Mode of Execution at Dahomey, the Blood Drinker Waiting with His Calabash to Drink the Blood
This image depicts the sacrificing or execution of an enslaved man in the kingdom of Dahomey in the Bight of Benin region. Duncan does not refer to this illustration in particular, but in Vol. 1 he described "the bodies of people who had been executed," and noted that "decapitation is the favourite mode of execution in Abomey," the capital of Dahomey (p. 219-220). John Duncan (1805–1849) was a Scottish traveller in Africa and member of the Royal Geographical Society. He travelled through Dahomey territory in 1845. He returned home in 1846 after falling ill with malaria and having his leg amputated. Although the caption refers to the blood drinker, Duncan may have misunderstood what was taking place. Very rarely in sacrifices or ceremonies do the Dahomean practitioners of Vodun actually drink the blood. They were most often collecting it to pour it, usually from a gourd, onto ancestral shrines or shrines to members of the Vodun pantheon. Probably a better identification would be the blood server. More likely, this image represents a ritual specialist, who is collecting blood to be offered to an ancestral shrine or to a member of the Vodun pantheon. Numerous modern shrines throughout southern Benin contain iconographic representations of earlier (eighteenth through nineteenth centuries) ceremonies where human blood sacrifices were presented to the deity represented by the shrine.
Image Title
Mode of Execution at Dahomey, the Blood Drinker Waiting with His Calabash to Drink the Blood
RegID
SI-OB-570
Date
1845-1846
Title
Mode of Execution at Dahomey, the Blood Drinker Waiting with His Calabash to Drink the Blood
Source
John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa, in 1845 & 1846, comprising a journey from Whydah, through the kingdom of Dahomey (London, 1847), Vol. 2, facing title page.
Language
English
Item sets
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Spatial Coverage
Africa--Western Bight
Reproduced In
John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa, in 1845 & 1846, comprising a journey from Whydah, through the kingdom of Dahomey (London, 1847), Vol. 2, facing title page.
Researchers
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Neil Norman; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Identifier
Duncan1