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Queering Creole
Spiritual Traditions
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender Participation
in African-Inspired Traditions
in the Americas
This page intentionally left blank
Queering Creole
Spiritual Traditions
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
and Transgender Participation
in African-Inspired Traditions
in the Americas
Randy P. Conner, MA
with David Hatfield Sparks, MM, MLIS
ROUTLEDGE
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
New York London
'JSTUQVCMJTIFECZ
5IF)BXPSUI1SFTT *OD "MJDF4USFFU #JOHIBNUPO /:
7KLVHGLWLRQSXEOLVKHGE\5RXWOHGJH
5IJSE"WFOVF /FX:PSL /:
1BSL4RVBSF .JMUPO1BSL "CJOHEPO 0YPO093/
3PVUMFEHFJTBOJNQSJOUPGUIF5BZMPS'SBODJT(SPVQ BOJOGPSNBCVTJOFTT
© 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm,
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher.
Photo of Eric Lerner by Patricia Lerner. Used by permission.
Excerpts from Bert Hoff (1993), “Gays: Guardians of the Gates, an Interview with Malidoma
Somé.” Used by permission of Bert Hoff and MenWeb <http://www.menweb.org>.
Excerpts from chants by AfraShe Asungi used by permission of MAMAROOTS/Asungi Productions.
Excerpts from Elizabeth McAlister (2000), “Love, Sex, and Gender Embodied: The Spirits of
Haitian Vodou,” in Love, Sex and Gender in the World Religions, Joseph Runzo and Nancy M.
Martin (Eds). Used by permission of Oneworld Publications.
Excerpts from Christ on the rue Jacob © 1995 by Suzanne Jill Levine and Carol Maier, translators.
Published by Mercury House, San Francisco, CA, and reprinted by permission. <http://www.
mercuryhouse.org/sarduy.html>.
Excerpts from Elizabeth Sayre (2000), “Cuban Batá Drumming and Women Musicians: An Open
Question.” Used by permission of the Center for Black Music Research.
Excerpts from Afefe Tyhimba (2000), “Making the Saint.” Used by permission of New Times.
Excerpts from “Call,” Copyright © 1986 by Audre Lorde, “The Winds of Orisha,” from COLLECTED
POEMS by Audre Lorde, Copyright © 1997 by the Estate of Audre Lorde. Used by permission of
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Excerpts from John Malathronas (2003), BRAZIL: LIFE, BLOOD, SOUL © John Malathronas.
Used by permission of John Malathronas and Summersdale Publishers Ltd.
Excerpts from the song “SuperHomem” by Gilberto Gil reprinted by permission of Preta Music,
Inc.
The photographs of Carlos Alfonzo (with Lydia Cabrera), and Juan Boza are reprinted with
permission from Ileana Fuentes, Director, Outside Cuba/Fuera de Cuba project (Rutgers
University, 1984-1990). They accompanied the artists’ biographical essays in Outside Cuba/Fuera
de Cuba: Contemporary Visual Artists (Ileana Fuentes, Graciella Cruz-Taura, and Ricardo Pau-
Llosa, co-authors. Rutgers University and University of Miami, 1989); Boza’s photograph taken by
Jeffrey J. Rocco at the opening of the Outside Cuba exhibition at the Atlanta College of Art, March
20, 1989. Outside Cuba/Fuero de Cuba: Contemporary Cuban Visual Artists/Artistas Cubanos
Contemporaneous. Miami: University of Miami, 1989, pp. 246 and 206.
Photo of Dorothy Randall Gray by Ann Chapman, 1998. Used by permission.
Cover design by Jennifer M. Gaska.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conner, Randy P.
Queering creole spiritual traditions : lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender participation in
African-inspired traditions in the Americas / Randy P. Conner ; with David Hatfield Sparks.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56023-350-8 (alk. paper)—ISBN 1-56023-351-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Homosexuality—Religious aspects. 2. Afro-Caribbean cults. I. Sparks, David Hatfield. II.
Title.
BL65.H64C67 2004
299'.6'08664—dc21
2003011305
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
Joseph M. Murphy
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Background 1
Overview of Book 8
A Note About Terms 13
Chapter 1. Sources 19
Creole Spiritual Traditions: A Bird’s-Eye View 19
Sexual and Gender Complexity in Yorùbáland? 21
Other Possible African Influences 31
Possible Indigenous Influences of the Western
Hemisphere 44
Chapter 2. Divinities and Spirits 51

Lwa of Vodou 55
Orishás of Yorùbá-Diasporic Spiritual Traditions 65
Spirits of Brazil 81
Chapter 3. Children of the Spirits 89

Divine Horses 89
Masisi and Madivin 95
Bigotry in the Vodou Community 98
A Bridge of the Spirits 99
Adés, Ekedes, and Others 101
Practitioners of Lucumí/Santería and Related Religions 106
Drag Queens, Transgender Persons, Transsexuals 112
Prohibitions and Discrimination within Yorùbá-Diasporic
and Allied Communities 115
Divination and Interpretation 129
Challenges and Transformations 135
Relationships and Ceremonies of Union 140
HIV/AIDS, Afro Ashé, and Odô Yá 141
Notions of Self in African-Inspired Spiritual Traditions 150
Chapter 4. Snapshots 157

Practitioners of Vodou 158
Practitioners of Lucumí/Santería/Regla de Ocha,
and Other Cuban- and Puerto Rican-Linked Traditions 161
Practitioners of Candomblé and Other Brazilian Traditions 188
Practitioners of Orishá Reverence, the Ifá Tradition,
and Bridge-Builders 194
Chapter 5. To Make the Spirit Manifest 229

Literature 235
Music 261
Visual Arts 275
Conclusion 307
Appendix A. Questionnaire 319
Appendix B. Interviews and Correspondence 323
Glossary 325
Bibliography 339
Index 361
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Randy P. Conner, MA, PhD candidate, has taught at the University

of Texas, Austin Community College, Florida Atlantic University,
and in northern California. He has been studying African and Afri-
can-diasporic traditions since the mid-1970s and is a practitioner of
both Vodou and Santería. Mr. Conner has been involved in the queer
movement and in LGBT studies since 1973. In 1974, he taught the
University of Texas’ first seminar on lesbian and gay literature. Mr.
Conner is the author of Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming the Connec-
tions Between Homoeroticism and the Sacred (1993) and co-author
(with his partner David Hatfield Sparks and their daughter) of
Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit, the first
book ever produced by a “queer” family. His work has also appeared
in The Advocate, Parabola, Papers on French Seventeenth-Century
Literature and the anthologies Queerly Phrased and Sexuality and
the World’s Religions.
David Hatfield Sparks, MM, MLIS, is a musician, ethno-
musicologist, educator, and librarian in northern California. He has
studied African-diasporic sacred and popular music extensively, and
has published on the music of Gilberto Gil in the Afro-Hispanic Re-
view. He is a co-author of Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth,
Symbol, and Spirit. His work has also appeared in This Bridge We
Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. He is currently at
work on books on African-diasporic music and on being a gay parent
raising a daughter.
Foreword
Foreword
This is a work of wide learning and empathy. Randy Conner, with

his life partner and co-researcher David Hatfield Sparks, has opened
a path to the crossroads of sexual identity and African spirituality. It
is a fascinating and underacknowledged intersection which they doc-
ument to have a vital and indispensable place in the African-derived
religious traditions of Haitian Vodou, Cuban Lucumí, and Brazilian
Candomblé.
They begin with an extensive review of the literature on gender
complexity and same-sex intimacy in traditional African societies.
Although mindful of the problems in applying Western categories of
gender to non-Western cultures, they make a persuasive case that
most traditional African societies recognized same-sex intimacy as
an identity and supported spiritual practices in which it was a part.
They move on to examine the complexity of gender identities and
homoeroticism among the spirits venerated by the traditions and
among the devotees themselves. Through careful reading of the
ethnographic record and stunning interviews with devotees, they
show that nearly every spirit in the pantheons of the African diaspora
has an androgynous or homoerotic “road” or identity. In the inter-
views devotees speak of how the gender complexity of the deities has
allowed them to express that same complexity within themselves.
These “snapshot” interviews are the high point of the book, in which
queer priests and priestesses from the United States, Cuba, Haiti, and
Brazil speak with authority in their own voices.
This is not to say that all practitioners of African traditions in the
diaspora have welcomed queer people. Conner writes that he has
been frequently disappointed by the homophobia expressed by priests
and priestesses within the traditions. This is a brave book, for it
names names, both of the detractors and the champions of queer
participation in spirituality. Conner and Sparks show that Vodou,
Lucumí, and Candomblé have been neither a heaven nor a hell, but
they have consistently offered images of deities and opportunities for
spiritual expression that have nurtured queer people from Africa to
ix
X QUEERING CREOLE SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS
the Americas. As a male Brazilian priest declared when he was

taunted for manifesting a female spirit, “Laugh, make jokes, call me a
bicha, but I serve the Orixá and she comes to me, that is the way it is
and everyone can just go to hell if they don’t like it.”
In the Conclusion, Conner writes, “As academics—and perhaps
especially as queer academics—I think we tend to focus far too much
on gender and sexuality . . . and far too little on care, compassion,
concern, generosity, affection, empathy, and love.” Although Conner
and Sparks do full justice to the caution and precision of academic re-
search, Queering Creole Spiritual Traditions is a work of great com-
passion. It gives voice to spiritual people in their full dignity and
complexity, working to be true to themselves and the spirit.
Joseph M. Murphy is an associate professor in the Theology Department at

Georgetown University. His works include Santería: An African Religion in
America (1988); Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora
(1994); and the anthology (with Mei-Mei Sanford) Òsun Across the Waters:
A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas (2001).
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Gloria Anzaldúa, whose 1981 interview with Eduardo

Mejía and José Vigo inspired this project. To Eric K. Lerner, whose
correspondence, filled with valuable advice and encouragement, nur-
tured my faith in those bleak moments when I felt like abandoning
the project. To Lázaro Pérez Moré, who opened the doors to Cuba to
my partner and myself and who has become a spiritual mentor to me.
Thanks to others who have profoundly nurtured my spiritual growth:
Mama Lola, Alina V., Roberto Carlo Hernández Ferro, Babaláwo Mario
and Olga of Havana, Luisah Teish, Miriam Chamani, Oswan Williams
Chamani, Guillermo González, Paolo Herzig, Maria Concordia, Rosie
Parilla, Vern Morley, Imani Ajaniku, Awo Onifade Sangodare, and
Yeye Ifé Joanne.
Thanks to Teresa Brennan, Stefanie Gapinski, Ron Antonin, Jane
Caputi, Jane Day, John Jamieson and Ayal, Lynne Bentley-Kemp, and
others involved with Florida Atlantic University’s Public Intellec-
tuals Program, who encouraged me to journey to Havana, and to
Karen Haskell of LMC. Thanks to Rey Rolo Garcia and his mother,
Carlos and Luis, Olivia King-Cantor and Lázaro Medina-Hernández,
Estela de Varona, Rosa and Jolie, Sonali, Regla, Olga, and other
friends whose hospitality made Havana seem like home and who
introduced my partner and me to many members of the Yorùbá-
diasporic spiritual community there.
Thanks to Ana Sisnett, Maria Odette-Carivell, Mike García, Nora
Kelly, Roberto Barrueta, and Zaida Fuentes for valuable assistance in
translation, and to the following individuals for their support, inspira-
tion, and, in some cases, constructive challenges: Adrian Ravarour,
Afefe L. Tyehimba, Afolabi, AfraShe Asungi, Albert Cordero, Alberto
Jones, Alfonzo Moret, AnaLouise Keating, Angana Chatterji, Aníbal
Mejia, Anne Lescot, Antoinette Jean, Arisika Razak, Asotto Saint,
Audre Lorde, Awódiran Agboolá, Blackberri, Carol Murphy, Caro-
lyn Brandy, Casselberry and DuPreé, Dottie Curry, David Cusick,
Eahr Joan, Eduardo Mejía, Efthimios Kalos and David, Efunyemi
and Ayodele, Emilio Bejel, Ernesto Pichardo, Francisco Suárez Mar-
xi
xii QUEERING CREOLE SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS
tell, Houngan Aboudja, Ivor Miller, Jim Wafer, Joe Kramer, Jorgé of
Habana Vieja, Jorge Ferrer, José Marmo da Silva, José Vigo, Julio Mi-
chael Morejón Medinos, Karen McCarthy Brown, Kathy McIver, Kay
Turner, Kemit Amenophis, Kevin Greene, Kola Abimbola, Lázaro
Ros, Lisa Jones, Lola Bell Taylor, Louis Martinie, Lucia Birnbaum,
Luis Marín, Luiz Mott, Magaly, Mambo Racine Sans Bout, Mariah
Sparks and Prado Gomez, Mark M., Mark Thompson, Michael Page,
Nereida Garcia-Ferraz, Ocha’ni Lele, Patrice Suncircle, Patrick Belle-
garde-Smith, Patrick Marks, Peter Fry, Philip Neimark, Quimbisa,
Ramón Alejandro and his sons, Regla Albarrán Miller, Reinaldo
Reina-Rodriguez, Roger Abrahams, Sean Kelly, Sheila Walker, Sobonfu
Somé, Star/Estrella, Susan Hurlich, Tânia Cypriano, Terry Rey, Tomás
Fernandez Robaína, Tony Molina, Uzuri Amini, Valeria De Sasser
Silva, Vigi Molfino, Willie Ramos, and Winston Leyland.
Thanks also to Donna Barnes, Tim Bronstein, Patricia Brown,
Rebecca Browne, Tara Davis, John DeCecco, Paul Deamer, Jennifer
Gaska, Anissa Harper, Shelley Jones, Dawn Krisko, Peg Marr, Rob
Owen, Bill Palmer, Josh Ribakove, Sandy Sickels, Julie Ward, Jason
Wint, and others at The Haworth Press who have assisted in the pub-
lishing of this text.
I would like to thank my partner and fellow traveler, David Hat-
field Sparks. Without his assistance (hence the “with”) as researcher
(his degrees in music, ethnomusicology, and librarianship have proven
invaluable to my work, especially where anthropology, ethnography,
and aesthetics are concerned), interviewer, and critical reader—not to
mention sharing myriad conversations with me concerning “queer
identity” and African-inspired traditions, attending ceremonies with
me, and helping to make my dream of traveling to Cuba become a re-
ality—this book would have never been written. David would like to
acknowledge those persons I have already mentioned, as well as Dr.
Gerard Behague of the University of Texas, who nurtured his interest
in the music of African-diasporic religions.
Finally, I would be amiss if I did not honor my mother and my part-
ner’s parents, my ancestors, especially Margaret “Maggie” Lundschien
(my maternal grandmother), beloved feline muses Puck, Pyewacket,
Tireslas, and Luci, and the many faces of the divine—including the
lwa and orishás—to whom I dedicate this book.
Introduction
Introduction
I have not forgotten your worship.
Audre Lorde, “Call”
BACKGROUND
I trace this text’s conception to 1981, when my friend Gloria

