ON THE PROVENIENCE OF NEW WORLD NEGROES.

This article focuses on the culture of the Africans of the New World. Acknowledge of the provenience of the Afro-Americans in the New World is basic to the study of New World Afro-American cultures, since to comprehend the cultural equipment with which these people entered upon their lives in the western hemisphere is essential in any successful attempt to utilize the materials gained from investigations of their present day life for an analysis of the processes of cultural change and of the results of culture-contact. In the U.S. it has long been held useless to attempt to do more than refer African origins to such vague geographical regions as the Guinea Coast, the Congo, the Gambia, and the interior, since it is felt that documents contemporary to the period of the slave-trade have recorded place and tribal names so poorly that accurate identification of the peoples brought to the western world is impossible. Thus it is to be seen from contemporary documentary evidence that the region from which the slaves brought to the New World were derived has limits that are less vast than stereotyped belief would have them.