Conjure Doctors

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Conjure/Doctors: An Exploration of a BlackDiscourse in America, Antebellum to 1940

David H. BrownEmory University

To catch a spirit or to protect your spirit against the catching or to release your caughtspirit-this is the com plete theory and practice of hoodoo. ( H an y M. Hyatt,Hoodoo-Conjuration-witchcraft-Rootwork)

Now, this singular conduct of Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that there wassomething in the root which Sandy had given me; and had it been any other day thanSunday, I could have attributed the [kind] conduct to no other cause than the influenceof that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think theroot to be something morethan I at first had taken it to be. All went well until Monday morning. On this morning,the virtue of the root was fully tested. . . . This battle with Mr. Covey was the turningpoint in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, andrevived within me a sense of my own manhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence,and inspired me again with the determination to be free. (Frederick Douglass,Narrativeofthe Life of Frederick Dou gla s)

Introduction

African-American conjuring, encompassing healing, charm-m aking,divination, and what are conventionally called witchcraft and sorcey,has long filtered through the lens of Christianized Anglo-Americansociety as the rank superstition of primitive black people. Oftenreported in the nineteenth century as a "relic of barbarism" on anevolutionary scale of human and religious progress,2 it graduated tothe status of "mental antiques" in the early twentieth century,representing a quaint practice in an era of increasingly moreprofessionalized, albeit nostalgic and som etimes condescending, folklo re~ o l l e c t i n ~ . ~onjure and related African-American practices receivedtheir most serious treatment by Newbell Niles Puckett in the 1920s,Zo ra N eale H urston , Works Progress Adm inistration interviewers (th e"ex-slave" narratives and "survival studiesn ), and Harry M iddleton Hyattin the 1930s (Puckett 1926582; Hurston 1931, 1935; Rawick 1972;


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Geo rgia W riters' Project 1940; Hyatt 1 9 7 0 ) .~All biases have notdisappeared from th e literature, however. O n e historian wrote recentlythat certain "folk beliefsn (conjure and superstition) that black slaves"carried into their Christianity provided the means for easing thetransition into a higher realm of thought and were themselves notessential" (Genovese 1976:231).'

Con juring in th e U nited States, as it is revealed in t he narrativesof ex-slaves and other documents, exhibited a strongly West Africancharacter in its method of making charms and medicines but was notintegrated into a larger religious system ofAfncan origin (MacGaffey1988:183-203; Thom pson 1983:Ch. 2).6 Historically, con jure maintain edan essential, complemen tary position with respect to black Christianityfor many people, serving a set of day-to-day needs that the lattereither could not, or declined, to serve (Raboteau 1978:286-288;Genovese 1976:168-182, 209-231; Levine 1977: 55-81). Conjuring, as itexisted in th e So uth outside of New O rleans-w here it historicallyappears to have been integral to Haitian-influencedVoodoo/Hoodoo-was a private practice: the conjurer engagedprimarily in doctor-patienticlient relationships.'

T h e following discussion explores conjuring in t he Un ited State sas it is reflected in documents covering the late antebellum periodthrough 1940. Nineteen-forty, the publishing date by the GeorgiaWriters' Project of Drums and Shadows, serves as a rough cutoff datefor primary interview material from people who had their roots in theslavery period. The earliest antebellum reference to apparent conjureactivity-healing and poisoning-in fact da tes to 1720 in So uth Caro lina(see Wood 1974:289-292). My focus is the use of conjure by African-Americans among themselves and at critical points of interaction withwhite society, during and after slavery. Intending to offer a set ofinterpretations using representative cases rather than an exhaustivesurvey of conjure data, I happily refer those readers interested in acomprehensive study to Michael Edward Bell's extraordinarydissertation on Afro-American hoodoo performance (Bell 1980).

Conjure was used within the "slave quarters" and later freecommunities as a system of alternative medical care, a mechanism ofsocial control by elders, and as an effective mode of settling scores,effecting change in everyday situations, and satisfying ambitions. Insignificant ways conjure continued to operate in the communitiesinvestigated by interviewers in th e 1930s as it had in th e qua rters. Th ememories of ex-slaves on antebellum conjure practice correlate withcontemporaneous practices observed and documented by GeorgiaW riters' Project interviewers. C learly, con jure was also used durin g th eslave period, as Lawrence Levine has written(197755-SO), as part of


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CONJURE/DOCTORS: A BLACK DISCOURSE 5

a larger "quest for control" vis-A-vis the master class, although theeffectiveness of conjure and conjurers in slave resistance has beensubject to some debate. According to Eugene Genovese, althoughconjurers helped build a culturally "autonomous black world" in thequarters, their role was conservative with respect to existing master-slave power relations as they posed "no direct threat to the regime."T he kind of "revolutionary conjuncture" between priests of A frican-based religions and political movements as foun d in th e Caribbean wasnever reproduced, except on a "trivial scale" in the United States, heargues. Moreover, "however positive their role in the struggle of theslave quarters for psychological survival, they never could have

matched the preachers as a force for cohesion, moral guidance, andcultural growth" (Genovese 1976:221-224). The evidence andinte rpr etat ion s offered below d o no t always affirm such conclusions.Aswe shall see, conjure could and did offer moral guidance, culturalgrowth, and effective instrumental power against oppression duringslavery-Frederick Douglass was by no means the historical exceptionin experiencing such (see epigraph and below).

My reading of conjure thus seeks to find company with other

recen t works tha t collectively suggest that alternative cu ltural practicescan, in fact, be mobilized as effective challenges to dominant,hegemonic power and autho rity (see, for example, Ga tes 1988; Gregory1986; Lipsitz 1990; Re ism an 1970; Comaroff 1985; Taussig 1987; Sm ithN.d.).

A reading of slave and ex-slave narratives as well as the reportsof outside observers reveals conjuring to have been a powerful anddramatic idiom of communication and social action before and afterema ncipation. Co njure may be seen as a n idiom, an explicit, culturallyspecific way of thinking and talking about cause, effect, power, andagency, and as a practical, creative process of mobilizing spiritual andmaterial resources to address problems and to effect change. Conjure'ssocial arena in these African-American narratives and accounts iseveryday, predom inantly rura l, life-first o n plan tations an d later insmall communities. T he m aterial it works o n consists of th e changingrelationships, fortunes, loves, finances, yearnings, and frustrations ofpredominantly black people. Conjure exhibits similarities to the kinds

of witchcraft and sorcery activity found in most African societies, aphenomenon anthropologists have seen as consisting in forms ofexplanation of, and methods provided for, controlling "undeservedmisfortune, death , and illnessn as well as jealousy and antisocialbehavior, all considered in one way or another to be the product ofwitchcraft (R ay 1976:150-151; H or to n 1967; Marwick 1970; M iddleton1967). I am reluctant, however, to reduce such activity to the mere


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superstructural function of reflecting or resolving "underlying" socialissues that ar e someho w m ore "real" or "objective" than the conjuringo r witchcraft itself, t o "demystify" it as "ideology" o r d efine it as merely"symbolicn-all of which might tend t o skir t or dismiss emicexpectations of its empirical effectiveness.I am thus in agreement withJack Goody's critique of Stanley Tambiah's well-known article, "TheForm and Meaning of Magical Acts." Goody finds problematicTambiah's assertion that the

position and creative meaning [of "magical acts"] is missed. . . if . . . subjectedto . . . emp irical verification assoc iated with scientific activity.I f ind th e argumentleads us back to where we started from, for my experience has been that theactors in "rituals of affliction" do indeed expect to have their afflictions relieved.And again, I find th e planting of grain a s "symbolic," often a s "formal," certain lyas "repetitive" as any other kind of action. (Goody1977:27-28)

Perhaps we are getting closer to the consideration of conjure as a"social practice," a notion Jean Comaroff sees as unifying "context,consciousness, and intentionality" (usually spoken of as ideology) and"the transformative practice of human actors" in their "livedexperience," as they construct the self and transform the environment(Comaroff 19851-6). While this brief consideration of conjure cannothope to develop exhaustively and systematically such an investigation,Comaroffs study suggests a useful avenue for further thinking.

I. First Sightings: Conjure Through Mainstream Eyes(First Frame)

T he m inister C harles Colcock Jones wrote in 1842 o n e of th e firstelaborated accounts using the term "conjurer." He highlighted one of

th e practice's centra l em ic terms, "second sight," delineated th econjurer's role in the black community as a powerful and influentialfigure, and explicitly linked conjure to slave resistance:

Intimately connected with their ignorance is theirsuperstition. They believe insecond sight, charms, witchcraft, anda kind of irresistible Sa tanic influence.Thesup erstitio ns brought from Africa have not been wholly laid aside. Igno rance andsuperstition render them easy dup es to their teachers, doctors, prophets, conjurers;to artful and designing men. . . . On certain occasions they have been made tobelieve that while they carried abou t th eir persons so m e charm w ith which they

had been furnished, they wereinvulnerable. (Jones 1842:127-128)8

The influential J.D.B. DeBow articulated similar sentiments in 1853,stating that "[oln almost every large plantation there is one or morenegroes, who are ambitious of being considered in the character ofconjurers, in order t o gain influence, and to m ake oth ers fear and obeythem" (DeBow 1853:321).


