About
the Project
The
United States Exploring Expedition, led by Lt. Charles Wilkes, was a scientific
expedition that circumnavigated the globe from 1838 to 1842, making
observations and collecting specimens that formed the historical nucleus of
Smithsonian collections. Expedition members collected many things that suggest
the level of global exchange already taking place, but nothing that speaks so
poignantly to the darkest side of that exchange - the trade in human lives that
brought Africans to Brazil. Transcribe Horatio Hale's handwritten notes on West
and Central African vocabulary and facial scarification that he collected from
enslaved Africans in Brazil during the expedition.
Horatio
Hale served as philologist and ethnologist for United States Exploring
Expedition. While in Rio de Janeiro, Hale interviewed "natives of
Africa" and obtained notes on more than a dozen languages. He also made
drawings of facial scarification marks (cicatrixes) and indicated the
particular places associated with each type of mark.
