Book
Rebel destiny: among the bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana
Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. • New York • Published In 1934 • Pages:
By: Herskovits, Melville J. (Melville Jean), Herskovits, Frances (Shapiro), Mrs., Bush Negroes Of Dutch Guiana.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This monograph describes the lives of the Saramaka tribe of Suriname Maroons and the Negroes of the coastal region of Suriname river. Included are, discussions of the beliefs and practices associated with birth, marriage, death, family relationships, community organization, folk lore, art, music, dancing, etc. The monograph is based upon two field trips to Dutch Guiana by the authors, a husband and wife team, in the summers of 1928 and 1929. The authors employed event centered interviewing together with participant observation technique to investigate Saramaka attitudes toward their own civilization, and their logic in explaining their own custom. They also compared Saramaka customs with those of town Negro of Dutch Guiana, Blacks of Africa and of the United States. It is the authors' contention that the history of Blacks in the New World can be considered as a vast 'laboratory' experiment in the processes of racial mixture and of cultural contacts. The materials on the concept, symbols, functions and hierarchy of supernatural forces; Saramaka's religious practices; and the unique decision making institution called KRUTU are especially valuable.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Travel
- Literary texts
- Community heads
- Community councils
- Spirits and gods
- Revelation and divination
- Magic
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Saramaka
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1999
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- South America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Amazon and Orinoco
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Hesung C. Koh ; 1962
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1928-1929
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1928-1929
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Suriname
- NotesAdditional notes
- By Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits
- Includes index
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 34014521
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Saramacca (Suriname people)