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Show ' An Old-TIme Negro Dance. From George W, Cable's illustrated paper, in the.February Century, accompanied accom-panied by the music of the Creole dances, we quote the following : "It was a weird one. - The negro of colonial Louisiana was almost -grotesque .figure. . He.. was nearly naked. . Often his neck and arms, thighs, shanks, and . splay feet, ..were shrunken, tough, sinewy like a monkey's. Sometimes it was - scant diet and cruel labor that had made them so. Even the requirement of law was only that he should have not less than a" barrel of corn nothing else a : month, nor get more than thirty, lashes to the twenty-four twenty-four hours. The whole world was cruder those times than now; we must not judge them by our own. ...... "Often the slave's attire was only a cotton shirt, or a pair of pantaloons hanging hang-ing in indecent tatters to his naked waist. The bond-woman was .well clad , who had on as much as a coarse chemise and petticoat. pet-ticoat. To add a tignon a Madras handkerchief hand-kerchief twisted into a turban was high gentility, and the number of kerchiefs beyond that one was the measure of absolute ab-solute wealth. . Some .were' rich in tig-nons, tig-nons, especially those, who served . within the house, and pie ased the . mistress, or even the master there were Hagars in those days; : However, Congo Plains did hot gather the house-servants so .much as the 'field-hands.' " ' "These came . in troops. , See them ; wilder than gypsies;., wilder than, the Moors and Arabs whose strong blood and features one sees at a glance in so many of them ; gangs as they are called gangs and gangs of them, from this and that and yonder direction j tall, well-knit Senegalese from Cape Yefde. black as ebony, with intelligent,' kindly eyes and long, straight, "shapely" noses; Mandin-goes, Mandin-goes, from the Gambia River, lighter of color, of cruder form, and a cunning that shows in the countenance ; "whose enslavement en-slavement seems specially a shame, their nation .'the merchants of Africa,'dwelling in towns, industrious, . thrifty, skilled in commerce and husbandry, and expert in the working of metals, even to silver and gold; and Foulahs," of goodly stature, and with a perceptible,, rose tint in the cheeks ; and Sosos, famous warriors, dexterous dex-terous with the African targe ; and in contrast con-trast to these, with small ears, thick eyebrows, eye-brows, bright eyes, ilat, . upturned noses, shining skin, wide mouths : and white teeth, the negroes of Guinea, true and unmixed, un-mixed, from the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast, and the Cape of Palms not from the Grain " Coast ; the English had that trade., See them come ! "Popoes, Cpto-colies, Cpto-colies, Fidas, Socoes, Agwas, .short copper-colored Mines what havoc the slavers did make r and -from interior Africa others equalty' proud and warlike : fierce Nagoes and Fohds; tawny Awas- sas ; Iboes, so light-colored that one could i not tell them from mulattoes but for their national tattooing; and the half-civilized and quick-witted but ferocious Arada, the original Vpudou worshiper. And how many more ! For here come, also, men and women from all that, great t Congo coast Angola, Malimbe, Ambrice, etc. small good-natured, sprightly 'boys,' and gay garrulous 'gals,' thick-lipped but not tatooed ; chattering, singing, and guffawing guffaw-ing as they come ; these are they for whom the dance and the place are named, the most numerous sort of negro, in : the colonies, the Congoes and Franc-Congoes, and though serpent worshippers, yet the gentliest and kindliest natures that came from 1 Africa. Such was the company. Among these bossals that - is, native Africans there was, of course, an evergrowing ever-growing number of negroes who proudly called themselves Creole negroes, that is, born in America ; and . at the present time there is only here and there an old native African to be mat with, vain of his singularity and trembling on his staff." |