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Jones's reference to the slaves' perception of their invulnerabilityrepresents an unwitting insight into their cultural resilience."Invulnerability" suggests a refusal to a ccept t he term s of t he discourseof th e m aster class, which accorded the m only th e statu s of beings withneither agency nor culture of their own. The master class wishfullyimagined slave resistance as the influence of designing,conjurerslagitators over ignorant dupes. However, the possibility thatslaves believed in their invulnerability threatened that comfortabletheory. The threat is evident in Jones's tone:

They have, on certain other occasions been made to believe that they wereinvincible. That they might go any where and do any thing they pleased, and itwould be impossible for them to be discovered or known; in fine, to will was tod-fely, successfu lly. (Jones 1842: 1 2 8 ) ~

If conjuring and conjurers represented resistance in the eyes ofobservers during the slavery period, they presented similar problemsto a slew of post-em ancipa tion era writers con fronting black resistanceto acculturation. P. A. Bruce in The Plantation Negro as Freeman(1889) pointed ou t t he "obtuseness and narrownessn of t he

superstitious Negro intellect. "Like a child, he dwells as much in avisionary world as in the material world." Bruce concluded that

plantation negroes in a convenient distance of churches, schools, and railroads, arefound to have as firm a belief in witchcraft as those savages of the African bushwho file their teeth, perforate the cartilage of their noses, and expose their bodieswithout a strip of clothing. (Bruce 1889:lll-115)

If the ethnocentric statement assumes an unquestioned faith inChristian morality, education, and technology-dominant indicators ofthe putatively advanced state of late nineteenth-century Americansociety-it nevertheless reveals an unwitting insight in to th e very he ar tof African-derived conjure practice: that is to say, "second-sight," themedia tion of "sp iritual" (visionary) and "material" worlds.

11. Second Sight: Healers, Leaders, and Conjure Practice(Second Frame)

"Bard, physician, judge, and priestn: the com plex role of con jurerwas filled by visionary men and women "of knowledge" (DuBois1969:216). Conjure doctors were described as having blue gums, redeyes, a gift for turning green as grass, and the ability to change intoanimal forms (Puckett 1926:202-205). They were reported to carrycrook ed o r snake-entwined canes.'' Like Moses before Pha raoh , th econjurer might, at a strategic moment, throw down his staff, saysomething, and it would wiggle like a snake; when he picked it up, it


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would be as stiff as any other cane. It was true, after all, that Moseswas on e of th e greatest con 'urers and, testimony suggests, an Africanhimself (Puckett 1926:202)j1 Conjurers were said to carry little bagsfilled with mysterious substances and wear dried reptiles on their beltsor necklaces. Conjure doctors often claimed to bea seventh son (ofa seventh son) and to have been born with a caul, or double caul.Acaul is a veil of placenta over the newborn's face. Ritually preservedfor later magical use, the single caul enabled one to see spirits, adou ble caul to converse with them. Thu s conjurers were referred t o as"strong in de head," as "two heads" or "double-sighters" (Bass1973:386). The spiritual premium on children born with a caul

translated into special talents and regard: they were said to "talksooner than other children and have a lot more sense" (Steiner1973:379).

One also could become a conjurer through initiations involvingritual isolation, fasting and ordeals, accompanied by the learning ofdreamlore, charms and remedies. One initiation procedure requiredthat the novice drink a pint of whiskey into which was put somerainwater-steeped bark gathered from two small saplings which rub

together in the wind (Puckett 1926:189).12Ed Murphy, a famous conjure doctor interviewedby NewbellNiles Puckett in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1926

lies down on his back at night, folds his arms, and a whole troop of visions swingsinto sight. H e can se e enemies coming; can s ee the future. H e lives by himself alot and meditates; does not like to be bothered by other folks. By looking througha clear pebble dipped in water he claims to be able to induce these visions.(Puckett 1926205)

Braziel Robinson, as described by a plantation owner, "established areputation as a foreseer of events, as a root doctor would adviseNegroes when to plant their garden, when to expect rain, administeredin a medical way to the many wants of the community in which helived" (Steiner 1973:377). Conjurers apparently acted in lieu ofadequate medical treatment and/or engaged in a pluralistic system ofmedical care in which both physical and spiritual needs were met.13The conjurers of slavery times were often said to be Africans who had

"supreme magic powuh" and could turn into animals and "disappeahlak du win, jis walk off duh plantation an stay fuh weeks at a time"(Jack Wilson in GWP 1940:7). Their power was explicitly tied toresistance and cultural origins and renewal: slaves were certain thatconjurers could easily "'scape an fly back tuh Africa" (Jack Wilson inGWP 1940:7; see also Serina Hall, GWP 1940:81; Charles Hunter,GWP 1940:176). A good many conjurers were pious, bi-religious


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people and often were recognized preachers and "exhorters" (Puckett1926:205; Steiner 1973:377; Rawick 1972:TX/4/1:4; Webb 1873). Inshort, they were powerful, recognized men and women comparable insome degree to their Caribbean and Brazilian religious counterpartswho, as Step han PalmiC has written, "easily slipped in to the role ofauthority figures manipulating one of the few sources of power opento Africans in a slave society: superhuman resources that could onlybe tapped by the possession of secrets bound to priestly titles" (seePalmiC 1989 and DuBois 1969:216). While they were perhaps unableto build cult institutions such as those found elsewhere in Afro-America, and while they did not stand, like the preach er, at th e cente r

of organized black churches, their charisma and authority must havemad e them magnets of a sort in the creation of the "new social ties"critical to the emergence of Afro-American culture (Mintz and Price1976).

Evidence suggests that on the client's side of the equation, largenum bers of slaves, and later freedmen, put m uch stock in co njure andwere aware of key differences in charm types and meanings. PatsyMoses, an ex-slave, stated: "De big, black nigger in de corn field mos'

allus had thre e cha rms aroun d he neck, to m ake him fort'nate in love,and to keep him well, and one for lady luck at dice to be with him.Den if you has indigestion wear a penny round de neck" (Rawick1972:TX/5/3:143). William Adams, an ex-slave an d con jurer, explained :"Some folks won't think for a minute of goin' without lodestone or desalt and pepper mixture in d e little sack, tied roun d e neck.. . . Whenon e have d e faith in sich and d e accidentally lose de c harm, dey sho'am miserable" (Rawick 1972:TX/4/1:4).

After slavery, the use of such charm s actually may have increasedrather than diminished. Cultural reproduction of conjure belief andpractice occurred throug h in tergenerational transmission of knowledge,that is to say, in learning from the elders through "hearingn and"training." "No, ma'am," said a Georg ia coastal wom an, "dey sh o ainlosin no faith in magic or sech tings. All deah libes dey heah aboutum from du ole folks. Seem lak tuh me dey beliebin in um mo an moall du time" (GWP 1940:45). Informants interviewed by the folkloristHarry M iddleton H yatt in 1935 concluded tha t "in th e S outh. . . 90percent of Negroes is been trained under thathoodooism and 40percent of the whites believed in hoodooism" (Hyatt 1970:ii). InNovember of 1885 a writer in theAtlanta Constitution had estimatedthat perhaps "a hundred old men and women practiced conjuring asa profession in that city, telling fortunes, locating lost and stolengoods, furnishing love philters, and casting spells upon people andcattlen (quoted in Cu lin 1890:281). T he presence of on e hundred


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conjure doctors implies the presence of a sizeable conjureclientele-and much conjuring-three elem ents tha t were mutuallyreinforcing.

111. Beyond Good and Evil: Conjuring Masters, Conjuring SlavesCo njure and conjurers were, more of te n tha n not, regardedas evil

instruments of the Devil by white society, if not by more orthodoxmembers of the black church. Reconciling the perspectives on conjureand conjurers taken by planters, ministers, and moralistic whiteobservers on the one hand, and conjure doctors and clients on theother hand, requires an unpacking of one central feature of thedominant religious discourse within which conjure was conventionallylocated: the opposed concepts of good and evil, God and Satan, inChristian thinking. Minister C.C. Jones saw in conjure an "irresistibleSatanic influence" (Jones 1842:128).P.A. Bruce was convinced thatconju re served as a vent for the Negro's "evil passions." Accord ing toJones, however, "a plain and faithful presentation of the G osp el usuallyweakens if not destroys [their] superstitions" (Jones 1842:128; Bruce1889:lll-115). An ex-slave spoke of the issue in similar terms: "I'm a

[Christian] believer, an' dis here voodoo an' h ood oo an' sper'ts ain'tnothin' but a lot of folks outten Christ" (Rawick 1972:AL/6:36-37).Suggesting that blacks could be both Christians and conjure

adherents, or at least that conjure and Christianity were not alwaystheoretically irreconcilable, Norman Whitten has proposed that theblack folk worldview can shift between two frames of reference. Thefirst is the normative frame of good and evil as articulated bymainstream Christian churches. In this view the "Lord an d His servants[ministers] are good and the Devil and his servants [conjurers] areevil" (W hitten 1975414). T he second fram e of reference is particularlyAfricanJAfrican-American. hitten found that, when asked, blackrespondents generally felt that conjurers were not necessarily evil; theyknow about evil things but they may also use this knowledge tocombat evil (Whitten 1973:413). Whitten's view could be nuanced withadditional shadings: Between the two frames of reference, we mightconsider a continuum of black perspectives on these issues, especiallydepending upon denomination, class, and region. The continuum was

probably never static. Moreover, the character and the status of morerecognizably "Africann folk practices vis-a-vis black Christianityprobably changed over time. Further research should historicize theseissues given the identifiable evolution of black "cosmologies" in theUnited States from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries (seeSobe l 1988 and Ra bote au 1978:Ch.2 and 3). A t any rate, th esalvational and com munal mission of the black church-even given its


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historically m ore "this-worldly" orientation-might no t solve day-to-dayinterpersonal problems satisfactorily, especially where revenge orseduction were sought. Therefore, church and conjure could becomplementary. Yet the complexity of that relationship and of thefeelings expressed by church-going individuals abou t con jure may neverbe fully understood. T he signification of th e uttera nce "good" o r "evil"from a given individual's lips may have been multi-layered, with themost conventional meaning resewed for public contexts and othermeanings for private, in-group contexts. "Devil" might refer t o th e firstframe of reference, where it signifies absolute evil. "Devil" used bysome blacks historically, especially with respect to conjure, might have

also signified "trickster," for the Devil in black folk tradition "is apowerful trickster who often competes with God" (Hurston 1931:411;Herskovits 1958:251-254).14

