Suriname folk-lore

4. Marriage and Divorce

The social organisation of Paramaribo Negro culture, strictly speaking, does not center about the compounds which we have described, for it is not the rule for the grouping of father, mother, and children to live in the same compound as those related to them. As a matter of fact, in its outward manifestations, there is not much difference between the family as constituted in Paramaribo among the Negroes and among the Europeans. Residence, in the main, is away from the parental home, a new couple going off to a compound where the relatives of neither live, to make their home. But when such matters as the ways of getting a mate, the attachments which characterise these family groupings, and the manner in which matings are ruptured are considered, certain features distinctive of this Suriname town-Negro culture appear.

The idealised manner in which a man goes about getting the girl of his choice for a wife, is given with the full reservation that it does embody an ideal, which is honored as often in the breach as in the performance.¹ In this ideal situation, the man who is attracted by a girl, sends his mother and a maternal aunt or uncle to the parents of the girl of his choice. When the two families satisfy themselves of the desirability of the marriage, the man is permitted to court the girl openly. This courtship extends over a period of not less than six months, - in some instances it has been known to last a year and more. During this period, gifts

1 The first account of such a courtship was supplied us, indeed, by a woman who was to our own knowledge fantasying, for, young as she was, her experiences with men had taken her through some four semi-permanent matings. The existence of the ideal, however, is of ethnological importance.

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Plate VI. Head-kerchief, front view.

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Plate VII. Name of pattern, Maka sneki; name of tying, Boto hɛdɛ.

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are made by the young man to the girl and to her mother and father, and, if the parents do farming, they make use of their privilege to call on their daughter's fiancé to help work their field. Any social functions, such as ceremonies for the individual souls of the principal members of the girl's family, are attended by the young man. If a death occurs in either family during that interval, attendance at the funeral and wakes is obligatory, and presents must be given.¹ If a wɩnti, a god, troubles a member of the girl's family with demands involving an expenditure beyond the means of the immediate family, and contributions are called for from relatives, good form requires that the suitor also make some contribution. In return, the man enjoys the right to share the meals of the girl's family whenever he comes to the house, though as a discreet suitor, he does not impose too greatly on this prerogative. The ‘church marrying’ need not take place when the marriage is consummated, if the couple do not have enough money to meet the expenses of the marriage fee and the marriage-feast and dance that go with the performance of a ‘White man's marriage’.

In reality, though all matings conform to this pattern to some degree, the whole of it is rarely carried through. What generally obtains is that a man and a woman decide to live together and establish their household in a one-room cabin in one of the yards. To the extent to which they are anxious to stay on good terms with their respective families, they will make gifts, and go through as many of the requirements of the ideal condition outlined above as is necessary, or as they can afford. The dearth of men in the colony, because of the operation of the economic factors we have discussed, allows the burden of marriage to rest but lightly on the men. Thus a mature woman, who is well established in the market and has means of her own, may take a fancy to a younger man and support him until such time as she discovers that he has formed an attachment for a younger woman. An older, well-to-do man, who may have gone through a marriage which had followed closely the lines of the approved form of courtship and a marriage ceremony, may choose, in addition to his legal wife, a young girl with whom he has a family under a free relationship. In some respects this may be said to follow the African pattern of polygyny which obtains at the present time among the Bush-Negroes of the colony. Such a mating, however, is not wholly sanctioned by the community, and the relationship resembles similar ones which occur among the monogamous Europeans. Thus, the term dɔro-sei̯ pikin, ‘outside children’, - that is, illegitimate offspring - is applied to the children of such matings, though no stigma attaches to these children

1 In Dahomey, this duty of attending the funeral of the father or mother of his fiancée or wife is the first duty of the engaged man or son-in-law toward the woman, and should this duty be neglected, the engagement is broken or divorce pronounced, as the case may be.

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in the community in which they live their lives. Indeed, though the sanctioned pattern calls for a legalised wedding, the real emphasis is more on the prestige given by the wedding feast, with the display of wealth it entails, than on the legalising ceremony itself. Not very many such weddings take place, and it is not too rarely that one occurs after the pair to be married had lived together long enough to have children of their own, or even grandchildren, for wedding attendants.

