Summary Of Sharla M. Fett's 'Working Cures'

This excerpt of Working Cures by Sharla M. Fett discussed the practice of conjuration, also known as “hoodo” or “rootwork”, affected people’s perception of illness and how conflicts within communities of enslaved people were dealt with. Conjuration was also used to resolve conflicts between slaves and their slaveholders, but its relation to conflicts within communities of enslaved people was discussed in more detail in this reading. The reading opened with the tale of an enslaved woman who died of an illness. Her overseer wrote an account blaming her demise on the consumption, but the enslaved community surrounding her believed it was due to a conflict between her and a man she was refusing to marry. It was believed that the man had “tricked”

or “conjured” her (85). This phenomenon of socially based illnesses stretched across African history and often occurred over conflicts of “love, sex, economic resources, and interpersonal power.(87)” In the society of enslaved African Americans it was seen that animosity between people could cause physical illness and that people could go to conjure doctors to exact revenge on others. Because of this, illnesses and disease were often viewed to be a result of interpersonal conflict.

The text also illustrates how conjuration acted as a tool to resolve conflict and teach moral lessons. Because enslaved people lived in close quarters, there was not much privacy and most people knew about each other’s interpersonal affairs. Because of this and the strain that slavery put upon people, conflicts over resources, and interpersonal affairs were very common(87). Conjuration served to mediate such conflicts. Tales of conjuration also served as a resource to teach morals to children. The text gave an example of this with a tale of how some children who threw rocks at an old man were cursed by him and the boldest of them dropped dead the next day(89). After this incident, the children did not bother the old man anymore and the tale taught children the moral value of respecting their elders. While the oppression and struggles of slavery strained social ties between enslaved African Americans, they were able to use the traditional practice of conjuration to resolve these conflicts and strained relations.

How did conjuration help maintain social order in the communities of enslaved people?

How did conjuration help enslaved people to adapt to the oppression and difficulties that they faced?