Life und er t he Peculiar Institution dem onstrated t o m any enslavedblacks the exploitative application of the first frame of reference andits fierce incompatibility with their daily experience. Wh ite m asters an dpro-slavery ideologists did, in fact, heavily invest in God's word assanction for black servitude, drawing on the services of white m inisters

to encourage their acquiescence to the system.As

a corollary, themaster class saw the Devil's work in any resistance to the institution.At least one shrewd slave, however, found that he could takeadvantage of th e master's set of religious abso lutes by turning it o n itshead. Jacob Stroyer relates the case-we may see it as a subversiveallegory--of o n e Jam es Hay, a black field hand. Hay was a much-punished slave because he never finished his task. The morningfollowing a severe whipping his Aunt Patience, a church-goingChristian woman, assured him that the Good Lord would help himtha t day to finish his work. H e began faithfully but could not finish,and the overseer would simply not accept Jim's excuse that the Lordfailed to help him: "I thought as I did half of the task, the Lord mighthave finishcd thc other half if he intended to help me at all." Jim wasseverely punished. Soon after, he was asked by

some professors of religion . . . f he was not tired of sewing the devil, and toldhim that the Lord was God and had helped many of his people, and would helpall who asked him and then take them home to heaven. Jim said that if the Lord

would not do half an acre of his task for him when he depended upon him, he didnot think he could trust him, and Jim never became a Christian to my knowledge.(Stroyer 1890:52)

Hay's trickster-like (certainly "devilishn) resp onse no t only challengesthe d om inan t framework of good and evil, G od and th e Devil, but alsoits underlying value system: Hay resists the exploitative app lication to


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slaves of the doctr ine of salvation after death-intended really t o gainhis acquiescence to a life of slave toil. Hay's more characteristicallyAfrican-American religious orientation seeks God's help in this worldrather than in th e next (G enovese 1976:246-247). T h e ap pa ren tunwillingness of "God" (read, in effect, as pro-slavery ideology) toanswer his needs made Christian faith (read as the internalization ofslave-status) an undesirable alternative. So me slaves, in conclusion, didnot place the same absolute evil value on the Devil as did "someprofessors of religion." They may have felt less of a need to troublethemselves about hell than white folks because, as a slave named Jackdeclared in William Wells Brown's classic narrative, "us niggers have

to work out in the hot sun, and if us go to hell it would not be sobad for us because us used to heat, but it will be bad for white folksbecause they is not used to hot weather" (Brown 1880:70-71).

On the plantation, the Devil provided a formidable weapon ofpersuasion if not physical force. The conjurer, seen by whites as theDevil's evil agent, could frighten whites simply by allowing their ownlanguag e to sha pe their responses. Now here is this dem onstrated bette rthan in William Wells Brown's story of Dinkie, the conjurer of PoplarFarm plantation. Dinkie was a "full-blooded African" and "no onecould remember the time when Dinkie was called upon to performmanual labor. . . . No on e interfered with himn (Brown 1880:70).Din kie had "de power" and was "him own massan (Brown 1880:71). H ehad faithfully served the "good and lovely devil" for 20 years. Beforehis wife and children were sold off he had served the Lord, "but datdid no good, kase the white folks don't fear the Lord. Bud dey fearsyou [the Devil], an' ever since I got into your service, I is able to doas I pleasen (Brown 1880:74). Dinkie avoided all work and even a

violent whipping in the barn by the new overseer, who threatened to"tear [his] black skin." Dinkie conjured up a scene of hell and theDevil in the corner of the barn and told the overseer "dat if he lay hisfinger on him, he'd call d e debble up to take him awayn (Brown1880:74). Th e overseer relented and b oth men em erged peacefully fromthe barn to go about their respective business.

Dinkie's con jure no t only worked symbolically bu t also empiricallyin this story. One could interpret the story in the following way:Dinkie graphically located slavery's violence in white society'snormative category of evil. At that crucial moment, the overseer wasforced to experience his own orientation as evil, a reversal of thedom inan t ideology. U p to th at p oint, white society had defined slavery(for the overseer) as a function of God's will; whipping was a meansof "beating the devil" out of the unruly, possessed slave. Dinkie'svictory was a matter of the successful communication of the injustice


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CONJUREDOCTORS:A BLACK DISCOURSE 13

of that proposition. Another more direct interpretation is possible: theoverseer, without reflection, simply balked in the face of Dinkie'sprojection of implacable power, available to him through hisrelationship with the Devil. In either case, the Devil remained afaithful ally of the slave, an instrument with which to interrupt theotherwise unhindered flow of pro-slavery ideology and behavior.''

Cha rles Chesnutt's 1899 con jure tale entitled "Mars' Jeem sNightmare," reinforces the first, if not the second, interpretation ofWilliam Wells Brown's story of Dinkie. Mars' Jeem s, before departingfrom his plantation, appo ints an overseer to sh ape u p t he place whilehe is gone. Before his departure, he is slipped some of the conjure

woman Au n' Peggy's "goopher" (conjure dust), which soo n transformshim into a young, difficult slave on another plantation.As such, andby coincidence, h e is then sen t back to the Jeems p lantation as a debtpayment to Mars' Jeem s by the othe r plantation's master. H e isseverely whipped by the new overseer and then sold in town becausethe overseer was unable to "break him." Mars' Jeems, apparentlyhaving had an extraordinary experience, returns to the plantation andfires the overseer, sho rten s work hours, increases holidays and r ations,and divests the plantation of the whip. "Aun' Peggy's goopher hadmade a noo man un 'im enti'ely"16 (Chesnutt 196954-102).

The inevitable question is raised as to why conjure, in this case,could be instrumental in obtaining reform of plantations' conditionsbut not the freedom of its slaves. Genovese raises precisely thisquestion, suggesting that slaves themselves perceived the "limitationso n the conjurer's powers." T he conjure rs were "accommodationists," hefeels, in their "double-edged adjustment to political reality": they weresubversive to the extent that their presence was psychologically

empowering to the slaves, but were ultimately unable to affect the realbalance of power. T he "limitationsn slaves recognized, according t oGenovese, amounted to: "[wle believe in these things . . . whereas thewhites do not; hence it works for us and not for them" (Genovese1976:222-223).17 Already we have seen that at least Dinkie's power"worked" on the overseer and Aun' Peggy's on the masteralbeitwithout "revolutionary" effect. Henry Bibb's im po rtant ex-slavenarrative, on the other hand, appears to reinforce Genovese's

conclusion-his con jure did not work at all on his master. Ye t whenBrown, Chesnutt, and Bibb are read along with key events in theNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, a m oresubtle interpretation begins to emerge. Perhaps it was that conjurersand their conjure were no more monolithic and homogeneous in their"limitedn power and effect tha n were a ll masters, overseers, and


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plantation orders in their resistance to conjuration. Genevese'sconclusion may simply represent an overgeneralization.

Henry Bibb felt deep frustration that the love powder a conjurerhad given him to change his master's sentiments toward him (fromanger t o love) had failed. "After this," Bibb writes, "for fear they mightfind me out in my dangerous experiments upon them, I had to givethem up, for the time being. I was then convinced that running awaywas the most effectual way by which a slave could escape cruelpunishment" (Bibb 1969:71). Bibb's conjure failed to soften hismaster's feelings toward him through th e particu lar charma conjurerhad given him. Insensitive to Bibb's "loven-overtures via conjure , his

master remained otherwise engaged to the oppressive discourse ofslavery which denied Bibb his humanity. Conjure gave Bibb neither"psychological" nor political empowerment.As a result , he chose toreject not only the aid the individual conjurer had provided, but also,in effect, the conjure tradition as a cultural option. Did he feel thatreliance on this tradition could only seal his acquiescence and that amo re radical solution was n e c e s~ a ry ? '~ W e canno t know preciselywhat Bibb thought.

In Frederick Douglass's narrative, written four years earlier,however, it was precisely the pow erful "root" given him by th e con jure r("an old advisor") Sandy Jenkins that influenced and overpowered theoverseers Covey and Hughes and opened the door to his freedom.Sandy Jenkins's root was apparently an all-purpose charm: it worked"love," physical strength, "confidence," and protection. The root wassubjec ted t o two "tests" (no t un like Bibb's "experiments") in th e firstof which, Covey's kindness toward Douglass is apparently achieved.

Now, this singular conduct of Mr. Covey really made me begin to think that therewas something in the root which Sandy had given me; and had it been any otherday than Sunday, I could have attributed the conduct to no other cause than theinfluence of that root; and as it was, I was half inclined to think the root t o besomething more than I at first had taken it to be. All went well until Mondaymorning. On this morning, the virtue of the root was fully tested. (Douglass197372)

Whereas Bibb lost faith in the love charm with its decisive failure,Douglass was forced to consider its possible effectiveness. His

reflection stands as exemplary of the empirically guided reasoningaround conjure-based phenomena. As i t was t he Sa b b a th a n ex traindep endent variable-Douglass was only "half-inclined" to att rib ut e th ecause of Covey's kindness solely to the root. Skepticism remained untilthat variable could be controlled. Monday morning was a normalworkday (slave labor resumes) and, therefore, the second test


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C O N J U R E D O C TO R S : A B LA CKDISCOURSE 15

proceeded with the independent variable eliminated. With his decisivevictory, he could bu t conclude th at t he ro ot was the cause. This "battle. . . was the turning point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the fewexpiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my ownmanhood. It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired meagain with the determination to be freen (Douglass 1973:74). H e wasnever whipped again. For Douglass the "root" was a token ofunmatched power and, one might infer, a sign of African-derivedcultural identity in service of the cause of effective resistance to theslave system (Douglass 1973:70-71).19

Predictably, the master class viewed the ingrained conjure

tradition, Africa, and the incidence of running away quite differently.J.D.B. De Bow cemented a medicalized rhetoric of health and diseaseto th e biblical sanction of slavery and t he ideology of paterna lism, withan interesting twist. "It may be thought," he wrote in 1853,

that the old superstition about conjuration has passed away with the old stock ofnative Africans; but it is too deeply radiated in the negro intellect to pass away.. . . T h e effect of such a superstition-a firm belief that h e is poisoned o rconjured-upon the patient's mind, already in a morbid state, and his healthaffected from hard usage, over-tasking o r exposure, want of wholesom e food , goodclothing, (etc.) . . . tends to directly generate that erythism of the mind which isthe essential cause of negro consumption. (DeBow1853:322)

Such consumption formed the basis of what De Bow termed"Drapetomania, or th e disease causing Negroes to ru n awayn (DeBow1853:322). With proper treatment it could be cured.

