Read Dancing in the Streets Online
Authors: Barbara Ehrenreich
Dancing in the Streets (16 page)
Guns Against Drums: Imperialism Encounters Ecstasy
The reader might justifiably accuse me of eurocentrism in my emphasis, so far, on European developmentsâexcept for one thing: It was the Europeansânot the Chinese or Aztecs or Zuluâwho forcibly imposed their culture and beliefs on people throughout the world. The centuries, roughly the sixteenth through the nineteenth, in which Europeans discarded and suppressed their festive traditions are the same ones in which Europeans fanned out all over the globe conquering, enslaving, colonizing, and in general destroying other peoples and their cultures. Technological advancesâin navigation and of course in weaponryâmade the European campaign of global conquest possible; perhaps the psychological changes discussed in the previous chapterâtoward a more driven and individualistic type of personalityâhelped make it seem necessary and appealing. No doubt there are many reasons (economic, demographic, ideological, even sexual) to explain why Europe's embrace of the new puritanism coincided with such a frantic burst of expansionismâa drive, it almost seems, to
get away
.
get away
.
But it is the immediate consequence, rather than the sources, of European expansionism that concerns us here: The Europeans who
explored and conquered and colonized were, certainly from the late sixteenth century on, fresh from their own experience of harsh cultural “reform” and had little tolerance for the exuberant rituals of other peoples. For example, a historian of Tahiti described the Protestant missionaries who settled on that sunny island in the early nineteenth century as followers of a “dour and cheerless creed,” who routinely dressed in black and “never laughed, never made a joke or understood anyone else's, never enjoyed what they condemned as unseemly levity, and never let themselves forget for a moment the awful burden of the sins of the world.”
1
Even in milder forms, the Christianity Europeans attempted to export to the world frowned on anything that looked to them like “emotionalism.” As an early-twentieth-century American professor wrote in condemnation of “primitive” religiosity, “The mature fruit of the Spirit is not the subliminal uprush, the ecstatic inflow of emotion, the rhapsody, the lapse of inhibition, but rational love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meeknessâ
self-control.
”
2
explored and conquered and colonized were, certainly from the late sixteenth century on, fresh from their own experience of harsh cultural “reform” and had little tolerance for the exuberant rituals of other peoples. For example, a historian of Tahiti described the Protestant missionaries who settled on that sunny island in the early nineteenth century as followers of a “dour and cheerless creed,” who routinely dressed in black and “never laughed, never made a joke or understood anyone else's, never enjoyed what they condemned as unseemly levity, and never let themselves forget for a moment the awful burden of the sins of the world.”
1
Even in milder forms, the Christianity Europeans attempted to export to the world frowned on anything that looked to them like “emotionalism.” As an early-twentieth-century American professor wrote in condemnation of “primitive” religiosity, “The mature fruit of the Spirit is not the subliminal uprush, the ecstatic inflow of emotion, the rhapsody, the lapse of inhibition, but rational love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meeknessâ
self-control.
”
2
Sometimes the Europeans' destruction of “native” rites was incidental to the physical destruction of the natives themselves: It would be shortsighted to complain about the abolition of Tasmanian or Carib traditions, for example, when the people who might have been carriers of these traditions no longer exist, having succumbed centuries ago to European weapons and diseases. In Australia, the missionaries' efforts to uplift and “civilize” the Aboriginals were often overwhelmed by the more pressing business of burying them. One missionary outpost was abandoned with the explanation that “the termination of the Mission has arisen solely from the Aboriginals becoming extinct in these districts.”
3
3
On the whole, though, there was nothing “incidental” about the European campaign against the communal rituals of other societies. Most Europeans had little use for any aspects of non-European culture; African religions, for example, were described by an English promoter of the missionary effort as “little more than loose collections of ideas, vague and puerile, arising from a superstitious
devotion to the life of Nature around.”
