In July 1916, having woven themselves into the fabric of Inuit daily life, it was time for Jenness and his companions to leave. He gave his family useful things: a frying pan, needles, thread, scissors, a fishing rod, a tent, a canoe and, controversially, a gun for hunting in winter. Then he packed his songs and other ‘specimens’ into bags and loaded them on to the ship. His mother asked him to ‘Harken to our call’, should she ever call to his spirit in need. His father and Jenny came to the beach to see the boat off. ‘I am going,’ he said. ‘You are going,’ they replied in unison.
Five years later, a missionary who had been working with the Inuit knocked on Jenness’s office door, back in Canada. His Inuit mother had sent him a message. She had heard her son had married and longed for a picture of the strange white woman who was now her daughter. She also wanted a big bowl.
Three years later, his Inuit father sent another message. ‘Jenny, your sister, is married and has a son. But I am growing old. Come back and stay with me once more before I die.’ Jenness knew the Arctic was changing, mostly for the worst. The caribou herds had been devastated by guns and the Inuit were catching diseases they had no name for and working for wages rather than to support the tribe. ‘Whither will it lead?’ he asked. ‘Were we the harbingers of a brighter dawn, or only messengers of illomen, portending disaster?’
In the heart-wrenching epilogue, written in 1958, Diamond Jenness answers his own question. His mother died of influenza, brought into her homeland by the white men. His father died while hunting caribou. His sister Jenny Sunshine had caught tuberculosis; it had already killed her tiny son and later killed her husband too. Her generation’s life was changed forever, as ‘the commercial world of the white man had caught the Eskimos in its mesh, destroyed their self-sufficiency and independence and made them economically its slaves.’
Today, Nunavut is a native-ruled territory. Its creation in 1999 was a landmark moment for the Inuit, granting them self-governance. It is one of the most remote places in the world, with a tiny population of 31,000. The northernmost permanently settled place in the world is there: Alert.
It’s so sad, knowing all that, to listen to this song. But it’s wonderful that we can. The fact it has been recorded means it is still part of what anthropologist Wade Davis has called the ‘ethnosphere’: ‘the sum total of all thoughts, dreams, ideas, beliefs, myths, intuitions, and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness’.
[Angivranna]
Angivranna singing and drumming at Berens Islands, Coronation Gulf, Nunavut. 28 May 1915.
[Wax cylinders]
These cylinders contain songs recorded by ethnologist Diamond Jenness.
[Edison phonograph]
Diamond Jenness loved to record Inuit songs – like ‘Song 21’ – on an Edison phonograph like this one. At first they were nervous of the machine, and thought it was magic, but over time Jenness earned their trust and recorded dance songs and incantations that will never be sung in the same way again.
[Alert]
Alert, Nunavut, is the most northerly inhabited settlement in the world. With coordinates 82°28’ N, 62°30’ W, it is only 817 kilometres away from the North Pole. This is the Canadian Forces Station in Alert, covered in the names of visitors’ home cities and the distances to them.
SALVADOR DE BAHIA IS A dazzling coastal city. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, it served as the capital of the General Government of the Portuguese colony. Now it is hot and hectic, the host to a seemingly endless succession of festivals.
Once the Portuguese established themselves in Salvador they began to import slaves from Africa. From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, around 4 million Africans were brought to Brazil as slaves. Salvador was the principal point of arrival. It was the first sight of Brazil for millions of African people, the first place the varied African cultures began to take new shape on Brazilian soil. It is this culture that is the focus of the Afro-Brazilian museum in Salvador.
A big feature of the museum is the religion of Candomblé, which means ‘dance in honour of the gods’. It evolved as millions of people from different parts of Africa began living together, as slaves, in Brazil. Of course, the Catholic Portuguese suppressed it, so its evolution was shaped by secrecy, but it survived and now flourishes throughout Salvador and Bahia.
In the storeroom of the museum is the curators’ much-loved statue of Exu, a god of Candomblé. The curators excitedly led me into their archives, and pulled out a sliding drawer. ‘Here is our Exu,’ they said, and looked at me for my reaction to the little creature, with his big red mouth and tongue, who had popped out of storage to say hello. I thought he was great!
In Bahian Candomblé there is one all powerful God, Oludumaré, who is served by lesser deities called orixás (which means ‘owners of heads’ in the Yoruba language of west Africa). Back in Africa, each area had its own orixá. In Bahia, all the gods came together as people from different African nations lived alongside one another. The hundreds of African orixás were reduced to just 27, 12 of whom were really important. These 12 orixás are all over Salvador; they each have a day, a colour and an area of life they are responsible for.
Exu is one of the most important orixás. He is in charge of movement, communication, paths, crossroads and decisions, and is the main link between the dead and the gods. He is vitally important: he is the animating force of human bodies and, without him, life would not have begun.
People who follow Candomble believe that he lives outside their house, in the street, and before any party or gathering in their home they make offerings to him to make sure everything goes well. The 2 million people around the world who worship the orixás do so through offerings, prayers and ceremonies. During a Candomblé ceremony, orixás possess the people as they dance, drum and sing for days on end. Offerings to Exu are the starting point of any Candomblé ceremony, to ensure its success.