If th e white ma n attem pts to opp ose th e Deity's will, by trying to mak e the ne groany thing else than "the submissive kneebender' [emphasis in th e original] (which th e

Almighty declared he should be) by trying to raise him to a level with himself..

. o r by denying him th e usual com forts and necessaries of life, the neg ro will runaway; but if h e keeps him in the position tha t we learn fro m th e Scrip tures he wasintended t o occupy, that is the position of submission, and if his master o roverseer be kind and gracious in his bearing towards him, without condescension,and that at the same time ministers to his physical wants, and protects him fromabuses, the negro is spell-bound [my emphasis], and cannot run away. (De Bow1853322)

D e Bow's paternalistic mode of slaveholding was, in effect, a gra ndiose

love-charm, nothing less than the white man's conjure in its advertisedcapacity to hold slaves spell-bound. In De Bow's system, the desire torun away constituted the disease and slavery--properly understood-thecure. Can it be suggested at this point that conjure used by blacks, onthe other hand, offered precisely the instruments required to turn themaster discourse o n its head, prescribing its unique antid ote of m oralclarity and instrumental power? Of course, it did not always work.


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Thank s t o "Do ctorn D e Bow, we can now diagnose H enry Bibb'sparticular case as one of "drapetomania." If Bibb's master had only had"an old adviser" (e.g., D e Bow) during Bibb's period of enslavement,would Bibb have run away? That is to say, if his master could haveconjured Bibb effectively with a little graciousness, protection, andpaternalism, would Bibb not have been spell-bound? By the sametoken, if Bibb had only had the advice of Douglass's conjurer SandyJenkins, perhaps things would have worked out differently for him.Can we begin to speculate that Bibb's conjurer gave him the wrongcharm-in which case we ar e talking abou t a doctor's m alpractice.Indeed, if Bibb had had Douglass's powerful, multi-purpose charm,

perhaps he could have had his "root"and his freedom, instead ofhaving to choose between them.

If Bibb's radical option of running away to freedomreplaced-s tood in opposit ion t o w n j u r e , i t was never thelessinextricably linked with conjure in numerous other accounts as one ofthe art's particular specialties. Many ex-slaves interviewed along theGeorgia coast associated conjure tradition, African descent, andfreedom-liberation from slavery's yoke. In the tale of Dink ie (a full-blooded African), of course, we saw that "de power" m ade him his ownmaster, essentially a free man. Charles Hunter of Harrington on St.Simon's Island told of

a root makuh wut lib yuh name Alexanduh. He wuz African an he say he kin doany kine uh cunjuh wut kin be done an he kin cuo [cause] any kine uh disease. Hewuz a small man, slim an bery black. Alexanduh say he could fly. (GWP 1940:176)

Serina Hall's mother told her about a couple "wut could wuk [work]cunjuh. Any time dey want tuh dey would fly back tuh Africa"(GWP

1940:Sl). Was flying a metaphor for escape and freedom and Africaasource of empowerment via cultural identity and renewal? Did conjurereally "work" in these escapes? Whatever th e case, th e accountssuggest con jure as not only a powerful to ke n of individual agency, will,and self-mastery but also as a compass point for collective solidarity,if not escape itself. Priscilla McCullough stated:

D u slabes wuz out in duh fiel' wukin'. All ub a sudden dey git tuh gedduh an staht tuhmoob roun in a ring. Roun de g o fastuhn fastuh. De n o ne by one dey riz up an take

wing an fly lak a bud. Duh obuhseeuh heah duh noise an he come out an see du slabesriz up in du eah an fly back tuh Africa. (GWP 1940:154)

Does her account of an entire group's "flying back to Africansuggest-in addition to noth ing less than a ring-shout in full "shout"(spirit possession)-coded reference to group escape underground-railroad-fashion?20 A t any rate, what is crystal clear is that o ne


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doctor's drape tom ania was anoth er doctor's "flying back t o Africa."Do es that principle represent grounds enough to reevaluate Genovese's

conclusion? Why should the "limitations" of conjure to "work"successfully to achieve radical solutions be accepted any less than thesuccess of paternalism and its corollary of "accommodationist"conjurers? Perhaps some conjure by some conjurers (Bibb's) simplydidn't work. Other conjure (e.g., Sandy Jenkins's, Dinkie's) apparentlydid. Th e same might b e said for D e Bow's spells and the paternalisticsystem of slavery.

IV. In the Era of Jim Crow:W ho is the Most Supe rstitious of Them All?

Twenty-four years after th e en d of the Civil W ar a nd twelve yearsafter the end of Reconstruction, conjure and conjurers among blacksstill provoked alarm and despair in the eyes of writers and landowners.In P.A. Bruce's 1889 work, Plantation Negro a s Freeman, conju reremained the agent most likely to subvert black submission to whitesocial control and permit the free play of evil Negro passions, nowwith respect to the system of plantation wage labor. Conjurers and

their followers, according to Bruce, "would not hesitate to commit anycrime . . . as revenge against such of their employers as have giventhem offense" (Bruce 1889:124-25). T he "trick-doctor," Bru ce felt, actsas a "secret agent fo r gratifying all th e animosities th at find lodgem entin th eir breas tsn (Bruce 1889:125).~'

Animosities indeed, after the gutting of Reconstruction, theinstitution of Jim Crow laws, and the establishment of the Ku KluxKlan. When Bruce put his pen to paper to inscribe the following

observations, t he incidence in lynchings and racial brutality thro ughoutth e So uth had reached their zenith (Woodward 1974:43-44). Bruce wasdisturbed by the fact that, when possessed by superstitious fears at thespecter of conjure in their communities, blacks failed to conform tothe polite and smiling character they were expected to exhibit:

All cheerfulness is banished from the atmosphere in which it flourishes, and onlymalice, hatred, mischief and calamity remain. . . . The native sunniness of hisdisposition does not irradiate this atmosphere with its own light; his mind . . . sdarkened by the gravest apprehensions . . . and loses the vivid gayety [sic] of hisordinary temper. . . . Wheneverrhey arefree to follow such inclinations, he tendencyof these is always to grow in vigor and intensity. (Bruce 1889:111, 124, myemphasis)

Clearly, Bruce's contras ting metaph ors of light and darkness, ord er andchaos, resonated w ith D e Bow's earlier equa tion of black freedom withdisease and submission with healthsuperst i t ious fears indeed.


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18 Folklore Forum 23:1/2 David H . Brown

O n e year earlier (1897), plantation owne r and writer Julian Ha llhad combined both sets of images in describing exactly the kind of

white nightmare Bruce had painted. Hall reports that he had hired anew field hand named "Tom," whose amorous pursuits got in the wayof his effective exploitation as a laborer. Tom, twenty-five years old,was "strong, active, and sensible . . . thinking intelligently . . . [andwas] altogether a n unusually fine specimen." Yet, a s soon as T om hadbeen successfully "domesticated," he was conjured by a vindictive,"duskie lassie." A sudden "change came over him . . . a 'misery.'"Eventually th e work schedule was disrupted an d H all had to fire Tom ."And s o it is. Poo r Tom! W e are sorry to lose him, but if h e canno tbe cured soon, he will probably be gathered to his fathers in a shorttime, a victim of a relic of barbarism and the dark ages. Can anyone'minister to a mind diseased?'" (Hall 1897:243). Imagine Hall's troubleif it had been just 33 years earlier. Hall would have owned T om andmight have been unable to get rid of him. For Julian Hall, thediagnostic and curative resources of his own cultural side of thefence-conventional wh ite doctors-and his ignora nce of th e bre ad th ofconjure's resources would not carry him far in the way of answering

his question. P . k Bruce had already concluded, with respect t oconjure, that the Negroes themselves had "no scheme for removingitby a force commensurate with that which created it" (Bruce 1889:124).Close study of statements by African-Americans collected during the1930s on the workings of conjure reveal a different answer entirely.

