Combs & Images

When researching Herskovits, we learned that he found connections between the cultures of Africans in Africa and those of Africans in the Americas. In his book, Rebel Destiny, he postulated that the Bush Negroes, descendants of enslaved Africans brought with them to Suriname the culture of their ancestors. The Saramaka people (as the Bush Negroes called themselves) were maroons who escaped from plantations owned by the Dutch and English. Saramaka culture is a fusion of multiple West and Central African cultures. Even though the Saramaka had been kidnapped from Africa hundreds of years ago and were thought to have lost their culture, examples of their atavistic memory are striking. Cooking techniques, carving, weaving, spiritual practices and language all persisted to some degree. One example is the craft of metal smelting, and the use of brass nails to embellish their artwork. The nails served to mimic the custom of body scarification practiced throughout Africa. Herskovits found evidence that even with foreign influence terrorizing them and discouraging their culture, the Saramaka retained what he dubbed Africanisms, or distinctive features of African culture.

In Saramaka culture, as well as in Africa, tropical hardwoods were carved into combs. These combs are carved by men and are embellished with brass head nails, ornate designs and motifs. They are given as courting gifts to a potential bride and her mother to prove a suitor’s worth. Once given the comb, the woman who owns it is the only one who can give it away or sell it. The comb cannot be given away without her consent, and if it is, it is considered to be disrespectful. The combs are both symbolic and functional to Saramakan culture. 

As Herskovits explained in his book, Rebel Destiny: 

“Aside from the decorated Apinti drum, only some of the workaday art forms of Africa—combs, paddles, mortars, among other such objects—were retained. For their decoration, the designs that in Africa had been cut into the base of figures or about the borders of masks had been remembered and reinterpreted in terms of the ancestral cults. And from those memories the Bush Negroes (Saramaka) had developed the unique art which is theirs.”

Melville J. Herskovits, Rebel Destiny. (New York, London: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1934). 284