The Images of John Stedman's Suriname

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No. 15, The Creole Bania as illustrated in Stedman's book. Although it has three long and one short strings, a rounded body, and a skin soundboard, it looks pretty different from the actual instrument Stedman collected.

     The first land he saw was a few rugged islands off the coast, followed by mangroves that lined the ocean. John Gabriel Stedman had journeyed from Holland to Suriname as a soldier contracted to fight Maroons--people who had escaped slavery and lived in the tropical jungle. During his time in Suriname, Stedman kept diaries, notes, and daybooks, which he turned into a massive manuscript, which at the hands of a publisher and ghost writer transformed into Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. 
     In Minneapolis, during the snowiest February on record and some of the coldest weather I've ever experienced, I sat for days with the writings of Stedman. It brought me back in time to some seven months earlier when I traveled to Suriname, to the tropical climate of the Caribbean I had experienced in Paramaribo and the hot and rainy jungles in the small South American country. They took me back in time to the 18th century, too. His writings offer us an intimate and a detailed look at enslavement and the culture and lives of the enslaved in the Americas during eighteenth century. Most importantly for me, he documented the banjo in Suriname during his trip and brought what is now the oldest existing banjo, the Creole-bania, back to Europe.

     The University of Minnesota's James Ford Bell Library bought the remnants of his writings, which are now tucked away in the rare books vaults deep under the cold Minnesota ground. A fellowship at the library allowed me to do the first big research dive for Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo's Hidden History, and I read every word of his writing that remains in order to build out the world around him, the world the early banjo exists in. And I write much more about Stedman and his trip to Suriname in Well of Souls (although an equal amount probably got cut; his time there was so interesting and he wrote so much about it). While I allude to drawings he made in Suriname and the illustrations that went into his book, I couldn’t include them. 

The stack of books and papers I researched at the library.

Stedman's watercolor of sleeping in the jungle (above) and the hand-colored print of an engraving based on that image that appeared in the first edition of his book (right).

     Although a soldier, Stedman had received an education in Europe, and knew how to read and write music, play the violin and flute, and paint. In the introduction to Stedman’s Surinam, Richard and Sally Price write that, “In addition to the 15 works that we have found [at the University of Minnesota] and the 104 (or perhaps 105) that he submitted to [his publisher] Johnson in 1791, Stedman produced a large number of others whose locations (in spite of our several years’ intensive search on three continents) remain unknown to us.”[1] Some of the found watercolors were clearly the models for illustrations in his book. 

      The other remaining drawings done by Stedman are not labeled, so it’s hard to know exactly what they are. Here is Stedman’s drawing of an animal, with some possibilities from the published book of what they could be… 

The watercolor has two furry animals on all fours that looks almost like a hyena, while the prints have an armadillo, a porcupine, wild boars and hogs, and an opossum.

     His book also includes two engravings of Joanna, although we don't know if these were copied from his drawings of her or if they were just using the descriptions he wrote.

Stedman, Joanna, and their son at L'Esperance, the plantation on which Stedman was living.

What would become a famous image of Joanna, with her light skin, short curly hair, exposed breast, and light skirt.

     While some of the plates are unsigned, others have the “sculp” listed. The most famous contributor to the illustrations in Stedman’s book was William Blake. While Stedman had some complaints about other engravers, he found Blake's work "excellent." Blake--unlike Stedman--was an abolitionist and found Stedman's descriptions of the horrors of slavery in Suriname compelling for the cause. "Blake was influenced by non-conformist religious sects from the well-known Quakers and the Baptists, to the exotic Muggletonians and Swedenborgians, which compelled him to reject slavery as an abject horror," writes Ed Simon in a JSTOR Daily post [2]. 
      It was Blake who illustrated Graman Quacy, a naturalist, herbalist, and healer, who Stedman called, “one of the most extraordinary Black men in Surinam or perhaps the World”[3]. Quacy makes protective obias (more on that in another post) and discovered a root, which is “highly esteemed in many other parts of the world for its efficacy in stregthening the stomach, restoring the appetite, &c” according to Stedman [4]. Stedman relates that he has “taken a portrait of this extraordinary man." 

     While the first English edition of Stedman’s book includes hand-colored plates, the second edition plates are uncolored, and the translated editions all have fewer plates (between eight and forty-six). All four of the images below show the aboma constrictor that Stedman writes about, but as the image travels from the original (on the left), to German (second from left), to Dutch (second from right), to the Italian (on the right), you can see how the image changes with each particular engraver's style and skill.

     The changes you see remind me that while historical images can be so informative, they are also problematic--and not only because of racism or white supremacy that impacted how an artist chose to depict something. Almost all of the translations with illustrations have the “Musical Instruments” plate, where you can see a roughness to the drums that doesn't reflect how they are actually constructed. For example, the open ends of the drums look like broken logs and the skins are held on with strings, which both isn't practical or how the people who made the instruments would construct or treat an important object. Is this because of how the engraver assumed the instruments of the enslaved would be made? Is this because he was making the engraving based on descriptions and not the actual instruments? In this case (and in many cases), we don't know. 

All images are courtesy of the James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota Libraries. Some of these books are available from Archive.org (https://archive.org/search.php?query=john%20gabriel%20stedman). 

[1] Richard and Sally Price, Stedman’s Surinam: Life in an Eighteenth Century Slave Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), xl. 
[2] Ed Simon, "William Blake, Radical Abolitionist," JSTOR Daily, June 5, 2019 https://daily.jstor.org/william-blake-radical-abolitionist/​ 
[2] John Gabriel Stedman 1790 Manuscript, James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota, 760. 
[3] Stedman’s Surinam, 301. 

This is part of Banya Obbligato, a series of blog posts relating to my book Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History. While integrally related to Well of Souls, these posts are editorially and financially separate from the book (i.e., I’m researching, writing, and editing them myself and no one is paying me for it). So, if you want to financially support the blog or my writing and research you can do so here.