Intersections

"The Baptist faith was brought to Trinidad by the "Merikens", former American slaves who were recruited by the British to fight with them, as the Corps of Colonial Marines, against the Americans during the War of 1812. After the end of this war, these ex-slaves were settled in the south of the country, to the east of the Mission of Savannah Grande in six villages, since then called The Company Villages."

... read that this evening. And it brought me back to my writings on my ancestor Pa Neezer, who is from the Companies, who I think is a direct descendant link to the MERIKINS. It took me to my writing with my cousin on our grandmother, Ruth Huggins who I suspected was a Shouter Baptist. I specifically asked my cousin Joanne, who was one of the last to grow up with her, if Grannie was Shouter Baptist because I remember her tying her head in red cloth hand ties. She was. This writing from Sheldon, for the first time, makes me remember, think, integrate that I am Baptist. I was baptized Baptist in the US, in Tuskegee. For the first time, in this moment, I recognize the Intersections. Me walking and mapping myself without ever knowing.

“Obeah Woman”
They called her that because she filled her spiritual vessel with the contents of her social being.
Because she wrass’led with the spirits.
Because she made a great emotional investment in the performance of her worship"

“Obeah woman:” With so many women in its hierarchy and within its congregations, it is no wonder that the Spiritual Baptist faith has been so persecuted and prosecuted over the years, the prosecutors and persecutors haughtily proclaiming their intent to stamp out” obeah, witchcraft and sorcery”.


The Shouters resisted. Indeed, their barefooted courage inspired Earl Lovelace’s great novel`` The Wine of Astonishment. The true sources of that courage are yet unknown and so too the real origins of the Shouters/ Spiritual Baptists. Where did they come from?


Some say they originated in Grenada. Were the members of the “Converted” sect made up of Grenadians who eventually headed down to Trinidad? Or were they Vincentians who fled first to Grenada to escape the Shaker law, then went on from Grenada to Trinidad?


Some say the Shouters got started in Trinidad from a spiritual spark brought there by the African-Americans ex-soldiers (the so-called “Merikins”), who came to the Island in the wake of the Anglo –American War of 1812. These African-American ex-soldiers were transported out of the United States to Trinidad, for they had waged war on the side of the British (in exchange for their freedom) against the Americans cause. Trinidad, then a sparsely populated colony with less than twenty years in the British fold-took delivery of its first batch of Merikins in 1815; a few more came in 1816 and 1821, the latter group consisting of ex-soldiers who had opted for Nova Scotia in the immediate wake of the 1812 war. Papa Neezer (Ebenezer Elliot [1901-1969]), the Trinidadian Orisha leader and seer, who rose to prominence in the 1950s-was a descendant of the Merikens. (See Frances Henry’s He had The Power Lexicon, 2008, pp7-8). Papa Neezer won some negative attention in Sparrow‘s “Obeah Wedding” (Melda O [1966]). In “Obeah Wedding” Sparrow boasts that he is the grandson of Papa Neezer and therefore untouchable. Sparrow sings:


You doh seem to understand
Obeah can’t upset my plan
For Papa Neezer
Is me grandfather.



Source: http://www.spiceislandertalkshop.com/cgi-bin/talkrec.cgi?submit=lt&fid=f1&msg_num=749674

^*the Shouter Baptists emerge as a Feminist Africanist  Healer Seer Tradition

been walking the path all along. gathering the pieces as I made my way through and forward