Anzaldúa (This Bridge Called My Back [Moraga and Anzaldúa,
1981]; Borderlands [Anzaldúa, 1987]; This Bridge We Call Home
[Anzaldúa and Keating, 2002]; etc.) asked me if I would like her to
interview two gay men friends of hers in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
where she was living at the time. Gloria (pictured with José Vigo in
this section) knew that my partner David Sparks and I were gathering
data on gay men and spiritual practice; she was also aware of my
growing interest in African-inspired—also known as African-based,
African-derived, African-diasporic, and Creole—spiritual traditions.
Eduardo Mejía and José Vigo were knowledgeable of these. Of
Puerto Rican heritage, they were familiar with the practices of Lucumí
(also called Santería and Regla de Ocha) and Espiritismo in both
Puerto Rico and the New York area. While Vigo approached these
traditions as a scholar, Mejía was a practitioner.
On hearing the tape, I realized that these men were engaged (aca-
demically or ritually) in traditions that differed in marked respects
from the so-called major faiths (Judaism, Christianity, etc.) and con-
temporary spiritual traditions and movements (such as neopaganism,
Wicca, etc.). Much of what they said about these African-inspired
traditions, which have been reformulated in the West, called to mind
ancient religions or traditions such as shamanism and those practiced
by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Maya, and others, traditions that em-
brace multidimensional reality, multiple manifestations of the divine,
initiatory rites, divination, magic, and healing. It also became appar-
ent to me that these were spiritual traditions practiced by gay people
1
2 QUEERING CREOLE SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS
of color. In the early 1980s, one rarely found gay people of color par-
ticipating openly in spiritual contexts other than in some liberal
Christian churches. Certainly, few gay people of color took part in
neopagan, Wiccan, and Radical Faerie (roughly, neopagan-leaning,
anarchist-leaning gay men) circles at that time. Here were gay men
and other “queer” persons who resonated with Gloria’s “border-
crossers” and her vision of “El Mundo Zurdo” (the “left-handed
world”), a vision that my partner and I shared with her and helped her
to nurture in a reading series at Small Press Traffic in San Francisco.
Gloria Anzaldúa and José Vigo
I first became aware of African-diasporic sacred traditions in the

early 1950s through Lola Bell Taylor, an African-American house-
keeper who was my closest companion in early childhood. I often
visited her home in a small east Texas town, inhabited primarily by
African Americans, where I played with her children and learned to
appreciate nature. When I read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, it
reminded me of the years I was fortunate to share in Lola’s life. I have
rarely spoken of the intense friendship that Lola and I shared, due to
its arising from a Southern institution of surrogate parenthood, inex-
tricably tied to racism. I know, however, without a doubt, that she
loved me and that I loved her, and that I probably would not have be-
come an activist in the civil rights movement had I not known her. I
recall when I realized that we were having a picnic by the side of the
Introduction 3
road rather than eating in a favorite family restaurant because she

could not enter the establishment in Richmond, Texas. I also remem-
ber drinking from the “colored” fountain with her when I realized
that she could not drink from the “whites only” one. I remember
when one day, as she was scrubbing the bathtub, I asked her, “Are
black people the same as white people?” “God made us all,” she
smiled, “and red blood flows in everybody’s veins.” I do not think I
would have become so interested in African-derived sacred traditions
were it not for her influence. I recall an instance when she and I were
watching an old movie about the Salem witch trials; she looked at me
and said, “Don’t believe that. Tituba was a good woman.” Like my
maternal grandmother (of Lithuanian heritage, a midwife and farmer
who practiced table rapping, her closest companion being a tarot
reader), and unlike my parents, Lola believed in spirits, in multidi-
mensional reality. Together, they, who were great friends (I can still
see us talking and laughing in the garden as we picked okra and toma-
toes), taught me that Spirit flows through all things. They nurtured
my creativity and accepted my gender-diverse behavior when oth-
ers—particularly my father—ridiculed and physically abused me.
Indeed, I honor Lola and my grandmother for protecting me from my
father’s wrath; I have no doubt that I would not be alive today were it
not for them and my mother.
Of course, like many others, I was introduced to African-Cuban
spirituality without being aware of this, when Desi Arnaz, as Ricky
Ricardo on I Love Lucy, sang the popular praise-hymn to “Babalu(ayé),”
the Yorùbá orishá of serious illness and potent medicines. Also like
many others, I learned something of African-Brazilian traditions
from the 1959 masterpiece Black Orpheus, which we watched in hu-
manities class in high school. Unfortunately, I was also “exposed” to
these traditions, as many have been, by way of racist, xenophobic
films and television shows—mostly on “zombies.” Attending college
in Austin, I learned more of Vodou, Santería, and Candomblé from
African-American and Latino friends and by reading studies of these
traditions; I recall that Gloria gave me a copy of one of Migene
González-Wippler’s (1975) books on Santería, and that this book led
me to many others.
In the late 1970s, when I moved to San Francisco, I became aware
of botánicas, stores where spiritual supplies for African-diasporic
and folk-Catholic traditions were sold. Although Gloria Anzaldúa
and I often spoke with the proprietors of these shops, it was not until
early 1981 that I became closely acquainted with a practitioner of one
of these traditions. A man who was working at a popular ice cream
parlor in San Francisco had contracted hepatitis but continued, know-
ing that he was ill, to serve customers. I became extremely ill. Fortu-
nately, no one else living in our co-op house in Noe Valley became in-
fected. I made several visits to a doctor, which proved futile. I remember
lying in bed, as Gloria and my partner David read to me, thinking to
myself, I am drifting into death. One morning, Gloria decided to call
Luisah Teish, an African-American writer, performer, and Yorùbá
priestess she had recently met while working on This Bridge Called
My Back. She asked Teish if she had any ideas. I then spoke with
Teish on the phone. She suggested an herbal bath and a prayer. Gloria
and David went out and got some candles, herbs, and other ingredi-
ents. I did as Teish had said. I was well within a week. Would it have
happened anyway? Possibly, but I doubt it. This, more than any other
experience I had had since knowing Lola in childhood, incited my in-
terest in African-diasporic spiritual practice.
In 1986, I was asked to write an article for The Advocate on gay
people in African-diasporic traditions (Conner, 1987). I interviewed
the few practitioners and artists I knew at the time who might have
something to say on the subject, gay people as well as heterosexual
allies—Teish, Guillermo González, AfraShe Asungi—and got up the
nerve to phone three of my favorite artists who had been inspired by
these traditions—poet/essayist Audre Lorde and musical duo Cassel-
berry and DuPreé, who were extremely popular at that time. Shortly
after that I joined a spiritual household for a very brief period.
Although its head and I respected and cared for each other, marked
differences led to a mutual decision that I would leave his household.
After I left, I became somewhat disengaged from these traditions,
at least where practice of them was concerned; moreover, my partner
and I returned to Austin, Texas, where these traditions were sup-
pressed, except for an occasional appearance by Teish, thanks to the
women’s spirituality community there. Austin’s laissez-faire attitude
(embodied by Willie Nelson) does not extend to African-diasporic
traditions; as is true of most cities in Texas other than San Antonio, its
Protestant community—especially among those populations that might
otherwise practice African-diasporic and indigenous faiths—exerts an
extremely powerful reactionary influence. My scholarly interest in
Introduction 5
these traditions did not, however, wane. Indeed, my partner’s interest

in them increased substantially as he studied ethnomusicology and
anthropology at the University of Texas; he took classes on African-
Brazilian music with Dr. Gerard Behague and wrote his master’s the-
sis on the impact of Yorùbá-diasporic religious music on popular Af-
rican-Caribbean and Latin American music (including such musi-
cians as Gilberto Gil, Celia Cruz, Willie Chirino, Lázaro Ros, Mezcla,
and Sintesis). I was fortunate to be able to audit a class in African-
diasporic religions taught by Sheila Walker, one of the wisest and
most inspiring professors I have encountered.
When David and I were vacationing in New Orleans in 1991, we
visited a Vodou temple in the French Quarter and met, at the Voodoo
Spiritual Temple, a priest and priestess of New Orleans Vodou (which
differs in some respects from Haitian Vodou), Oswan and Mother
Miriam Williams Chamani. Our daughter, Mariah, had met them the
year before on a high school trip and had encouraged us to visit their
temple. They were extremely kind to my partner and me; we found
them wise, generous, and jovial. They sensed that David and I had a
deep connection to the Gedes and the Bawons, particularly to Bawon
Samdi. Our connection to the realm of the dead has, incidentally, sur-
faced in subsequent divinatory consultations by other practitioners of
African-diasporic and other sacred traditions. Oswan gave us two
small, smooth, gray stones that he said would protect us. Miriam gave
us two small black-felt dolls filled with Spanish moss and complete
with male genitalia, which she said could serve as spirit dolls. Not
long after, she sent us a doll she had made especially for us, of Papa
Legba, spirit of the crossroads. On Monday evenings, we meditate
before the figure of Legba. With his red-and-white-striped suit and
cap and the knapsack (macout) of sweets he carries on his back, he re-
minds me of Santa Claus. David smokes a cigar in his honor while I
offer him rum, coconut, and peppermint candies, and we pray to him
to open the roads.
During the 1990s, my partner and I continued to pay visits to the
Voodoo Spiritual Temple and to receive spiritual consultations from
Priestess Miriam. In 1993 I published Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming
the Connections Between Homoeroticism and the Sacred, which in-
cluded chapters on African and African-inspired traditions. Responses
to this work culminated in my making connections with many more
practitioners and scholars of these traditions. In the mid-1990s, we
returned to California, where, in the midst of working on the Ency-

clopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit (Conner, Sparks, and
Sparks, 1997) with David and our daughter, I began once more con-
ducting interviews with practitioners, scholars, and artists engaging
with these traditions.
I decided to write the present book for numerous reasons. The rea-
sons that guided me during the early years of researching and writing
included a desire to understand how “gay spirituality,” roughly
speaking, the interrelationship of same-sex intimacy and spiritual ex-
perience—including its Radical Faerie manifestation—might be ex-
pressed within the context of other spiritual movements and tradi-
tions (especially those beyond Christianity and Judaism, which have
already been commendably explored), as well as a desire to approach
the spiritual practice of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender
and transsexual persons in a more ethnographic or anthropological
manner than I had attempted in the past.
As time went on, writing this book also became a kind of protest
against numerous practitioners—most of them heterosexual—who
made it known that they did not think I should be writing such a book,
that it could only be “divisive.” One priestess whom I respect told me
“this isn’t a good time.” Although I said nothing at the time, I won-
dered when the right time might arrive. Rather than viewing the book
as divisive, I increasingly saw its writing as a necessary response to
the significant amount of homophobia and transgender-phobia I wit-
nessed within spiritual traditions that had allegedly “moved beyond”
these forms of bigotry. I became increasingly determined to honor in
some particular way those queer-identified practitioners and artists
who have made significant contributions to these traditions but whose
gendered or sexual identities have been submerged or suppressed
even as their other identities—African American, African Brazilian,
Cuban, Haitian, Latino, etc.—have been foregrounded and cele-
brated. I hope that their presence herein may serve not only to support
other LGBT practitioners of African-diasporic traditions or religions
but also to nurture other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/trans-
sexual spiritual practitioners as they struggle against bigotry discov-
ered in other religions, and as they strive to lend their voices to, and to
contribute creatively to, Christianity and other faiths.
I have been inspired by numerous earlier works that treat this gen-
eral subject, most notably the writings of Ruth Landes (1940), Peter
Introduction 7
Fry (1985), João Trevisan (1986), Jim Wafer (1991), Patricia Birman
(1985, 1995), and James Sweet (1996) all of whom have focused on
sexual and gender complexity in African-Brazilian spiritual tradi-
tions. Very few works have looked at African-Cuban traditions in this
light; most notable are Tomás Fernández Robaína’s essay “Cuban
Sexual Values and African Religious Belief,” included in Ian Lumsden’s
Machos, Maricones, and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality (1996),
and Roberto Strongman’s “Syncretic Religion and Dissident Sex-
ualities” (2002). Even fewer works on Vodou have treated this subject
in depth. In her essay “Love, Sex, and Gender Embodied: The Spirits
of Haitian Vodou,” Elizabeth McAlister of Wesleyan University
notes, “Of all the anthropologists who have been fascinated with
Vodou, none has taken its (homo)sexualized aspects as a serious topic
of studying and theorizing” (McAlister, 2000, p. 135). Finally, in
2002, an illuminating documentary on this subject, Des Hommes et des
Dieux, by Anne Lescot, appeared (Lescot and Magloire, 2002).
Although I have tried to keep theorizing to a minimum, I have been
especially inspired by the “complexity theory” of Edgar Morin (Morin
and Kern, 1999), the aesthetic, anthropological, and ethnographic
writings of Mikhail Bakhtin (1984), Gloria Anzaldúa (Moraga and
Anzaldúa, 1981; Anzaldúa and Keating, 2002), Will Roscoe (1998),
and Serena Nanda (1990), and by theoretical approaches employed in
recent works on African, African-inspired, and neopagan traditions
and movements, including Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A
Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (1991 [2001]), J. Lorand Matory’s Sex
and the Empire That Is No More (1994), Susan Greenwood’s Magic,
Witchcraft, and the Otherworld: An Anthropology (2000), Sarah M.
Pike’s Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and
the Search for Community (2001), Jone Salomonsen’s Enchanted
Feminism: Ritual, Gender, and Divinity Among the Reclaiming Witches
of San Francisco (2002), and Michael Atwood Mason’s Living Santería:
Rituals and Experiences in an Afro-Cuban Religion (2002). These
works share in common an emphasis on subjectivity (roughly speak-
ing, how one identifies oneself and is identified, often in terms of ex-
pressing “multiple selves”) and agency (roughly, how one enacts
identity/subjectivity or identities/subjectivities).
OVERVIEW OF BOOK
Chapter 1 of this book, “Sources,” introduces the reader to Afri-

can-diasporic spiritual traditions/religions, as well as to their African
origin and New World manifestations, and considers the possible
roles that African and indigenous American cultural traditions may
have played in the emergence of expressions of sexual and gender
complexity within these traditions. Chapter 2 introduces the reader to
faces of the divine in these faiths that express gendered and erotic/
affectional complexity. Incidentally, space does not permit me to pro-
vide histories of sexual and gender complexity (nor of their relation-
ship to the sacred), nor in-depth explorations of African-based tradi-
tions. For readers who would like to pursue these more general topics
in greater depth, I would recommend works listed in the bibliography
by Brown (1991 [2001]), Conner, Sparks, and Sparks (1997), Cosentino
(1995a,b), Deren (1983), Dow (1997), Feinberg (1996), Galembo
(1993), González-Wippler (1975, 1985, 1989, 1992), Gordon (2000),
Grahn (1984), Greenberg (1988), Hurbon (1995), Hurston (1938
[1991]), Métraux (1972), Mott (1990, 1998a,b), Murphy (1988, 1994),
Murray and Roscoe (1998), Rey (1999), Teish (1985), and Verger
(1957, 1981, 1989, 1995). For those who wish to explore histories of
same-sex intimacy and gender diversity in Brazil and Cuba (I know
of no in-depth studies of this kind on Haiti), I would strongly suggest
reading the works of Trevisan (1986), Wafer (1991), Birman (1985,
1995), Lumsden (1996), and Roscoe (1998), as well as Lourdes
Arguelles and B. Ruby Rich’s essay “Homosexuality, Homophobia,
and Revolution: Notes Toward an Understanding of the Cuban Les-
bian and Gay Male Experience” (1990), Stephen O. Murray’s Male
Homosexuality in Central and South America (1987), Richard G.
Parker’s Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contem-
porary Brazil (1991), Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith’s an-
thology ¿Entiendes?: Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings (1995),
Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin’s anthology Hispanisms and
Homosexualities (1998), Don Kulick’s Travesti: Sex, Gender, and
Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (1998), James
N. Green’s Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Cen-
tury Brazil (1999), José Quiroga’s anthology Tropics of Desire: Inter-
ventions from Queer Latino America (2000), and Emilio Bejel’s Gay
Cuban Nation (2001).
Introduction 9
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on practitioners. The former, “Children of

the Spirits,” is devoted primarily to written historical and ethno-
graphic accounts, and the latter, “Snapshots,” is comprised of inter-
views with individual practitioners conducted between 1981 and
2003. In terms of the interviews included here, I have followed a
practice similar to that described by Urvashi Butalia in her remark-
able study The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of In-
dia (2000):
The difficult decisions come when one wants to try to figure

out what to include and what to leave out. . . . In presenting the
interviews to the reader, I have taken the liberty of narrativizing
them. . . . I do not believe that the transcript of any interview can
ever be an unmediated text. . . . Given this, I thought it pointless
to pretend that the interviews could appear before the reader in
some “pure” form, and I have edited them into what I feel is a
more readable form. [As] I was shaping the interviews, I felt I
needed to point out what, for me, was significant. . . . [H]ow
people define their self-identities, and how these identities get
represented, are two different things. I am deeply aware that my
representations of the experiences of [interviewees] are, after
all, my representations, selectively illuminated by my concerns
and priorities. (pp. 11-14, 279)
Once I decided that interviews would play a significant part in this

text, my partner David and I set out to interview lesbian, gay, bisex-
ual, transgender, and transsexual practitioners of the Yorùbá-diasporic
traditions/religions and Vodou. I hoped to reach a balance in terms of
the numbers of interviewees expressing each of these identities or
subjectivities. Despite my efforts, this was not to be. One rather dis-
heartening attitude that I discovered in interviewing practitioners was
that many—including lesbian, gay, and bisexual practitioners—express
prejudice against transgender and transsexual individuals. This ap-
pears to have resulted in a much smaller transgender/transsexual
membership in these spiritual communities than I at first imagined, as
well as in the silencing (including self-imposed) of practitioners who
might have interviewed with me had they felt more comfortable in
doing so. Prejudice against transsexual/transgender practitioners con-
tinues to puzzle me, as these are traditions—please bear in mind that I
am referring to their diasporic manifestations, which have been pro-

foundly Westernized, rather than to their traditional African expres-
sions—that revere divinity not only in nongendered, traditionally
masculine, and traditionally feminine forms, but also in forms em-
bodying sexual and gender complexity (including androgynous,
gynandrous, or what some have termed “alternate gender,” “third-
gender,” “gender-bending,” “gender-crossing,” or “gender-diverse”
forms).
Beyond my disappointment in interviewing transgender/transsex-
ual practitioners, I found lesbian practitioners somewhat less willing
to interview with me than were gay male practitioners. This may have
been due in part to my being a gay man. In certain cases, I think it may
also be to their tendency to foreground their identity as “women” in
these traditions over their identity as “same-sex oriented.” Contrary
to what some scholars have said, I have found that essentialization of
the feminine plays a key role in African and African-diasporic ex-
pressions, especially in terms of motherhood, nurturing, and charm.
Their acceptance as women may or may not permit lesbianism to ex-
ist, but if it is present, it is rarely foregrounded. The interviews of les-
bian practitioners and artists that do appear here, however, in my
view, enrich this text significantly.
I was surprised that I encountered very few self-identified bisexuals
during the researching and writing of this book. I expected to dis-
cover more self-identified bisexual male practitioners among those I
interviewed in Havana, but this proved to be a mistaken assump-
tion—although one santero there told me it was common for gay
male practitioners to have bisexual, nonpractitioner lovers. One of
my U.S. female interviewees felt that her present exploration of bi-
sexuality might not meet with approval among her lesbian friends
and fellow practitioners.
Where the various traditions/religions are concerned, adherents of
Yorùbá-diasporic ones seemed more willing to interview than adher-
ents of Vodou; indeed, one Haitian gay oungan living in Paris insisted
that I delete his interview at the last moment. This surprised me at
first, as none of the heterosexual priestesses of Vodou I know, includ-
ing Mama Lola and Miriam Chamani, have any problem with gay
godchildren speaking as such; later, however, I learned of homophobic
prejudice within the Vodou community. In general, gay male and les-
Introduction 11
bian practitioners of Vodou have seemed much less willing to speak

