h appeared in the
_Century Magazine_ in 1886. In this case it seems to have been an
importation from the West Indies. I have never found an account of a
genuine instance of voodoo worship elsewhere in the United States,
although it seems to have been common enough in the West Indies at one
time.

My own impression is that the amount of African tradition which the
Negro brought to the United States was very small. In fact, there is
every reason to believe, it seems to me, that the Negro, when he
landed in the United States, left behind him almost everything but his
dark complexion and his tropical temperament. It is very difficult to
find in the South today anything that can be traced directly back to
Africa. This does not mean that there is not a great deal of
superstition, conjuring, "root doctoring" and magic generally among
the Negroes of the United States. What it does mean is that the
superstitions we do find are those which we might expect to grow up
anywhere among an imaginative people, living in an intellectual
twilight such as exists on the isolated plantations of the Southern
States. Furthermore, this superstition is in no way associated, as it
is in some of the countries of Europe, southern Italy for example,
with religious beliefs and practices. It is not part of Negro
Christianity. It is with him, as it is with us, folk-lore pure and
simple. It is said that there are but two African words that have been
retained in the English language. One of these is the word Buckra,
from which comes Buckra Beach in Virginia. This seems remarkable when
we consider that slaves were still brought into the United States
clandestinely up to 1862.[5]

The explanation is to be found in the manner in which the Negro slaves
were collected in Africa and the manner in which they were disposed of
after they arrived in this country. The great markets for slaves in
Africa were on the West Coast, but the old slave trails ran back from
the coast far into the interior of the continent, and all the peoples
of Central Africa contributed to the stream of enforced emigration to
the New World. In the West Indies a good deal was known among
slave-traders and plantation owners about the character and relative
value of slaves from different parts of Africa, but in the United
States there was less knowledge and less discrimination. Coming from
all parts of Africa and having no common language and common
tradition, the memories of Africa which