There are two representations of Exu on show in the museum. The first is a bronze figure of him in his usual pose – with his penis sticking out, holding a three-pronged fork. The second is in the highlight of the museum, a wood-panelled room filled with intricate wood carvings of each of the 27 Bahian orixás. Some are inlaid with shells, another with turquoise, others with mirrors and metals. Ossaniyu, the medicine man orixá, who uses leaves to heal, is carved out of wood like the others, and represented as a tree. So what is this particular Exu, the third the museum owns, doing nestled in a sliding drawer inside a secure cabinet in the storeroom?
I asked Graça, one of the museum’s lovely curators, why it was in storage. She screamed, ‘He is too scary! The children will be scared!’ She thinks that if this horned creature with his vivid red, sticking-out tongue were on show she might have crying children on her hands (and she doesn’t want that).
The other reason for hiding the statue away is that Exu is misrepresented as a devilish creature. He looks menacing, has horns, hooves and a curly tail. Christian religious figures have often confused Exu with the devil, because he’s tricky, sensual and provoking and, as I mentioned, usually depicted with his penis sticking out, holding a fork. But this isn’t what Exu is about at all.
Exu might look intimidating to prudish Christian eyes but really he’s irreverent and playful and, like all the orixás, he has good and bad sides, just like a human. Exu and all the orixás are there to help each person to fulfil his or her destiny to the fullest, regardless of what that is; they don’t judge things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. This statue of Exu might give people who didn’t know anything about Candomblé the wrong impression, so – as much as the curators love him – they have chosen not to put him on display to the public.
It was interesting to see the zany little wooden Exu, having seen the elaborate religious object, the precious gem-studded cross in storage in the Museu de Arte Sacra on the other side of the city. Both Catholicism and Candomblé were imported into Brazil and evolved in B
ahia, and both thrive there and across Brazil still.
Once I had seen the statue of Exu, I looked deeper into the archive, uncovering clothes worn for Candomblé, including an intricate lace dress too delicate to display, and a symbolically powerful wooden rattle used in its ceremonies. Graça also showed me a beautiful silver crown, which would be a security risk if it were on show; it isn’t valuable in monetary terms, but it is culturally. Graça thinks someone might try to steal it. She says the museum has opponents; some people think there shouldn’t be a museum devoted to Afro-Brazilian culture and that they might try to cause trouble. The rest of the archive was filled with drums, ceramics and other African and Brazilian creations donated by African countries, international institutions and local Brazilian people.
Afterwards, I was sitting in the curators’ office chatting. A lovely smiling lady named Gilcelia Oliveira Pinto (or Gil) came in. I told her I was going to write about the statue of Exu in the archive, and she invited me to her home. She makes clothes worn for Candomblé ceremonies and wanted me to see her work.
I went over that evening with Graça. On the way there I passed a lake, filled with huge sculptures of the Bahian orixás dancing on the water. When we arrived Gil was in the shower. She was laughing from behind her shower curtain, saying how happy she was and welcoming us to her home. We had coffee and sweetcorn cake and talked in a mixture of Portuguese (her) and English (me) with a lot of help from Graça. I marvelled over the beautiful white cloths she has been making since she was 12 years old. I was taken aback by the craftsmanship, the level of skill and the level of dedication: for the most ornate piece of lace cloth, she told us she might work on it every evening for two years. She loves her creations, and pointed out each of the different stitches, each representing a different orixá.
Each month, Gil wraps herself in the white cloths she has handstitched and goes to a Candomblé ceremony one and a half hours away by bus. During it, she becomes possessed by the orixás, and people in the ceremony take care of her, taking off her white clothes and dressing her in the clothes of the orixa who has inhabited her body. Women are extremely important in Candomblé worship and often hold the highest positions. Ceremonies are usually led by a woman, known as ‘mother of the saint’ and they are responsible for training future priestesses. During the ceremonial feasts, food sacred to each orixá is served in large leaves. It is believed to have healing powers.
Gil told me she always leaves an offering to Exu at the beginning of a party or gathering. As we sat at her kitchen table, she pointed out the door into the street – ‘he lives there, just there, outside my door.’ His spirit is all over Salvador de Bahia – as are each of the orixás.
From the beginning of the slave trade, Christian slave owners and Church leaders tried to convert the enslaved African people, to make them more submissive and to sever the links to their shared past. Many slaves practised Christianity outwardly, praying to the saints, but secretly worshipping the orixas and their ancestor spirits. Candomblé followers were violently persecuted right up until the 1970s, when the law that required police permission to hold a Candomblé ceremony was lifted.
The popularity of Candomblé surged. Around 2 million people in the world now follow it, and many people from African countries visit Bahia in order to learn more about the faith of their ancestors. There is no holy scripture, so you can only learn from looking and listening to other people, like Gil and Graça.
Oxum, a female orixá who loves beauty, love and fertility, is said to take care of the city of Salvador, as well as newborn children, until they are four years old. If you visit her city filled with music, dance and life, be sure to say hello to Exu. Pay your respects, and he will take care of you.
