What is God?
What is God?
by Katharine Gerbner
In Damma’s letter, “God” has many names. The God of Damma’s homeland, “adga tome,” is called “Bruku Mau,” which is translated into Dutch creole as “die Heer Mau”: the Lord Mau.
“Mau” is one of the only words in Damma’s letter that is not translated into Dutch Creole: it remains in Gbe in both letters. Mau, which is usually spelled “Mawu,” is generally understood as one part of the dual sky god “Mawu-Lisa.” Lisa is male, and often represents the day and the sun. Mawu is female, and represents the moon and the night. In some African religious traditions, “Mawu” is the supreme, sky God; in others, Mawu is a lesser vodu, or divine being. Examining the historical evolution of Mawu helps to understand Damma’s letter; and Damma’s letter offers important evidence about the historical evolution of Mawu as an African deity.
According to Sandra Greene, oral histories and archaeological records suggest that Mawu originated in the Adja region of West Africa, where Damma was likely born and raised. As early as the sixteenth century, there was a large sanctuary dedicated to Mawu, who was believed to live in the region. Mawu is also associated with the rise of several kingdoms with Gbe roots, including Adja Tado, Notsie, Allada, Whydah, Dahomey. As Greene has argued, seventeenth-century European accounts suggest that Mawu was believed to be the “Supreme Being” in Whydah, a town in southwestern Benin that was a major center of the slave trade. Mawu is also associated with the rise of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, and oral traditions describe Mawu as a supporter of the Dahomean king Tegbesu (1740-1774), who came to power after Damma was enslaved and transported to St. Thomas.
The gender of Mawu is ambiguous: Most African traditions refer to Mawu as female or androgynous; but in European accounts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, missionaries often referred to Mawu as a “he.” The Moravian missionary C.G.A. Oldendorp, for example, referred to Mawu in masculine terms based on his interviews with Africans in St. Thomas. However, it is unclear whether this gender association came from his interviewees, or from Oldendorp:
They call the God in heaven who created the world Ma-u, and the other one they call Gajiwodu. They call on him for help in all affairs. They come outside together and sing songs to him. They didn’t know of other things that they honored as Gods. The soul comes to Him after death. But they didn’t know of the belief that the corpse would rise again. (Oldendorp Vol 1, Book 3, Chapter 2, p. 412)
In his first sentence, Oldendorp maintains a gender-neutral definition for Mau: “They call the God in heaven who created the world Ma-u.” But in his second sentence, he uses the male gendered pronoun: “They call on him for help in all affairs.”
We do not know if Mawu’s gender evolved over time or whether European missionaries, whose own god was masculine, presumed a male identity for the African god. The latter is most likely since when “Mawu” is referenced in non-European sources, it is usually as female or androgynous. Significantly, there is no gender ascribed to “Mau” in Damma’s letter.
Bruku / Buluku / Bruhu
Vodu
While “Mau” remains untranslated in the Dutch Creole version of the letter, the term “Bruku” was translated as “the Lord.” “Bruku” is a puzzling word, and we remain unsure of its meaning. The Gbe languages don’t have the sound “r” and “l” as distinct phonemes, so perhaps “Bruku” should be spelled “Buluku,” and indicate another African deity, “Nana Buluku,” who was historically associated with the Kingdom of Dahomey. It’s also possible that “Bruku” was a word used in Damma’s homeland to refer to “God,” or perhaps “Bruku Mau” was a distinct deity. A third possibility is that “Bruku” could indicate a name such as “Aluku” or “Abiku” in Gungbe. The latter is a child born after several miscarriages, who is understood to have survived death. The name Aluku, meanwhile, is given to those who are believed to be God’s (i.e., Mawu’s) spirit and to have certain physical signs of this divinity.
“Bruku” is used twice in Damma’s letter, once in reference to “Bruku Mau,” the god of Damma’s homeland, and once to refer to God once she arrived in the white man’s country. It is significant that Damma used the term “Bruku” to refer to “God” in both Africa and the Caribbean. This suggests that for Damma, God existed in both places. In the Caribbean, however, white people tried to prevent Damma from serving God. In the Dutch Creole version of her letter, Damma explains that as a “black person” in the “white man’s country” (blanco land), she was not allowed to worship God (see What is Race?). This was an experience that caused her suffering, or “fu” in Gbe, a word that can also mean “to let rot” and connotes a state of being that has no purpose.