4
Especially repellent to Europeans were the rituals of indigenous peoples, since these almost invariably featured dancing, singing, masking, and even the achievement of trance states. In large parts of Africa, for example, the identification between communal dance and music, on the one hand, and what Europeans might call “religion,” on the other, was profound. The term the Tswanas of southern Africa use for dance (
go
bina)
also means “to venerate,”
5
and in the Bantu language group of southern, central, and eastern Africa, the word
ngoma
can mean “ritual,” “cult,” “song-dance,” or simply “drum.”
6
devotion to the life of Nature around.”
4
Especially repellent to Europeans were the rituals of indigenous peoples, since these almost invariably featured dancing, singing, masking, and even the achievement of trance states. In large parts of Africa, for example, the identification between communal dance and music, on the one hand, and what Europeans might call “religion,” on the other, was profound. The term the Tswanas of southern Africa use for dance (
go
bina)
also means “to venerate,”
5
and in the Bantu language group of southern, central, and eastern Africa, the word
ngoma
can mean “ritual,” “cult,” “song-dance,” or simply “drum.”
6
The anthropologist Jean Comaroff noted that of all the “native” customs and traditions in southern Africa, “collective song and dance were especially offensive to Christians.”
7
As we saw in the introduction, Europeans tended to view such activities, wherever they found them, as outbreaks of devil worship, lasciviousness, or, from a more “scientific” perspective, hysteria. For example, a Jesuit missionary among the Yup'ik people of late-nineteenth-century Alaska wrote:
7
As we saw in the introduction, Europeans tended to view such activities, wherever they found them, as outbreaks of devil worship, lasciviousness, or, from a more “scientific” perspective, hysteria. For example, a Jesuit missionary among the Yup'ik people of late-nineteenth-century Alaska wrote:
I have great hopes for these poor people, even though they are so disgusting on the exterior that nature itself would stand up and take notice ⦠In general their superstitions are a fearful worship of the devil. They indulge profusely in performances and feasts to please their dead but in fact to please and corrupt themselves, in dancing and banqueting.
8
8
So whether the goal was to pacify indigenous peoples in a military and administrative sense or, more generously, to impose upon them the supposed benefits of civilization, Europeans generally found themselves in furious opposition to the communal pleasures and rituals of the people whose lives they intruded upon.
The existence of a widespread European campaign against indigenous ritual is beyond dispute; some scholars mention it almost in passing, as if little elaboration were required. The anthropologist
Jon P. Kirby, for example, tells us that missionaries in West Africa “were too busy suppressing traditional rituals and beliefs” to find out what they were and meant,
9
while another anthropologist, Beverly Stoeltje, explains that the distinction between ritual and festival “evolved as a consequence of modern religious systems' attempts to obliterate native religions.”
10
Apparently, if native religious rituals could not be tolerated, they could still sometimes survive as “secular” festivities.
Jon P. Kirby, for example, tells us that missionaries in West Africa “were too busy suppressing traditional rituals and beliefs” to find out what they were and meant,
9
while another anthropologist, Beverly Stoeltje, explains that the distinction between ritual and festival “evolved as a consequence of modern religious systems' attempts to obliterate native religions.”
10
Apparently, if native religious rituals could not be tolerated, they could still sometimes survive as “secular” festivities.
But it is frustratingly difficult to find blow-by-blow accounts of conflicts over specific native practices. One exception is Hawaii, where a three-way conflictâamong white missionaries, white sailors, and native Hawaiiansâhas been documented. The Hawaiians, for the most part, wanted to continue their traditional pleasures; the sailors wanted to drink and exploit local women; the missionaries wanted to establish a kind of puritanical theocracy. Although the Hawaiians were organized into socially complex kingdoms, the white American missionary Hiram Bingham saw them as “almost naked savages,” having “the appearance of destitution, degradation, and barbarism.”