Yet, though matings which are legal from the point of view of the law of the colony are far from the rule, the use of the term ‘marriage’ to describe the matings among the Paramaribo Negroes is ethnologically none the less valid. If marriage is defined as a socially sanctioned mating, then innumerable instances of non-legalised matings as secure, as long-lived, and as socially honorable as any performed in church or registry office can be found among the Negro community of Paramaribo. These are marriages where many of the requirements of the ideal way of getting a mate have been carried out, where the man and woman have lived together on good terms with each other and their respective families, and where their children have held together as a recognised unit in the social whole. No definite marriage ceremony precedes such matings, though during the year there may perhaps be ‘birthday parties’ for the young couple, and they may, if they can afford it, gi tafra - ‘provide food’, - for their souls, so that these may live together amicably.

Relationships, once established, may be dissolved as a result of the operation of several factors. A man and woman may get on badly because they had unwisely disregarded that they were both born on the same day of the week. Having been born on the same week-day, - Thursday, let us say - they both have ‘Thursday souls’, and this, it is believed, makes for conflict, since both derive their springs of action from the same source. The two may have tried to guard against this difficulty, yet the souls refuse to live together. The effect is the inevitable clash of temperament, - unaccountable bursts of temper, and general disharmony; and the result is that one of the two becomes ill and goes to a diviner to discover what has brought on this illness. If the diviner discovers that it is because the souls are incompatible, the two separate. Another reason for separation lies in the belief that sometimes a man's wɩnti (god) or a woman's wɩnti forms a dislike for the spouse. In such a case, there will also be difficulties of adjustment and, at the advice of the wɩntimąn who is consulted, separation will ensue. In the majority of instances, however, marriages are broken because of infidelity on the part of the man or woman. Where the man neglects his wife, resentment arises out of the fact that his new mate is given money gifts, for this neglect takes the form of smaller and smaller contributions toward the support of his family.

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As this situation becomes more apparent to the woman, she shames him by going about in public in her oldest clothes, seeing to it that she appears, clothed in this way, where he happens to be. Another effective protest, antecedent to actual divorce, takes the form of the wife's refusal to cook for the man.¹

Often, at this stage, magic is called in to aid the woman, who uses what money she possesses to pay a diviner to reveal to her a means for keeping her husband. She may also go to a skilled maker of charms to find out how she can ‘tie his soul’, or, if matters go from bad to worse, she may go to a practitioner of black magic to get charms with which to avenge herself.

There is no other single factor which, among these people, shares psychologically the importance of potency and fecundity as an essential to human happiness. So much stress is laid upon this, that by far the greater part of innuendo, gossip, and ridicule lodges in situations involving impotence and infertility. The greatest threat, when an appeal to black magic is implied in a quarrel, is to bring about these conditions. Certainly in marriage, the fear that a neglected wife or a deserted husband may bring about sexual failure by employing such means is a notable factor in preventing separation, - a fear that is particularly strong since, through intimacy of contact, it is not difficult to obtain hair or nail-clippings, or some bit of clothing effective for such use.

The means to which a woman resorts to secure the constancy of her husband, or her lover, fall into three categories. A woman may avail herself of a love-charm, - an opo - or she may have recourse to ‘tying his akra’, - controlling his soul - or she may obtain from a practitioner of black magic ‘medicine’ concocted of herbs to which either the man's hair, finger-nails, a bit of cloth saturated with his perspiration, or a piece of his wearing apparel is added, and which causes him to be potent only when with her. A man who is given such ‘medicine’ is thought unable to perform the sex act when he goes to lie with another woman, and thus is subjected to the ridicule attaching to such incapacity.

