Atlantic Creolization: Enslaved Africans Maintain and Adapt Cultural Practices Under Surveillance

Through the first half of the eighteenth century, enslaved African people in the colonies developed sophisticated strategies for maintaining African cultural traditions while adapting to colonial conditions. Forbidden by law in most colonies from using drums — which colonial authorities correctly understood as communication tools — enslaved people developed substitutes: hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and the body-percussion practice of patting juba. Ring shout worship — a shuffling circular dance to chanting and handclapping that preserved West African religious movement — was practiced in brush arbor gatherings away from white surveillance. Enslaved Muslims maintained prayer practice in secret. African naming traditions, foodways, medicinal plant knowledge, and craft techniques (basket-weaving from specific West African traditions survives to the present day in South Carolina's Gullah-Geechee community) were transmitted across generations. Praise houses and informal gatherings became sites of community formation and information-sharing. Enslavers tried to disrupt African cultural continuity by mixing people from different ethnic groups to prevent communication, but cross-group bonds formed anyway.