With the advantage of details on local diseases gathered by other doctors in the area, mainly from the Scottish missions, Dr. Howard adopted an anti-malaria strategy, and in conjunction with colleagues at Blantyre mission, embarked on an anti-smallpox vaccination program. The personal cost was high--in the gardens of St. Michael's church at Blantyre, the city named after Livingstone's birthplace in Scotland, is a memorial plaque to fourteen members of the Nyasaland Mission who died in the service of the Church of Scotland's African missions. The dates of death given on the plaque range from 1890 to 1919. A passage from the Bible reads: "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."
[edit] References
^ Dictionary of African Christian Biography[1]
^ Maples, Ellen (1897) Chauncy Maples: Pioneer Missionary in East Central Africa for Nineteen Years. London: Longmans[2]
^ Maples, Chauncy (1880) Masasi and the Rovuma District in East Africa. London: Royal Geographical Society
^ Maples, Chauncy (1899) Journals and Papers of Chauncy Maples, Late Bishop of Likoma, Lake Nyasa. London: Longmans [3]
^ Hermitage-Day, E. (1901) Chauncy Maples, Second Bishop of Likoma, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1901
^ Frere, Gertrude (1902) Where Black Meets White: the Little History of the UMCA. Westminster: Office of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa[4])
^ Oxford and Cambridge Mission to Central Africa (1859) Meeting at Cambridge, Tuesday, November 1, 1859. London: Odhams
^ Good, Charles M., Jr (2004) The Steamer Parish: the Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier. University of Chicago Press [5][6]
^ Sindima, Harvey J. (1992) The Legacy of Scottish Missionaries in Malawi. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press ISBN 0773495746
^ Good, Charles M., Jr (2004) The Steamer Parish
^ Wilson, George Herbert (1925) A Missionary’s Life in Nyasaland. Westminster: Universities Mission to Central Africa ([7])
^ Keable, Robert (1914) Darkness or Light: Illustrating the Theory and Practice of Missions. Westminster: Universities' Mission to Central Africa
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncy_Maples"
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