The African Presence in America Before Columbus A Bibliographic Essay by Floyd W. Hayes IIIhttp://www.nathanielturner.com/africanpresenceinamericabeforecolumbus.htmThe contemporary Black educator has an enormous challenge. One of his prime tasks must be the research, resurrection, and dissemination of information about the long suppressed contributions Africans (in Africa and the diaspora) have made toward the development of world civilization. It is transparent from extant literature that traditional academic disciplines, mainly the social sciences, have given a distorted representation of the African experience and reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” have until recent times characterized the Black man as “half-devil and half-child,”1 waiting in the darkness of ignorance before the coming of the European to bring the “light” of western civilization and culture.
Additionally, most western “scholars” until recently have falsely maintained that Africa made little substantial contribution to the evolution of world civilization. For instance, Greece is praised as the original foundation of world culture, the development of the Arts and Sciences, while the fact that the development of Greece was strongly influenced by Africa is ignored. It must not be forgotten that the Greeks did not carry culture and learning to Africa, but located them there.2 Generally speaking, little of Africa is known except on the issue of the slave trade.
More than anything else, the legacies of slavery and colonialism have been devastating to African peoples, and the effects of these human institutions linger on. Probably the most painful legacy of European oppression was the systematic Miseducation of Black people in Africa and abroad).3
We have been ‘educated” or indoctrinated away from our true selves by our oppressor so that we do not actually know who we are. It might be suggested that we have received a perpendicular education. Indoctrinated by this method of education, which has prevented us from relating effectively with ourselves, we are instead pulled away toward the imitation of the white man and his culture, thus killing the man in us.4
It is this educational pattern, imposed on blacks, which renders agreement and unity difficult. On the other hand, the white man has provided for himself a horizontal education which allows him to know and get along with other whites. Surely, various difficulties of opinion are exhibited by whites, but there is a common denominator for agreement.
The contemporary Black education, then, is face with the problems of overcoming years of miseducation, for he must realize that he too has been miseducated. He also has the job of educating students to identify and analyze the actions of the oppressor with the goal of contributing to the liberation of African peoples of systematic dehumanization.
Realizing that the oppressed cannot fully examine, comprehend and tackle the problems placed before them by utilizing the traditional academic approaches, theories and analytical frameworks of their oppressors, the oppressed must create new theoretical approaches. For, in the words of Frantz Fanon, “let us decide not to imitate Europe; let us combine our muscles and our brains in an new direction. Let us try to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth.”5
It is incumbent, then, upon the Black educator who focuses upon the African experience, to develop other means of examining the entire story of African peoples. A concept has been suggested that will allow for the study of the growth of the African world in all its multifaceted dimensions. Africanism incorporates a scientific examination of Africans and the African diaspora, i.e., African peoples in Asia, the Caribbean, Canada, United States, Europe, and central and South America.6 “Africanism is both a science and a philosophy aimed at freeing the black man from bondage to a culture and values which have been forced upon him.”7
The proposed methodology and theoretical framework employed for viewing the global African experience is Confrontational System Analysis, which will allow for the examination of all the systems brought into play between the oppressor and the oppressed. “Such a framework affords the opportunity to explore all the facets of the systems involved, the often ignored antithesis, the necessary and unnecessary reactions, the counter elements generated, the systems which persist (while having undergone some change), and the favorable results of such confrontations.”8
This creative approach is of considerable importance, for it allows one to consider and explore areas of knowledge that have long been ignored. For example, Columbus did not discover the Americas.9 One area of knowledge which has lacked popular attention and research is the extent to which Africa contributed to the growth of pre-Columbian America; those scholars who have courageously ventured into such a study have been quietly dismissed.10 Indeed, there is scarcely any discussion of this part of the dispersal of Africans in courses on African and Black American history in most universities and secondary schools. Hence, it is implied that Africans only traveled to Asia, Europe and the Americas as slaves. While the main focus of this bibliographical essay is on the African influence in ancient America, one should be mindful of the early African presence throughout the world.11
The fact that Africans could have visited the Americas before Columbus should call for no stretch of the imagination, for Africa is less than 2,000 miles from South America. In the following discussion, then, I shall explore some of the existing research regarding the extent of the pre-Columbian African presence in the Americas.
