Saramaka ancestors were honored through drumming and libations after raids

Evidence

When they got back safely to their villages, they fired many salutes for the people who had waited at home. These people came to the bank of the river singing, to escort them to shore. They played drums, danced, blew African trumpets, and sang, danced and celebrated the whole afternoon until nighttime and the whole night until morning And they played drums so! When they were finished, they would bring a bush drink that they made from sugar cane juice, and which is called bush rum. They would pour a libation on the ground. That was in order to give thanks to God and the ancestors. After that they would play for the obeahs and for the other gods who had helped them fight. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 701

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Ritual libation to God, ancestors, and obeahs after a victorious raid fits directly with the reader’s essay on sacrifice as love/grief — here the ancestors are literally fed and thanked.
• CANDY: The image of returning maroons celebrating all night with drums, African trumpets, bush rum, and libations is a vivid, shareable vignette.
• XREF: Ritualized thanksgiving to ancestors and warrior gods evokes similar cosmologies in Haitian Vodou and West African war-cult practices.