as such in interviews than practioners of Yorùbá-inspired traditions.
Lack of funds also resulted in my not being able to interview as
many practitioners and artists as I had hoped. For this reason, I was
not able to travel to either Brazil or Haiti. After spending a lengthy
period of time attempting, unsuccessfully, to raise the money to visit
Haiti and Brazil before completing this book, I decided its comple-
tion could wait no longer. Fortunately, I was able to visit Havana three
times, in 2000, 2002, and 2003. I also traveled extensively in the
United States, including to New York, Maryland, Florida, Louisiana,
Illinois, and my home state, California. For this reason, most of my
interviews have been conducted with Cuban and North American
practitioners and artists of Yorùbá-diasporic traditions practiced in
these places, especially of Lucumí/Santería and the “Orishá,” or
“Ifá,” tradition (associated with but distinguished from the Ifá priest-
hood of babaláwos). Fortunately, a number of practitioners, scholars,
and artists affiliated with Brazilian and Haitian traditions have com-
municated with me via telephone, mail, and e-mail. As it has turned
out, a majority of the individuals I have interviewed identify as per-
sons of color, primarily of mixed African, indigenous American, and
European ancestry. A majority are also highly educated; a number are
educators and artists. Most are working class or middle class; none,
to my knowledge, are wealthy.
I should note that as the years passed, questions asked of inter-
viewees expanded and deepened, as I came to understand more about
these traditions and their adherents. I should also note that although I
have sought to remain in touch with the interviewees, I have lost con-
tact with some of them. Several have passed on.
Chapter 5, “To Make the Spirit Manifest,” focuses on artists of var-
ious kinds, including writers, musicians, and visual artists, who have
been profoundly inspired by and/or who have made significant con-
tributions to African-inspired spiritual traditions. This chapter, like
Chapter 4, includes a number of interviews. As I have said elsewhere,
I think that particularly in the cases of women and of same-sex ori-
ented and transgender persons who have frequently been prohibited
from becoming spiritual authorities, we must turn toward the realm of
art in order to understand more comprehensively how such persons
have embodied and expressed their spiritual beliefs.
Encountering Cuba
As I write this, I recall the first time I visited Havana. I had just
completed teaching a graduate seminar at Florida Atlantic University
in the Public Intellectuals Program. I was permitted to travel legally
because of my research and because I was traveling with members of
an organization promoting U.S.-Cuban cultural exchange. I waited
for what seemed an eternity at the Miami airport, primarily with Cu-
ban Americans who support the embargo who were loaded down
with VCRs and other appliances they were taking to relatives. An en-
tire night was spent moving through various security stations (this
was in 2000, before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001) and
signing numerous documents. Finally, after a lecture about the United
States and Cuba being enemies, we boarded the plane. Once inside,
the crew and passengers were jovial. It seemed I had barely started a
conversation with a baseball player and a young woman who worked
at Disney World before we looked down and saw the emerald green
of Cuba. The green changed to sandy tones as we landed at José Marti
International Airport.
At first it seemed rather frightening. I have rarely experienced such
scrutiny. Once I had my bags in hand and was cleared to go, however,
everything changed. I noticed the comedians promoting Cuban tour-
ism on the televisions scattered about the airport, and the gift shops
selling Cuban music, cigars, rum, and dolls of the Yorùbá divinities. I
hailed a cab, and we sped past hundreds of pedestrians, bicyclists,
and workers waiting for buses, until we reached central Havana,
where I barely had time to settle in before Lázaro and Rey arrived to
take me to a spiritualist misa (“mass”). It felt great to be seeing Ha-
vana for the first time in the company of two gay men who practice
the Yorùbá religion. I knew Lázaro had lived in Miami since child-
hood, yet I must admit I was a bit disappointed at first that Rey and
the other gay men I met in Havana resembled the gay men from San
Francisco or New York more than the “Che Guevaras” I had dreamed
of. Of course, during that period many gay men had been imprisoned;
indeed, my partner was nervous about my going, having just seen Be-
fore Night Falls, the film about writer Reinaldo Arenas.
The misa we attended was held at Olga’s house, primarily for their
friend Luis, a gay artist who had recently moved to Miami. There I
met Olivia, an American dancer who had fallen in love with a Cuban
Introduction 13
man and moved to Havana, where she has become a mother and
santera; her godchildren include a number of gay men. During the
misa, Olga became possessed by “the mother of the waters.” She kept
asking to be drenched in water, until the entire house looked like “The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice” scene (with Mickey Mouse in wizard’s cap)
from Disney’s Fantasia. At one point, she grabbed me and embraced
me. “You are my child!” she cried. I did not doubt it. When the cere-
mony ended, Olga, having returned to her everyday personality, and
the rest of us enjoyed café cubano (there is no better) and rested a bit
before departing for another ceremony, this one a spiritual birthday
celebration for Olivia and Lázaro, commemorating their years as ini-
tiates. As we sped toward the next event, the old car bounced up and
down, which sent yellow and green icing from one of the cakes flying
in all directions. That evening I spoke with the young gay man who
had fashioned an exquisite altar for the event, and I danced with a gay
diplomat who practices Santería. Although I learned quickly that it
was unwise to speak of politics, the Havana I encountered had changed
dramatically from the nightmarish city of Before Night Falls. That
night, after leaving Olivia and Lázaro’s, we walked along the Malecón,
where I watched as gay men embraced and kissed at the ocean’s edge,
very near El Morro, under the full moon.
Eleggúa, open the road! Atibon Legba, open the gate for us!
A NOTE ABOUT TERMS
Terms originating in African languages and in African-derived

dialects are often spelled in a variety of ways; this is due in part to the
influence of different African and European languages and dialects.
For instance, Vodou is frequently also spelled Voodoo, Vodoun, Vaudou,
Vodu, Vodun (especially as practiced in Africa), and Voudou; none of
these is, as some would have one believe, the only “correct” spelling.
In most cases, I have chosen the African-Cuban or Creole spellings of
terms, since these are the forms with which I am most familiar; in cer-
tain cases, I have used the African-Brazilian spelling.
For the purposes of this book, I have chosen to employ the terms
Creole, African-inspired, African-derived, and African-diasporic in-
terchangeably to refer to the various manifestations of African-based
cultural and spiritual traditions. I have occasionally employed the
term Yorùbá-diasporic to refer more specifically to faiths inspired by

or rooted in the beliefs and practices of the Yorùbá people of Nigeria.
Speaking of terms, I have alternately employed religion, faith, and
spiritual tradition, to reflect the ongoing conversation between those
who wish to employ one of the first two in order to insist that these re-
ligions should be viewed as such and granted the status that Hindu-
ism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and other religions are granted,
and those who wish to stress a second perspective, namely, that al-
though certain religions demarcate mundane from spiritual experience,
African-diasporic spiritual traditions do not, but rather constitute “ways
of life” or “life paths,” with practitioners perceiving all aspects and ele-
ments of life as being imbued with spirit. In a similar vein, I alternately
employ terms such as deity, divinity, goddess, and spirit, to reflect the
ongoing conversation as to whether the sacred beings of African-
diasporic traditions should be equated with “gods,” an equation that for
many indicates a comparison to the deities of ancient religions such as
those of Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia and which may also infer
polytheism, or whether, because they are generally perceived as various
manifestations of a central divine source, comparable to the rainbow and
its hues, the term spirit might be more appropriate. I can certainly under-
stand why some employ god, goddess, deity, divinity, or even santo
(saint), after encountering West African and African-American Chris-
tians who—succumbing to colonialist propaganda—derogatorily refer
to Yorùbá orishás and Fon/Dahomean lwa as “spirits of a lower or-
der,” in contrast to Jesus Christ, Mary, and the Catholic saints, who
are thought to be of a “higher order.”
Where terms regarding gendered and sexual complexity are con-
cerned, I have found Ruth Vanita’s introduction to her anthology
Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and
Society (2002) particularly instructive. Vanita, acknowledging that
many queer theorists have accepted the notion that prior to the nine-
teenth-century European definition of “homosexual,” persons and
groups were not classified according to their affectional or sexual
preferences or identities, observes that numerous scholars have chal-
lenged this notion, including Michael Sweet and Leonard Zwilling,
who have “demonstrated the formulation of sexual categories in
Hindu and Jain texts as early as the sixth century B. C. E.” (p. 1). She
notes that she, Saleem Kidwai, Carla Petievich, and others have dis-
covered centuries-old Indian terms for women-loving women (pp. 2-
Introduction 15
3). While acknowledging the existence of swayamvara sakhis and

other indigenous terms, Vanita challenges David Halperin’s sugges-
tion that one should avoid all present-day terms when “writing about
the past” (p. 4). She points out that when “discussing same-sex rela-
tions in the past, many theorists and historians today are terrified of
using terms like homosexual” (p. 4). (I know I am, or at least I have
been for over a decade.) In particular, she mentions that “pioneering
historian John Boswell has been much criticized [“condemned” might
be more appropriate] for using the word gay to describe persons in
late antiquity and early medieval Europe” (p. 4). She goes on to say,
“Many of us carefully use terms such as homoerotically inclined,
queer, or alternative sexualities to talk about the past [Mea culpa!]
But, surely, these terms were not used in the past either—certainly
not with their present connotations—and it is only a convenient fic-
tion that leads us to find them more acceptable” (p. 4). Not content to
leave it at that, Vanita (2002) argues that
the same historians who are horrified by the “ahistorical” use of

such terms or concepts as homosexual or even same-sex seem to
be relatively untroubled about using a host of terms and con-
cepts such as family, marriage, slave, master, law, woman, or
man when discussing past societies. (p. 4)
Although I tend to agree with Vanita here, if Oyèrónké Oy wùmí is

correct then, neither “men” nor “women” existed in traditional Yorùbá
culture. I would definitely agree, however, that historians and others
tend to be far less troubled by terms and concepts relating to hetero-
normativity than they are by terms and concepts relating to same-sex
intimacy and gender diversity. Vanita (2002) then observes,
Theorists who think only terms from a particular past time

should be used when discussing that time also think that only
terms “indigenous” to a particular place should be used in that
place; therefore terms like gay should not be used in India. The
impulse to make connections between vastly differing and yet in
some ways critically similar human experiences has led many
people living and organizing in India over the last two decades
to adopt and even translate words like gay and lesbian. It is sig-
nificant that it is usually those who have already obtained most
of their basic civil rights and liberties in first-world environ-
ments who object to the use of these terms in third-world con-

texts. . . . I would argue that if, notwithstanding the vast differences
between middle-class women in Delhi today and women writ-
ing mystical poetry in sixteenth-century Gujurat, there is enough
commonality between them to justify including their writings in
one collection, there is similarly enough commonality between
people engaged in same-sex relationships in Bombay today and
those engaged in very differently structured same-sex relation-
ships in eighteenth-century Lucknow to justify including writ-
ings about them in one collection. To quote Martin Duberman,
“gay people [in this case, gay Indians] have a desperate need to
know” that they are “bearers of a diverse, rich, unique heritage.”
(pp. 5-6)
Ultimately, Vanita (2002, p. 6) suggests adopting “a range of nam-

ing strategies to enable a discussion of same-sex love, desire, and sex-
ual relations.” Following her suggestion, I have utilized a variety of
terms, partly in an attempt to suggest the variety of perceptions re-
garding gender and sexuality one finds among practitioners, artists,
and scholars of these traditions. I have, in many cases, chosen to em-
ploy Western terms such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
(occasionally these four appear together as the acronym LGBT),
same-sex intimacy, and queer. These African-based traditions have
experienced considerable Westernization (having now been practiced
in the Americas for well over two centuries and perhaps much lon-
ger). Although terms such as masisi and madivin (used in Vodou to
refer to gay men and lesbians) and adodi and alacuata (used to refer
to gay male and lesbian practitioners of Yorùbá-diasporic traditions)
continue to be used occasionally, most scholars, practitioners, and
artists currently employ Western terms to identify themselves and
others, and many have, it would seem, done so for quite some time. I
have used same-sex intimacy and same-sex oriented especially in
those contexts where it might have seemed historically inappropriate
to use gay, etc. I occasionally employ gender diverse to suggest a
fluid continuum of behavior that ranges from generally nonmasculine
(effeminate) or nonfeminine (butch) behavior to androgyny, but that
does not usually extend completely into male-to-female or female-to-male
behavior or identity. In other words, gender diversity herein signifies
gendered behavior that deviates from traditional associations of men
with masculinity and women with femininity but does not infer trans-
Introduction 17
sexuality in terms of anatomy or psychological gender identification.

For instance, gender diversity might refer to a drag queen who continues
in certain contexts to identify as a male and who might tend to perceive
his relationships in gay rather than transgender terms, or to a butch dyke
who continues in certain contexts to identify as a woman and who might
describe her relationships in lesbian rather than in transgender terms. I
employ transgender and transsexual in those contexts where I wish
to indicate male-to-female or female-to-male behavior or identity,
and, more specifically, transgender woman to designate male-to-
female identity and transgender man to designate female-to-male
identity. In numerous cases, ascertaining whether gender diverse or
transgender most appropriately describes a subject has been difficult if
not impossible, especially where historical texts composed by early
European observers are concerned.
I have also been inspired by French thinker Edgar Morin’s “com-
plexity theory.” It is for this reason that I have chosen to employ the
terms sexual complexity and gender(ed) complexity as umbrella terms.
In Homeland Earth (Morin and Kern, 1999), Morin argues that we
need a kind of “thinking that, instead of isolating the object being
studied, considers it in and through its . . . relation to its cultural, so-
cial, economic, political, and natural environment” (p. 131). I have
attempted herein to place lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/trans-
sexual, and other practitioners, scholars, and artists of African-diasporic
spiritual traditions within the varied and complex contexts that they
inhabit.
Chapter 1
Sources
Sources
Blessed are the Ancestors because They are why I AM.
Michael S. Smith,
“African Roots, American Fruits:
The Queerness of Afrocentricity”
CREOLE SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS:

A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
African-inspired spiritual traditions or religions are practiced in

various places in the Americas, the Caribbean, Western Europe, and
elsewhere. They are variously described as “Creole,” “syncretic,”
“hybrid,” and “mixed” traditions because they arise from the inter-
mingling of diverse beliefs and practices. The process whereby they
are formed has been termed “creolization” (Fernández Olmos and
Paravisini-Gebert, (2003, p. 4); this is an “ongoing and ever-changing
process” (Fernández Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert, 2003, p. 6). In
Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and
Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo, Margarite Fernández Olmos and
Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert (2003) describes these “religious systems”
as “fundamentally complex, pluralistic, and integrationist” (p. 4).
Most of these share in common a belief in an all-powerful divinity
who possesses multiple manifestations. Most also believe that each
individual is spiritually “parented” or “guarded” by one or more of
these manifestations. The faithful learn about the deity and its mani-
festations by way of sacred tales and, primarily in the case of Yorùbá-
diasporic traditions/religions, divinatory readings. Divination is one
of the chief ways practitioners communicate with the divine; others
include prayer, offerings, and sacrifices (including animal sacrifice).
19
In terms of these sacred communicative actions, the theory of corre-

spondences—by which certain manifestations of spirit are associated
with certain days, colors, foods, odors, animals, plants, numbers, hu-
man pursuits, etc.—plays a significant role. One of the most powerful
forms of communication with the divine occurs in the phenomenon
of possession, when the initiated practitioner is embodied by a mani-
festation of the deity. Most African-diasporic spiritual traditions/reli-
gions require practitioners to undergo lengthy and complex initiatory
rituals. Practitioners typically belong to spiritual households headed
by priests and/or priestesses and envision themselves as members of
a family and, in larger terms, of a spiritual community. They gather
primarily for initiatory rites and calendrical feasts.
Traditions/religions considered to be primarily Yorùbá-derived in-
clude Lucumí, also called Santería and Regla de Ocha, originating in
Cuba; Candomblé, originating in Brazil; the way of the Ifá priest-
hood, carried from Nigeria to Cuba, the United States, and elsewhere;
and the Orishá or Ifá tradition, related to but distinguished from the
former, primarily linking certain practitioners in the United States
and Western Europe with practitioners in Nigeria. These traditions
tend to include other African as well as indigenous American, Euro-
pean, Christian (particularly Catholic), and Western occult elements,
although, generally speaking, practitioners of the Ifá priesthood and
Ifá/Orishá tradition seek to remove European and Christian elements
from spiritual practice.
African-diasporic traditions/religions that demonstrate marked Bakon-
go/Angolan influence include Macumba and Quimbanda (in which magic
plays a key role), originating in Brazil; and Palo Mayombe, originating
in Cuba. Other traditions that display some Yorùbá and/or Bakon-
go/Angolan influence but in which other influences such as indige-
nous American traditions and European-based spiritism, spiritualism,
and occultism play significant roles include Candomblé Caboclo, prac-
ticed in Brazil; Espiritismo, rooted in the concepts of French spiritu-
alist Allan Kardec (Hippolyte-Léon Denizard Rivail, 1804-1869),
practiced throughout the Americas, in Europe, and elsewhere; Um-
banda, originating in Brazil, which embraces all of these influences
as well as Eastern mysticism and astrology; and Abakúa, which also
reveals Igbo influence, practiced in Cuba (see Bramly, 1979; Ca-
brera, 1968 [2000], 1970 [1986], 1980a,b, 1986, 1988; Canizares,
n.d.; Dow, 1977; Flores-Peña and Evanchuk, 1994; Galembo, 1993;
Sources 21
González-Wippler, 1975, 1985, 1989, 1992; Mason, 1985, 1992;

