Family of things

Loincloth worn by Eddie Smart, obiaman (healer) in a Creole winti dance group. (translation of the second paragraph of the archival ticket in the Museum System. See Fig. 1).

To come back to the question whether this is a Ndyuka cloth: I actually have no way to verify this, and I wonder why Dubbelaar and Pakosie brought it up in their monograph on Ndyuka Afaka script.

The owner of the cloth was a man named Eddie Smart. He was a member of a Creole dance group. And, though the archival ticket is not specific on this matter, I take him to be a Creole himself. In Suriname, Creoles are the descendants of the released slaves that worked on the plantations, and are thus different from Maroons like the Ndyuka, in that they did not flee into the rainforest.

Eddie Smart was the obiaman of this Creole dance group. In Afro-Surinamese beliefs, be it Maroon or Creole , a winti spirit may enter the body of a person, and use it as a vehicle to materialize and apply obia, best understood as ‘all things with winti power’. Eddie Smart was a vehicle, the obiaman. He became the hands and feet for the spirits.

Winti, meaning wind, is omnipresent. It is the air around us; it is our breath. Likewise, spirits are everywhere and in everyone, and therefore they are also called winti. In short, winti are ‘the gods and spirits which rule the destiny of the universe.’ See Herskovits & Herskovits 1936, p 61 The winti that live with and within us reveal themselves in dance and trance. The obiaman and the dancers play a role in inviting and negotiating with the winti. This is no small feat, since the winti pantheon is crowded.

I know Eddie Smart just as well as you do: he is Creole and an obiaman. Besides his loincloth, the National Museum of World Cultures has more from Eddie Smart’s obia wrokosani (‘working kit’). All of these were brought to the Netherlands by Van Wengen. Let us take a look:

There is a dark blue cotton shoulder cloth trimmed with white cotton (no image available) and a dark blue angisa scarf with white flower motifs (Fig. 3), used as decoration or on the obiaman’s head during rituals. These two obia are a color match with the loincloth.

There is a gin bottle wrapped in red, white and blue cotton fabric (Fig. 4). The obiaman drinks dram from it, medicinal alcohol (consisting of 90% alcohol, because that is what the winti crave). There is also a little red cotton medicine pouch with powerful cowrie shells attached to it (Fig. 5). His paraphernalia also includes a spirit whip made out of a stick with real hair tied to the end with red cotton (Fig. 6). His other obia include his Indian krakomki bowl with its calabash spoon, used to invoke the winti inside us humans (Fig. 7); an ornamented apatye krabasi (Fig. 8), two calabashes where one fits into the other, turning it into a box for dresi ('medicine’) (Fig. 9-10). The museum also has Eddie Smart’s obiaspikri, an essential mirror that an obiaman needs to see the reflections of the winti that possess the sick. There is a chain from cowries, kernels and stones (Fig. 11) and a metal buoy wrapped with blue cotton, giving the obiaman strength (Fig. 12). This buoy was made by the Maroons ; maybe the loincloth was made by them as well? In any case:

A. Lot. Of. Things.

I wonder why Eddie Smart parted with all of this. The last object that I found in the collection makes this question all the more urgent: Smart gave Van Wengen his doll (Fig. 13). The doll is made of wood, and is dressed in dark blue fabric with white motifs. Hair is attached to its face. It carries a red hat and shoulder cloth. It has cowry eyes and small, detailed jewelry. This doll belongs in the dwellings of the obiaman; he worships it and makes offerings to it; in return the doll protects the obiaman against evil forces, and helps him to gather the superpowers needed to perform the rites and healings.

This loincloth was part of a family of objects that assisted Eddie Smart in his work as obiaman. There are several visible and conceptual elements that tie this family together. One element really stands out: the use of cotton fabric. Red, white and blue.