Ecuadorian Boat Seat

ca. 1900

This boat seat was the first object donated to the museum.

In 2005, Juan García Salazar (1944–2017), a celebrated Afro-Ecuadorian activist, scholar, and folklorist, donated this wooden boat seat to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is from Esmeraldas, a coastal community that in colonial times was a maroon society—a settlement of free African and Indigenous people. Deborah Nazareno, García’s grandmother, sat on this boat seat as she traveled the Ecuadorian waterways and at home while sharing traditional folktales with her grandson.  

The spiderweb and the spider represent Anansi, a cunning trickster character from West African folklore. Stories of Anansi—also called Ananse, Anancy, Bo Nancy, and Aunt Nancy—were carried by Africans via the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, including to Ecuador and the United States. This boat seat reflects how African folklore and storytelling traditions have been passed down across generations throughout the African Diaspora.