where I noted earlier that a lot of the original blacks had come from
had long been a crossroads of the world where peoples and cultures were assimilated in warfare and the rise and fall of great empires. An essential feature of the cultural materials brought from Senegambia as well as from other parts of Africa was a willingness to add and incorporate useful aspects of new cultures encountered. This attitude was highly functional in a dangerous and chaotic world. New Orleans became another crossroads where the river