Murphy, 1988, 1994; Murphy and Sanford, 2001; Núñez, 1992;
Simpson, 1978, 1980; Teish, 1985; Thompson, 1984, 1992, 1993;
Voeks, 1997).
As is true of other Creole traditions, Vodou embraces elements of
African, indigenous American, European esoteric, and Christian ori-
gins. Its African roots may be traced primarily to the Fon/Dahomeans
of Benin and Togo, the Ewe of Benin, Togo, and Ghana, and, to a
lesser extent, to the Yorùbá and Bakongo. The distinct form of Vodou
(Voodoo) that emerged in New Orleans has tended to emphasize
eclectic, magical, divinatory, and Catholic elements, although at pres-
ent some adherents appear to be seeking to nurture its more Haitian
and African (Vodun, Vodoun) manifestations, including the initiatory
dimension. Vodou also appears to be linked to Hoodoo, an African-
American, largely Southern and Midwestern tradition that foregrounds
magical and healing practices and that, due in part to its development
within a Christian milieu heavily populated by Protestants, has lost
much of its spiritual foundation (see Brown, 1991 [2001]; Cosentino,
1995a,b; Deren, 1983; Desmangles, 1992; Galembo, 1993; Gordon,
2000; Hurbon, 1995; Hurston, 1938 [1990]; Marcelin, 1950; Métraux,
1972; Rigaud, 1953, 1974, 1985; Teish, 1985).
SEXUAL AND GENDER COMPLEXITY

IN YORÙBÁLAND?
As anyone who has read recent texts concerning Yorùbá concep-

tions of sexuality and gender—or lack thereof—will attest to, contro-
versy rules—indeed, the expressions “opening a can of worms” and
“opening Pandora’s box” come to mind.
For many years, explorers, colonists, missionaries, anthropolo-
gists, and others—many of European heritage—have been docu-
menting their perceptions of gender and sexuality in Yorùbá culture.
These documents have included descriptions suggesting complexity
of gender and sexuality. For instance, in his monumental study of
cowrie shell divination, William Bascom (1980) describes a diviner,
Salako, who was born in Nigeria around 1880. As an infant, Salako
was taken to a priest who “confirmed that he belonged to Orishalá”
(p. 10), a manifestation of the deity or spirit Obatalá, who rules com-
passion and diplomacy,” and that Yemayá (the spirit of motherhood

and the sea) was also to play an important role in his life. Salako was
initiated in 1895, and by 1926 he had become a renowned diviner.
When Bascom met Salako in 1951, when the latter was about sev-
enty, he described him in terms indicating gender complexity: he was
“slight and delicate of build . . . with his hair plaited like a woman’s”
(p. 11). In general, Salako was of “a somewhat effeminate appear-
ance” (p. 11).
Echoing this description of Salako, Margaret Thompson Drewal
(1987) has more recently described priests and initiates of the Yorùbá
orishá Sango (Shangó) in complex gendered terms. They are often
considered to be the “wives” of the spirit. This relationship of priests
to a masculine (although not consistently) male deity is reflected in
the priests’ hairstyles. One of these hairstyles is the shuku, “which re-
fers to the round basket in which the marketwomen carry their wares
on their heads” (p. 61); another is the “Yorùbá bridal hairstyle known
as agogô” (p. 61) resembling that worn by the priest of Oyá. Some
scholars suggest that the relationship between priest and spirit is
characterized in feminine-masculine terms because the Yorùbá think
of the state of possession as a receptive, and hence potentially femi-
nine, state, i.e., to be possessed or “ridden” by the spirit is to be pene-
trated by the spirit (Drewal, 1987, p. 62).
Drewal relates that in Yorùbá ritual,
men portray spirits in masks . . . that represent both males and

females. In contrast, women as priests and mediums of the dei-
ties portray female as well as male deities, often carrying carved
weapons, or staffs, as insignia of office while dancing in states
of possession trance. (1992, pp. 176-177)
Such performances thus frequently include cross-dressing or trans-

vestism, which may extend beyond the duration of a particular ritual.
Drewal (1992) describes, for example, a priestess of Ogun who wears
a “man’s hunting outfit” as well as a “male priest of the river goddess
Oyá [who] displays in his house a photograph of himself dressed as a
woman with plaited hair” (p. 186). Of the Agemo priest Adie, she
relates that he “is supposed to wear his hair plaited in female style
throughout his life” (pp. 176-177). Drewal also mentions a priest of
Oyá from the remote Ijebu area of Nigeria who wears “a women’s-
style wrapper tied under the arms and Oyá’s cowry vestment over his
Sources 23
left shoulder” (1987, pp. 61-62). Of a priestess of Sango, she writes,

“Iya Sango partakes of her deity’s masculine character even in her
daily life. She is never merely not herself, not not Sango. Rather, she
is a third term, a trickster shifting positions. It is the nature of her ‘in-
ner head’” (Drewal, 1992, pp. 176-177). Drewal theorizes that by
way of this type of sacred transgender performance
both men and women have institutionalized opportunities to

take on the attributes of the opposite gender temporarily . . . en-
gaging in an ongoing dialectic on gender. . . . That Yorùbá shift
back and forth between gender roles in ritual situations, and are
not necessarily construed as either comical or horrendous, is in
and of itself significant. It suggests that Yorùbá are conscious
that gender is a construction dividing sex into two mutually ex-
clusive categories to underscore biological difference. What
this does in effect is to channel human behavior that is not bio-
logically determined. (1992, p. 186; also see p. 190)
Drewal recounts,
Sometimes women possessed by the divine mediator Esu be-

come tricksters wearing a carved wooden penis and testicles; at
a Gelede festival in Ketu, 1971, one with a deadpan face went up
to other women seductively pulling her wrapper back to reveal
her equipment. (1992, pp. 176-177)
Similarly, she writes of Iya Sango, a priestess of the “tough, hot,

male warrior deity” Sango (Shangó), who “becomes male on certain
ritual occasions through possession trance” and who then can “turn
Sango . . . into a comic lecher by enacting fucking with other men”
(1992, pp. 176-177).
Drewal (1992) further observes that although the value “place[d]
on progeny . . . explain[s] why homosexuality as a way of life is
absent, . . . homosexual relations are [nevertheless] known to exist” in
Yorùbá culture (p. 186). Indeed, such relationships often exist along-
side heterosexual relationships, suggesting that, in Western terms,
many Africans might be more appropriately described as being bi-
sexual or as pansexual rather than as either heterosexual or homo-
sexual.
Such accounts of Yorùbá gender and sexuality have not only in-
spired but also been challenged by several recent publications, per-
haps especially by J. Lorand Matory’s Sex and the Empire That Is No
More: Gender and the Politics of Metaphor in Oyo Yorùbá Religion
(1994) and Oyèrónké Oy wùmí’s The Invention of Women: Making
an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (1997). Matory as-
serts that what others have perceived as transvestism and transgender
behavior in Yorùbá ritual chiefly refers neither to sexual nor gender
complexity but rather to hierarchies linked to sociopolitical power re-
lations. Nevertheless, Matory demonstrates that metaphors of sexual-
ity pervade the initiatory process. For example, the orishá Shangó is
revered as “husband,” with the initiate assuming the role of “bride” or
“wife” (ìyàwó). He infers that the initiate might experience, if only
metaphorically, a union with the orishá (expressed in terms of “mount-
ing,” gùn, gigun), which, in the case of a male initiate, might be con-
strued as embracing same-sex intimacy and/or transgender behavior.
Notwithstanding the initiatory process, however, Matory arrives at
the conclusion that the powerful presence of sexual and gender com-
plexity in Yorùbá-diasporic spiritual practice in the Americas cannot
be chiefly attributed to ritual behavior in Yorùbáland, as, briefly put,
traditional Yorùbá do not perceive gender or sexuality in Western
terms.
Despite his challenging of previous scholars’ projections of West-
ern sexual and gender categories onto Yorùbá subjects, Oyèrónké
Oy wùmí, in The Invention of Women, critiques Matory’s theorizing,
focusing on the very few remarks he makes concerning transvestism
and homosexuality:
James Matory . . . reveals another facet of the sexualized view.

He interprets the categorization of the male adherents as ìyàwó—
which he glosses as “wife”—as a sign of symbolic if not actual
homosexuality. In the Geertzian mode of “thick descriptions
(inventions),” his interpretations are so thick they curdle. Thus
in Matory’s writing, Sàngó priests appear as drag queens and
transvestites. . . . Obviously, the very premise on which
Matory rests his study is alien to the Yorùbá conception. . . .
Of course the gender categories he depicts are his own inven-
tion. . . . His introduction of homosexuality into Yorùbá dis-
course is nothing but an imposition of yet another foreign
model. (1997, p. 117)
Sources 25
Oy wùmí, a Yorùbá scholar, insists that in traditional Yorùbá culture,

expressions of gender “did not constitute social categories” (1997,
p. 13). Thus, it would be inappropriate to categorize an individual as
female, feminine, male, masculine, androgynous, transgender, trans-
sexual, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, etc., apparently even if
analogous Yorùbá terms existed for these. Oy wùmí strongly suggests
that to employ such terminology is to bow to the influence of Euro-
pean/Anglo-American gender- and sexuality-obsessed ethnocentrism.
Of androgyny and ambiguity of gender, she writes:
Yorùbá genderlessness is not to be read as androgyny or ambi-

guity of gender. It is not genderless in terms of a presence of
both male and female attributes. Instead it is genderless because
human attributes are not gender-specific. Bioanatomical differ-
ences are a source of neither distinction nor identity in Yorùbá-
land. . . . Ana[tomical] sex differences are incidental. (1997,
p. 174)
Similarly, she writes regarding the theorization of third gender or al-

ternative gender in the writings of Serena Nanda (on the hijras of In-
dia) and others:
Western ideas are imposed when non-Western social categories

are assimilated into the gender framework that emerged from a
specific sociohistorical and philosophical tradition. An example
is the “discovery” of what has been labeled “third gender” or
“alternative genders” in a number of non-Western cultures. The
fact that the African “woman marriage,” the Native American
“berdache,” and the South Asian “hijra” are presented as gender
categories incorporates them into the Western bio-logic and
gendered framework without explication of their own socio-
cultural histories and constructions. (1997, p. 11)
This statement causes me to wonder whether Oy wùmí has in fact

actually read the works of Nanda, Will Roscoe, Walter Williams,
Gilbert Herdt, and others who have spoken in terms of third, fourth,
and alternate genders. These scholars, like Oy wùmí—who, through-
out her text, alternatively denigrates others as Westernized and West-
ernizing and praises Western theorists such as Michel Foucault—
have been profoundly influenced by social constructionist theory and

have amply demonstrated that they are acutely aware of, and sensitive
to, the significance of specific, local sociocultural histories and con-
structions, in part by employing gendered and sexed terms used by
the individuals and groups of the cultures they have written about in
their works.
Regardless of her tendency to critique fellow scholars, including
feminists and fellow Yorùbá scholars—frequently in an insulting
manner—Oy wùmí arguments must be taken seriously, especially
since she has lived among other Yorùbá for many years. I am, how-
ever, left with several lingering questions after having read her book
several times. If “bioanatomical differences” signify little or nothing
in traditional Yorùbá culture, how is it that the culture privileges re-
production above so many other human pursuits, in an almost exag-
gerated manner, when one considers the value placed upon fertility,
pregnancy, and childbearing in numerous other cultures? Are we to
assume that Yorùbás pay no attention to the fact that reproduction is
dependent upon heterosexual coupling (even when same-sex-inclined
persons parent children, heterosexual coupling in some form is typi-
cally required)? Why do so many patakís (legends, sacred tales) cele-
brate the love relationships of (obviously) heterosexual couples, such
as those that speak of Shangó and his wives? Or are we to assume that
Shangó’s wives are without gender? If they are, or if “he” is, then is it
possible that they are engaging in relationships other than heterosex-
ual ones? If Yorùbá mortals are indeed genderless, then how is it that
Oy wùmí is able to ascertain that “homosexuality does not seem to
have been an option” in Yorùbá culture (1997, p. 63)?
Chief Adedoja Aluko, African-American head of the Ile Orunmila
Temple in Miami, Florida, appears to agree with Oy wùmí when it
comes to the absence of homosexuality in Yorùbá culture:
You must remember that traditionally there were no homosexu-

als in Africa. Relationships and marriages were not based on
physicality or sexual pleasure. Instead they were based on the
best interest of the community, the mutual consent of one’s lin-
eage, the perpetuation of the lineage, and children. Everyone
recognizes that homosexual relations produce no offspring. And
for the Yorùbá, offspring was the whole point of marriage;
Sources 27
whether the marriage was for spiritual or political reasons.

Homosexuality cannot exist in such a culture, where love is not
an emotion or where sex or feelings are not the main motivation
for a relationship. (Aluko, Web site, n.d.)
Afolabi, in “The Africa Question: Did They or Didn’t They?”,

views this matter somewhat differently:
This kaleidoscopic view of gender, sexuality and social position

is so utterly foreign to the Western mind that when we see it, we
don’t even know it is there. It is the assumption of the neo-
Yorùbá set [here, he refers to practitioners who are seeking to
“re-Africanize” African-diasporic traditions by removing in-
digenous American, Catholic, Cuban, etc., elements from them]
that since we do not see homosexuality as we know it in the
West among the Yorùbá, then it must either be taboo or entirely
non-existent. This does not mean, however, that same-sex eroti-
cism did not exist among the Yorùbá. . . . For the most part, re-
gardless of whether an individual engaged in same-sex sexual
relations, he or she still married and had children. The idea of a
“gay lifestyle” was simply not a consideration. The need to have
children outweighed any option of having a non-reproductive
lifestyle. As we can see in today’s Nigeria, with the presence of
the first Nigerian Gay Organizations, this need no longer exists
as it once did. Individuals have more liberty in choosing the path
their lives will take. (Afolabi, Web site, n.d.)
In a 1998 interview, an African-American professor of theology

said this to me about the apparent absence of homosexuality in
Yorùbá culture:
When people say, “We can’t find any records of this,” we have to
bear in mind what was destroyed. What was intentionally de-
stroyed. When Christians went to Africa and condemned all
sexual practices that were not procreative as wrong, sinful, and
evil, and people were killed for practicing them, it’s not surpris-
ing that today when one goes to Africa and asks people, “Do
you have gay men or lesbians?” they reply, “No, of course not,
that’s a European thing.”
Blackberri, an African-American musician and practitioner of the

Yorùbá religion who has spent time in Nigeria, shared with me in a
June 2002 interview:
In Africa, they don’t call it homosexuality; that’s a Western

word. But it’s always been there, and is still. It was never ques-
tioned, it was a part of society, the way it was. I know now that
even in Ile Ife, there are prominent gay people in the commu-
nity, but there’s no reason to talk about it. . . . One of the babás
[priests] was telling me that there’s a certain time of the year that
people in the village get to do whatever they want, it doesn’t
matter, their wildest fantasy, they can sleep with whoever they
want. When that day is done, no one talks about it. There’s noth-
ing to talk about, it just is. A lot of the homophobia is Christian-
based and Islam-based.
Invisibility/Hostility
Although I pay heed to Oyewùmí’s warning about the danger of

applying Western gender discourse(s) to traditional Yorùbá culture, I
think it is necessary to observe that numerous writers who have
denied the existence of sexual and gender complexity in African cul-
tures, and/or who have attributed its existence primarily or solely to
Western colonialist influence, have also expressed decidedly hostile
attitudes toward homoerotic and transgender behavior. This hostility
is exemplified by remarks made by writer Wole Soyinka in his 1976
text Myth, Literature, and the African World, which, interestingly,
includes the use of the term Afrocentric as well as an illuminating
essay on the Yorùbá orishás, “Morality and Aesthetics in the Ritual
Archetype.” In a discussion of Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de
Violence (1968), Soyinka attacks the author because of his portrayal
of homoerotic tenderness. Indeed, Soyinka uses such terms as “mis-
anthropic” and “pathetic” to refer to homoerotic intimacy. Moreover,
he describes homoeroticism as a product of Western decadence and
links Ouologuem’s work to that of gay writers Jean Genet and James
Baldwin, the latter of whom he depicts as both victim and perpetrator
of European and Euro-American influence. Soyinka contrasts Ouolo-
guem’s work with “iconoclastic” works, which he sees as works link-
ing indigenous African influence to revolutionary fervor. Condemning
Sources 29
Ouologuem’s writing as un-African, he writes, “Such solemn ca-

dences [as found in the work of Ouologuem], extolling the anal salva-
tion of the lonely . . . belong to the fictional prose of Baldwin and
Genet, and cannot be integrated into the mould of iconoclastic litera-
ture” (Soyinka, 1990, pp. 103-104).
This position is more radically stated by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
in the anthology First Word: Black Scholars, Thinkers, Warriors (Per-
son-Lynn, 1996), wherein she describes same-sex intimacy as a
“pattern of distortion” created by “pale white [and weak] males” of
European antiquity to serve to nurture their own masculinity, to de-
stroy that of “black [and] other nonwhite males,” and to promote Eu-
ropean imperialism and colonialism:
We did not have epidemic levels of male homosexuality in

