Two African American homesites on Manassas National Battlefield Park — the Robinson House site and the Nash site — have yielded small objects that speak to something larger: families holding on to part of their African identity.
Mancala at the Robinson House
Mancala gaming pieces from Manassas National Battlefield Park. NPS
About two dozen gaming pieces turned up around the ruins of the Robinson House foundation and in its backyard. They are small, typically diamond-shaped pieces shaped from broken ceramic and glass, their edges smoothed and worn from years of play.
They belong to mancala, one of the most widely distributed board games in the world:
| The name | from the Arabic manqala, "to move" |
| How it is played | pieces are distributed into holes or cups |
| What game scholars call it | mathematicians who study games often call the mancala family "sowing games" |
| Where it is found | the Near East, Egypt, West Africa and the Caribbean |
| Other names | Adi, Adji, Awale, Awele, Awari, Ayo, Ayo-ayo, Gepeta, Ourin, Ourri, Oware, Wari |
Where players elsewhere might use pebbles or seeds, the Robinson and Nash families used what they had: fragments of broken dishes and glass.
The Nash site: games, and perhaps faith
Mancala pieces from the Nash site (middle row, and far right of the bottom row). NPS
Mancala pieces were found at the Nash site too. So was something rarer: a buried cache of six quartz crystals, together with a lump of the mineral galena — not available locally — and a quartz projectile point. It lay beside the outside western wall of the stone chimney.
The Nash site cache: quartz crystals, a quartz projectile point (bottom row, center right) and galena (bottom row, center left). NPS
The cache may have had a ritual purpose, and it may suggest that the Nash family practised a traditional African religion:
- The objects resemble items found in African nkisi, or spirit bundles. How such bundles were used varied greatly, but African folklore and tradition stress the importance of white objects such as quartz.
- The materials were unusual here: quartz crystals and galena are rarely found in this part of Virginia. The projectile point may have been picked up by a member of the family in the surrounding fields and added to the collection.
- Similar finds exist elsewhere: quartz crystals have been found in African American contexts at Poplar Forest in Virginia and at the Charles Carroll House in Annapolis, Maryland.
This article belongs to the NPS series African American Households; the previous article is Finding Identity Through Material Culture: The Nash Site.
Sources
Based on "Cultural Continuity," National Park Service, Manassas National Battlefield Park; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Rewritten in hubnx's own words.
In these publicationsManassas National Battlefield Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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