V . "The Science of the Concrete":Conjure Practice as Revealed in 1930s Testimony

The eccentric but effective folklore researcher Harry Hyatt cameto understand that th e system of "ho odo on (conjuration-witchcraft-rootwork) did, in fact, have a scheme for removing with acommensurate force what it had created. Hyatt codified cogently whatconjurers and clients reiterate throughout the published accounts: "Tocatch a spirit or to protect your spirit against the catching or torelease you r caug ht spirit-this is th e com plete theory and practice ofhoo doo n (Hyatt 1970, I:24). Co njure doctors, root doctors, hoodoos,and two-heads could "work" spells and unwork them , send illness an d

other types of harm and cure illness and protect from harm sent byothers. Christine Nelson of coastal Georgia put it this way: "Ef a rootwukuh break yuh spirit , h e kin hanl lak h e want tuh.. . . Dey kin pu tspells o n yuh an lif duh spell some udduh root wukuh hab put o n yuh"(GWP 1940:19). Hyatt's idiom of "catching" and "releasing" resona teswith a variety of cognate terms African-Americans traditionally usedt o express this dynamic: they can "lift" what oth ers have "fixed,"


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CONJUREJDOCTORS: A BLACK DISCOURSE 19

"worked," "put down for," or "put on yuh," terms that are, in fact,found throughout the African ~ i a s ~ o r a . ~ ~Catchingn or "breaking"one's spirit is analogous to controlling another's will and agency withextern al "powuh" and "releasingno r "lifting" to returnin g one's contro l.Fred Jones graphically fleshed out this cycle, "Deah wuz a man widdu h powuh. H e draw a ring roun anudd uh man a n da t man couldn gitout dat ring till duh root man come an wave tuh um" (GWP 1940:27).

Importantly, Hyatt 's formulation draws on a set of terms thatskirts the mainstream Christian moral paradigm of good and evil andspeaks to Hcrskovits's articulation of an alternative, more fluid moraluniverse characteristic of African-derived cultures (see discussion

above). Catching, releasing, and "protectingn have to d o with agencyand manipulation, security and danger, creation and destruction,ordering and disordering, not exclusively and absolutely with "good"and "evil." At least, Georgia Writers' Project interviewees were lesswilling to assign conjure exclusively to the category of evil as Bruceand H all had bee n a nd were quite clear that working conju re wascomplex and multivalent. Mrs. Nelson insisted that conjurers had"powuh obuh tings udduh folks dohn unnuhstan. Dey kin wuk dat

powuh fuh good aw bad" (GWP 1940:19). On a very practical level,these African-Americans were simply being realistic, and vigilant. Thevoices throughout the ex-slave and survival narratives echo preciselyhow Paul Stoller's Songhay sorcerer-mentor admonished him in aconversation:

" If you do not 'fix' a situation . . . you will be former unprotected and your workis bound to fail. For almost everything you do, you must protect yourself fromyour enemies, from the whims of the spirits."

"Everything?""Yes. In this world, you take nothing for granted, my son. Nothing!" (Stoller

and Olkes 1987:158)

Indeed, the very con jure charms that P.A. B ruce referred to a s articlesof "a trivial nature" and the "bundle of trash" a Selm a, Alabam a,journalist identified as belonging to an "old supe rstitious neg ro" (Bruce1889:117), were, through other eyes, powerful media.

Conjurers traditionally ob tained the force or power they employedin their work from the spirit world of the dead and from nature, andunderstood the power they manipulated as either morally neutral orambivalent. Mississippi conjurer Ed Murphy, interviewed by NewbellNiles Puckett in th e 1920s, eloquently described graveyarddirt-perhaps th e most important medium of con jure work because ofits critical metonymic link to th e world of the dead-as "a powerfulmixture and, like fire or money, is used for good or evil" (Puckett


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20 Folklore Fonun 23:1/2 David H . Brown

1926:247)." William Edwards, a Georgia conju rer, prized th e spiderin his work: "duh spiduh is bote good an ebil an is useful tuh man.Imake medicine out uh duh spiduh by stooin eel skin in lahd wid it"(GWP 194056-57). These media embodied a power not intrinsicallygood o r evil bu t o n e that could b e put to "use" for good o r evil givendirection by human choices.A kind of universal currency or token ofpossibility, like money, or a powerful transformative energy, like fire,it could be commanded for creative o r destructive purposes.25 W hilecertain people or beings, such as witches and sorcerers, might useconjure power in ways that are inappropriate and destructive ("evil"),the same power might be put to constructive and appropriate use

("good"). If graveyard dirt could be used to serve individual goals andpossible to harm, authorities within the slave quarters, on the otherhand, according to Jacob Stroyer, used it to serve the collective endsof social control. Thieves were presented with a mixture of water andgraveyard dirt-and here th e double-edged understanding of th esubstance is thrown in to relief--with th e warning that they would b urnin hell if they had, in fact, stolen. If associated with the dead and the"Devil," according to Stroyer, it also was a con crete sign of absolu te

truth:N o matter how untrue a man might have been during his life, when h e cam e todie he had to tell the truth and had to own everything that he ever did, andwhatever dealing those alive had with anything pertaining to the dead, must betrue, or they would immediately die and go to hell to bum in fire and brimstone.(Stroyer 1890.60-61)

Working conjure can be compared to setting up a kind ofcircuitry--a bricolage of diverse, symbolically resonan t materials

constructed according to a set of principles that Claude Levi-Strauss(1966:18) has aptly named the "science of the concrete." Like Levi-Strauss's bricoleur, the conjurer "interrogates all the heterogeneousobjects of which his treasury is composed to discover what each ofthem could signifi, and so contributes to the definition of a set whichhas yet to materialize" (Levi-Strauss 1966:21). The con jurer makes th eright "connections" throu gh metonymy an d comm ands particular effectsand aims through "visual and verbal metaphor" and mimesis. Wyatt

MacGaffey7s analytical use of metonymy and me taph or line u p withRobert Farris Thompson's more descriptive formulation of "spirit-embedding" and "spirit-directing" medicines, respectively (seeMacGaffey 1988; Thompson 1983).

A composite picture of their explication of the process, withcerta in elaboration, might go something like this: 1) Spirit-powerharnessed from the "other world" through metonymy (graveyard dirt,


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th e bon e o r body of a dead person o r animal--e.g., th e spider, the"black cat bone") is given direction ("toldn what to do ) th roug h. . . 2)objects that signify intention metaphorically or mimetically (wordplayis often involved) and th en is. . . 3) linked metonymically, i n tu rn, t oa specific person upon whom or object upon which the conjure issupposed to "work" through something of the person's body or clothingthat has been collected.

If we were to apply this scheme to descriptions given by MinnieDawson of Coastal Georgia, we would find that she supplies the twomost widely recognized examples of the last crucial link as it workedin concert with th e first: a person's hair combings and finger- o r toe-nails along with the graveyard dirt. "Dey make mojoes [charms] outnanything," Mrs. Dawson related, "but dey say grabeyahd du t a n nails a nblood an haiah , dey is impawtant." Consequently, she warned, "yuh sh ohab tu h be keaful not tuh let no enemy git hole uh yuh haiah combinscuz dey say dey sho could fix yuh den" (GWP 1940:84).~~

Frank Dickerson described to Puckett some of the "spirit-directing" co nte nts of a "debt-getting charmn-the middle factor(2) inth e equation-and in each case stated (what I have inserted in

bracketed quotes) what effect the charm component was intended toproduce:

Dust som e nails thoroughly with som e powdered "shame weed" ["make debtorashamed of not paying"], dried wasp stingers ["sting his mind into moving"], anddirt-dauber's nests [make him "itching to see you"], and drive them into a locusttree in the shape o f an cros s [the c ross "draws from all directions"]. Within a shorttime your debtor will come and pay you in full. (Puckett 1926:283)

The details of the accounts are so rich with apparent "meaning" thatone is tempted to begin and end their consideration with anunreflective "decoding operation," a "herm eneu tic represe ntation ofpractices" that tends to "reduce all social relations to communitiverelations." One is thus "condemned to see all practice as spectacle"(Bourdieu 1977:l-2). T he interpretive, structuralist, or co mm unicationsapproach that looks merely to decode the conjure code may obscurewhat is, in fact, most remarkable about the conjurers' explications oftheir charms' "meanings": their action and praxis orientation. Charm-

doing-the "charm-eventn-is insepa rable from th e charm -done (charm-as-structure, seen as a static code or expression). First, Dickerson'saccount itself is organized around the imperative forms, "dust" and"drive" as a re o the r conjurers' prescriptions arou nd seq uenced actions:"get," "name," "fold," and "stick." Thro ugh mimesis, these action s a re t oelfect, directly or indirectly, and often quite mechanically, a set ofparallel a ctions in t he individual who is being "fixedn o r healed. This


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22 FoNdore Forum 23:1/2 David H. Brown

principle-long in th e anth ropologica l literature-has been called"sympathetic magic": i.e., "like produces like."27 Secondly, and moreimportantly, it is likely th at the conjurer uttered the "name n of eac hobject, possibly saying ou t loud what it was supposed t o d o (as in th ebracketed material above), upon its inclusion in the charm. The kindof con crete "punningn and "word magicn found in the Dickersonexample--where saying and nam ing ar e abou t authorizing andactivating-is found throug hout Africa and th e Car ibbean (Thom pson1983:129-130; Marks 1 9 8 7 ) . ~The essence of "word magic" and"punning" is to render certain effects that the named object, oftenbecause of characteristics, suggests, and, by its inclusion, calls intobeing: shame weed "shames" its object; wasp-stingers "sting" thetargeted individual, whose will has presumably been circumscribed bythe conjurer's power.

Many charms are exceedingly simple. To break up a home ormarriage, bury a file under the doorstep(i.e., to file or wear down therelationship) (Puckett 1926:269-70). Or mix dirt from the foot-tracksof th e man with dog's hair and dirt from the foot-tracks of th e wom anwith cat's hair and bury them together: "After that the man and the

woman could not live together any more than a dog and cat could"(Moore 1896:228). As shall be further explored below, the burying orinserting of the instruments of conjure (usually contained in bottlesand bags) in and around the domestic setting where the victim willinevitably com e into co ntact with them (front walk, doorste p, gatepost,bed and pillow, dresse r drawers)29 provides th e rem aining metonym icconnections-to specific, inhab ited places-that com plete the conju recircuit.