Afrika. It is a European-created phenomenon. . . . The nonwhite
males in Afrika did not have homosexuality in the first place.
After they are conquered and reduced to passivity and taken out
of the home, you begin to see a pattern of homosexuality and bi-
sexuality within the black population. (pp. 83-84)
In their anthology Female Desires: Same-Sex Relations and Trans-

gender Practices Across Cultures (1999), Evelyn Blackwood and
Saskia E. Wieringa write regarding Ifi Amadiume’s attack on Audre
Lorde’s association of woman-woman marriages in Africa with les-
bian love:
On the issue of same-sex practices between the partners of a

woman-marriage she [Amadiume] fulminates against the les-
bian African-American poet Audre Lorde, arguing that in her
desire to search for African roots of her sexual orientation Lorde
has fallen prey to white ethnocentric biases. (p. 4)
Amadiume writes in Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender

and Sex in an African Society (1987) that “African women” will un-
doubtedly consider the association of woman-woman marriage and
lesbianism to be “shocking” and “offensive” (p. 7). Amadiume whole-
heartedly accepts this reaction to such a linkage as appropriate and
condemns Lorde and other “Black lesbians [who] are using such prej-
udiced interpretations of African situations to justify their choices”
rather than exploring the intriguing hostility of African women (in

her opinion) toward this form of amatory expression (p. 7). Note-
worthy in Blackwood and Wieringa’s critique of Amadiume’s re-
marks is their observation that Lorde is not referring to the Nnobi
women of Amadiume’s study but rather to the Fon. “Amadiume,”
they remark, “is guilty of the same sins she so rightly denounces in
other anthropologists’ work, that of universalizing and imposing her
own assumptions, in this case her homophobia, on the work of others”
(1999, p. 4).
In a text more directly speaking to the relationship of gender and
sexual complexity to the African-diasporic spiritual traditions, psy-
chologist Michael Oshoosi, (Michael Frank Wright) in African Spiri-
tuality versus the African-American (1997), insists that only a few
unreliable, anecdotal references to same-sex intimacy exist in African
cultures. He also insists that within the Yorùbá and Yorùbá-diasporic
traditions the patakí (sacred tales associated with divination) do not
speak of same-sex eroticism. On the other hand, he admits that these
practices and identities may be found in Yorùbá-diasporic traditions. In
this vein, he describes individuals who condemn the participation of
lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender persons in these traditions as
“off-base.” Nevertheless, he himself refers to lesbianism and homosex-
uality as “sexual compulsions,” and he makes it clear that in terms of
one’s spiritual identity as well as in terms of one’s social identity, an in-
dividual errs when he or she attempts to balance his or her gendered or
sexual identity with his or her ethnic/racial identity. African-American
identity and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender identity cannot
work together, in Oshoosi’s view, to nurture a perspective that honors
these various aspects of identity at once. He condemns those individu-
als who might join together in spiritual groups with others expressing
gender and sexual complexity, as he condemns practitioners who offer
gender-diverse or same-sex-oriented variants of patakís. To do so, in
his view, is to willfully promote a “distortion of African cultural tra-
ditions” (p. 142). Furthermore, he views as heresy any attempt—such
as that undertaken in this book—to focus on the relationship of gen-
der and sexual complexity to African-diasporic traditions in a way that
grants equal significance to these. In his view, such an undertaking
can be inspired only by “white and western cultural imperialism”
(1997, p. 142).
Sources 31
OTHER POSSIBLE AFRICAN INFLUENCES
If we at least tentatively accept Oy wùmí’s theory of the absence

of gender discourse(s), then traditional Yorùbá culture cannot be con-
sidered responsible for expressions of sexual and/or gender complex-
ity in African-diasporic spiritual practice. We must then consider
how other African cultures might have contributed either directly or
indirectly to this dimension of these traditions, via possible interac-
tion with the Yorùbá within Africa or in the Americas, prior to, dur-
ing, or after the Middle Passage. As we attempt this exploration, we
must bear in mind that other descriptions of African cultural and spir-
itual traditions, such as those of traditional Yorùbá culture, may have
been misinterpreted by observers possessing and applying Western
concepts of gender and sexuality. I feel, however, that it would be pre-
mature to disregard the data collected by ethnologist Hermann Bau-
mann and many others prior to in-depth studies such as Oy wùmí’s
being undertaken on gendered and sexuality complexity in these cul-
tures and allied spiritual traditions.
Baumann (1995) numbers among those writers who have empha-
sized the shamanistic-like character of African spiritual traditions.
Shamanistic-like elements include ancestor worship, herbal medi-
cine, animal sacrifice, divination, initiation rites, and secret societies.
In a number of African spiritual traditions, as in shamanic traditions,
an individual may be possessed, embodied, or energized by a deity or
spirit of a gender or sex other than her or his own. In Baumann’s view,
two key elements of African shamanistic-like spiritual belief and
practice include belief in an androgynous or transgender divinity or
spirit and, second, transgender behavior (temporary or permanent)
among practitioners.
Tracking androgynous divinities and gender-diverse and/or trans-
gender spiritual practitioners, Baumann has documented the occur-
rence of one or both in a number of African spiritual traditions,
including those of the Akan, Ambo-Kwanyama, Bambara, Bobo,
Chokwe, Dahomeans (of Benin), Dogon, Etik, Handa, Humbe, Hunde,
Iba, Jukun, Kimbundu, Konso, Kunama, Lamba, Lango, Luba, Lulua,
Musho, Nuba, Ovimbundu, Rundi, Shona-Karonga, Venda, and Vili-
Kongo. Exemplary of androgynous or transgender deities or spirits
are those of the Akan of Ghana: Abrao (divinity or spirit of the planet
Jupiter), Aku (that of Mercury), Amen (that of Saturn), and Awo (the
divinity of the moon). Nyame, the supreme being of the Akan, de-
cides the fate of each human prior to birth. Nyame’s feminine aspect
is identified with the moon (and hence with Awo), and her/his mascu-
line aspect is identified with the sun. Among the Bambara of West
Africa, Faro is an androgynous or transgender deity who splits her-
self/himself into, or gives birth to, male-female twins who in turn be-
come parents to the human race. Faro, whose sacred color is white,
also bestows mortals with language and the knowledge of fishing and
farming. Nzambi (also, Zambi) is the androgynous or transgender su-
preme being of the Bakongo (or BaKongo) people. Nzambi created
all life, and it is Nzambi who cares for those who honor him/her and
who punishes those who do not.
In terms of same-sex intimacy and transgender expression and
their intermingling with the sacred in African cultures, numerous
scholars indicate that these behaviors were known to Africans long
before the continent, except perhaps for Egypt and Libya, was sub-
jected to non-African influences. It is important to note that sexual
and gender complexity are not always linked in African spiritual tradi-
tions or cultures; on the other hand, they often appear to be. Gendered
and sexual complexity have often been expressed temporarily, in a
ritual context for a limited duration, this context often being associ-
ated with possession by or performed embodiment of a deity or spirit.
They have also been practiced in more permanent ways in numerous
African cultures and African-based spiritual traditions.
In Voodoo: Africa’s Secret Power (1980), a photographic journal,

Gert Chesi writes about his experience among the Ewe of Togo in the
1970s. His vivid descriptions include encounters with males who
dressed in women’s garments, behaved in an apparently feminine
manner, and performed spiritual services. He first observes “trans-
vestites” in Glidji, a village in Togo near the border of Benin, where
hundreds have gathered to take part in a Vodun ceremony. Among the
participants are two “transvestites, fair of skin, [who] dance dressed
in women’s clothes” (Chesi, 1980, pp. 128, 133). He encounters these
individuals again at a feast in Anecho for Mami Wata, a female water
spirit:
The two transvestites are also here again, now hung around and
around with silver. They wear short brocade skirts, and white
spectacles are painted round their eyes. Their naked upper bod-
Sources 33
ies and legs are painted with kaolin in a longitudinal pattern of

stripes like those of the women. (p. 147)
Chesi then focuses on one of these, who is named Gilbert. He de-

scribes Gilbert as a “businessman” whose profession seems to be im-
porting fabrics. Gilbert lives in a house with his sister and other wor-
shippers of Mami Wata. Chesi notes that although the majority of
Mami Wata’s priests are female, a “few men, who are called mamissas,
are an exception” (p. 163). Gilbert has a tiny room “just big enough
for one bed and a huge altar,” on which rest, alongside a depiction of
Mami Wata, “pictures of Indian gods next to French perfume and Eu-
ropean dolls” (Chesi, 1980, p. 158). Gilbert insists that Chesi take his
photograph, but not until he has donned ceremonial garb:
First he must wash, make up, and decorate himself. It takes

ages. Two women fuss over him; he has his hair combed and his
legs washed. . . . [H]e seems to delight in his own beauty, as
again and again, he holds up the small yellow-rimmed mirror to
his face and gives instructions. Narcissus would have paled be-
side him. . . . When the sister is made up, Gilbert protests. Her
make-up is more beautiful than his. He demands to be made up
again. (p. 163)
Later in the text, Chesi documents a ritual to Mami Wata during

which Gilbert becomes possessed by her spirit: “Gilbert dances in
front of the drums. . . . Gilbert is seized and shaken by his god. His
body struggles up as if in fever and falls full force against a bench
packed with people” (p. 181). Near the end of his journal, Chesi, writ-
ing of a “transvestite show” at the Hotel Tropicana in Togo, reports
that after the show,
the artist was mobbed by the native population. . . . The first and
most important question he was asked was whether he could ac-
tually transform into a woman. He said that he had only played
the role of a woman, but that explanation was implausible. For
the boys in the hotel, it was easier to think of someone trans-
forming oneself rather than of someone imitating so perfectly
another entity—in terms of the African tradition, a completely
obvious reaction, for the transformation is an everyday event
here. (p. 204)
According to Isaac Schapera (1930), the Nama(n), a tribe of Khoi-

san people, practiced from time immemorial a form of egalitarian
homoeroticism. This relationship was formalized by means of a cere-
mony of communion at which a beverage, in earlier times water and
in later times coffee, was shared by the lovers. This relationship was re-
ferred to as a sore//gamsa, a “water bond.” The relationship was
thought to be rooted in “deep friendship” and aimed at “mutual assis-
tance.” The preferred form of sexual intercourse appears to have been
oa/huru (mutual masturbation) (pp. 242-243). Male-male and/ or
transgender intimacy has been documented by S. F. Nadel (1947)
among the Nuba peoples of the Nilotic Sudan. Nuba terms for the
transgender partners engaging in these relationships include domere
(Tira), korre (Nyima), londo (Korongo), tomere (Heiban, Otoro), and
tubele (Mesakin). The transgender partner, according to S. F. Nadel,
“wears women’s clothing, does women’s work, and adopts women’s
ways.” Male-male and/or transgender marriage is practiced by the
Korongo and Mesakin; writes Nadel, “[Transgender] ‘wife’ and ‘hus-
band’ live together and keep a common household” (1947, p. 285, see
also pp. 109, 214, 396).
Among the Azande, living in what today are southwestern Sudan,
northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the southeastern cor-
ner of the Central African Republic, a form of intergenerational
homoeroticism was practiced from remote antiquity until the begin-
ning of the twentieth century. Anthropologist Edward E. Evans-Prit-
chard (1971) has insisted that this and other forms of same-sex inti-
macy were indigenous and not the result of foreign influence. The
typical intergenerational relationship was between a ruler or warrior
and a younger male. Younger males who were the intimate compan-
ions of rulers were sometimes referred to as the “king’s old bark-
cloth” and as the amoyembu, “those who could be summoned.” The
most common form of sexual intercourse practiced between warriors
and youths was interfemoral. Relationships were formalized by way
of marriage ceremonies. The ritual of betrothal included the older
partner giving spears to the younger partner’s parents, building a hut
for his mother-in-law (his negbiore), and giving the younger partner
“pretty ornaments,” this last gift suggesting that the relationship may
have included a transgender element, although not so great an ele-
ment as to designate the younger partner as having a transgender or
female gender identity. The older partner now addressed the youn-
Sources 35
ger’s father as gbiore (father-in-law), while the partners addressed

each other as badiare (“my love”). The relationship stressed the train-
ing of the younger partner as a warrior (Evans-Pritchard, 1971).
Azande women appear to have practiced same-sex and/or trans-
gender intimacy from the remote past until the present century. This
activity was apparently feared by most men, which may have led to
general denial of its practice. This type of intimacy was thought
to double the female partners’ power. It appears to have been espe-
cially common among women and/or transgender male-to-female
persons living in the courts of princes. When two female-born Azande,
often married to men, decided to enter into a formal relationship with
each other, they participated in a bagburu ceremony. This ceremony
centered on a ritual object, a cob of red maize called kaima, symbol-
izing blood, which was divided between them. They recited a spell,
presumably a spell of binding and love, over the cob. Then, one of
them held the bottom of the cob, the other the top, and it was broken
between them. Each then planted the seeds in their respective gar-
dens. On conclusion of this rite, the partners referred to each other
“not by their proper names” but as bagburu. “The one who is the wife
cooks porridge and a fowl and brings them to the one who is the hus-
band” (Evans-Pritchard, 1970, p. 1432). Their relationship appears to
have included an erotic aspect; in lovemaking they employed dildos
made of sweet potatoes, manioc, and bananas.
Evidence suggests that Azande individuals engaging in same-sex
or transgender intimacy may have also engaged in magical practices
and/or have served as spiritual functionaries. In folkloric belief, they
were associated with witchcraft and were linked to the adandara, a
supernatural wildcat with gleaming ebony skin and luminescent eyes.
Indeed, this type of lovemaking was referred to as adandara, and it
was imagined that such lovemaking practices led to the birth of cat
people (Evans-Pritchard, 1976). Among other African cultures, the
Nuer of the Upper Nile practiced woman-woman and/or woman-
transgender individual marriage into the twentieth century, although
its erotic component appears to have diminished over time. Nuer
“woman-husbands” often served as magicians or diviners (Butler,
1990, pp. 8-9).
Mwami prophets of the Ila people in what is now southern Zambia
dressed, according to Reverend Edwin W. Smith and Captain An-
drew Murray Dale, “always as women, did women’s work such as
plaiting baskets, and lived and slept among, but not with, the women”
(Smith and Dale, 1920, 2: 74). In his fifteenth-century sketch of
Morocco, Leo Africanus described female sorcerers who allegedly
experienced possession in order to serve as oracles. They were called
sahacats, “which in Latin signifieth fricatrices [from “friction,” the
rubbing together of female genitalia],” because of their engaging in
intimate relationships with other women. According to Africanus,
married women were known to have left their husbands in order to
become the lovers of sahacats (Carpenter, 1919 [1975], quoting
Africanus, pp. 38-39). Among the Lugbara, John Middleton indi-
cates, spiritual functionaries have often been regarded as marginal
persons and more specifically as transgender; these qualities promote
their serving as messengers between the human and spirit worlds.
Transgender male-to-female mediums are named okule (“like women”),
and transgender female-to-male mediums are called agule (“like
men”) (Middleton, 1969).
We may also wish to consider the sangoma (isangoma, izangoma),
a spiritual functionary of the traditional religion of the Zulu people of
southern Africa. Although at present it appears that neither trans-
genderism nor same-sex intimacy plays a central role in the tradition,
it is nevertheless the case that some male-born sangoma have been
described as transgender and/or homoerotically or bisexually in-
clined. A process of gender metamorphosis may be initiated when an
ancestral female spirit chooses to take possession of a male, either be-
fore birth, at birth, or later in life. In Body and Mind in Zulu Medicine,
contemporary Zulu anthropologist Harriet Ngubane (1977) writes,
“Divination is a woman’s thing, and if a man gets possessed he be-
comes a transvestite, as he is playing the role of a daughter rather than
that of a son” (p. 142). The process is nurtured and enhanced by way
of formal initiation, referred to as ukuthwasa, which suggests a “‘com-
ing out’ or ‘emergence,’ as of the appearance of the new moon” (Lee,
1969, p. 134). Following a kind of shamanistic dismemberment, the
initiate is taken by one or more sangoma to be healed and further ini-
tiated. During this time the initiate learns about healing, divination,
magic, and other beliefs and practices; and it is usually during this
time that the male-born initiate undergoes gender transformation. At
this time, according to S. G. Lee (1969), the initiate “adopt[s] female
dress” and begins to “speak in high-pitched tones” (p. 134). The
transgender (or transgender-like; male-to-female-like) sangoma finds
Sources 37
her complement in the transgender (or transgender-like; female-to-

