The Brass People's “Greatest Religious Festival”
Courtesy of The New York Public Library
In his 1841 trip through the Niger River region William Allen found that the Brass people, associated in some way with the people of Benin, celebrated the “Marocho” at the completion of the sowing season “which occurs about our Christmas period of the year,” writes Allen. He adds it is the “greatest religious festival” with a weeklong of feasting on goat and poultry dishes as well as a steady succession of “dancing, singing, and firing of muskets.” This is evidence that Africans came to the Americas with a special occasion that included food, music, and dance at the Christmas time of the year. The mention of feasting on goat leads me to think perhaps that’s where dishes like curry goat became a part of the Christmas culinary lexicon of the Caribbean. Africans introduced goat to Caribbean table and the English introduced the curry from their colonial holdings in East Asia.