[Candomblé]
The name Candomblé means ‘dance in honour of the gods’. Worshippers sing and dance to music, possessed by the orixás.
[The orixás]
On the way over to Gil’s house I passed a lake, filled with huge sculptures of the Bahian orixás dancing on the water.
THIS HAS GOT TO BE one of the most famous lines in history. It was uttered by a journalist called Henry Morton Stanley, who was on a job for the New York Herald. He was looking for David Livingstone, a missionary and explorer who was in Africa trying to find the source of the Nile.
When they met, each man was wearing a hat. The two hats are now side by side in the archive of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in London.
In How I Found Livingstone (1872), Stanley’s account of their meeting in Ujiji, deep in the heart of what is now Tanzania, he describes how they doffed these hats to one another:
As I advanced slowly toward him I noticed he was pale, looked wearied, had a gray beard, wore a bluish cap with a faded gold band round it. …
I walked deliberately to him, took off my hat, and said, ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
‘Yes’, said he, with a kind smile, lifting his cap slightly.
I replace my hat on my head and he puts on his cap, and we both grasp hands, and I then say aloud, ‘I thank God, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you.’ He answered, ‘I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.’
The hats – a sailor’s cap that belonged to Livingstone and a pith helmet that belonged to Stanley – are in front of me now, on a table at the RGS. A tailor named Hawkes made Stanley’s pith helmet and another named Gieves made Livingstone’s cap. This was before the two tailors joined forces to become the famous tailoring firm of Gieves & Hawkes. Their current shop at 1 Savile Row was once the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society, before it moved out to South Kensington. The tailors had kitted out so many explorers over the years that the building felt like home, so when the Society moved they bought it for themselves.
Livingstone was very fond of his hat and is usually depicted wearing it: at the RGS there is a painting of him with it on, and the statue of him outside the building also shows him wearing it as he gazes out towards Hyde Park, above an old milestone measuring the distance to London (1 mile to Hyde Park Corner) and Hounslow. Have a look if you are walking past.
The hat reminds me of another piece of Livingstone memorabilia, held by the Hope Entomological Collection in Oxford, the second largest collection of insects in the UK. It is the ‘type’ or standard example of a tsetse fly. This small fly, little realizing how famous it would be in the future, landed on Livingstone’s arm. He swatted it, then scraped its squished body and two others like it on to a piece of card, labelled the card ‘Setse: Destroys horses in Central Africa’, and sent it home to his entomologist friend, Frederick Hope (1797–1862), in Oxford, who was probably delighted to open it over breakfast one morning. The first curator of Hope’s insect collection, John Westwood (1805–93) described the tsetse fly from this specimen and added it to Hope’s collection of almost 5 million insects (it’s unlikely anyone will ever count them all).
But Livingstone didn’t go to Africa just to collect scientific samples. He went as a missionary, though only managed to convert one person to Christianity during his 33-year career with the London Missionary Society. Even that person was only a brief convert; the African chief lapsed shortly afterwards, due to ‘the temptations of polygamy’. What really drove Livingstone was exploration. He became the first European to cross Africa from the Atlantic coast to the Indian coast. He renamed Victoria Falls after the Queen (they were originally called Mosioatunya, ‘the smoke that thunders’, by the people who lived there) and, with the help of the RGS, went on an expedition along the Zambezi River. In 1844 he was mauled by a lion and survived.
He is best known for his final expedition, sponsored by the RGS, to find the source of the Nile. He set off in 1866 determined to solve the mystery, though several others, including the translator of the Kama Sutra, Sir Richard Burton, had failed before him. Seven years later, he still hadn’t found it and the world had lost all contact with him. In 1872, Henry Stanley, a journalist, was sent to find him.
Stanley’s real name was John Rowl
ands. He was born in Wales and grew up in a Denbigh workhouse after his parents abandoned him. At 17, he joined a ship and jumped off in New Orleans, where he met Henry Stanley, who was a local cotton magnate. Rowlands pretended to be his son and took his name. He joined the army but deserted and became a journalist. The New York Herald paid him to look for Livingstone. He set off from near Zanzibar in 1871. On his way, Stanley encountered cannibals who shouted, ‘Niama, niama,’ (‘Meat, meat’). After one violent clash, according to his diaries, those left on the battlefield had their faces, genitals and stomachs boiled and eaten with rice and goat meat.
It has been suggested that Stanley made up the line ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ for his article in the Herald in August 1872 and then repeated it in his biography. Whatever the truth of the matter, it makes for a good story and has been reported ever since.
Livingstone died within a year of their first meeting. All the years of travelling had made him sick, and he died, aged 60, while kneeling in prayer. His heart was buried under a mvuli tree and an African man named Jacob Wainwright carved the inscription ‘Livingstone May 4 1873’ into its bark. Livingstone was laid in state at the RGS at 1 Savile Row before being buried in Westminster Abbey. The inscribed bark was brought back to England two decades later when the tree was cut down. It is in the RGS archives, along with his letters, diaries, maps and more. In 1902, the Livingstone Memorial was built to mark the spot where he died.
The Secret Museum Page 16