male-like) sangoma, who is described as “active” and “masculine.”
Unlike Zulu women, the female-to-male sangoma is allowed to
“carry a shield and a spear, those badges of manhood” and enjoys
“meat and beer” (Lee, 1969, pp. 150-151, see also pp. 134-140).
Among the Baganda of the vicinity of Victoria Nyanza Lake in
Uganda, the supreme deity Mukasa, a rainbow serpent who provides
abundance, includes among his priests transgender, female-born in-
dividuals who, by way of embodiment by Mukasa, spoken of in terms
of a marriage, undergo gender metamorphosis, which is manifested
in the adoption of masculine attire, behavior, and, apparently, identity
(Roscoe, 1911).
Among the Lango, another people of the Uganda, androgynous
males or transgender male-to-female persons engaging in eroticism
with masculine men were still being called jo apele or jo aboich in the
early twentieth century. Jo apele saw themselves as the children of
the gynandrous deity Jok. According to anthropologist J. H. Driberg
(1923), Jok is said to be “bala yamo muweto, like moving air. . . . Jok
is an indivisible entity penetrating the whole universe” (p. 216). The
most ancient manifestation of the polymorphous Jok is as Atida, also
known as Min Jok, the Mother of God. Atida is a woman warrior,
hunter, and rainmaker. Jo apele believed that this deity had been pres-
ent “at their fertilization (jok manywala, it was god who begat me)”
(p. 210). They were said to have been “transformed into women.” It is
not clear from Driberg’s description whether they were treated differ-
ently from birth or whether they underwent a kind of shamanic trans-
formation as adolescents. He suggests, however, that their special
status became known to them gradually, in stages. As persons of
transformed gender, the jo apele were known as dano mulokere or
mudoko dako. Jo apele took women’s names, dressed in women’s
garments, decorated their faces like Lango women, wore their hair
long, and “simulate[d] menstruation.” They were formally wedded to
men “without offending against Lango law” (p. 210). They did the
work of women, which appears to have included serving as spiritual
intermediaries, delivering oracles while sitting beneath Atida-Jok’s
sacred banyan tree (Driberg, 1923).
Among the Kenyan Meru, the transgender, male-born mugawe, a
“powerful religious leader” who is “considered a complement to . . .
male political leaders,” wears women’s clothing and often women’s
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The authorities and the visitors were so much pleased with each
other that an arrangement was entered into by which a Portuguese
ship was to be yearly despatched—probably from Macao—laden with
articles of trade. The returns were made in gold, silver, and copper,
of which latter metal there was abundance in Japan.
Then came the establishment of a mission under Francis Xavier,
afterwards canonized by the Catholic Church, and a man of
wonderful ability and with all the requisites for a Christian missionary
of his time. He and his assistants did not meddle with Japanese
affairs or politics, soon made friends, and many converts; but St.
Francis Xavier died in 1552, and his successors were not so wise or
so Christian-like as he had been. They differed among themselves
and meddled with matters which did not concern them. The
Franciscans and Dominicans quarrelled with the Jesuits, but they
obtained, among them, a very large number of converts, among
whom were numbered some of the princes or feudal lords.
The Dutch came next in establishing a footing in Japan, about
1598. One of their first vessels had an English pilot named William
Adams, who has left us a narration of his long residence there—a
romantic story, but which can only be alluded to here. He arose to
high distinction, and, among other things, instructed the Japanese in
the art of ship-building and mathematics.
An English factory was established at Hirado in 1613, but the
enterprise was soon abandoned.
All went well with the Portuguese until about the year 1617, when
a revolution occurred in Japan which placed in power those who
were hostile to both foreign traders and to missionaries. This
revolution had a fatal effect upon the Portuguese influence,
especially as they had, as has been said, showed imprudence in
mingling in the politics of the country, while their ambassador
exhibited great pride and haughtiness, in marked contrast with the
Dutch. The latter, attending strictly to their mercantile transactions
and moved by hatred and jealousy of their rivals, the Portuguese,
took good care to give the assurance that they themselves were of a
different creed from the Jesuits.
When, therefore, in 1637, the Portuguese—traders, missionaries,
and all—were banished from the country, after many persecutions
and much bloodshed, the Dutch were allowed to keep up an
intercourse, but under severe restrictions.
Once rid of the Portuguese, there then began a persecution of the
native Christians, which continued for many years, during which it is
said that several millions suffered for their faith. The number sounds
large, but all accounts agree in regard to it.
Then the Dutch fell under suspicion, for several good reasons, and
were only permitted to remain at all on condition of residing at one
spot, where they could be guarded and every motion observed. In
1641 they were ordered to remove to Dezima, a small island near
Nagasaki, which Kæmpfer said “was more like a prison than a
factory.” But, unwilling to quit the prospect of profitable trade, they
willingly underwent this imprisonment and agreed to forego any of
the outward signs of Christianity, such as leaving off divine service,
etc.
The island Dezima is shaped like a fan, and is very small, only
about six hundred by two hundred and fifty feet, and mostly of
artificial construction. It was connected with the town of Nagasaki by
a bridge, on which there was always a strong guard. The whole
island was surrounded by a high fence with iron spikes. No stone
houses were permitted to be built, and the interpreters, clerks, and
servants were spies, whom the Dutch were obliged to pay. The few
ships allowed to come annually were searched and their arms and
powder taken away. “A more annoying and thorough system of
imprisonment and espionage was never devised.”
Although subject to this oppression and contumely, the Dutch
continued their trade—one or two ships going from Batavia every
year—until Japan was thrown open to the world by means of the
action of the American expedition of 1853. But before speaking of
that expedition we must allude to the idea which has been
extensively entertained that there were formerly, and until quite
recently, two Emperors at the same time in Japan. This erroneous
idea was conceived in this way. About the year 1200, of our era, the
then Emperor created a supreme general, called Shógun. Each
Shógun owed allegiance to the Emperor, and was invested by him,
but his position as supreme head of the military organization, which
gave him immense influence with the powerful nobles or feudal
lords, made him almost the equal of the sovereign. Several years
after Japan had been opened to the world and treaties made with
many nations, in 1868, the Shógun’s power was shattered during a
war which might be denominated a revolution. Military domination
was swept away and the Mikado reinstated in his position of
supreme authority. In that year the powerful Tokugawa clan, and
others who supported the Shógun, were overcome by the great
clans of Satsuma, Choshin, and Tosa, and a powerful northern
opposition was put down by the Mikado’s forces.
It is a curious fact that the Stonewall Jackson, an ironclad, took
part in this war. She had been built in France for the Confederates,
taken to Havana, and then claimed by our government as a spoil of
war. She was sold by the United States to Japan, and taken out
there and delivered by one of our naval officers.
And now to relate some of the events in Japan in which our
country was most concerned.
In 1831 our first effort at intercourse began. A Japanese junk
which had been blown off their coast had drifted about the Pacific
for a long time, and at length went ashore near the mouth of the
Columbia River. Her crew were kindly treated and sent to China,
whence they were sent, on board an American merchant ship, the
Morrison, to Japan. People were not then aware of a Japanese law
which prohibited the return of any Japanese who had left their
country. At any rate, it was an errand of mercy. When the Morrison
entered Jeddo Bay the Japanese, finding she was unarmed, fired at
her with shotted guns, and she was forced to go to Kagosima.
Meeting the same reception there, she returned to Macao with the
shipwrecked Japanese on board.
Complaints having multiplied that American seamen wrecked on
the coast of Japan had been harshly treated by the authorities of
that country—which was very true, for the writer was a shipmate of
one who had been so treated, and often talked with him of his
adventures—our government was anxious to make a treaty which
would provide that such unfortunates should be kindly treated, and
also that American vessels in distress should be able to enter
Japanese ports for needed supplies. So Commodore Biddle, with the
Columbus, of 90 guns, and the sloop-of-war Vincennes, of 20 guns,
entered the Bay of Jeddo, in 1846. The ships were at once
surrounded by guard boats—four hundred of them. The ships
remained ten days, but no one belonging to them landed, and an
application for license to trade was met by the answer: “No trade
can be allowed with any foreign nation but Holland.”
The next attempt was in 1849, when the United States sloop-of-
war Preble, Commander Glynn, was sent to inquire as to the
detention in Japan of sixteen American seamen who had been
shipwrecked on the coast of the islands. As the Preble approached
Nagasaki harbor she was surrounded by boats and warned off. But
the ship stood in with a fair breeze, and anchored in spite of them.
Troops were hurriedly gathered and heavy batteries erected on the
elevated shores, all bearing upon the ship. But Commander Glynn
persisted, in spite of threats and subterfuge, demanding the
prisoners and saying that the government meant to protect its
citizens and means would be at hand to enforce its demands.
Afterwards he sent word that the men must be delivered to him in
two days’ time; and then the Japanese, finding him in earnest, gave
them up. They had been very cruelly treated. Other attempts than
those we have mentioned were made at different times, without
success, by other nations, the English and the Russians especially.
Commodore Perry’s successful expedition left the United States in
November, 1852, several vessels intending to join it being already in
Chinese ports.
It was well known that our government contemplated such an
expedition, and it had been the subject of much comment in several
European countries more immediately concerned. The general
opinion was that the mission would, like the many others which had
been attempted by various powers, prove fruitless, from the
prejudices and obstinacy of the Japanese. But they did not reckon
upon the great tact, skill, and firmness which were to be displayed in
the accomplishment of this difficult task. The President’s letter was
presented on July 14th, 1853, when the squadron left with a
promise to return next season for an answer. On March 31st, 1854, a
treaty of peace and amity, providing especially for the protection of
American sailors, was signed.
In June, 1857, a new treaty was made at Simoda, by Townsend
Harris, American Consul-General to Japan, who succeeded in the
next year in reaching Jeddo in spite of opposition, where he
negotiated a third treaty, covering many more points than the first
ones.
Other nations soon followed us in making treaties, until Japan was
in full intercourse with the world at large.
It is impossible, here, to give more than a sketch of the many
interesting incidents of Perry’s first visit, but we will endeavor to give
a few points.
On the 7th of July, 1853, the Susquehanna and the Mississippi,
paddle-wheel frigates, with the Plymouth and the Saratoga, sloops-
of-war, entered the Bay of Yedo, the sailing sloops-of-war being in
tow of the steamers, and the crews of the junks which were
overhauled showed every evidence of surprise at the sight of the
first steamships they had ever seen, taking to their oars and sweeps
and hastily getting out of their course. At 5 o’clock in the afternoon
the squadron anchored off the city of Uraga, and from their position
distinctly saw the sacred mountain, Fusiyama, although it was at a
distance of about sixty miles. Previous to anchoring a number of
guard boats were observed coming off, and, contrary to the practice
permitted during the visit of the Columbus, the Commodore
determined to exclude casual visitors, so that they were not
permitted even to make fast their boats to the ships, much less to
come on board—a proceeding which seemed to anger the Japanese
officials, but had a good effect in the end. Soon after an official
came to warn the ships off, and he made signs to have the gangway
ladder of the flag-ship lowered for him. But the interpreter told him
that the Commodore was a very high officer of his government, and
that he would receive no one but a functionary of the highest rank,
and was asked why the Governor himself did not come off. He
replied that he was forbidden by law to do so, and asked that he
(the speaker, who was Vice-Governor,) should be received. After
some delay this was done, but he only saw the Commodore’s aide,
who told him that the Commodore’s intentions were perfectly
friendly, and that he brought a letter from the President of the
United States addressed to the Emperor. The Japanese official
insisted that the ships must go to Nagasaki and there deliver the
letter, as that was the only place, under their law, for the transaction
of business with foreigners. He was told that the Commodore would
not go to Nagasaki, but expected to be duly and properly received
where he was, near Yedo, and intimated that force might be used to
deliver the message with which he was charged. He was prepared to
meet the Japanese on their own ground and imitate their own policy.
The result was that the squadron was left free from all annoyance,
an event unprecedented in the intercourse of Japan with foreign
ships for two centuries.
There were a good many forts and batteries to be seen on the
shore, however, and every precaution was taken against a sudden
attack, especially as bodies of soldiers could be seen moving about.
But the next day the Governor of the city appeared and came on
board. Being an official of the third rank, however, the Commodore
would not personally meet him. The Governor still insisted upon the
ships leaving there and going to Nagasaki, and was again told that
they would deliver the letter there, as the nearest point to the
capital. At a later interview he was informed that unless an answer
was given in three days, and the business which had brought the
squadron there was arranged at the present visit, the Commodore
would be obliged to return with a larger force, and, as Uraga was an
unsafe anchorage, he should go much nearer to Yedo.
It would take many pages to give all the arguments for delay
offered by the Japanese; but the firmness of Perry, who had not
been personally seen—as too exalted a person—at last gained the
day. The Emperor consented to have a meeting of high officers
deputized by him and Commodore Perry in a house built for the
purpose, on shore, where the letters could be formally exchanged.
All the officers of the squadron who could be spared accompanied
the Commodore, in full uniform, and a large force of marines and
sailors, under arms, formed a guard of honor. The United States flag
and the Commodore’s pennant were borne in front by two stalwart
seamen, and two boys, appropriately dressed, bore, in an envelope
of scarlet cloth, the President’s letter and the Commodore’s
credentials.
After long ceremonial conversations, everything was settled
pleasantly, and an answer promised upon the return of the squadron
the next spring.
On the 12th of the following February, Perry returned for his
answer. The Japanese were quite friendly, and the squadron, of
three steamers and four sailing men-of-war, anchored about twelve
miles beyond the town of Uraga and about twenty miles from the
capital city, Yedo. Even then the Japanese tried to change the place
of meeting, but without success, for the Americans persisted in
having it at that place, which is now known as Yokohama. Here a
fine building was erected as a “Treaty House,” and, on the 8th of
March, 1854, Perry landed in state for the second time, and on that
and the following days conferences were held and handsome
presents interchanged. Among arms, implements, wines, and other
things, was a small locomotive and tender, with a passenger car, and
enough rails to form a track. The Japanese Government sent to the
President a great quantity of things peculiar to the country, and all
ended in a good understanding and the granting of the demands of
the American Government.
Thus, not within the lifetime, but within the naval lifetime of the
writer, has a nation emerged from complete isolation and become so
powerful as to challenge and successfully meet in battle a
neighboring nation, some of the provinces of which contain as many
inhabitants as the whole of Japan.
No matter what may be the result of the war which is now going
on, it is certain that none of the great Western nations which have
hitherto controlled, more or less directly, the course of events in the
extreme East, will in future venture to take political steps without
reckoning Japan as a first-class power. Her resources, military and
naval, are present, while those of the Western nations must be
transported halfway round the world to reach them.
Before war was actually proclaimed the ships of China and Japan
had two or three conflicts on the Korean coast, one of which
involved quite a battle, and the destruction of a small Chinese
cruiser which was protecting the landing of Chinese troops, from
transports, on the coast of Korea. The second was the sinking of the
Kow-Shing, which steamer, in spite of her Chinese name, was an
English vessel, and one of the fastest and best employed in the
Chinese coast trade.
When the news of the sinking of the Kow-Shing, which took place
on the 25th of July, first appeared, there was great bluster in the
English papers about holding Japan responsible; but, when the true
facts came to light all this talk quickly died away, as it was clearly
seen that the Japanese were within their own right in preventing the
landing of their enemy’s troops in Korea. Of their merciless
treatment of the Chinese when struggling in the water a difference
of opinion may probably be held.
The “Kow-Shing incident” was as follows:—This vessel, of about
1400 tons, had a crew of Chinese, but the captain, the three mates,
and three engineers were Englishmen. She was chartered by the
Chinese government, by the month, for military purposes. Toward
the end of July she took on board twelve hundred Chinese troops,
with two generals, and their body-guards, of about one hundred and
fifty men.
War was not formally declared, but two other Chinese troop ships
trying to land men, and under escort of men-of-war, accomplished
their purpose, but an action succeeded between the convoying
vessels and some Japanese cruisers, in which one of the Chinese
ships suffered great loss, and was set on fire. Her commander ran
her on shore, where she shortly blew up.
The Japanese succeeded in intercepting the Kow-Shing, and
determined to force her to return without landing the troops she had
on board.
But one of the Chinese cruisers, the Tsi-Yuen, accompanying the
two which had landed troops, observing the Japanese cruiser
Naniwa taking note of the operation, is said to have approached the
Naniwa with the Japanese flag flying and suddenly opened fire upon
her, as evidence of which an officer of the Kow-Shing was shown a
shell, which happily did not explode, in the ward-room of the
Naniwa. “What happened afterwards was probably done, at least in
part, as retaliation for this act of fighting under false colors.”
On July 25th at 8 o’clock in the morning, the Kow-Shing, with the
Chinese troops on board, sighted the Naniwa, which signalled her to
stop and then to anchor; she did so, and then signalled “Can we
proceed?” As an answer to this the Japanese cruiser sent a boat,
with an armed crew and two officers, who proceeded to the
captain’s cabin, where they examined the ship’s papers. They were
told that the Kow-Shing was a British steamer, with the British
Consul’s clearance, flying the British flag, and that war had not been
declared when she left port.
Major Von Hanneken, the German officer in Chinese employ, told
the Chinese generals what had passed, and the latter said they had
rather die where they were, and said that if the British officers
attempted to leave the Kow-Shing they would be killed by their
body-guard. The English captain tried his hardest to show them how
useless it was to resist the Naniwa, but without success. By this time
the boat had returned to the Naniwa, and the latter signalled,
“weigh, cut or slip, wait for nothing” meaning that the English
captain was to carry his ship back to the place whence she had
come, and not attempt to land the generals and their troops in
Korea. If they had obeyed the order there would have been no loss
of property or life. But the Chinese would not allow the captain to
move, and threatened death again if he did so. The Naniwa then
steamed abeam of the Kow-Shing, on the port side, about 500 yards
off. Then she blew her whistle, ran a red flag up to her foremast
head, and discharged a torpedo, which however fell short.
Immediately afterward, seeing that the torpedo had missed, the
Naniwa fired a broadside which hulled the Kow-Shing, which keeled
over to starboard and immediately began to sink.
The English officers at once jumped overboard, and began to
swim for the land, through swarms of Chinamen, dead or drowning.
Bullets were striking on every side. They came from the Chinese
soldiers who were herded on the only part of the Kow-Shing left
above water. Then the Englishmen swam toward the Naniwa, and
after being a long time in the water were picked up by her boats. By
this time only the Kow-Shing’s masts were visible, and two of her
boats, while crowds of Chinese in the water were swimming about.
The officer of the Japanese cutter which had picked up the
Englishmen said he was ordered to sink the boats. He did fire at
them and then returned to the Naniwa without picking up any of the
Chinese. The next day the Naniwa joined the rest of the Japanese
fleet, and the Englishmen were sent by despatch boat to Japan,
where they were set at liberty a few days afterwards.
The Chinese and Japanese have for ages been in communication,
mercantile and otherwise, but there has always, so far as history
goes, been an underlying hostility in the feelings of the two nations.
These feelings have been aggravated by collisions at various periods
in regard to sovereignty, and the commercial intercourse with the
Loo-choo Islands, as well as in regard to Formosa, a very large and
immensely valuable possession for the nation which may be
fortunate enough to hold it. At present the greater part of the island
is in the possession of native clans, and the Chinese control the
country for only a short distance inland, upon the southwestern
portion mostly.
Then again, China and Japan have been at difference for a long
time in regard to the Korean territory, over which China has always
claimed a jurisdiction, which however she has not practically
exercised, except by intriguing in the state affairs of the country and
demanding acts of vassalage. When Japan, whose interests in her
neighbors are very important, protested against Chinese intrigue and
influence, she was received with ill-disguised contempt. Upon war
being declared by Japan, the Emperor of China and his advisers, not
recognizing the forward state of preparation of the Japanese, is said
to have ordered his military and naval commanders to “exterminate
the Japanese vermin.” How far the effort at “extermination” went,
the whole world now knows.
Japan solemnly declared, in a diplomatic note, that her whole
object in the war was to settle and secure once for all the separation
and independence of Korea. Of course, if successful, she would
demand compensation for the immense outlay incurred in her
campaigns by land and sea; and, while not approaching the sum
paid by France to Germany at the close of the Franco-German war, it
will be very large indeed, and one which will hamper the Chinese
government for a generation to come, as their fiscal methods do not
readily lend themselves to such an emergency.
The Naval Battle of the Yalu, Sept. 17, 1894.
Since the advent of modern battle-ships of the new type, armed