It should be said that the analytical categories and distinctionsmarshalled he re to uncover t he "syntax" of conjurers' practice may, infact, beg the question: did Afro-American conjurers make suchdistinctions along the lines of subjectlobject, wordlmeaning,signifierlsignified, nounherb, to begin with? The ability to controla n o th e r c a tc h one's spirit-through conjure may imply notions ofagency, ecology, and modes of dissociation that are incompatible withthe "W estern" concept of perso nhoo d and the body in physical, psychic,and social space (see e.g., Gee rtz 1983 and Wafer 1989). "My" "egonand "personality" ("spirits") are not necessarily seen as situatedimm utably "in my bodyn but integrally pa rt of th e flow of ob jects ingeneral, and amenable--depending o n the level of my "protectionn-tobe "captured" and transferred from o ne "containern to ano ther, forexample, to a charm or covered jar under the control of the spirit-worker, conjurer, houngan, bokor, etc. Jea n Comaroff found am ong th eTshidi, for example, that


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C O N J U R E / D O C TO R S : A BLACK DISCOURSE 23

the subject was enmeshed in a web of forces that promised to invade his bodilydomain. . . . [Plersonhood was not confined in space and time to a corporealcocoon: it permeated the world through its material and spiritual extensions.Anindividual's name, his personal effects, and his footprints in the sand bore hisinfluence, and could be used by sorcerers wishing to attack him. Malevolentthoughts toward oth ers might cause them tangible harm. (Com aroff1985:128-29)~~

Nume rous p eople interviewed in t he 1930s by th e WPAresearchers were convinced of the existence of forces they had toprotect themselves against and relied on an etiology of malaise andsickness th at allowed witchcraft o r con jure as possible causes. M en tionof witches as a thoroughly dangerous and disruptive influence is ascommon in the accounts as conjure, although the distinction betweenthem is not always clear. Conjure was apparently multivalent: a threatas directed by the malicious, malcontent, and vengeful, or a comfort,protection, and cure in the hands others. Christine Nelson of CoastalGeorgia related that "a witch is a cunjuh man dat somebody paid tuhtawment yuh. I know uh folks dat wuz rid so much by witches dat deyjis pine way an dien (G W P 1940:19).~' Jam es M oo re felt th at "deah'sroot men wukin gense yuh all duh time. Dey kin lay tings down fuhyuh an ef yuh walk obuh dis, yuh fall unduh duh spell. Less yuh kinfine somebody else wut kin wuk roots an kin lif duh spell, yuh isdoomed" (GW P 19 40:1 9) .~~W hethe r it was a witch, "hag," o r "ghost,"a malicious "root man" (in effect, a witch), or a conjurer paid bysomeone to "work against" or"fix" a person, people used preventativeand remedial measures. In short, they invested in insurance.

M innie Dawson of Pin Point, a settlement southeast of Savannah,Georgia, put stock in a typical method of warning against conjure,despite a hint of pressure (perhaps due to public scrutiny) not to

believe in it:Cose I know bettuhn belieb all dis but it make yuh sho full uh worry ef somebodytryn tuh fix yuh. But ef yuh weahs a silbuh dime tied tuh yuh ankle and yuh stepobuh anything wut put down fuh yuh, duh dime'll sho tun black sudden an quickan den yuh knows it. (GWP 1940:84)

George Boddison, an elderly man interviewed in Tin City, asettlement in the rice country east of Savannah articulated the

"science" of conjure in a world of opposing forces and explained hisparticular preventative investment:

I know deah is luck an unluck an some people kin wuk it. Itsa science in mosebryting dey does. Dey kin swap yuh from good luck place tuh bad luck place... . Some days I feel lak uh jis caahn [can't] make it. It seem lak sumpm hab a holton me an uh caahn wuk. Den I know strong currents is directed tuh do me ebil.If they res on me, uh would be sick, maybe die. But deze dat I weahs [indicating


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the protective crown of copper wire and little mirrors, and charms bedecking hisbody] keeps all deze tings from huttn m e. Duh ebil caahn dwell on m e. It hab tuhpass on. . . . Long as I weahs em deah is nuttn kin do m e reel hahm. (GWP1940:21)

Conjure power, something that can take "hold" of him and preventhim from engaging in work, is a "strong current. . . directed to dohim evil." Its directed intention is evil though it is not necessarily evilin itself. His crown and set of charms are themselves, of course, abulwark of conjure power with protective ("good") intention.33W hereas malign con jure would simply anno unc e its insidious presenceby tarnishing Mrs. Dawson's silver dime-thereby alertin g he r of th e

need take further precautions, it would be entirely deflected by Mr.Boddison's devices.

Un protec ted individuals were threatened by conjure as they wentabout their daily routines in familiar settings. Of course people werealso threatened by a variety of other ills. The narratives suggest thatin communities in which conjure discourse was prevalent, people hadways of distinguishing between classes of afflictions and employeddiagnostic methods based o n observation and precedent t o distinguish

co njure illness ("un natu ral illness") from "natura l illnessn-that is to say,not caused by conjure (see W hitten 1970:414). O n e can imagineextended conversations among family and friends, possibly with thehelp of m ore informed lay people an d conjurers themselves, tha t wereanalyses, really, of both the symptoms and the apparent contexts inwhich th e symptoms were co ntracted. Suspicion of co njure emerges a sthe signs of its difference from other afflictions are turned over inpeople's minds through talking abou t them. T he accou nts of EvansBrown and Emmaline Heard are analyses that throw into relief thenotion of the specificity of the intended victim and the specificity ofplace, respectively. A do orkn ob was fixed-prepared with conjure--toafflict Evans Brown's mother and no one else: "Fo' [four] women wuzin duh house wid muh mudduh, but duh doe knob wuz dressed fuhhuh. All dem women pass out befo she did, all tuhnin duh knob. Butwhen she come out, a pain strik uh in duh side.. . . Uh whole sidetun black an she dien (GWP 1940:30-31). Emmaline Heard's sisterLizzie

had a pretty peach tree and one limb spread out over the walk and jest as soonas she would walk under this limb, she would stay sick all the time. T he funny part'bout it wuz that while she wuz at other folks house she would feel all right, butthe minute she passed under this limb, she would begin ter feel bad. (Rawick1972:GA/13/4:260)


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CONJUREDOCTORS: A BLACK DISCOURSE 25

Conjure, in these accounts, is not like a contagious disease that affectseveryone in its wake. Nor does it re side constantly "in" the person , bu tinstead, in the person's relationsh ip to a particular time, place, o rsituation. Lizzie began to "feel bad" when she passed under the limbin her own front yard, presumably moving out of the domestic settingtowards the street or returning from the street to the house. Herconjure affliction was, thus, situated relative to the place in which shelived, or to her transit between domains; for when she was at others'houses, she felt "alright."

Conjure symptoms, as described in the accounts, range fromdisturbing mental states and behavior perceived subjectively and/or

observed by others-from lethargy and indisposition ("pining away"), t ooutright death or physical illnesses that lead to death, as in the caseof Evans Brown's mother. Therefore, it is not clear that conjure causesparticular illnesses or that particular illnessesprima facie indicateconjure. It seems that contextual analysis of symptoms-holisticdiagnoses tha t include social and psychological categories-points to itspresence o r absence as a cause. Sometimes, this is do ne in retrospect.In either case, it is a subject over which there may be disagreement.Katie McCarts of Old Fort in the northeastern section of Savannah,Georgia, was "scornful" of the wild claims of her neighbors:

Wy they all believe that everything that happen tuh anybody is cause by some rootwukuh. They don't leave anything fuh God tuh do. Ef anybody takes sick, yuh'llfine somebody theah sayin sumpn is wrong with yuh sickness, that somebody putdown sumpn fu yuh. If anybody dies roun yeah, some root wukuh is responsiblefuh duh death. Now me, I don't believe people kin put sumpm unduh steps awunduh yuh house that will hahm yuh. Some time ago my son, my only chile, wuzdrownded. Well every time I tun roun some of my neighbors wuz tellin me myson's death wuzn't fair. They say "somebody hoodooed yuh chile an cause him tuhgit drownded." (GWP 1940:4)

Her statement does indicate, however, that among her neighbors,cons iderations such as "fairnessn-perhaps including consideration ofwhether the pe rson merited such an end relative to his age, condition,quality of being, the fates of others around him, or the law ofaverages-entered in to their diagnoses. Eighty-year-old Fred Jo nes ofYamacraw near Savannah felt that one affliction was a clear cut

c a s e a lt h o u g h he did not elaborate upon its specific symptoms. H e putit this way: "Wenebuh a pusson go crazy, wut is dat but conjuh?"(GWP 1940:27).

W ith respect to analysis of symptoms themselves, co nju re may besuspected as affecting others when they exhibit strange or abnormalbehavior, when "[tlhey jes' ain't actin' natch'l" (Puckett 1926:216-217).Emmaline Heard of Atlanta described a conjure case in which: "He


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26 FoNdore Forum 23:1/2 David H . Brown

would squeal jest lak a pig and he would get down on his knees andbark jest lak a dog" (Rawick 1972/GA/13/4:249). Dorothy Johnson ofSpringfield near Savannah related that a conjured woman would "ackqueah an run away an stay fuh days at a time" (GWP 1940:44). Withrespect to one's subjective apprehension of conjure, "[ylou can tell'caze you feels so diffe'ntly" (Puck ett 1926:216-217). T he most bizarre,frightening, and most frequently cited symptom was described by "PipenEllen Jones, a 122-year-old ex-slave from near Savannah, who wasconjured by a woman who worked "a root o n m e so strong dat she pu ta big snake in muh bed, an I could feel tings moobin all tru muhbody. I could feel duh snake runnin all tru me" (GWP 1940:143). The

most often cited and clearest signal of conjure-caused affliction arisesat the boundaries of a medicalized health-care context, where illnessesdo not respond to conventional medical treatment: where, accordingto James Moore, "duh doctuhs couldn tell wut ail im" and the conjuredoctor is called in (GWP 1940:19).As Fred Jones related, in his case,"duh doctuh he caahn [can't] help me none. FinallyI went to a rootman. H e say right off somebody don e gib me a dose"(GWP 1940:27).

