Blog Post

Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House – The nkisi was discovered in floorboards of this building.

We’ve spent a lot of time this summer and fall considering ideals about religious toleration in Rhode Island, much of which was possible thanks to the 1663 Charter.  Most of these topics have related to Judeo-Christian religious ideas, and to the European settlers.  Let’s now branch out to non-Western ideas and consider the religiosity of enslaved Africans.

Many enslaved Africans were influenced by the surrounding Judeo-Christian religious milieu, and converted to Christianity.  For instance, Occramar Mirycoo (Newport Gardner), whom you may remember from a post a few weeks ago, founded the African Benevolent Society, a Christian civic organization for blacks, in 1780 and the Union Colored Church, a Christian church, in 1824.  Working with Christian ministers in town, he raised money to return to Africa as a Christian missionary.

However, Africans like Mirycoo did not arrive on Newport’s shores as blank slates, ready for Europeans to teach them about religion.  They came with their own distinct cultures and religious ideas.  It is also important to remember that the slaves arriving in the colonies were not generically African, but were from specific regions and kingdoms within Africa.  Divided by ethnicity, language, politics, and culture, these groups did not all have the same religious beliefs.  Thus, we cannot speak of the religion of the enslaved Africans.  No such monolithic religion existed.  Also, while people of different regions in Africa had their own ideas about religion, Africa itself was not untouched by western religious ideas before the slave trade began in earnest; both Christian and Islamic ideas had already permeated the continent.

Since this is such a large topic, let’s focus on religious ideas in the Kongo, as they relate most directly to a building here in Newport.  As with other regions of Africa, millions of people from the Kongo were imprisoned and sold into slavery from the mid 1600s to the late 1800s.  At the most basic level, people from the Kongo tended to believe in one Supreme Being who created the world, provided the weather, and was both omniscient and omnipotent.  They believed that this deity ruled with the help of a number of lesser gods, and that ancestors could serve as mediators between people and the creator god.  African Traditional Religions, as were practiced during the height of the slave trade in the Kongo, imagined the universe as a series of interactions among gods, spirits, humans, animals, and the cosmos.  So, when Kongolese people arrived in the colonies, many of them understood the world through this spiritual lens.

Because slaves rarely left written records, much of what we know about them must be traced through records written by white people, or material culture.  In other words, we often must turn to archaeology and physical objects to try to understand the slaves’ experiences.

Rope from the Nkisi

Thanks to written records, we know that multiple slaves lived in the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House in Newport, RI, one of the properties owned by the Newport Historical Society.  Built in 1697 for a relatively wealthy family, this structure is one of the oldest still standing in Newport.  We do not know whether slaves lived in the home when it was first built, but we have records of slaves who lived there in the mid 1700s.  A probate record of items inherited by Ann Conkling upon her husband’s death in 1746 notes that she owned three slaves: “A Negro Man called Casan,” “A Negro Boy called Briston,” and “A Negro Girl Called Jenny.”  When Ann Conkling remarried Martin Howard, the man who owned the Hazard House in the mid 1700s, these slaves became his property.  In the 1760s, Howard left Newport and the Wanton family purchased the house.  Census records from 1772 note that John G. Wanton owned a number of slaves, and a manumission from 1775 proves that he freed at least one of them, a man named Cardardo.

For years, this is all that the historical society knew about the enslaved Africans on the property.  Our knowledge took a giant leap forward in 2005 when a staff member pulled up floorboards in the attic and discovered remnants of a bundle of cloth which contained objects like nails, pits, beads, pins, corncobs, and a cowrie shell.  They had found an nkisi.

Miscellaneous Objects from the Nkisi

An nkisi (minkisi in plural form) was a religious object associated with Bakongo spirituality.  Minkisi were composite objects made of various objects which were designed to bridge the gap between the physical world and the spiritual realm, providing protection and healing.  Some minkisi were wooden anthropomorphic figures, while others were cloth pouches or ceramic containers.  Minkisi could be placed in public places to provide protection for many.  However, more powerful minkisi were placed in secret domestic locations, and were fiercely protected.  Many Kongolese people believed that they could be attacked by malevolent spirits if their location was revealed.

Minkisi have been discovered throughout the colonies in various places were enslaved Kongolese lived and worked.  The nkisi from the Hazard House means that Casan, Briston, Jenny, or Cardardo was likely from the Kongo.  It shows that at least one of them had access to the attic; perhaps the attic was used as a living space.  By placing a nkisi under the floor boards in the attic, the slave was seeking protection for the house, and holding on to his or her religious beliefs from home.

The fact that the nkisi survived (mostly) intact and provides tangible evidence of slave life in the Hazard House is amazing.  Imagine how many other minkisi may have existed throughout the colonies that have since been destroyed by rodents or building alterations.

To learn more about minkisi and how African traditional religions were practiced in the British North American colonies, check out Martha B. Katz-Hyman and Kym S. Rice’s World of a Slave: Encyclopedia of the Material Life of Slaves in the United States or Nathaniel Samuel Murrell’s Afro-Caribbean Religions: An Introduction to Their Historical, Cultural, and Sacred Traditions.  If you are an expert on minkisi and African material culture and can tell us more about the nkisi, let us know!  The Newport Historical Society would appreciate learning more about this wonderful find.  And, if you are interested in seeing the nkisi, check out the new exhibit at the Statehouse in Providence, RI.