with high-powered rifled ordnance, naval officers of all nations had
been eagerly looking for an occasion when the use of such ships and
guns would be an object lesson to them, and various theories in
regard to naval warfare would be put to the test of actual practice.
While most people were looking to movements in other and widely
distant parts of the world—some predicting a naval battle in the
North Sea, while others looked for a battle of giants in the
Mediterranean—the problem was in part solved for them by a
pitched battle in the far Orient, between the Japanese and Chinese
fleets, and which will be known in history as the battle of the Yalu.
The rival fleets may be said to have illustrated each a different
principle. That represented by the Chinese was the principle of the
school which puts material above personnel, for their fleet contained
the heaviest ships and the largest guns, although these were not so
numerous as those of the Japanese. They had also the most
extensive torpedo equipment.
The Japanese represented the school which believes in lighter,
more active ships, and in “the man behind the gun”—that is, the
greater rapidity and accuracy of fire and ability in manœuvring—
much the same as Farragut’s conviction that the best protection for a
ship was a rapid and accurate fire from her battery.
BATTLE OF THE YALU—SINKING OF THE CHIH-YUEN.
Before proceeding to describe the battle it would be well to give

some account of the strength of the contending fleets. By this we
mean the available naval strength of each nation at the outbreak of
the conflict.
The Chinese navy owes its existence principally to the fostering
care of the Imperial Viceroy, Li Hung-Chang, now in disgrace. He
employed Captain Lang, an Englishman, and other Europeans to drill
the ships’ companies. But Captain Lang was forced to leave that
service some time before the war began, and Captain Von
Henneken, a German, who constructed the forts at and near the
naval port of Wei-hai-wei, appears to have taken his place as adviser
to Admiral Ting—as much as a military man can advise upon naval
matters. The Chinese had five heavy ironclads—Ting-Yuen, Chen-
Yuen, King-Yuen, Lai-Yuen, and Ping-Yuen—with armor from fourteen
to eight inches thick, and armed with Krupp guns, from twelve-inch
to eight-inch calibre, mounted in barbette. They had also some
quick-fire and a number of machine guns. All of these vessels,
except the Ping-Yuen, were built at Stettin, in Germany.
The Chinese protected and partly protected cruisers were nine in
number, with armaments of Armstrong and other guns, and a
number of quick-fire guns in two of them, the Tschi-Yuen and Ching-
Yuen. Most of them were built in Germany and in England, but three
of the smaller ones were constructed in the Chinese building yard at
Foo-choo. Some of the vessels named were quite fast, but as the
speed of a fleet is that of its slowest ship, we must put it down at
ten or eleven knots—the speed of the ironclad Ping-Yuen.
The torpedo flotilla included twenty-eight boats of over one
hundred feet in length and thirteen over eighty, all built in Stettin.
As regards the Japanese fleet, of the armor-clads (Riujo, Fuso,
Kongo, Hi-Yei, and Tschiyoda), all are stated to be practically
obsolete but the last, and she was much damaged in the battle by
the Chinese Tschi-Yuen. They were all built in England at different
dates, from 1864 to 1879. The Tschiyoda, armored cruiser, is a
modern ship of about 2500 tons, built in Glasgow. She has a four-
and-a-half-inch belt, one-inch deck plating, and mounts 24 quick-fire
guns. Her best speed is about nineteen knots.
The modern protected cruisers which took part in the battle on the
Japanese side were the Naniwa, Takachiko, Itsukushima, Hashidate,
Matsushima, Akitsushima, and Yoshino. The lowest speed of any of
these ships was seventeen and a half knots, and they were armed
with Armstrong, Canet, and Krupp heavy guns and a very large
number of quick-fire 4.7-inch, and smaller guns.
The Akitsushima and Hashidate were built in Japan; the
Itsukushima and Matsushima at La Seyne, in France. The Naniwa
and Takachiko were English built, as was also the new Yoshino, with
a speed of twenty-three knots, 4150 tons, and one of the finest
cruisers afloat in any navy.
The Japanese torpedo flotilla consists of 41 boats more than 100
feet in length; but, as we shall have occasion to see later on,
torpedoes were of not much importance in the Yalu battle, owing to
the manner in which it was fought, and few of those were present.
The principal dock-yard and naval arsenal of Japan is at Yokosuka;
and the whole country is divided into two naval districts or
departments, each subject to a vice-minister under the naval
minister at Tokio, the capital. The discipline and regulations of the
Japanese fleet are modelled upon those of Europe and America
much more closely than that of China, and the ships are manned by
efficient and well-trained crews, who have excellent and well-
instructed officers. So many of the population are engaged in
maritime pursuits—either in the fishery or in coasting and carrying
on the active communication between the islands composing the
empire—that there is a large reserve of hardy, seasoned men to
draw upon for service in the navy.
Many of the officers have been educated abroad, some of them
being graduates of our own Naval Academy at Annapolis, where, as
a rule, they have always stood well in their classes in spite of the
difficulty of carrying on their studies in a foreign language. These
naval cadets were received at the request of the Japanese
government and wore the uniform and were treated in precisely the
same way as our own cadet midshipmen, but the Japanese
government paid all their expenses.
Thus, though apparently weaker than the Chinese fleet, except in
the matter of swift cruisers, the Japanese navy had qualities which
gave it the real, practical advantage in the battle of the Yalu. More
than ever has it confirmed the theory that speed is the greatest
requisite in the sea-fighting of the present day; for it was the
swiftness of the Japanese vessels which gained them the advantage
in the first place, seconded by rapid and accurate gun-fire.
We shall see that torpedoes had not much opportunity for action,
and when used by the Chinese (rather clumsily), failed in taking
effect, while there was no use of the ram at all—a manner of offence
which many looked to see exemplified in the first great naval battle.
The great sea-fight at the Yalu will not be completely elucidated
for some time to come—probably many months—but we know
enough about it to be able to give its leading features, mostly from
the report made to the Japanese Emperor by an aide of Admiral Ito,
who commanded the fleet of Japanese vessels.
This fleet had been for several days in the estuary of Ping-Yang, in
the Bay of Korea, co-operating with the land forces upon the river
Ta-Tong. On the morning of September 16th the Admiral was
advised that Ping-Yang had been captured, and he at once got under
way, proceeding to the northward with eleven ships, the names of
which have already been given, and the Saikio, a light-armed vessel
having on board Admiral Kabiyama, who was senior to Ito, but who
did not assume command, as he was only upon a tour of inspection
and his vessel was not intended for fighting. The ships were in two
divisions.
On the 17th, in the bay of Takuchao, on the coast of Manchouria,
they discovered the Chinese fleet, of fourteen ships and four
torpedo-boats. It was then about mid-day. As the opposing forces
rapidly approached each other it was seen that the Chinese were
coming out of the bay in a formation not unlike a closed crescent or
wide V; the Japanese fleet being in line abreast, with the Admiral in
the centre in the Matsushima. The little Saikio also took place in line,
in spite of her feeble armament.
When about 4000 metres distant the Chinese Admiral and some
other of his vessels opened fire, but the Japanese waited until the
distance had decreased to 3000 metres before making any reply.
Even then they fired but a few shots, after which Admiral Ito, seeing
that the Chinese retained their peculiar and very disadvantageous
formation, signalled to the van squadron to attack the enemy on the
right and the rear squadron to attack the left. At the same time he
ordered the Akagi and the Saikio to get on the port or outer side of
the rear squadron, for safety. The presence of the two large and
heavily plated German-built battle-ships in the Chinese fleet
convinced Admiral Ito that he would have to fight the battle under
full steam, and, by attacking the Chinese on their flanks, break their
formation and throw them into confusion. Seeing that he was
exposing first one wing and then the other of his fleet to a
concentrated fire which he could only partially return, Admiral Ting
now tried to get his vessels into line, and a tremendous cannonade
ensued, at a distance varying from a mile to a mile and a half. The
ocean fairly shook as the ships swept on, rapidly firing pieces of
heavy modern ordnance. The Chinese vessels presented a strange
appearance, for not a moving man could be seen upon their upper
decks, nor were there any boats at their davits or on their decks. It
was said that they had purposely left their boats behind to prevent
their crews from deserting.
At first the Chinese fire was fairly accurate; but that of the
Japanese, coolly handled, and with the newest pattern of guns, had
a terrible precision. The wheeling movement of the Japanese on the
right and left flanks, and the terrific effect of their rapid-fire guns,
seemed to throw the line of their enemies into disorder and to
demoralize their gunners.
During this tremendous and incessant fire one of the Chinese
vessels, the Lai-Yuen, an armored cruiser, was badly injured, and the
Japanese particularly concentrated their fire upon her as well as
others of the Chinese fleet which seemed to be damaged. The Lai-
Yuen then began to get low in the water, but her gunners continued
to fire almost to the last, when she sank, stern foremost. As her
stern went under, her bows rose out of the water, and she is said to
have remained in this position for about a minute and a half before
she finally disappeared. This fine vessel was sunk by shot, as not a
torpedo had been discharged. Then came the turn of the Tschi-Yuen,
which showed signs of being in trouble, and with a concentrated fire
directed upon her she soon sank, with every soul on board.
While the rear of the Japanese main squadron was turning the left
of the Chinese the Hi-Yei came so close to the latter that, to avoid
receiving their fire broadside on, she left the main squadron and
steamed straight for the Chinese line, passing between the two large
ironclads, the Ting-Yuen and Lai-Yuen. Both these great floating forts
fired at her as she passed, and also launched two torpedoes, both of
which missed, and on went the Hi-Yei, cheering and firing from both
batteries. She had a great number of killed and wounded, but had
passed more than half-way through, without serious damage to hull
or machinery, when a shell from one of the battle-ships hit her aft,
about three feet above the water line, and shattered her mizzenmast
and killed her paymaster, both her surgeons, all the medical
attendants, the men at the spare steering-gear, and many of the
powder division. These were all in the ward-room, which was the
surgeon’s quarters in action. Besides this damage the shell set her
on fire, and her commander, named Sakurai, was obliged to run out
of the line of fire until he could subdue the flames.
The Saikio, which was only a steamer of commerce turned into an
armed vessel, had a somewhat similar experience with the two great
Chinese ironclads. A shell from the Ting-Yuen struck her and
destroyed her steering apparatus, so that she had to withdraw from
the line of battle, steering as well as she could by means of her
screw propellers. It was evident that the Chinese thought she was
trying to ram, for the two steered apart and made an opening
through which the Saikio passed, escaping the torpedoes launched
by the Chinese. During these exciting moments the fire slackened a
little on both sides, but was renewed, as soon as the little vessel was
safely out of the way, with greater force than ever.
By this time the Chinese cruiser Tchao-Yung had become disabled
in her machinery, and was forced onto a reef of rock; but she
continued to use her guns vigorously against two of the Japanese
fleet which had closed with her, the effect of whose fire was such
that she soon went down by the head and slipped off to sink in deep
water, leaving about two-thirds of her masts above the surface. All of
her crew who could do so took refuge in the rigging and raised
pitiable yells of distress. But the fighting was still going on so
desperately that no assistance could be rendered to these
unfortunate people. Then another Chinese ship came to grief, the
Yang-Wai, which retired slowly from the battle, evidently hard hit
and rolling heavily, while dense masses of smoke came up from her.
Seeing that she was hors de combat, the Japanese did not pursue
her. Indeed, the fight was too close to permit them to detach any of
their ships. Although they had not suffered so much as the Chinese
their damages were very considerable. A shell had struck the
Matsushima which had dismounted her forward rapid-fire gun and
killed and wounded a number of her crew. The gun was thrown
across her deck with such force as to damage the hull of the vessel
very considerably. Indeed, as flag-ship, the Matsushima had been
the object of particular attention from the Chinese ever since the
battle began. She had her commander and her first lieutenant killed
and one hundred and twenty of her ship’s company killed and
wounded. Yet, in spite of the treatment she had received, she
seemed in no danger of sinking.
But Admiral Ito needed a flag-ship in better fighting condition than
that to which the Matsushima was reduced, and so he had a boat
lowered, and accompanied by his staff passed to the Hashidate and
hoisted his flag there. The Japanese cruiser Yoshino bore a very
conspicuous part in the engagement; and when her captain
perceived that the Hi-Yei was disabled, he manœuvred his ship in
such a way as to cover her withdrawal, and then taking her place,
attacked her enemy with the greatest vigor. She was struck many
times and her forward barbette and gun were seriously damaged,
but the damages were promptly repaired, and she was not forced
out of action.
During the battle the Chinese tried to use torpedoes several times,
but the Japanese kept a good lookout for them, and not one made a
hit. The captain of the gun-vessel, Akagi, stationed himself in the
foretop and followed all the movements of the Chinese, so that
whenever they prepared to launch a torpedo he signalled the fact.
But at last a shot struck the mast, cut it in two, and, as it fell to the
deck, it killed the captain and the two signal-men who were aloft
with him. The first lieutenant assumed command, cleared the wreck,
and continued the fight until night put an end to it.
As the evening drew near a dense smoke arose from the ironclad
Ting-Yuen and from two of the Chinese cruisers, and they were
supposed by the Japanese to be on fire, especially as their batteries
had very much slackened and only fired intermittently. But they still
held their ground, and it was not until sundown that they were seen
to be in full retreat.
The Japanese fleet hauled off seaward, expecting to renew the
action in the morning and fearing to follow too closely, perhaps on
account of torpedoes, while their speed was necessarily slow, as it
had to be regulated by that of their own damaged vessels.
When day dawned not a sign of the Chinese fleet was to be seen.
They had made the best of their way to the secure refuge of the
naval arsenals and docks at Port Arthur and Wei-hai-wei. Admiral Ito
then steamed toward Talu Island, where, aground and abandoned
by her officers and crew, they discovered the Yang-Wei. She was at
once destroyed by a torpedo, which, it is interesting to remark, was
the only one used on the Japanese side during the whole of the
operation.
The Japanese fleet then repaired to the rendezvous off the mouth
of the Ta-Tong River, from whence the Akagi, Matsushima, Hi-Yei,
and Saikio were sent home for repairs, Admiral Ito’s flag being on
board the Hashidate, where it had been transferred while the action
was in progress.
On September 23d the Japanese fleet, reconnoitring the
neighborhood of Port Arthur, discovered the Chinese cruiser Kuang-
Ki on shore in Talien-Wan Bay, and, as the Japanese drew near, they
saw the Chinese abandon and blow her to pieces.
This was the fifth war-ship lost by the Chinese since the beginning
of the battle of the Yalu. Though some were much damaged, not a
Japanese vessel was lost. Twelve Japanese officers and 98 men were
killed, and 13 officers and 170 men were wounded. The Chinese
loss, including those who were drowned, was estimated at 2000; but
the exact number will probably never be known. From the accounts
of eye-witnesses the sea was full of drowning Chinamen at the time
the three vessels were sunk during the battle, and few could have
been saved, as the severest fighting was going on and the Chinese
vessels, as we have said above, had no boats.
The condition of the Chinese fleet, when it had with difficulty
reached Port Arthur under cover of night, was most deplorable. The
ironclad Ting-Yuen had more than 200 holes in her made by
projectiles, but her armored belt was not seriously damaged, the
heaviest dents not being much more than a few inches deep. Her
sister ship, the Chen-Yuen, was less frequently struck; but the
damage she sustained was more important. She almost sunk before
she could be secured at her safe anchorage, being several feet by
the head. According to the Chinese accounts, it was the rapid-fire
guns of comparatively small calibre which inflicted such serious
injury.
The captain of one of our American war-ships on the Asiatic
station, in describing a visit to the Japanese field-hospital, near
Nagasaki, says: “There I got a fair conception of the killing and
wounding qualities of the small-bore rifle that all Europe is adopting.
The Japanese infantry arm is the Murata, the invention of General
Murata, now Chief of Ordnance of Japan. The calibre of the gun is
.315, and the bullet weighs 235 grains. I saw a Chinese officer who
had been struck in the knee-joint by one of these bullets, fired at a
distance of about 1000 yards. The thin steel envelope of the bullet
had broken, and the joint was simply a mass of finely comminuted
bone splinters. The knee was perfectly soft, without a bone in it
unbroken an inch long. Of course, the leg had to be amputated.
“The hospital was the admiration of the French and English
surgeons as well as our own. The medical staff were all Japanese
who had graduated in medicine and surgery either in America or
England, then taken a post-graduate surgical course in clinics at the
Paris and Berlin hospitals. They had the best modern instruments
and systems, the newest antiseptics—everything a hospital on
modern lines should have. And all this is the work of a generation.
Truly, the Japanese is a wonderful man.
“I saw something, too, of the effect of the modern shell fire on the
cruiser of the period at the battle of the Yalu River’s mouth. The
Akagi was hit several times by eight-inch shells of the Vavasour-
Palliser pattern. One of these, fired from the Chinese cruiser Chin-
Yuen, tore off nearly one-half the iron and steel port-quarter of the
Akagi, killed Captain Sakamato, her commander, and killed and
wounded a dozen more officers and men. A second shell, from a
200-pounder, made a hole eight feet in diameter in the side of the
Akitsu. Had the service of the Chinese great guns been equal to that
of the Japanese, the Akagi, the Hashidate, and Matsushima must
have been sunk. The Japanese fire was terribly accurate and deadly.
The Chinese ship Chen-Yuen was hit nearly one hundred times.
Nothing was left above water of her; of her crew, 460 strong, over
350 were killed or died of wounds. All this was from the fire of six-
inch and eight-inch rifles, at a distance from 1000 to 1600 yards.
The Chinese had the heavier ships at Yalu, but the Japanese out-
manœuvred them and out-fought them. Man for man, and ship for
ship, my professional opinion is that the Japanese commanders are
equal to any in Europe. They have courage, a high professional
knowledge, and a fierce fighting spirit that nothing daunts.”
The paper from which this report is taken adds that the American
commanders attribute much of Japan’s success to the fact that so
many of her naval officers were educated at the Naval Academy at
Annapolis.
The following description of the condition of things on the decks of
Admiral Ting’s flag-ship Chen-Yuen, after her fight with the two
Japanese cruisers Naniwa and Yoshino, was sent to an English paper
by an officer of the British squadron at Chefoo: “The slaughter has
been awful, blood and human remains being scattered over the
decks and guns. Three of the five men working the four-ton gun in
the after-turret were blown to pieces by a six-inch shell from one of
the Naniwa’s quick-firing guns, and a fourth was shot down while
attempting to leave the turret. The remaining gunner stuck to his
post and managed to load and fire three rounds at the Naniwa, and,
one shell entering her engine room and another blowing her
forebridge away, she hauled off. The Chinese Admiral awarded the
plucky gunner 1000 taels. One shell struck the Chen-Yuen’s steel
deck and, glancing off, passed up through the conning-tower and
exploded, blowing the gunnery lieutenant to pieces and leaving his
head hanging on one of the voice-pipes. Huge fragments of armor
and backing had been torn from their fastenings and carried
inboard, crushing a number of poor wretches into shapeless masses,
even the upper part of the funnels being splashed with blood. An
engineer officer (European) was sent for to repair the steam-pipe of
the steering-engine, and tried to grope his way through the smoke
of bursting shells and heaps of killed and wounded lying on the
deck, when a shot struck his assistant and disembowelled him,
covering the engineer with blood. He nevertheless managed to reach
the steering-engine and repaired the pipe, for which he received a
rather handsome reward from the Admiral. This engagement lasted
about one and a quarter hours, when the Japanese hauled off and
the Chen-Yuen made the best of her way to Wei-hai-wei, their naval
station, where she arrived the next day in just the same condition as
she had left the scene of action, no attempt having been made to
wash away the blood or remove the dead bodies.”
A French writer, in speaking of the battle, says: “As was to be
expected, recriminations were rife among the officers of the
defeated fleet. Each one tried to throw the responsibility upon his
neighbor, while the captains were the objects of all sorts of
reproaches, some of them being charged with downright cowardice.
But, if his subaltern officers failed in their duty, Admiral Ting cannot
avoid the greater part of the responsibility for the defeat. During the
years that he has commanded the fleet in the Gulf of Pe-chi-li he has
not known how to make it a naval force worthy of the name. The
fire of his ships was more than mediocre, and the Japanese, in that
respect, had a vast advantage over the Chinese gunners. On the
other hand, this general officer has proved himself absolutely
ignorant of the general principles of naval tactics. He hastily got
under way and took a formation in the shape of a closed crescent,
something like a V, which no sailor before him ever dreamed of
doing; his ships mutually paralyzed each other, and at a glance
Admiral Ito took in the situation and overwhelmed the branches of
the V, one after the other.
“Admiral Ting would only have been excusable if he had not had
time to form line of battle; but in this case he must be reproached
for not having lookout vessels far enough away, as he must have
known that the conditions were favorable for Japanese vessels to
make raids in the Gulf of Pe-chi-li and the Bay of Korea. He appears
to have known nothing of the movements of his enemy, and if he
took any interest in them it was purely a speculative one. Personally,
Admiral Ting conducted himself with bravery; but personal courage
is not the only requisite in those on whom is conferred the fearful
responsibility of chief command.”
To sum up the result, the battle of the Yalu was won by guns, on
fast ships-by guns alone, just as in former naval engagements; for
neither torpedoes nor rams played any part. If the Japanese
torpedo-boats had been present, it is quite likely that the destruction
would have been greater. The Japanese guns were a little more
modern than those of the Chinese.
The Japanese had among their artillery some large Canet guns
and Armstrong rapid-fire guns of moderate calibre. The Chinese had
Krupp and Armstrong guns of more ancient model, and it would
appear that the only rapid-fire guns they possessed were of very
small calibre—such as are intended for defence against torpedo-
boats, of which the Japanese had none in the battle.
The Chinese fleet showed great want of concerted movement, and
as a consequence a defective formation—a lack in the commanding
officers of ability in manœuvring—and the crews were insufficiently
drilled. When the Matsushima received such injuries that Admiral Ito
was obliged to shift his flag to the Hashidate, there must have been
a period of hesitation and delay among the Japanese ships, but
Admiral Ting does not appear to have taken advantage of it. He
either did not see it or he did not know how to profit by it.
The Japanese, on the other hand, showed admirable decision, and
took the offensive with a precise and definite knowledge of what
they wished to accomplish, while their Admiral, by a manœuvre
worthy of all praise, concentrated the whole of his force upon each
wing of his enemy’s fleet in succession. Their crews were well drilled
and instructed and full of patriotic ardor, all having the same end in
view—to win the battle at all costs. This is always the case when
battles are won, either at sea or on land. Victory is the reward of
worthy effort and methodical preparation. The Japanese have
appreciated and adopted European methods, have assimilated
Western ideas, and put them in practice with an ability which is the
more astonishing when we consider that thirty years ago they were
armed with the weapons of feudal days.
It was reserved for the last comer into the family of nations—the
last to assume fellowship—to give lessons to the rest in the art of
naval warfare.
No doubt, if two first-class European or American fleets had
cannonaded each other for five long hours, as the Japanese and
Chinese did at the Yalu, there would have been even more terrible
destruction; but the deduction is nevertheless to be made, from the
late battle, that the victory was won by the side which knew best
how to prepare for it. The lesson it teaches to all nations is the
necessity of careful preparation and sedulous training. Modern men-
of-war take a long time to build and modern arms a long time to
construct, while the training of an efficient ship’s company takes
almost equally long, even when good and conscientious officers
devote to it their best abilities.
After the date of the battle of the Yalu, events of great import and
influence upon the course of the war followed each other with great
rapidity, and the telegraph conveyed to the Western world reports of
marches, battles and sieges, in which, however, the Japanese navy
bore only a secondary but still very important part.
The Chinese, weakened in vessels and depressed in spirit by their
losses at the Yalu, did not attempt any further naval operations.
In the latter part of November one of the Japanese armies
captured Port Arthur, with its fortifications, which were almost
impregnable if well defended. The fruit of this capture was the fine
docks, plenty of naval stores, and repairing tools and material,
ammunition, guns, and several vessels undergoing repairs in
consequence of injuries received in battle. This important operation
was effected by the land forces of Japan, assisted by the navy, which
occupied the attention of some of the seaward Chinese forts, and
also prevented the escape of several vessels and of a portion of the
garrison.
The Japanese proceeded at once to remove the torpedoes and
submarine mines planted to protect the entrance of the harbor, and
at once became busily engaged, without the loss of a day, in
reorganizing the construction and repairs shops, and in availing
themselves of the facilities offered by the fine dry docks—built at so
much cost by their enemy.
Transports, with provisions and the latest reserves, soon began to
arrive at this most advantageous naval base, particularly so for the
Japanese fleet, which patrolled the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, both to prevent
interference with their transport service and to keep open
communication with the army of Field Marshal Yamagata as it
approached Moukden, the ancient city of the North, the place of
sepulture of the ruling dynasty of China and the site of their principal
treasury. It is held in much greater reverence than Pekin, the
political capital, which has twice been occupied by foreign armies—
those of the French and of the English.
At one time during the early part of the war there was a
disposition shown by England to interfere in the struggle and to
endeavor to put an end to a state of things which seriously
interfered with her commerce and promised to affect it still more
seriously in the future. But the remarkable ability and power shown
by Japan, and the failure to persuade other nations to join in an
armed intervention before the Chinese were forced to sue for peace
at any price, put an end to the plan.
In the meantime the northern provinces of China fell almost into a
state of anarchy. The troops and their generals could not be
depended upon to successfully defend any position, no matter how
strong, while banditti, composed of stragglers, deserters and the
scum of the population, ravaged the country, and operated with
almost complete impunity in the very environs of Pekin.
A foreigner who had been employed in the Chinese customs
service was despatched to Japan to endeavor to negotiate some sort
of armistice, with a view to peace negotiations; but the Japanese
Minister of Foreign Affairs refused to have any communication of so
irregular a character, and the official was sent off with scant
courtesy.
After this came the intervention, as negotiators, of the American
Ministers at Pekin and Tokio—both officials of great length of service
and experience in their positions—with proposals for a peace
founded upon the granting to Japan of a large money indemnity, as
well as a territorial concession which would add largely to the extent
of that empire.
But, after some tentative proceedings, this well-intended
intervention failed, as the Japanese seemed determined that the
Chinese Emperor should sue directly for peace, which their success
in the conduct of the war entitled them to demand.
The Emperor of Japan is a tremendously hard-worked ruler, and a
good business man. He watches closely the Japanese, as well as the
foreign press, and passes over, as a rule, ordinary misstatements or
criticisms; but if a newspaper becomes at all dangerous he gives an
order to his censors, and the newspaper is stopped, while the
editors are liable to imprisonment. As he has the appointment of a
large number of members of parliament, and the constitution is so
adroitly worded that he is still the almost absolute ruler of Japan,
there was probably not much delay in the voting of war measures
and supplies.
The Crown Prince, who is not the son of the Empress, but of one
of the secondary wives, was sixteen years old in September, 1894,
and is said to be a bright lad, of dark complexion, like his father,
with almond eyes and face of the most pronounced Japanese type.
He is of an erect figure and fond of military pursuits. He has been
educated in the Nobles’ school, and has studied French and English.
The Emperor is taller than most of his subjects, very dark, with a
long face and heavy features. Except in complexion the son is not
very much like his father, his face being rounder and shorter. There
have been one hundred and twenty-one Emperors of Japan, all of
the same family. The first one governed the country just about
twenty-five hundred years ago. “He was on the throne long before
Julius Cæsar aspired to be Emperor of Rome, and three hundred
years before Alexander the Great thought he had conquered the
world. The Japanese have the history of all of their Emperors from
that time down to this, and they will assure you that the Mikado is a
lineal descendant of the first Emperor, whose name was Jimmu
Tenno.
“Any other royal family would have run out in less than this time,
especially in an isolated country like Japan but the Japanese have a
law by which the Emperor cannot marry one of his own family. He
has to marry the daughter of one of the court nobles, and the
Empress is, therefore, not of royal blood.”
It is interesting to us, as Americans, to recall the fact that, while
China and Japan were thus grappling in the throes of war, important
diplomatic work, of a peaceful character, was going on between
ourselves and each of the contending powers. The treaty signed
with China arranged many important points which had been long at
issue between us and them; but the most important action was the
Convention between the United States and Japan, signed about the
1st of December, 1894, at Washington, by Secretary of State
Gresham and Minister Kurino, as Plenipotentiaries on behalf of their
respective governments.
This Convention supplants the Treaty of 1858, already alluded to,
in which Japan was dealt with as a barbarous nation, and that of
1866, by which the United States, Great Britain, France, and the
Netherlands established Japan’s customs tariff for her. The United
States, alone of all nations, has, of late years, insisted upon Japan’s
complete autonomy in foreign as well as domestic affairs; in taxes
and tariff duties, as well as in judicial jurisdiction—none of which she
had enjoyed under the old treaties.
Copyright, W. H. Rau.
Deck of U. S. S. Indiana.
In the foreground are two of her 13-inch breech loading rifles, and two of her 8-
inch guns are shown on the right. It costs to fire one of the former, with tooled
steel projectile, $700. The Indiana is capable of giving combat to any vessel afloat.
Naval Battles of America
PREFACE.
At one time in the history of the United States, when the
population was comparatively small, and most of it concentrated in
what are now termed the Eastern States, almost every one was
familiar with the exploits of our naval officers and seamen during the
Revolutionary War, the War of 1812-15, the Mexican and the Florida
Wars—beside the encounters with pirates in many parts of the
world. Since these memorable encounters the way of the population
has largely gone westward, so that the East, where maritime affairs
are necessarily better understood, has been left much in the
minority. When a war occurs—which must be largely naval—the
people of the centre and West are naturally inquiring—“Why do we
not have more ships?” The answer is, that Congress (their own
representatives among them) has not seen fit to increase the navy in
proportion to our increase of population and the increase of our
responsibilities.
Many representatives do not at all realize that it takes years to
build a modern battleship, and that the men to man them are not to
be picked up on the wharves of any seaboard city, but must be put
through a long training to be efficient.
Recent events, however, will prevent any serious opposition to
naval increase for years to come. The lesson has been too striking
an one.
Yet Congress has not been illiberal—according to its lights. Since
1883 it has authorized the construction of seventy-seven vessels, of
all rates, sixteen of which are not yet completed. The cost of these
was more than $134,000,000, yet that has only about been spent in
a month of war preparation, which might possibly have been saved if
we had had ready a naval and military force which would have
rendered impossible any armed opposition to our demands.
Fifteen years ago there was not a modern gun afloat in the United
States Navy, and we had no facilities for the manufacture of heavy
armor. Now our establishments for gun-making, armor-forging, and
ship and engine building compare favorably with any in the world.
It is well that it is so, for this is an age of progress, and the art of
war progresses with as much rapidity as peaceful arts.
Other nations take full advantage of these improvements, and so
must we. A great and rich nation, as ours is, cannot afford to do
otherwise.
We must, in future, be armed at all points, and especially in the
naval points.

