Art of the Rain Forest 
Descended from escaped slaves, the Maroons of Suriname have 
drawn on their diverse African past and their unique New World 
experience to create a way of life rich in artistic expression 
by Sally Price and Richard Price 
an in everyday Maroon life is unmis- 
takable. One woman has brought a sup- 
ply of manioc flour and set up a large 
round griddle over a barely smoldering 
fire. She is baking large, dry cakes, 
which in the coming days will be 
broken in pieces, dipped in water or 
broth, and eaten. The second woman 
sits on a handsomely carved stool with 
a clean, wet, hemispheric calabash shell 
on her lap and a collection of broken 
bottle pieces in a scrap of cloth on the 
ground. Next to her, the third woman 
sits on an old cloth on the earthen floor, 
her legs outstretched and a bottle on 
her lap; with a sharpened umbrella rib 
she is crocheting a pair of cotton calf 
bands for her husband, using the bottle 
as a form to create an evenly circular 
band. 
The first woman spreads her manioc 
flour deftly over the dry griddle, draws 
her fingers over the entire surface to 
form decorative patterns, and carefully 
sifts a thin layer of flour over the top. 
While each cake bakes, she works on a 
hairdo for the woman with the cala- 
bash. Standing behind her seated 
friend, she sets up a network of parted 
sections and braids each section as part 
of an overall design. The braids around 
the face protrude forward and are se- 
cured with hairpins shaped out of scrap 
aluminum wire; those to the back are 
linked together; and a long, tightly 
braided line of hair runs between. 
The woman with the calabash, well 
known in the village for her sense of de- 
sign in this decorative art, is marking 
several designs as a favor to the woman 
sitting next to her, who will later finish 
A special exhibition, Afro-American Arts from the Suriname Rain Forest, will 
appear at the American Museum of Natural History, October 28, 1981. toJanu- 
ary22, 1982. Organized by Sally Price and Richard Price, with the cooperation of 
the Museum of Cultural History of the University of California at Los Angeles 
and the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the exhibition 
presents the full range of Maroon arts in the context of this people's African heri- 
tage and their life and history in the New World. 
Three women are sitting and work- 
ing in an open-sided hut under a palm- 
leaf roof. Carefully patterned arrange- 
ments of scar tissue create sharp, raised 
accents on their bodies, and their skirts 
and waist ties make splashes of color 
against the earthen floor. Among them, 
they are producing designed manioc 
cakes, an elaborate hairdo, carved cala- 
bash bowls, and decorative calf bands, 
casually combining individual artistry, 
mutual cooperation, and lively aesthet- 
ic discussion. 
The ancestors of these women were 
Africans sold into slavery in the Dutch 
colony of Suriname in South America. 
They escaped into the rain forest just 
north of Brazil, where they fought wars 
of liberation for 150 years. In the 1760s, 
a full century before the general eman- 
cipation of slaves in Suriname, these so- 
called Maroons (also known as Bush 
Negroes) won their freedom from the 
colonial government. By that time they 
had succeeded in building new societies 
and cultures that epitomize the remark- 
able resourcefulness of Africans and 
their descendants everywhere in the 
Americas. Today, there are six Maroon 
tribes in Suriname, speaking variants of 
two main languages. (The word ma- 
roon derives from the Spanish Cimar- 
ron, a word originally used to refer to 
domestic cattle that had taken to the 
hills in Hispaniola; by the early 1500s, 
however, it had come to designate the 
slaves who escaped from captivity in 
plantation colonies throughout the 
Americas.) 
Even in the informal gathering of 
these three women, the pervasiveness of 
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