An opo, the principle of which we shall explain later,² is a charm which gives the possessor power over the will of another. It is made by a dealer in magic, and the knowledge of how to make it and give it power is kept as a professional secret by the maker. It is used not only by a woman to retain the affection of her husband, but by a man to insure his wife's fidelity; thus, one such opo, described by an informant who was assured of his wife's constancy by its use, was stated to operate in such a way that, if she were to

1 We note, in this connection, that many of the women's songs recorded by us among the Ashanti, in a village where European influence is at a minimum, contained the theme of complaint made by women against their men for giving them no meat to put in their stew.

2 Pp. 99 ff.

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go to another man, the menstrual flow would come as soon as she attempted to have sex relations with him.

If the method of ‘tying the soul’ is employed, the actual technique may take several forms. One way is for the woman to use a black pot made by the Bush-Negro women of the interior, a type of pottery much prized both in the bush and in the town for its inherent magical properties. With a knife she scrapes the bottom until she has about a teaspoonful of the scrapings, and this she puts into the man's food. That night, when the man is asleep, she gets up softly in order not to waken him, pours a little rain-water into the black pot, and places a candle in it. She then places this pot at the man's head, as he sleeps. Taking up a piece of white thread, she tries to waken the man sufficiently to elicit a grunt from him, having care, however, not to bring him to full consciousness. After the third response from him, she quickly makes a knot in the string, and lights the candle. If she means to free his soul later, she keeps the string, for when the knot is untied, his soul is released; otherwise she throws it away so that it is in no danger of being found by the man should he ever become aware that she had ‘tied his soul’. The special term that is employed for this is kroi̯ ʾa mąn, - ‘tie the man’. Still another way to cause the man to desire no other woman is achieved by taking the head of a ground-lizard, smoking it until it is dry, and pounding it until it is reduced to a powder. The powder is then put into the black pot, and to it is added perspiration from the woman's face, or else the black pot is held under the woman's arm until sufficient perspiration has dropped into it. This mixture of perspiration and powdered lizard's head is mixed with the food eaten by the man, or put in the rum he drinks, and the same result is believed accomplished.

To protect himself against such charms, a man provides himself with a tapu, a preventive against all magic designed to impair his virility. In addition, he stimulates desire by drinking rum into which has been put the scrapings from a fish called kutai.¹ The female of this species is used for this potion, its efficacy lying in the fact that it is believed to menstruate. The fish is cleaned and left to dry in the sun, or is smoked until dry, and scrapings are then put in rum, so that after two or three days this mixture is ready for use. A small glass of this mixture drunk daily, though not necessarily before coitus, is held to be excellent. We may refer once again in this connection to the medicine made of the ‘seed’ found inside the manatee, as an erotic stimulant for men.

The man can, as suggested, avail himself of the use of magic to insure his wife's fidelity, and to accomplish this he may, with a few minor differences in its execution, resort to the first of the two methods described above. The principal difference lies in the fact

1 Encyc., p. 412, states this name is given to fish of the order Anablebs Anablebs and Anablebs Microlebis.

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that the man does not put anything into the woman's food, the reason for this being that since men have nothing to do with the preparation of food, any man discovered beside the cooking pot would arouse very serious suspicions. However, a woman's hair being long, he has the advantage of tying his wife's soul with her own hair, instead of using a piece of thread or string. The controlling element in this magic is that it involves the principle of ‘tying’,¹ which in itself is an important category in magical devices for subordinating one will to another, and its particular duties are defined in the formula which is pronounced when the tying is done. These formulae follow a definite pattern of making a compact with the supernatural force employed.² The man's formula, in this instance, would be: ‘Just as I tie this hair, so I tie you, Akra Abena (Tuesday Soul), and not until someone finds this to untie the knot, is A... (here is spoken the woman's name) to attempt coitus with any man, other than myself, without the menstrual flow appearing directly to make this impossible.’ The instructions to the soul vary with the ends that are desired. The soul might be told to feel loathing for all men but himself; or to bring violent pain to the woman when about to perform the sex act with another; or to shame her by inducing an instantaneous attack of diarrhea when about to have connection with another.

