Obayifo to Obeah: Priestly Power and Other Elements of Afro-Atlantic Akan Identity

This paper investigates elements of southern Akan culture and history among maroons, slaves and free blacks in Jamaica and New York during the long 18th century. Akan culture and history accompanied captives on their voyage to the Americas. Forced migrants from the southern Akan states memorialized priestly power of Okomfo and Obayifo in expression of kumfu, obeah and myal in American environs. These spiritualists used oath-making, allegiance rituals, shrines and other priestly powers on both sides of the Atlantic. This paper emphasizes priestly power and other Akan cultural forms in a zone of circulation and transmission concomitant to trans-Atlantic slavery. Field, material and demographic evidence is correlated to identifiable examples of Akan culture and history in West Africa and the Americas. Key examples include Okomfo Anokye and the emergence of the Asante state, the installation of an Akyem Abuakwa stool in Akuapem in 1733 and Cudjoe’s maroons and the treaty of 1739 in Jamaica. Emphasis on slavery validates a coerced Afro-Atlantic identity of shared crisis, one forced into fruition by tortured men, women and children in African factories during the middle passage and on American plantations. However, this approach represents only part of the process of African cultural transference in the Americas. This paper investigates how African culture and history figures into the process of identity construction of maroons, free-blacks and slaves. Akan culture and history, African port cities, the middle passage and daily life on plantations are comparatively discussed to assess identities of African descendants in the Americas.