Voodoo in the United States

The origins of voodoo in the Western world are found in the days of the African slave trade which began in the early 16th century. Most slave trading during that time focused on the conquest of the tribes of Western Africa. Three West African groups were particularly targeted for the American slave trade: "The Yoruba of present-day Nigeria, the Fon of Dahomey (present-day Benin), and the Kongo of what are now Zaire and Angola" (Brown 297). These various tribes each had unique beliefs regarding the spiritual world. At the same time, however, "all these West Africans had certain basic beliefs

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ca came to clash with Catholic beliefs, in the United States, the confrontation was primarily with the Protestant religions. In particular, the Church of England sought to Christianize the African slaves in a way which would severely limit their opportunities for retaining their traditional beliefs. In fact, "when the Church of England brought pressure on the American colonies to instruct the Africans in the Christian religion, laws were instituted with severe penalties against teaching the art of reading to slaves, in order that they might be catechized" (Barrett 184). As a result, compared with the other regions of the Western Hemisphere, it may be said that "in the United States the gods of Africa died" (184). There were two other basic reasons that African beliefs evolved differently in the United States than in the Caribbean or Latin America. First, the African slaves in the United States were separated from one another to a much greater extent than they were in the other areas. For this reason, the American descendants of African tribes had fewer opportunities for contact among each other, "thus inhibiting ethnic groupings necessary to sustain cultural solidarity" (185). Secondly, the African traditions in the United
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Approximate Word count = 2571
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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