Though the use of menstrual cloths, either by men or women, is thought to be so abhorrent as to be classed with the practice of black magic, it is possible to devise a charm for fidelity of the type we have described by taking such a cloth to a practitioner and having him use it to achieve the same results as those sought in the ‘tying’ of the soul. Black magic does, indeed, enter on occasion, but when this is called into play, it is for revenge after desertion, and is intended to bring sterility, impotence or death. In our ensuing discussion of wisi, - black magic - the way in which this is manipulated will be explained.

When separation occurs, the children remain with the mother. If she is unable to care for them herself, her mother, if living, takes all or several of the children, or a sister or a maternal aunt cares for one or more of them, as economic conditions permit. Sometimes a younger sister comes to live in the cabin to look after the children while they are young and their mother is away selling in the market, or is in service. If because of extreme poverty the mother's family is unable to care for the children, and the woman herself has no means with which to feed them, the children find homes in strange families as kweki. The term kweki as applied to such children is difficult of definition, but literally it means that they become

1 In Dahomey there is a whole category of magic charms which involve the principle of ‘tying’. In Haiti, too, the concept of ‘tying’ - in this case of ‘tying’ a spirit, a loa - is present. Cf. Parsons, (I), p. 163.

2 See below, story No. 141.

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attached to certain households which engage to bring them up. Frequently these children are given homes because of friendship for their mother, or some member of her family, but a kweki is not an adopted child. If the kweki are intractable, or shiftless, they can be sent back to their families, and furthermore, they have no claims on the families with whom they live, beyond the expectation of being fed and clothed in exchange for the work they do as members of the household. Abuses in the treatment of these children are, nevertheless, but seldom heard of, and very often they are sent to school as are the children of the household.¹ In Paramaribo itself the institution of the kweki has far less currency at the present time than it had in former years.

Whether the children, after separation between a man and a woman, remain with the mother, or go to their maternal grandmother or aunt, or are sent as kweki to outside families, they identify themselves with the family of their mother, and it is to the mother's family they come when in trouble. This obtains despite the fact that a child's food taboos come from the father, that in particular the strength of the soul of a boy depends upon the father's friendliness toward him while in his mother's womb and thereafter at least through early childhood, and that, on occasion, the sons especially may inherit the father's personal god, or gods, - his wɩnti.

It is not intended to convey, however, that there is no affection between a father and his children after the separation of the parents, particularly if the children are sufficiently grown to know him as an individual; or that a father may not help provide for them after separation. Such significant divergence, however, as is found to exist from the pattern of identification with the mother and her family when separation occurs may be said to stem from three separate causes, any one of which may at the same time be interrelated with another, or with the other two. The first is the emotional factor which enters where the father's personal feelings toward his children dictate an interest in their well being, and this may be qualified also by the importance which is attached to fruitfulness, and a generalised feeling that it might be displeasing to his own ancestors if he allowed the young children to experience want. The second is the factor of acculturation to European modes of thought, which manifests itself more often in determining the disposal of material possessions at death to a man's own children, rather than to a brother, or a sister's children. The third, which is perhaps most important of all, is that not all of the African ancestry of these

1 It may be said, perhaps, that the European system of apprenticeships of earlier days more nearly describes the role of the kweki in the homes to which they go, or that the institution of the kweki, as such, is even more akin to the African system of ‘pawns’ for family debts, though in the instance of the kweki no debt is involved.

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people derived from regions where descent was traced through the female line,¹ and that while the conditions of slavery favored the institution of maternal descent, the paternal descent groups did not lose their own traditions.

It must be stated, however, that emphasis is always placed among these people on the ties toward the mother and her family, and that the responsibilities held binding are those which bear upon relationships through the mother. One illustration of the importance of the association of children with the mother is given in the folktales, where, as in African stories, we see clearly that an orphan is a child without a mother and never one who has lost his father.²

1 Among the Yoruba and the Dahomeans, descent is patrilineal; in Ashanti, matrilineal as far as family membership and the inheritance of property are concerned.

2 Thus, in Dahomey, the term for orphan is nochiovi, lit. ‘mother-dead-child.’ This illustration may be of some significance as throwing light on the reference to ‘motherless child’ in American Negro spirituals. One of the best known of these spirituals is ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.’