a938: Bwa Kayman: Muslim or Taino? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tim White <timwhite@rockisland.com>

From: Tim White timwhite@rockisland.com
>What do Corbeteers think about this Islamic-Boukman-Bois-Caiman theory?
>Nekita

Here is one alternative to Bois Caiman as Bwa Kay Iman:

"The priest-shaman led the assembled villagers. They beat hollow log drums,
rattled maraca, sounded bamboo tubes, and sang and danced to the spirits.
Initially they lapsed from consciousness to stupefaction. Then their arms
and legs went loose, their heads nodded...In frenzied intoxication they
danced until overcome by a trance-like possession of communion with their
ancestors from the underworld and the overworld. The spirits imparted
information, orders and prophecies. Some claimed this ceremony culminated in
sexual orgies...Finally the participants collapsed into a stupor, and their
companions carried them to their hammocks for a deep sleep."

An early account of a vodun ceremony?

Though I place it in quotes, the above is fused paraphrase of early Spanish
chroniclers Father Ramón Pane and Fernández de Oviedo Y Valdés, graphically
portraying the focal religious rite of the Taino, the cohoba ceremony.
Through hollow "Y"-shaped tubes, the Taino snuffed the dried pulverized
seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina (formerly named Piptadenia peregrina), a
large shading tree of the mimosa or Leguminosae family preferring lowland
tropical savannas. Growing up to sixty-five feet tall and two feet in
diameter, the black-barked tree bears a profusion of long, curving, slender
brown-black pods, each containing a row of up to fifteen thin, flat roundish
glossy-brown seeds the size of fingernails.

Anadenanthera species are known to have been snuffed by Native Americans
from Chile to Cuba. Cohoba contains the hallucinogen DMT as the primary
psychoactive constituent. Contexts for Indian use run the gamut from
heightening physical courage and sharpening battle and hunting prowess, to
aphrodisiacal orgies and recreational intoxication. Yet more commonly the
snuff is employed as among the Tainos—to induce visionary trances, to
communicate with their zemi spirits and ancestors, for prophecy and
divination, for healing and protecting the community from sickness.

The "peregrina" of the Latin name "Anadenanthera peregrina" denotes
"pilgrim".
Haitians know the tree by its common name, perhaps inspired by the bark:
"alligator tree", or "bwa kayman". ("Kayman" is Taino for "alligator". )
The town of Las Cahobas preserves the Taino name for the tree, the snuff,
and the ceremony.

So Bwa Kayman...a grove of alligator trees? Taino? Vodun? You decide.

For the heart of the matter, hear Boukman Eksperyans leader Lolo Beaubrun,
describing their music to the Vancouver Sun (June 26, 1993):

"[Our] music comes from the temple, the temple of Vodou. Not the Voodoo
stereotype, like a black magic doll. I’m talking about the African religion
which meets the Indian religion [in Haiti]. That religion we call Vodou. It’
s more than religion, it’s a culture, and we took our religion from that
culture."