Major Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in North America All North America Virginia/Maryland S. Carolina/Georgia Lower Mississippi West Central Africa Bakongo, Ndgongo, Loango, Teke Bight of Benin 40% Mina, 25% Yoruba, 15% Aja/Fon/ Arada, Hausa, <1% Edo (Benin) Gold Coast Fante, Akim Bight of Biafra 80% Igbo (mostly female), Ibibo/Moko, Ijo, Ekoi, Bioko Senegambia -  40% Mandingo, 25% Wolof, 20% Bamana, Fulani (a/k/a Fulbe, Fula, Peul), Sereer, Kanga Sierra Leone Temne, Mende, Gola Colors correspond to colors on maps pictured above. Ethnicities are listed roughly in order of frequency among North American slaves for their region of origin in Africa. Percentages and geographical locations are approximate.  Data from Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas and Michael Gomez's Exchanging Our Country Marks.

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall believes that most African-Americans can trace their African lineage to Igbo or Wolof women.  Notably, the ethnicities claimed as the source of Africanisms in African-American quilts are in the minority or even completely absent.  

These ethnic mixes are very different not only from each other, but from slave populations in Caribbean and South America. Demography significantly affected the forms that African-American culture would take in each region, as did the US ban on slave importation in 1808, which reduced the influx of new Africans to a trickle.   By the 1830s, when patchwork quilts were first being made in significant numbers, 95% of American slaves were US-born, without any firsthand knowledge of African textile traditions. 

Part II

Cloth in subsaharan africa and Europe 

Cloth in subsaharan Africa 

Until the late 19th century, most West Africans' daily experience was with locally produced, traditional plant-fiber textiles. Many were very similar to the simple stripes and checks fabric worn by average Europeans.   

With one exception, textiles indigenous to subsaharan Africa are made from plants:  probably in order of use, these are tree bark, raffia, and  cotton.  Oral history says the Igbo wore barkcloth before they learned to weave:  While recovering from a hunting injury, a man watched a spider, and decided it would be safer to hunt with a net than a spear. He made a prototype net out of "bush-rope", and showed it his wife, who said "This is cloth, and it's better than the barkcloth we wear because it doesn't shrivel when it gets wet. Make me cloth like this and I will wear it." After many tries and more spider-watching, the man developed a loom. "This cloth is too coarse!" said his wife, so he switched from bush rope to raffia. "And the man lived to be very old and was a great chief and a great hunter. For it is good for a man to be a great hunter, and it is good for a man to please women."

But without a mordant, or binding chemical, dye will not bond to these fibers.  And only India had developed this technology for vegetable fibers; Europeans did not learn it until the mid-1600s and it was never adopted in Africa.  The only animal fiber, wild silk, was used in its natural, silvery-beige state; typically it was woven in subtle, alternating stripes with natural cotton.  From Senegal to Cameroun, indigo produced shades and tints of blue.   Most barkcloth naturally oxidized to shades of brown, and Angola's Kongo blackened thread for embroidery on beige raffia cloth.  Printing or stamping techniques were not used until the 19th century, but in Mali the Bamana painted black designs on natural-colored cotton fabric with iron-rich mud. 

Early European visitors left detailed (and obviously fascinated) descriptions of West Africans' spectacular hats, decorative scarring and hairstyles, and massive gold jewelry, and how even average people wore cloth - the way they wrapped it on their bodies, or the cut of their clothing. They also described, and brought back to Europe as curiosities, a few specific African textiles for which there is no European corollary:  barkcloth, Bakongo raffia cloth and Yoruba tie-dye. But to other fabrics these otherwise extremely observant men make only passing references other than to size; they are simply "striped," or "white," or "blue" "country cloth".  They note the narrowness of fabric woven on strip looms, but say next to nothing about the appearance of the assembled cloth.  Their near-silence is less puzzling if we compare precolonial West African cottons to European and American homespun cottons and linens:  the fabrics these explorers saw on most West African farmers, craftsmen and tradeswomen were not substantially different from those which their European counterparts wore every day.  The "women's cloth" Africans wove on vertical looms was even the same width as European fabric (18-30"). 

One difference regularly remarked on, however, was the superb quality of West African blue dye, especially among the Yoruba.  Africa's native indigo contained the same compound (indigotin) as the woad used in Europe, but in much stronger concentrations, which was further enhanced by repeatedly dyeing the fabric and then beating it until it shone with an almost coppery iridescence. (In some communities women also used blue dye as a cosmetic on their eyebrows, hands and feet; the total effect, particularly combined with gold or brass jewelry, must have been dazzling.)