Beyond the cultural unpreparedness of most white physicians todeal with conjure afflictions, it may also be that they werepharmacologically untrained to deal with the sophisticated animal andplant poisons that conjurers were known to use historically. EllenJones's sickness may represen t just one case of many whose symptomswould suggest to conjurers, lay people, and ethnopharmacologists alikethe fruit bo rn e by the adm inistration of animal toxins. Wh ether o r notone accepts the whole of Charles Singleton's depiction of thisprocess-he stat ed that a local conju re wom an would "kill du h insec [orsnake, frog, spider, etc.] an g rine it tuh powduh an r ub it o n d uh skin

uh duh pusson aw gib it tuh um tuh drink. When it entuh duh body,it tun back intuh insec, sometime a lizud aw a frawg aw a snaken-thecompo sition and administration of th e substance and the symptoms feltby Ellen J one s closely resemble t he preparative work of Haitian bok orsand the symptoms felt by their victims (Singleton quoted in Herronand Bacon 1973:362; Davis 1988:119).~'

VI. Conjure Discourse, Narrative, and Dramaturgy

Given the frequency and elaborateness of conjure references inth e ex-slave, African survivals, and folklore lite ratu re (see Bell 1980:2-24)-references tha t ar e often developed into poignant stories-it is fairto suggest that the con jure story be considered a sub-genre of African-American oral literature. Indeed, Charles Chesnutt must have been soimpressed with th e conjure discourse as "usable" and authen tic African-


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Am erican material in 1899 that h e produced a stun ning volum e ofconjure stories (Chesnutt 1969).~'

T h e conjure references in the W PA and survivals narratives areaccou nts of experiences that have benefitted from narrativization: theyare both documents of "the ongoingness of life as it [was] registeredthro ug h the filter of culture-that is, through ac ts we have alreadylearned to interp ret as experiencesn-and of those m ediated mom entsas "reprocess[ed] . . . after the fact, by talking about them" (Abrahams1986:SS). Conjure discourse was available to provisionally shapeparticipants' behavior and perception of events as they occurred-theywere going through something they knew othe rs to have gon e through,

in predictable ways-i.e., "I am being conjured." Then, con jurediscourse, in co ncert with A frican-American storytelling m odes, allowedthe participants to narrate afterward what happened to them inconventional terms, ordering and revising this material into coherentstories. As docu ments, the accoun ts have a certain "empirical" value a sfar as what "really happened" to people at the time; our evidencereally just consists in the stories themselves. However, they are not"just stories." Probably by the time they were transcribed byWPAinterviewers-and this is a significant context to b e considered-thestories had been told and retold. In fact, the first stories probablyemerged as the events unfolded and then were told again. Morecritically and dialectically, only through this process of talking andpeople "seeing themselves" in a situation did the "experiences" takeshape to begin with (Goodwyn 1978). The "effervescent andcontradictory listening and talking su rrounding" the symptoms wouldseem to comprise empirical data as important as the symptomsthemselves (see Taussig 1987:190).~~t is indeed imaginable that many

individuals who felt and exhibited symptoms were never "really"conjured; that is, an actual charm or bottle was never disinterred orelse "sleight of hand" (see below) may have been used by the conjurerhimself during th e diagnosis or healing ~ e s si o n .~ ' hus the cause-and-effect sequen ce inscribed by the narrative-from malicious int en t tocon jure work to symptoms to discovery of the con jure should, perhaps,no t be reified-it may never have "actually" hap pen ed in that way o rin that order. Saying this is not to condescend to the victims but

merely to suggest that being conjured is as much about having certainsymptoms as having talked-about-symptoms and a certain culturalpreparedness, what medical specialists refer to as the "set and setting"of the patient (Davis 1988:181).

Many of the stories, often little envelopes within the largernarratives, reveal a pattern that can only be likened to that of the rite-of-passage-from rou tine, ongoing lives, to sickness to wellness and


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reincorp oration into a group-a series of thresho lds through which th econ jure docto r stewards the patient. However, th e extremes sho uld no tbe idealized as necessarily orderly an d harm onious, the "sickness" beingthe only "disorder." Some accounts "begin" in the context of domesticharmony, proceed to problems and other social asymmetries, movethrough a struggle with conjure ("middle"), and climax with conjurevictims' deaths, their domestic situations in disarray ("end"). Othersbegin in the context of tensions and end in harmony. And not all thestories are "complete" in terms of tying all the ends neatly together.

The movement from beginning to end usually proceeds throughthe cure, often effected dramatically and cathartically, as the sickness

is jettisoned and the patient gets better, sometimes in the company,and with the help of friends and family. Moreover, some stories havedramatic sequels in which the conjure is "turned around" and sentback. The conjurer's role is multifold. If the cu re depends, as is oftenthe case, on herbal remedies, it is also the doctor's construction forthe patient of a significant context to understand the illness andconcrete avenue to wellness, through drama and symbolism, thatcom pletes the "cure" and which makes it an "experience" withidentifiable bound aries. Th e concrete aven ue t o wellness has as muchto d o with the body as it does with the m ind. T he conjurer's healingwork often creates an immediate awareness of the body's insidenessand outsideness, in relation to which the successful cure depends onthe dramatic drawing out and displaying of the conjure. The con'uredoctor thus becomes conjure dramaturg as well as stage-director.4s

Fred Jones related the case of his conjure, using indirection toheighten the significance of the story by framing it with a self-effacingopening.

I dohn lak tuh talk bout muhsef, but I caahn nebuh fuhgit duh time I h ab a doseput on me by a uhmun [woman] uh didn lak.I wuz a good frien ub uh huzbun anshe didn lak fuh us tuh go out tuhgedduh;so she to le me no t t uh come tuh uhhouse no mo. I ain pay n o tention. Well, suh, duh nex night s oon a s uh laid down,uh feel muhsef swoon. Ebry night it happen. Dis ting keep up till uh git sick.Icouldn ea t an jis git tuh pinin way. Duh doctuh he caah n he p m e none. FinallyIwent tu a roo t man. H e say right off somebo dy do ne gib me a dose. H e say,'I'llbe roun tuhnight. Git so me money tuhgedduh cuzI caahn d o yuh no good less yuhstaht off wid some silbuh.'

Wen he come dat night an git duh silbuh, he look all roun duh house an dendig a hole unduh duh doe step. Deah he fine a bottle. He tro it in duh fyuh anholluh, 'Git gone, yuh debil. ' Attuh datI git bettuh, but I ain nebuh bin tuh datuhmun's house since. An I dohn lak tuh talk about it. (GWP 1940:27-28)

T he co nju re illness, objectified and named as a "devil," is dramaticallydestroyed by fire. H e is cured physically an d, simu ltaneously, socially


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changed as his interpersonal life is modified significantly.A seasonedstoryteller, h e skillfully closes th e story by lead ing th e listener back ou tof the frame, out of the world of somewhat dangerous conjure talk,back into the flow of the interview.

In Ellen Dorsey's case, dom estic schism an d her husband's use ofa co njurer set the stage for her dramatic cure by ano ther c onju rer shehired. The sickness, once again objectified and named (the devil) bythe conjurer, is just the kind of the fruit borne by the "dose" CharlesSingleton described. There is also the suggestion that Mrs. Dorseymight have prevented her affliction if she had earlier purchasedprotection from the man who eventually cured her:

M e an im couldn git long so I lef im. H e wen tuh a root d octuh fuh him tu h ma keme co me back home. D en du h root doctuh put me down sickso duh wite peopleI wuz wukkin fuh would dischahge me. I had pains runnin up a n down m uh wholebody, an I knowed I wuz cunjuhed but uh wouldn gib in.I call me in a man whouse tuh try tuh sell me a han [hand=protection] t o wawd off wnjuh . H e rub m uhlegs down twice a day, an one mawnin a big black snake run outuh muh big toe."Deah goes duh devil," say duh root man, an frum den onI get bettuh. (GWP1940:29-30)

Th e cathartic mom ent of the cu re is often preceded by days o r weeksof tending by friends and family, as in the case of Dye Williams (seeappendix). In one reported case, the gathered group acted as a kindof response chorus to the conjurer's "call," serving to herald thejettisoning of the conjure and the reclaiming of the victim from herdangerous and liminal state of affliction. Puckett writes that upon therelease of th e accursed reptile, "the curious onlookers cried, 'Dar hitgoes! Dar hit goes!' . . . The woman was from that moment cured"(Puckett 1926:303).

T h e conjurer's dramaturgy is often not com plete until the d ram adevelops its pro per sequel-that is, where the do ctor "turns thetrick":it is sent back from whence it came and the perpetrator gets a tasteof his or her own medicine. D.C. Kelsey described his sister IdaWalker's cure. After removing "puppy dogs" (small reptiles) from herbody, the conjure doctor

ax uh did she want em tuh go back weah dey come from an sh e say yes. S o he sayhe know duh man wut sen um, an h e went tuh du h winduh an tro du h watuh widduh puppy dogs in it in du h direction uf du h ma n ho use and say, "Go." O n e weeklatuh du h ma n wuz in he fie1 ploughin a n h e dr op duh plow a n fall down. Wh enduh people git tuh im, all he could say wuz, "Dis is my wuk. Dis is my wuk" [thisis my conjure coming back to me]. H e went plumb crazy and died b ut m uh sistuhgot well an fine. She lib neah Millen now. (GWP 1940:36)


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30 Folklore Fonun 23:1/2 David H . Brown

The full cure requires the playing out of the drama in the form ofaconcluding sequel in which a critical exchange is made: theperpetrator's confession and death for the victim's health.