In the middle of her letter, Damma introduces a third word for God: “vodu,” also spelled “Wodu,” which was translated in Dutch Creole as “God.” “Vodu” is a flexible word for Damma: it refers to “Mau,” the God of “adga tome” and also to the Christian God. It may also be Damma’s word for “Jesus.”
The first known printed reference to vodun comes from 1658 in the Doctrina Christiana, a Catholic catechism developed by Spanish Capuchin missionaries to the Kingdom of Allada, in current-day Benin. The Doctrina Christiana offers a translation from Spanish to “la lengua Arda,” the “language of Ardra,” and uses the term “vodun” to signify “God.”
The term “vodu” can refer to God, to religion more broadly, or to specific deities (such as vodu-Gu, the iron god, or vodu-Sakpata the god of the earth). All vodu are considered the children or dependents of Mawu, who is the supreme god (vodu-Mau). A person who worships vodu is referred to as the vodu-si (Vodu-wife), and individuals often worship multiple vodu. In some Gbe cultures, each vodu has a specific day to be worshiped. For example, Guzangbe (the day of Gu) means “Tuesday” and corresponds to the day to worship vodu-Gu, the god of iron.
Damma used the term “vodu” three times: once to refer to the god she was forbidden to worship in the white man’s country; once to refer to “vodu Mau,” in a sentence in which she writes, “My Queen, thank God,” (Me acadda na da-kpe no vodu Mau); and a third time to refer to the god that she was able to worship once Friedrich Martin and the Moravian missionaries arrived.
As with “Bruku,” Damma’s use of “vodu” suggests continuity in Damma’s religious cosmology. For her, the category of vodu transcended the differences between the Vodun religion of adga tome and the Christianity she encountered in the Caribbean.
It’s possible that Damma considered the Moravian god to be a vodu, and that she continued to worship the vodu of her homeland. She may even have considered Jesus to be a vodu. In fact, it is notable that the term “Jesus” is never used in the Gbe text, although the Christian savior is mentioned four times in the Dutch creole “translation.” Could this divergence be explained by the fact that Damma used the term “vodu” to refer to Jesus in Gbe? Or were the references to Jesus added to the Dutch Creole version of her letter in order to appeal to a European Christian audience? Either way, it is clear that the concept of vodu retained significance for Damma before and after her baptism in the Moravian church.
Mawu: Continuity and Change
Mau returns to Damma’s letter at the end—but only in the Gbe version. While the first reference connected Mau with Damma’s life in “adga tome,” where Damma served “Bruku Mau,” the final reference to Mau offers a prayer, of sorts, for the Danish Queen:
These lines can be translated as “God’s peace for [the] Queen,” and are intended as a gesture of goodwill towards the Danish monarch. They are followed by Damma’s statement that she is “a woman from Popo” and, finally, by her African name: Damma.
The reference to “Mau” is deleted in the Dutch Creole translation, as is Damma’s proclamation that she is “A woman from Popo.” Instead, the Dutch Creole version ends with the statement that Damma’s letter was “written in the name of over 250 Black women who love the Lord Jesus.” (Op naam van over tweehondert en / Vijftig Negersken vrouwen, die / den Heere Jesus beminnen, geschreven / door ). The final printed version is signed “Marotta / nu / Madlena / van Poppo uyt Africa,” or “Marotta, now Madlena, from Poppo in Africa.”
What accounts for the divergence between the Gbe and Dutch Creole versions of Damma’s letter? Why was the final reference to Mau removed, and why was the reference to the 250 Black women who “love the Lord Jesus” added? Were these simply scribal errors?
Given the dramatic differences between the two endings, it seems likely that the Dutch Creole version of Damma’s letter was intentionally edited to make it more amenable to a European Christian audience. In the editorial process, which may or may not have involved Damma, Moravian scribes added four references to “Jesus” and deleted multiple references to “Mau” and “vodu.”
The only sentence in Dutch Creole that retained the Gbe word “Mau” referred explicitly to “Poppo op Africa.” This change allowed the Dutch Creole version to be read as a “conversion narrative” and implied that while Damma worshiped “Mau” in Africa, she worshiped only the Christian God and Jesus in the Caribbean. Damma’s Gbe text, by contrast, does not make such clear distinctions between Christianity and Vodun.
In using the terms “Mawu” and “vodu” to refer to “God” in both Africa and Caribbean, Damma indicated an underlying continuity in her cosmology that suggests that she integrated the Moravian God, and Jesus, into her understanding of Vodun. It was “Mau” that Damma referenced, not “Jesus,” when she bestowed her wishes for “peace” on the Danish queen.
adga tome