Book
First-time: the historical vision of an Afro-American people
Johns Hopkins University Press • Baltimore • Published In 1983 • Pages: 189
By: Price, Richard.
Abstract
This is an oral history of the Saramakans, collected and annotated by the ethnographer. History is learned at the feet of elders who themselves learned it in this way. Each Saramakan historian throughout the course of his life picks up bits and pieces of genealogies, verbal maps, proverbs, songs, epithets, commemorative place names, etc. from other historians and puts together his own understanding of events. Price includes the edited transcripts of various versions, provides commentary, and, where he can, compares them with contemporary written accounts by European officials, planters and missionaries. The histories tell of the different runaway slave groups, or clans, their leaders and their magic, the settlements they formed and reformed, the relationships they developed with each other, the battles they had with the planters and the final Peace in 1762. The histories are important in establishing the relative status and authority of the clans and their territorial claims. Perhaps most important, however, the histories evoke the pride of a people who banded together to survive and fight for their freedom, beholden to no one but themselves.
- HRAF PubDate
- 1999
- Region
- South America
- Sub Region
- Amazon and Orinoco
- Document Type
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator Type
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- Analyst
- Ian Skoggard; 1997
- Field Date
- 1976-1978
- Coverage Date
- 1685-1762
- Coverage Place
- Suriname
- Notes
- Richard Price
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-187)
- LCCN
- 83000029
- LCSH
- Saramacca (Surinam people)