Freedom With Feathers: the Power of Folklore

“The two of them knew the forest to be their friend, and magical”. This is a beautiful line from the book The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl by Virginia Hamilton which is filled with favorite characters from African American folklore and portrays the forest as a sanctuary and safe haven for fugitives who hide from a world that would otherwise enslave them. The cast of courageous escapees, both real and magical, are helped, nurtured and surrounded by wild birds of all kinds as well as folk magic, poet-prophets, earth-centered wisdom and a deep trust in the spiritual realm. Hamilton shows us how deep intimacy with the wild along with a rich folkloric heritage is a source of strength and resilience for those who survived this horrifying time in history. Stories like this remind us of how folktales weave their way even into the lives of those who are most marginalized and oppressed.

In this book an enchanted relationship is forged between people and birds and this manifests itself in a variety of ways. Some of the birds mentioned in the book include: albatross birds, which the two main characters shapeshift into as they watch over a slave ship as it crosses the Atlantic Ocean; an African Foola-fa-fa woodpecker which is conjured up magically with root magic; Passenger pigeons who watch over the secret encampment and inform the fugitives when strangers arrive; birds like crows and crested flycatchers are used traditionally as literary metaphors and symbols of free people; and finally the Buzzard, also known as Opete, an Ashanti West African sacred bird who appears in the form of a dance:

Close-up of buzzard featured in a linocut inspired by Hamilton’s book The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl. Below the bird is a pokeberry plant next to a De Conquer root, both of which are used on folk tradition included in the story.

“Dwahro got up to do a buzzard lope for them. It was a solo dance, like the kind Dwahro had seen done by the lowland people across Africa. There were many such dances that copied the way animals an birds moved about. This was was for the buzzard, Opete, as the Ashanti called him. And he was sacred in all of West Africa. / The Children had to learn the buzzard lope. Pretty Pearl had to learn it. And with Josias at her side, laughing at her and at himself, too, she learned it. / Dancing, Dwahro went about in a circle. He bent his body forward from the waist, And he threw back his arms in perfect imitation of the bird. All of them copied him” (184).

Bird folklore offers people sense of agency in their own lives and a way to remain connected with their African roots in the midst of displacement. Through a deep relationship with birds, they birth a free community for themselves in this new land, along with a vision for their future free from bondage and with a sense of ownership over their own lives.

I absolutely love how this story includes so many examples of folkloric wisdom and skills required to survive in the wild including:

• Recipes for acorn cakes and sunflower seed bread and many others made of wild foraged foods including lambs quarters, wild ginger, and wild poke berries and many passages describing where and how to forage for them;

• Falconry;

• Regenerative farming practices which the characters in the story work hard to implement resulting in sheds filled to the brim with freshly harvested potatoes, guords and corn;

• Natural dyes of all colors made from from pokeberries, roots of maple and walnut, black hickory bark, and oak leaves;

• Basketry and the weaving of sandals with wild vines and grasses;

• Herbalism and medicinal remedies made from wild foraged plants and roots;

• Magical charms, and talismans made of wild roots infused with folk magic;

• Handcrafting musical instruments.

Carving a feather alongside some found feathers!

This story offers us rich insight into the important role of folk tradition in fostering a deep knowledge of the natural world, cultivating an enchanted and reciprocal relationship with the wild, as well as healing and spiritual support - all of which are crucial for survival in the wild.

For many years it was thought that these fugitive settlements may have just been imaginary communities since so much of recorded American history was from a point of view that privileged the wealthy and European, excluding not only enslaved people but also other non-European groups including Native and immigrant, women in general, disabled people, non-gender conforming people and the poor. Acts of resistance to slavery were deliberately marginalized, additionally the sensitive nature of these fugitive settlements, established as safe havens for those fleeing the brutality of slavery, made it challenging for their stories to be shared openly. Only recently have archeologists, anthropologists and historians have begun to uncover remnants of these fugitive settlements shedding light on lesser-known aspects of our shared human history.