Visiting Europeans' impressions of 17th and 18th century West African dress. From left:  Sierra Leone woman dancer (probably in natural color wild silk/cotton); Sierra Leone man in striped "country cloth" and Moslem-style tunic; Mende man in plain and striped "country cloth"; "Dahomean noblewoman; Gold Coast chief's wife (mesh may be coral beads) and country girl with decorative scarring; Angolan woman in checked wrapper; Angolan man in raffia cloth with embroidered border and decorative animal skin.  All from the image collection assembled by Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite, Jr. at the University of Virginia.

A significant way wealthy or powerful Africans evidenced that wealth and power was in the textiles they wore and acquired. Except in certain ritual situations, lack of personal embellishment was looked on as carelessness. Certainly it raised questions about an individual's ability to provide for his subordinates and fulfill his social obligations.   Among the Loango, observes Phyllis Martin:

[In the 17th century, d]ressing well in fine raffia clothes was not only aesthetically pleasing. It was also a true display of power since the cultivation of trees, the processing of threads, and the weaving of cloths represented an investment of labor that only big men could control.

Cloth in Europe and America

Most everyday European cloth was blue and brown.  But because wool and silk take dye easily, by the 18th century many Europeans could afford patterned fabrics in vivid colors, including printed cottons from India. 

In Europe and America, wool was the most common fiber.  Like silk it takes dye easily; dyers' guilds had operated in Europe since medieval times, producing a wide range of hues.  Blue (from either indigo or woad) was by far the most common color - in fact, until the 17th century it and brown were virtually the only colors for cotton and linen, which were often woven into checks and stripes.  Because England taxed intercolonial commerce, most early Americans wore locally-produced homespun fabric, colored with local or imported dyes.  Before the Industrial Age, textile production was labor-intensive at every step, so few people had more than one or two outfits.  

Left to right: 1737 French cottons, c.1780 swatchbook of French silks, c.1795 swatches of English striped and patterned woolens.  Click for details.

But by the 18th century, the cost of colored and patterned cloth was not out of reach to people of reasonable means, even in the distant American colonies. A fashionable man might combine breeches of imported nankeen (yellow cotton) with a green wool or silk coat and a vest brightly embroidered by his female relatives in florals imitating Indian designs. Women aspired to vividly-colored silks and hand-painted prints from India, France or England, or England's "new draperies" - lightweight woolens with patterns woven in color combinations that seem lurid to modern eyes.  In larger American towns, printers such as Benjamin Franklin's brother offered to stamp plain (usually linen) fabric with knockoffs of the motifs found on expensive Indian hand-painted cottons.  Those who could not afford imported prints and brocades could embroider their clothing with designs in multicolored silk or wool.

War with England - first the Revolution, then the War of 1812 - seriously curtailed imports of dyes and fabrics, so Americans gamely embraced local textiles as a practical way of expressing their independence not only from England but from the fashions (and, by implication, attitudes) of royalty.  With a few brief hiatuses, the shortage lasted until 1817, and to some extent the US got out of the imported-fabric habit.  By the 1830s it had developed a booming textile industry, producing millions of yards of affordable, multicolored cotton prints which spurred the development of the patchwork quilt. In Europe and America printed cotton fabric's ubiquity eliminated much of its cachet, but in Africa it remained an imported novelty until the 20th century. 

West Africa and European textiles

Every culture regards imported goods as a symbol of wealth and power. Europeans traded for African gold and ivory; West African elites collected imported European textiles in vivid colors.  But aside from the Fante people, average West Africans wore simple plain, checked, or striped cloth in white, blue or brown.   

Arab caravans had brought limited amounts of colored silk and wool cloth to subsaharan Africa from Europe, India, and North Africa since the Middle Ages.  But because the tsetse fly native to subsaharan Africa's wooded areas would kill their camels, once Arab caravans crossed the savannah to the forest edge, they had to transfer their goods to human porters - whose cost they passed on to consumers.

When European ships arrived on the West African coast in the late 15th century, such fabrics became more available, at least to elites. A single Portuguese trade vessel carried as much fabric as dozens of porters, and could reach coastal regions all but untouched by caravan routes.  From Morocco the Portuguese brought hambels, wool blankets with wide stripes of white, red, blue and green (which may have been used for their yarn); from Europe they brought luxury brocades, fine woolens, and, later, printed cotton. These were gifts for, or sold to, rulers and the new merchant class building its wealth on European trade. 