11
He and succeeding missionaries fought, with mixed success, to suppress both the sailors' carousing and such Hawaiian customs as surfing, canoe racing, lei wearing, and that “depraved native dance,” the hula.
12
11
He and succeeding missionaries fought, with mixed success, to suppress both the sailors' carousing and such Hawaiian customs as surfing, canoe racing, lei wearing, and that “depraved native dance,” the hula.
12
I could find only sketchy and scattered accounts of the encounters between high-minded Europeans and native “devil worshippers” elsewhere. What they suggest is that the global campaign against festivities and ecstatic rituals in many ways resembled the post-Reformation campaign against festivities within Europe: It was a sporadic undertaking, carried out by both secular and religious authorities, and subject to frequent setbacks. In some settings, repression had the force of law, taking the form of edicts against drumming, dancing, and masking, for example, with penalties of flogging or even mutilation. As Kirby notes, “Most missionaries considered the colonial administrations as allies in the essential task of destroying existing structures,”
13
just as religiously motivated
reformers within Europe could generally count on the assistance of secular authorities.
13
just as religiously motivated
reformers within Europe could generally count on the assistance of secular authorities.
In other settings, where the colonial administration was still underdeveloped, individual missionaries usually attempted to halt the “devilish” native practices single-handedly, much like the puritanical preachers who took it upon themselves to tear down maypoles and disrupt festivities in their native England. Missionary accounts include many tales of such courageous, reckless, and, from a non-European point of view, surely ridiculous behavior. Early Catholic missionaries in Africa reported that, at the first sound of drums, they would “immediately run to the place to disturb the hellish practice.”
14
A Capuchin friar in the Portuguese fort at Massangano, in what is now Angola, was almost stoned to death by an angry crowd “for endeavoring to oppose these people in their wicked ceremonies.”
15
In the mid-nineteenth century, a Presbyterian missionary found black Jamaicans engaged in what they called a
myal
dance, and rushed out to stop them, only to be told that the dancers were not, as he supposed, “mad.” “You must be mad yourself,” they told him, “and had best go away.”
16
14
A Capuchin friar in the Portuguese fort at Massangano, in what is now Angola, was almost stoned to death by an angry crowd “for endeavoring to oppose these people in their wicked ceremonies.”
15
In the mid-nineteenth century, a Presbyterian missionary found black Jamaicans engaged in what they called a
myal
dance, and rushed out to stop them, only to be told that the dancers were not, as he supposed, “mad.” “You must be mad yourself,” they told him, “and had best go away.”
16
Again, as in Europe, collective rituals became what Comaroff called an “arena of contest” between the contending culturesâsites for the exchange of insults and threats, if not actual violence. Colonized peoples might use their rituals to mock the European intruders or, as the Europeans usually suspected, to whip up armed resistance. Or they might be attracted by Christian teachings, only to be repelled by Christian forms of worship. Nxele, a nineteenth-century Xhosa diviner, was originally drawn to Christianity, then decided that the right way to worship was not “to sing MâDee, M'Dee, M'Dee all day and pray with their faces on the ground and their backs to the almightyâbut to dance and enjoy life and to make love, so that the black people would multiply and fill the earth.”
17
For their part, the Europeans “focused their challenge on communal rites”
18
and often judged the progress of their “civilizing” efforts by their success in suppressing such rites. A Methodist
missionary in southern Africa, S. Broadbent, wrote in 1865: “I feel happy also in saying that the Bechuana customs and ceremonies are considerably on the wane. The native dance is, in some instances, kept up; but I frequently go at the time of the dance, oppose it, and preach to those who are willing to hear.”
19
Among the Namaquas of South Africa, it was said of someone who converts to Christianity that “he has given up dancing.”
20
17
For their part, the Europeans “focused their challenge on communal rites”
18
and often judged the progress of their “civilizing” efforts by their success in suppressing such rites. A Methodist
missionary in southern Africa, S. Broadbent, wrote in 1865: “I feel happy also in saying that the Bechuana customs and ceremonies are considerably on the wane. The native dance is, in some instances, kept up; but I frequently go at the time of the dance, oppose it, and preach to those who are willing to hear.”