Daniel Sayers, author of A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in The Great Dismal Swamp (2016), has uncovered evidence of independent fugitive communities that lived in Great Dismal Swamp, which at the time included 2,000 square miles in Virginia and North Carolina. His archeological findings include the soil footprints of their cabins, tiny fragments of their tools, weapons and white clay pipes, arrowheads, pottery, and manufactured items like nails. From the 1660’s through to the Civil War, these secret communities were multicultural and multiracial and included African Americans who had escaped enslavement, Native Americans fleeing the colonial frontier, and European Americans escaping indentured servitude or hiding from the law - all of whom lived together.

The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl a hand carved linocut inspired by the book which includes a variety of details in the story: a portrait of Pretty Pearl and a profile of John de Conquer (the two main characters); two albatross birds (what the two main characters shapeshift into as they watch over a slave ship as it crosses the Atlantic Ocean); and a buzzard (aka Opete, an Ashanti West African sacred bird who appears in the form of a dance); a de Conquer magical root, berry brambles and a poke berry plant - some of the wild foraged plants and roots used in the book; a community of free people gathered around a campfire; and plenty of feathers!

What Sayers’ findings show and what Hamilton’s book brings to life is the strength of Black resistance and initiative during one of the most horrifying periods of American history. I love how Hamilton captures so well the vibrant role folklore plays in the lives of so many people who were forced to hide themselves from the world in order to stay free, and how these folkloric traditions were perhaps, even richer precisely because they were required for survival under such brutal conditions.

What is even more remarkable is Hamilton wrote her book in 1983, long before Sayer made any of his discoveries and long before there was much proof of the existence of these fugitive settlements except for oral testimony. What this demonstrates is the crucial role folklore plays in telling histories that would otherwise be erased or marginalized, and the vital role folklore plays in resisting mainstream narratives and how it gives those who practice folklore a sense of agency in crafting a sense of identity, and a place in history and visibility (at least in the folk tradition passed down orally) when one’s existence is kept secret from the outside mainstream world world.

It is my hope that through celebrating the folk traditions shared in this book we can recognize the value and wisdom the book offers all of us at this particular time in history. With so many challenges to contend with today, particularly the impending climate catastrophe that impacts us all, many are afraid and wondering how to prepare, adjust and persevere through such a monumental change. “As a mother, I’m most interested in telling my children stories that will help them adapt and survive - through their relationships, their resourcefulness, their enchantments - on a damaged planet” - says Kaitlyn Teer in her article “Rewilding the Fairy Tale” in the most recent issue of Orion Magazine entitled The Deep Dark Burning Woods: Fairytales for the Climate Crisis. Teer says it is precisely because folktales and fairytales frequently include a combination of both enchantment as well as a darker more grimm aspect, that they contain valuable frameworks for contending with difficulty, catastrophic change, loss and grief.

Zora Neale Hurston is an American celebrated author & anthropologist who did ethnographic research on Black folklore of the Deep South. In her book Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings she includes folktales, poems, songs, folk magic, rites & rituals. . . some of which are included in the book The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl by Virginia Hamilton which inspired me to create the Pretty Pearl linocut..

Hamilton’s book is a great example of this. Through her book we learn how folklore and folk tradition bring this small community into deep relationship with the wild, and how enchantment and magic serve as a source of psychological resilience and practical survival in the face of unimaginable hardship. We learn that we, too, can nurture our own resilience and come into closer kinship with the earth by discovering the ways our own folklore connects us to the wild, how our own ancestors found food regeneratively and interdependently with the earth, and how we, too, can live more meaningfully through enchantment with this one wild and precious planet.

References:

Hamilton, Virginia. (1983). The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl. Harper Collins Publishers Inc.

Grant, Richard (September 2016) “Deep in the Swamps Archeologists are Finding How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom” (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/deep-swamps-archaeologists-fugitive-slaves-kept-freedom-180960122/)

Sayers, Daniel O., A Desolate Place for a Defiant People: The Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp. University Press of Florida.

Teer, Kaitlyn (Summer 2023). “Rewilding the Fairy Tale” Orion Magazine: The Deep Dark Burning Woods: Fairytales for the Climate Crisis.

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