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[CHAPTER 13]
[Page 1]
NEGRO DANCES
There is an "intimate relationship" between folksongs and folk dances that has been readily recognized by students of folk culture.1 The Negro slave in the New World not only developed the dances brought over with him from his native land, but also created folksongs to preserve their rhythms. It is probable that nothing in American slave life indicated the general homogeneity of African culture as the dances of the slaves of North and South America. During the entire Colonial period in Louisiana, the dances of the newly arrived African slaves continued to be given in the public square of the city with little objection from the authorities.
Le Page du Pratz, the early Louisiana historian, was one of the Colonials who objected to the slaves holding public dances. He said:
In a word nothing is more to be dreaded than to see the negroes assemble together on Sundays, since, under pretence of Calinda or the dance, they sometimes get together to the number of three or four hundred and make a kind of Sabbath, which it is always prudent to avoid; for it is in those tumultuous meetings, that they sell what they have stolen to one another and commit many crimes. In these likewise they plot rebellions.2
This view of du Pratz, a leading citizen and superintendent of the king’s plantation, referred to the period of French Domination between the founding of New Orleans and the beginning of Spanish rule. For different reasons, however, "the dances of the slaves on the public square" were again mentioned in the bando de buen gobierno of the Spanish governor Miro on June 2, 1786. In this group of laws, the slaves were
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