16th-18th c. European silk brocades. Click for details.	Imported goods as symbols of power Whatever their place of origin, the rarity and cost of imported objects often makes them suitable for ritual use, or as emblems of power.  Brightly colored textiles were scarce in Africa, but gold and ivory were plentiful; the reverse was true in Europe.  Both cultures used the rare and exotic to embellish ritual objects.  In Africa, imported fabric covered the king's stool, wrapped religious carvings, and was unravelled and rewoven into local cloth. In Europe, African gold became crowns and scepters, encased the relics of saints, and covered the thread used to embroider royal robes and church vestments.  Imported textiles' exotic appeal in subsaharan Africa is further evidenced by a trend that developed among some rulers: amassing huge caches of fine fabrics from Europe, Asia, and other parts of Africa which they set aside and, when they died, had buried with them.   Even though Loango itself was a center of textile production, when its king died in 1624, he was buried with thousands of yards of imported fabrics.
Wealthy members of society also adopted this practice of textile hoarding - which, John Thornton argues, may account for much of the European fabrics imported into the region; most may never have been worn.   Some African cultures still follow this tradition  today, displaying piles of carefully folded, unused (and mostly imported) textiles at funerals of the well-to-do.
West African taste in European textiles  European textile traders had a vested interest in accurately recording West African taste. Their notes refute the claims of late 19th century explorers, missionaries and amateur ethnographers that Africans preferred cheap fabrics with "gaudy" or "loud" colors and "tacky" designs.  In fact, during the 17th and 18th century, the textiles most desired in Africa were not much different from those favored in Europe and America. In both parts of the world, vivid "Turkey" red and multicolored hand-printed Indian cottons, colorful silks, and costly damasks and velvet were the height of fashion.  Red and green perpetuana, from a c.1750 swatch book Among the fabrics England exported to West Africa was a soft, woolen twill fabric called "perpetuana", which came in many colors including red and green.  West African weavers unraveled it and rewove the yarn into their own textiles. The red yarn from "Turkey" red and white striped cotton was also used in the same way. Also popular was brightly-colored "waste" (short fiber) silk, either as yarn or as fabric which was unraveled and rewoven.   Aside from fancy European striped silks and English woolens, before 1800 most of the textiles imported to West Africa were manufactured in India. Among the most popular cottons from India were cotton checks (chilloes), plain muslin (calico), lightweight blue and white stripes (nicanee), coarsely-woven cotton in natural, red or blue (baftas or "bafts") similar to that used in today's Indian block-print bedspreads, block prints (indiennes or guinees), later imitated by the French, and tie-dyed red or yellow fabric about a yard square (bandhani or romauls), the ancestors of today's bandanas, which England later copied (two samples here, made in Manchester c.1750).  Imports were overwhelmingly cotton. During the late 18th century, 95% of British/Akan dealings included cotton romauls, which came in "Asantee" red, "soot blue" and "fine blue," and brown; silk romauls and German and Irish linen were also a frequent item of trade. (A detailed list, from Alpern's "What Africans got for their slaves: A master list of European trade goods", can be found here.)  Imports of European textiles were severly limited during the American Revolution, but after England mechanized textile production in the early 1800s, English cottons took the lead over those of other countries, including France.       Cost of imported textiles But during the Diaspora, such textiles were beyond the reach of average West Africans - if they ever saw them at all.  From 1680-1870, sufficient European fabric for a toga-like body wrap was equal in value to a new musket, or about four times the value of undyed strip-woven Wolof cloth. At the beginning of the 18th century, European traders noted that two muskets or three or four of these "lengths" of fabric could buy a slave; seven muskets or six lengths of nicanee bought a hundred pounds of ivory. In 1807, a length of taffeta had the same value as three muskets, 15 brass pans or basins, or 500 pounds of salt.   Even in the 1860s, after mass-produced English cottons replaced Indian handwovens, the same amount of ivory could be purchased for only 23 muskets or 25 romauls - about four pounds of ivory per musket or bandana. During the 1860s, textile imports to West Africa averaged about three yards per capita annually. But during the years slaves were being exported to America, imports averaged less than half a yard per person per year.  European fabrics' rarity and cost meant that during and for decades after the Diaspora, imported textiles were luxury items that had no effect on West African textile production.  In Sierra Leone, for example, textiles never reached 25% of imports.   The sole exception is during the last quarter of the 18th century among the Akan, whose coastal Fante people acted as middlemen between British traders and the inland Asante kingdom. At that point European textiles played a role in almost every transaction between the Fante and British, and constituted more than half of all imported goods (compared to only 12% for weapons). By the 1780s, unlike every other coastal people, most Fante were wearing cloth from England or India. Increased access these textiles and their brightly-colored yarns culminated in what is regarded as the golden age of Asante kente weaving.   For the Asante, says Metcalf, textiles were the sole reason they had any trade with Europe at all. sources NEXT: Earliest West African Textiles