If the reptiles are not burned or sent back, they may serveanother set of purposes following the cure: as both proof andconversation piece. Puckett reported a case in which a Dr. RogerWilliams, a w hite physician evidently sensitive to the term s of co njure,gave the ailing patient a dose of ipecac. When s he starte d to vomit h elet fall a live frog, appa rently believing th at conju rers som etimes carryreptiles up their sleeves.

It fell with th e vomitus, hopping ou t of t he receptacle, and a s she saw it she beganto shout , 'Thank God, Thank God! I knew it was down there!" And heedless ofthe fact that sh e was soiling her floor, vomiting as sh e scampered around , sh e didnot stop until she had caught the frog, which she preserves till this day to showher friends what came out of her. She was at once cured. (Puckett 1926:304)

The preserved reptile, a badge of courage and emblem of the rite ofpassage, could serve as th e ever-ready foil for m ore con jure stories, th elink between conjure-cause, symptoms, cure-and co njure talk.

In some cases there is neither conjure cure nor conjure talk onthe part of the victim, for dead men tell no tales. However, there isalways room for conjure stories told by others. Emmaline Heard ofAtlan ta told W PA interviewers of a case sh e "witnessed" in which th er ewas neither allowance for the long-term treatment to take effect norfor the ritualized, cathartic transition from sickness to health. OneReverend D ennis was con jured by his mistress. Sick for a year, medicaldoctors could not help him. His wife prodded him to see a local rootman named Dr. Geech, who informed him that the "snakes in hisbody" were the result of some "stuff' the mistress had put in hiswhiskey. T he Rev erend rejected Dr. Geech's prediction that "he woulddie when t he snakes got u p in his arm n and th at th e mistress would"come and take the medicine off the shelf and throw it away." TheReverend simply "didn't believe a thing Dr. Geech said," according toMrs. Heard,

So sho' nulf she com e jest lakDr. Geech said and took the medicine away. After

he quit taking t he medicine h e got bad off and had ter stay in the bed; s h o nuffthe morning he died you could see the snake in his arm; the print uv it wuz therewhen he died. Th e snake stretched out in his arm and died too. (Rawick1972/GA/l3/4:248)

A t first I interpr eted t he story as a kind of cautionary tale with a clearmo ral to ne, inferring that it was "really" a kind of a dm onition tomarital fidelity and temperance. Mrs. Dennis, a genuinely aggrieved


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CONJURE/DOCTORS: A BLACK DISCOURSE 3 1

party to the case, obviously wanted her husband "cured," that is, freeof his mistress. Reluctant to give up his mistress and content toremain an adu lterer, he was left, unrepentant, to d ie with th e Devil inhim. T his moral interp retatio n may represent just o n e possiblereconstruction of many. From another perspective, it is not essentialif we approach the story as a c onju re tale. Th at th e cause of death layin the Reverend's dissipation and moral turpitude could be aconsistent conclusion in a story-version inscribed with such value bytho se so inclined-possibly, in this case, th e lat e Reverend's wife, th emem bers of the Hardshell Bap tist Church of which h e was thepreacher, and Mrs. Heard herself. It is likely that Mrs. Heard's story

performance-tone and gestu re-so m ethin g lost to us now, wouldprovide additional evidence. And since we do not have the otherwoman's side of it, we do not know if her intention was on e of malice,seduction, or legitimate revenge. At any rate, was the Reverendreluctant-implying active volition-to believe Dr . Geech's warn ing andtak e measures to prevent the mistress from lifting the medicine; o r washis spirit caught, broken, and fixed so effectively by her conjure thathe really had no choice (moral or otherwise) in the matter? PerhapsDr. Geech's medicine was simply not powerful enough to overcomethat provided by the mistress' conjurer.

In ending my discussion with a story whose central charactersinclude a preacher and conjurer, I suggest obliquely that anyformulation privileging one over the otherusually it has beenChristian over con jure practice-neglects their horizo ntalcomplementarity in the plural Afro-American religious experience.Notwithstanding the main characters' presumed participation in theHardshell Baptist Church, the events represented are not necessarily

or exclusively about God or issues of salvation. The solution pursuedto heal the preacher's sickness relied not on any "purelyChristianM-theological, moral, or spiritual-guidance o r perspective, butprecisely on conjure practice, perhaps blending in the participants'minds with shared or overlapping set(s) of mores. We are thus led,once again, to reevaluate the argument that the preacher historicallyprovided "moral guidance" where th e co njurer did not. Of what does"moral guidance" consist and how homogeneous is it in any givencommunity, not to mention across all of Afro-America? If we insistup on interpreting Mrs. Heard's story along conve ntional "moral" lines,we find the conjurer, Dr. Geech, in the front line of the battle fortemperance and fidelity. At the same time, we find apparentlychurchgoing people, including the Reverend himself, deeply entren chedin "immoral behavior" and conjure practice. It is imaginable that anyof those churchgoing people might have echoed Minnie Dawson's


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32 FoNdore Forum 23:1/2 David H . Brown

ambivalent state m ent, "Of course, I know better than to believe all thisbut it sure makes you worry if somebody is trying toFE you" (GWP1940:84). God was someone to have on your side. But that neverprecluded a visit to the conjure doctor.

Most intriguing, and really to the point where issues of conjurepractice are concerned, the manifestation of the illness here (and invirtually all conjure cases), the prescription for the cure, and thepreacher's fate, graphically depic ted by Mrs. Hea rd , all focus squarelyo n the body. In whatever term s we hazard a n explication of th e eventsand values associated with Reverend Dennis's case, we might avoidformulations that either wholly medicalize (de-socialize) his case,

wherein th e dramatic elaborations ar e seen as simply epipheno me nal,or posit his symptoms as merely a ("psychomatic") reflection or figureof som e other, m ore fundamental ground. It may be useful to draw onthe terms of Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Comaroff and to think ofRev erend Dennis's "casen-and those of oth er con jure victims wh oundergo illness, transformation, and conjure rites-as that of aparticular "socially informed" o r "socially cons tructed" body, situ ated inand s t ruc tu red by i t s "hab i t~s . "~~The body," Comaroff writes,

"mediates all action upon the world and simultaneously constitutesbo th th e self and the universe of social and n atural relations of whichit is a part. . . . [ T h e logic of that universe is itself written in to th e'natural' symbols that the body affords" (Comaroff 19856-7). ForBourdieu, "[ilt is in the dialectical relationship between the body anda space structured according to the m ythico-ritual oppositions tha t o n efinds em-bodying of the structures of the world, that is, theappropriating by the world of a body thus enabled to appropriate theworld" (Bourdieu 1977239). Not least in understanding this "space" arekin relations, the "sexual division of labor," "the division of sexuallabor" (Bourdieu 1977:89) and the spatial organization of the house,neighborhood, church, market, etc. And conjure practice, far frombeing a stranger to this space or world, is part and parcel of it, or atleast works within that sub-domain inhab ited by "unnatural," asopposed to "natural," illnesses, events, causes and effects.

The conjure medicine in the Reverend's case, or the conjurers'physical manipulations, rubbings, washings, etc. in other cases, work

directly on the afflicted body and are geared dramatically to jettisonthe various snakes, reptiles, "puppy dogs," ants, etc. Whether thecreatures-"devilsn-are "really" in the body o r the conju rer dro ps the mstrategically ou t of a hidden fold in a sleeve is not truly an issue, sincetheir expected presence and the conjurer's handling of them in hispractice, are consistent objectively with other critical processes andways of acting and thinking in the society. There is no reason why


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CONJUREDOCTORS: A BLACK DISCOURSE 33

snake-devil shou ld no t be associated with afflictions in ce rtain African-Am erican com munities any m ore tha n "germs" should have a m onopoly

anywhere else in "modern" society. The culturally specific category ofsickness as it appropriates and is appropriated by the body and itsapprehension by all involved "proves" the snake as much as theappearance of the snake should prove that conjure was at work.Indeed, particular cases of "unna tural" sickness should deman d tha t t heconjurer supply a reptile if there is not one already there. The snake-devil and its status inside or outside the body graphically indexes

the objective structures of a determinate state of the social world: this principle

is nothing other than the socially informed body, with its tastes and distastes, itscompulsions and repulsions, with, in a word, all its senses, that is to say, not onlythe traditional five senses-which never escape the structuring action of socialdeterminisms-but also the sense of necessity and the sense o f duty, the sense ofdirection and the sense of reality, the sense of balance and the sense of beauty,common sense and the sense of the sacred, tactical sense and the sense ofresponsibility, business sense and the sense of propriety, the sense of humor andthe sense of absurdit moral sen se and the sen se of practicality, and so on.(Bourdieu 1977:124) 4 8

Without reducing the reality of the physical affliction to a socialground, condescending to the reptile idiom, or risking a facile set ofstructuralist analogies, it is fair, I think, t o index so m e of th e resonantfeatures of Mrs. Heard's story: the apparently contested social andspatial intrusion of th e mistress i nto th e various dom ains in which t heReverend functioned: marriage, home, pulpit, and church community;th e parallel intrusion of th e "stuff" into the whiskey in to his body, andconsequently the birth of the snakes in his body. Then there is the tugof war over the "medicine." There is an inverse relationship betweenhis rejection of the doctor's prediction and the continued ingress ofthe mistress on the o n e hand, and th e seriousness of his illness o n th eother. Ultimately her ability to affect and change events, to rejectejection, presumably through her own conjure, was his demise. Themedicine was thrown away and the snake remained. There would, ofcourse, be no verbal affirmation of "Deah

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