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Creating Safe and Supportive Learning Environments A

Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas Empires Texts

Gay and lesbian theologies repetitions with critical

Religions in the Modern World Traditions and

The Goddess in Hindu Tantric Traditions Devi as Corpse

Colours and Contrast Ceramic Traditions in Chinese

Now You See It Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film 2nd

The Social Sciences in Modern Japan The Marxian and

Chapter 2. Divinities and Spirits 51

Chapter 3. Children of the Spirits 89

Chapter 4. Snapshots 157

Chapter 5. To Make the Spirit Manifest 229

Appendix A. Questionnaire 319

Appendix B. Interviews and Correspondence 323

Randy P. Conner, MA, PhD candidate, has taught at the University

This is a work of wide learning and empathy. Randy Conner, with

the Americas. As a male Brazilian priest declared when he was

Joseph M. Murphy is an associate professor in the Theology Department at

Thanks to Gloria Anzaldúa, whose 1981 interview with Eduardo

I have not forgotten your worship.

Audre Lorde, “Call”

I trace this text’s conception to 1981, when my friend Gloria

Gloria Anzaldúa and José Vigo

I first became aware of African-diasporic sacred traditions in the

road rather than eating in a favorite family restaurant because she

these traditions did not, however, wane. Indeed, my partner’s interest

returned to California, where, in the midst of working on the Ency-

Chapter 1 of this book, “Sources,” introduces the reader to Afri-

Chapters 3 and 4 focus on practitioners. The former, “Children of

The difficult decisions come when one wants to try to figure

Once I decided that interviews would play a significant part in this

am referring to their diasporic manifestations, which have been pro-

bian practitioners of Vodou have seemed much less willing to speak

A NOTE ABOUT TERMS

Terms originating in African languages and in African-derived

term Yorùbá-diasporic to refer more specifically to faiths inspired by

3). While acknowledging the existence of swayamvara sakhis and

the same historians who are horrified by the “ahistorical” use of

Although I tend to agree with Vanita here, if Oyèrónké Oy wùmí is

Theorists who think only terms from a particular past time

ments who object to the use of these terms in third-world con-

Ultimately, Vanita (2002, p. 6) suggests adopting “a range of nam-

sexuality in terms of anatomy or psychological gender identification.

Blessed are the Ancestors because They are why I AM.

CREOLE SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS:

African-inspired spiritual traditions or religions are practiced in

In terms of these sacred communicative actions, the theory of corre-

González-Wippler, 1975, 1985, 1989, 1992; Mason, 1985, 1992;

SEXUAL AND GENDER COMPLEXITY

As anyone who has read recent texts concerning Yorùbá concep-

passion and diplomacy,” and that Yemayá (the spirit of motherhood

men portray spirits in masks . . . that represent both males and

Such performances thus frequently include cross-dressing or trans-

left shoulder” (1987, pp. 61-62). Of a priestess of Sango, she writes,

both men and women have institutionalized opportunities to

Sometimes women possessed by the divine mediator Esu be-