Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upOur lens: how we read itColonizer lens: the colonizers' version, on trial
Year: 1942 · Places: Louisiana, Northeast, Ayiti, Caribbean, South America, Europe
SUMMARYAyiti's kanaval: Indian bands in black and red
RECORD (the reel)old color footage captioned "Ayiti 1942" shows kanaval maskers in feathered headdresses and crowns, with bodies painted red and black, fringed waist garments and bows. LIKELY
SOURCE (to confirm side by side)the 1942 Kodachrome film "Calls in the Caribbean: Introduction to Haiti" (Mary Darling; narrated by Milton Cross; sponsored by the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs; Film Highlights, New York), Prelinger Archives, https://archive.org/details/Introduc1942. At about 4:20-5:10 the narrator speaks of "men with high ceremonial headdresses" and children "purporting to be those Indian aborigines who" "greeted Columbus" (machine transcript)
DISPUTEDthe same narrator says the Indians "died completely off in 25 years," with no evidence, while the screen shows Ayiti's people carrying those ancestors
RECORD (the maskers' own words)Jacmel Endyen masker Marc André Michel (2002, in Leah Gordon: KANAVAL): "I really feel like I have Taíno Indian blood in me."
RECORD (1804)the Act of Independence is headed "Armée indigène."
PATTERNIndian masking runs through the carnivals of the Americas, from the Black Masking Indians of New Orleans to Trinidad's Wild Indian mas and Brazil's caboclinhos (research file original/12-carnival.md)
LENSAyiti's carnivals are the biggest, and the bands are straight Indians, black and red. OPEN, the next dig: the history of Ayiti's Endyen (Indian) bands in kanaval and rara, with dated photographs, films and written accounts, in Kreyòl and French. Needs deep research.