Antonia Graetoef 
Maroon men carve calabashes only on 
the outside, using knives and chisels to 
create a textured design. Calabashes 
made by women are decorated on the 
inside with free-form shapes carved 
with pieces of broken glass. 
song, and drumming are conceptual- 
ized in terms of the social events for 
which they are most frequently per- 
formed, the meaning of artistically de- 
signed objects are bound up with the 
social moments for which they are in- 
tended. 
Together with fish and game, garden 
and forest products, and Western im- 
ports, artistic objects contribute to 
the fulfillment of a variety of social 
relationships, from voluntary formal 
friendships to ties of kinship and mar- 
riage. Most important among these are 
the relationships between a man and his 
wives. Woodcarving, calabash carving, 
textile arts, and decorative body cicatri- 
zation are generally intended to serve in 
the ongoing campaign of every adult to 
attract spouses and lovers and to main- 
tain their affection over time. 
A husband’s return from the coast is 
one of the many regular contexts in 
which gifts, including artwork, are pre- 
sented and reciprocated. A Maroon 
woman provides the following descrip- 
tion of this custom, in which a man’s 
sisters serve as intermediaries, present- 
ing the gifts he has brought back to his 
wife — salt, kerosene, kitchenwares, and 
other imported goods. After the trunks 
holding the gifts have been opened, 
everyone really celebrates in that house! 
Then the woman says “Listen to me!” and 
she jumps up. She’ll load an enamel basin 
with some calf bands. She'll load up some 
narrow-strip textiles. She’ll put in some 
cross-stitch embroidery. She tells her sis- 
ters-in-law, “Take these to the man for me.” 
And they’ll set everything on their heads 
and carry it off to the man. The woman will 
stay in her own house, rejoicing over the 
presents, while all the others go off to the 
man’s house. Then the man will say, “Well, 
here’s something for you to take over to the 
woman.” This last present can be anything 
that he’s brought back from the coast — any 
kind of dishware, maybe an aluminum wa- 
ter jug. . . . They bring it over and say, 
“Woman, don’t you see? Here’s something 
that your husband sent over for you.” The 
wife will jump right up. She’ll grab the one 
thing that she hasn’t yet given him and, 
right there, she’ll give it to her husband’s 
kinswomen. She'll always have one thing 
held back, to give him separately. It could 
be some cross-stitch or an embroidered 
neckerchief, or whatever. "Take this thing 
here. Go drape the man with it for me.” 
After her gift is presented, shouts will ring 
out wooooooo. . . . “My goodness! The wom- 
an has really pulled the goods to the 
ground!” That means that she hasn't been 
shamed by having made too little to recipro- 
cate his gifts properly. That’s what’s known 
as “pulling the goods to the ground.” 
Many visitors to Suriname have envi- 
sioned Maroon arts less in the context 
of their contemporary setting than in 
the context of their African roots. The 
villages of the rain forest have often 
been seen as a “little Africa in Amer- 
ica” and Maroon arts as direct “Afri- 
can survivals.” The title of an article on 
Maroons that appeared in the pages of 
this magazine more than forty years 
ago was quite explicit: “Africa’s Lost 
Tribes in South America: An On-the- 
Spot Account of Blood-chilling African 
Rites of 200 Years Ago Preserved In- 
tact in the Jungles of South America by 
a Tribe of Runaway Slaves.” And more 
recent visitors have even claimed that 
Maroons have maintained a society 
“that is ‘more African’ than much of 
Africa is today.” Behind this view lies 
the myth that so-called primitive soci- 
eties exist outside of history, that they 
are by nature strongly resistant to 
change, and that they develop only 
when other, “more advanced” societies 
impinge upon them. 
In fact, societies differ enormously in 
their attitudes toward change and in 
the extent to which they exhibit an in- 
ternal cultural dynamism. The societies 
of the Suriname Maroons, like the vast 
majority of societies in pre-twentieth- 
century West and Central Africa, have 
always been highly dynamic. Our fif- 
teen years of research on Maroons — in 
historical archives, museums, and Ma- 
roon villages — has persuaded us that 
creativity, innovation, and artistic de- 
velopment from one generation to the 
next lie at the very heart of their cultur- 
al life. Far from being static leftovers 
from seventeenth-century Africa, Ma- 
roon societies have continually devel- 
oped as their members played and 
experimented with the artistic heritages 
of their ancestors, adapting them cre- 
atively to their changing lives. 
We now know that the original Ma- 
roons produced little decorative wood- 
carving or textiles; their clothing was 
extremely simple and their houses and 
furnishings largely unembellished. It 
was only over time that the relatively 
crude woodcarving of the mid-nine- 
teenth century developed into the twen- 
tieth-century art that has struck many 
outsiders as “African looking.” And 
the multichromatic Maroon narrow- 
strip textiles that so closely resemble 
The pots and pans in a Saramaka 
woman ’s house are kept proudly on 
display. Obtained by men who 
travel to coastal areas to work 
for wages, such imported items are 
selected with a critical eye. 
M>cnae< 
