268 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentthe 1733–1734 Danish St. John slave revolt, a movement
in which slaves held the island for nearly six months, the
leaders were inspired by notions of the eternal soul. Dur-
ing the subsequent court trials, one anonymous slave testi-
fi ed, “When I die, I shall return to my own land.” It is clear
that the rebels involved in this particular attempt to cast
off the chains of enslavement originated from West Africa’s
Gold Coast and were likely Akan-speakers from the col-
lapsed state of Akwamu. Other Akan-speakers used similar
conceptualizations of transmigration to engage in acts of
resistance or shaped community values regarding burial
practices. A sizable number of suicides or suicidal resis-
tance eff orts engaged in by Akan-speakers in 18th-century
Jamaica, New York, Antigua, and Barbados were likely
shaped by a strong belief in transmigration. In addition, a
symbol that implies the impervious and eternal nature of
the human soul—the Akan Adinkra known as Sankofa—
was found on a coffi n lid buried at some point in the early
18th century in New York City’s African Burial Ground.
Th e use of conch shells and other seashells—as a replica-
tion of the Kongo cosmogram—conveyed similar values at
gravesites in South Carolina, Brazil, and Haiti, among many
other locales.
Within African American folklore, the ubiquitous
“fl ying African” tales and the story of Ebo Landing em-
body both resistance to slavery and spiritual transmigra-
tion. Both sets of folktales are based on cases of suicide
or death through other means that lead to the releasing
of human spirits from earthly limitations in order to fl y,
walk, or swim back to Atlantic Africa. Within these stories,
only those born in Africa had the ability to fl y or walk back
to Africa. Verifi cation that slaves in the American South
embraced transmigration and the ability of Africans to re-
turn home can be found in the narratives of Charles Ball
and Olaudah Equiano. If the soul of a deceased individual
returns back to former companions, friends, and kin, that
would mean that the souls of African-born slaves would
have to “fl y” or “swim” across the Atlantic to get back home.
Th is would not work for slaves born in the Americas. Th eir
families and friends were in the Western Hemisphere, not
Africa, and thus they did not have the ability to take fl ight.
Th e phenomenon of fl ying Africans is absent in African
folklore for similar reasons. If an individual dies in Africa,
the spirit has no need to fl y because it is already home.
Th ough rooted in African metaphysical understandings,Condé, Maryse. I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem. New York: Bal-
lantine Books, 1992.
Hoff er, P. C. Th e Devil’s Disciples: Makers of the Salem Witch Craft
Trials. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: Th e Salem Witchcraft Cri-
sis of 169 2. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002.
Tucker, Veta Smith. “Purloined Identity: Th e Racial Metamorpho-
sis of Tituba of Salem Village.” Journal of Black Studies 30,
no. 4 (2000):624–34.
Transmigration
Th e notion that the human spirit or soul is indestructible
and eternal can be found in a number of religions and spir-
itual systems in Atlantic Africa and throughout the Atlan-
tic African Diaspora in the Americas. At the heart of such
folkloric traditions as the “fl ying African” tales and the
story of Ebo Landing, this concept—akin to reincarnation—
prefi gured a number of phenomena in African American
religious worldviews. In Atlantic Africa, transmigration is at
the heart of the Kongo cosmogram—a continuously mov-
ing, counterclockwise circle that refl ected both the east-to-
west motion of the sun and the movement of human souls
to and from the earthly plane of existence. In the particular
context, an ancestral spirit could oft en be reborn with its
kinship group. Th e link between the Kongo cosmogram
and transmigration may have prefi gured the idea within
African American folkloric traditions that dreaming of a
fi sh equates to an imminent pregnancy within the family.
Beings residing below the Kalunga Line—a horizontal line
in the Kongo cosmogram separating the earthly and spirit
realms—were envisioned as simbi spirits, or chalk-white
fi sh. Th ese disembodied simbi spirits, bound to be reborn,
indeed represented potential pregnancy, birth, and the con-
tinuation of the perpetual cycle of life.
Transmigration was also embodied within the ring
shout, which itself was a refl ection of the Kongo cosmo-
gram. Th ough individuals engaging in the ring shout by
the late 19th and early 20th centuries may have lost touch
with the spiritual underpinnings of this practice, the form
itself—a counterclockwise circle in emulation of the cos-
mogram—captures the very concept of the immortality of
the human spirit.
Belief in transmigration likely played an important
role in slave rebelliousness and resistance. In the course of