Theories regarding the pre-Columbian presence of Africans in the Americas are not new. Rather, men in various times have discussed such a possibility. For example, in 1854, at the National Emigration Convention of Colored People, held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a statement was issued to the African inhabitants of the United States regarding the necessity for leaving the United States as the only alternative left for them. Within that statement, which incidentally was signed by Martin R. Delany among others, we find the following:
And among the earliest and most numerous class who found their way to the new world, were those of the African race. And it has been ascertained to our minds beyond a doubt, that when the continent was discovered, there were found in the West Indies and Central America, tribes of the black race, fine looking people, having the usual characteristics of color and hair, identifying them as being originally of the African race.12
By 1900, the notion that Africans could have traveled to the Americas had moved beyond the stage of speculation. It was now definite that Africans had made contact with the Americas. Peter ReRoo, in his History of America before Columbus, was quite firm in acknowledging the fact that Africans had settled in the western hemisphere and made contact with native Americans. He says,
Yet a better proof of ancient Negro arrivals is the fact of Negro colonies found by the Spanish and Portuguese discoverers on the eastern coasts of South and Central America. Mendoza encountered a tribe of Negroes, and Balboa, when on his famous expeditions of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, met in the old province Quareca, at only two days’ travel from the Gulf of Darien, with a settlement of Negroes. . . .”14
In 1920 Leo Weiner, a Harvard University philologist, produced a pioneering examination of the existence of Africans in the Americas prior to the arrival of Columbus, which appeared as volume one of African and the discovery of America. Volumes two and three followed in 1922. While doing an investigation of native American languages, Wiener learned to his amazement that there was a considerable African influence on these languages. After further study he was led to conclude that much of the American archaeological work done on both Africans and native Americans was erroneous. Commenting on his work he says,
In the first volume I show that Negroes had a far greater influence upon American civilization than has heretofore been suspected. In the second volume I shall chiefly study the African fetishism, which even with the elaborate books on the subject, is woefully misunderstood, and I shall show by documentary evidence to what extraordinary extent the Indian medicine-man owes his evolution to the African medicine-man.15
His third volume is concerned with an examination of African social and religious influences on pre-Columbian American societies.
Arguing that West Africans had made numerous voyages to America before Columbus, Wiener noted that:
The presence of Negroes with their trading masters in America before Columbus is proved by the representation of Negroes in American sculpture and design, by the occurrence of a black nation at Darien early in the XVI century, but more specifically by Columbus’ emphatic reference to Negro traders from Guinea, who trafficked in a gold alloy, guanin, of precisely the same composition and bearing the same name, as frequently referred to by early writers in Africa.16
As additional proof, he noted the presence of West African words for numerous crops in various native-American languages and suggested that the crops were indigenous to Africa.
Indeed when we turn to the appellations of the sweet potato and yam in America, we find nothing but African forms. Here as there the two are confounded, and chiefly those names have survived which Dr. Chanca mentioned in 1494. he called the plant he described, apparently the sweet potato, both nabi and hage. We see that the first is a phonetic variation of Wolof nyambi, etc., ‘yam.’ . . .17
Wiener further indicated that the West African penetration of the Americas varied:
There were several foci from which the Negro traders spread in the two Americas. The eastern part of South America, where the Caribs are mentioned seems to have been reached by them from the West Indies. Another stream, possibly from the same focus, radiated to the north along roads marked by the presence of mounds, and reached as far as Canada. The chief cultural influence was exerted by a negro colony in Mexico, most likely from Teotihuacan and Tuxtla, who may have been instrumental in establishing the city of Mexico. From here their influence pervaded the neighboring tribes and ultimately, directly or indirectly, reached Peru.18
Another scholar concerned with pre-Columbian African influence in the Americas strengthens Wieners’s position regarding the African presence in ancient Mexican history. Joel A. Rogers, the prolific Black writer and student of world civilization, in Africa’s Gift to America suggested that “Africa played a role, perhaps, the chief role in the earliest development of America—a period that antedates Columbus by many centuries, namely Aztec, Maya, and Inca civilizations. About 500 B.C. or earlier, Africans sailed over to America and continued to do so until the time of Columbus.19 Additionally, Rogers quoted several Mexican authorities on the subject:
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