19
Among the Namaquas of South Africa, it was said of someone who converts to Christianity that “he has given up dancing.”
20
European observers sometimes noted the parallel between the crackdown on native rites worldwide and the crackdown on carnival and other festivities within Europe. Recall their tendency, as mentioned earlier, to equate the “savages” of “new” worlds with the lower classes of the old world, and the occasional analogy drawn between European carnival and the ecstatic rites of distant peoples. The parallel extends, in part, to the motive for repression: One of the goals of the crackdown within Europe was to instill the work ethic into the lower classes and apply the time “wasted” in festivities to productive labor. Similarly, European colonizers were often appalled both by the apparent laziness of the natives and by the energy they invested in purely “superstitious” ritual activities, and to such a degree that their irritation sometimes extended to the flora that supported the supposedly easygoing, native way of life. The poet Samuel Coleridge, for exampleâsurely a liberal by nineteenth-century British standardsâonce suggested that the South Sea Islanders' breadfruit trees be destroyed, so that the islanders would be forced to learn hard work.
21
Along the same lines, the historian Thomas Carlyle was incensed by the West Indian pumpkin: “Where a Black man, by working about half-an-hour a-day ⦠can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to raise into hard work!”
22
Short of eliminating these psychologically debilitating plants, Christianity could solve the problem, as proposed by the English promoter of missions quoted above: “One of the chief difficulties experienced by employers of labour in Africa is the unstable and undisciplined character of the native
labourer. Christian teaching and industrial training can do much to remove this trouble.”
23
21
Along the same lines, the historian Thomas Carlyle was incensed by the West Indian pumpkin: “Where a Black man, by working about half-an-hour a-day ⦠can supply himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little stiff to raise into hard work!”
22
Short of eliminating these psychologically debilitating plants, Christianity could solve the problem, as proposed by the English promoter of missions quoted above: “One of the chief difficulties experienced by employers of labour in Africa is the unstable and undisciplined character of the native
labourer. Christian teaching and industrial training can do much to remove this trouble.”
23
But the parallel between repression within Europe and the cultural repression visited by Europeans on their colonial subjects in distant places goes only so far. Within Europe, elites recognized the human objects of repressionâgenerally peasants, laborers, and artisansâas fellow Christians and, increasingly over time, as people who shared with them a sense of nationhood. Not so with the “savages,” whose skin color and facial features combined with their unfamiliar beliefs and customs to render them almost entirely “other”âto the point where their very status as humans was open to question. English settlers in Australia thought of the original occupants of that subcontinent as “a species of tail-less monkeys” or, if human in any sense, clearly the kind of human “nearest of all to the monkey or orang-outang.”
24
Georges Cuvier, the noted early-nineteenth-century Swiss comparative anatomist, judged that “the negro race ⦠manifestly approaches to the monkey tribe. The hordes of which this variety is composed have always remained in a state of complete barbarism.”
25
This attitude helped justify a casual, even lighthearted, approach to genocide. “I took no more notice of a hundred armed Indians than I would have of a handful of flies,” wrote a Spanish conquistador,
26
while an English bush ranger boasted he would just “as leave shoot [Tasmanians] as so many sparrows.”
27
24
Georges Cuvier, the noted early-nineteenth-century Swiss comparative anatomist, judged that “the negro race ⦠manifestly approaches to the monkey tribe. The hordes of which this variety is composed have always remained in a state of complete barbarism.”
25
This attitude helped justify a casual, even lighthearted, approach to genocide. “I took no more notice of a hundred armed Indians than I would have of a handful of flies,” wrote a Spanish conquistador,
26
while an English bush ranger boasted he would just “as leave shoot [Tasmanians] as so many sparrows.”
27
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