For a study of the acculturation process, there are probably no materials more complete and accessible than those offered by the history of the American Negro. No other representatives of a primitive race have had so prolonged and so intimate an association with European civilization, and still preserved their racial identity. Among no other people is it possible to find so many stages of culture existing contemporaneously. It has been generally taken for granted that the Negro brought a considerable fund of African tradition and African superstition from Africa to America. One not infrequently finds in the current literature and even in standard books upon the Negro, references to voodoo practices among the Negroes in the Southern States. As a matter-of-fact the last authentic account which we have of anything approaching a Negro nature worship in the United States took place in Louisiana in 1884. It is described by George W. Cable in an article on "Creole Slave Songs" which appeared in the _Century Magazine_ in 1886. In this case it seems to have been an importation from the West Indies. I have never found an account of a genuine instance of voodoo worship elsewhere in the United States, although it seems to have been common enough in the West Indies at one time. My own impression is that the amount of African tradition which the Negro brought to the United States was very small. In fact, there is every reason to believe, it seems to me, that the Negro, when he landed in the United States, left behind him almost everything but his dark complexion and his tropical temperament. It is very difficult to find in the South today anything that can be traced directly back to Africa. This does not mean that there is not a great deal of superstition, conjuring, "root doctoring" and magic generally among the Negroes of the United States. What it does mean is that the superstitions we do find are those which we might expect to grow up anywhere among an imaginative people, living in an intellectual twilight such as exists on the isolated plantations of the Southern States. Furthermore, this superstition is in no way associated, as it is in some of the countries of Europe, southern Italy for example, with religious beliefs and practices. It is not part of Negro Christianity. It is with him, as it is with us, folk-lore pure and simple. It is said that there are but two African words that have been retained in the English language. One of these is the word Buckra, from which comes Buckra Beach in Virginia. This seems remarkable when we consider that slaves were still brought into the United States clandestinely up to 1862.[5]