Kwasimukamba, Quassi or Graman Quacy (also spelled Kwasi and Quasi) (1692 in

Guinea (region) Guinea is a traditional name for the region of the African coast of West Africa which lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It is a naturally moist tropical forest or savanna that stretches along the coast and borders the Sahel belt in the north. Et ...

; 12 March 1787 in

Paramaribo Paramaribo (; ; nicknamed Par'bo) is the capital and largest city of Suriname, located on the banks of the Suriname River in the Paramaribo District. Paramaribo has a population of roughly 241,000 people (2012 census), almost half of Suriname's ...

) was a enslaved Surinamese man, later freedman. He was known as healer,

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

and slave hunter in service of the Dutch colonists in

Suriname Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north ...

. He is also known for having given his name to the plant genus

Quassia ''Quassia'' ( or ) is a plant genus in the family Simaroubaceae. Its size is disputed; some botanists treat it as consisting of only one species, ''Quassia amara'' from tropical South America, while others treat it in a wide circumscription as a ...

.R. Price. Kwasimukambas gambit. In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 135 (1979), no: 1, Leiden, 151-169

Biography

Quassi's roots were among the Kwa speaking

Akan people The Akan () people live primarily in present-day Ghana and Ivory Coast in West Africa. The Akan language (also known as ''Twi/Fante'') are a group of dialects within the Central Tano branch of the Potou–Tano subfamily of the Niger–Congo ...

of present-day

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

, but as a child he was enslaved and brought to the New World. In Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America, he was first put to work in the

sugar plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

''New Timotebo''. Quassi had a great linguistic and botanical knowledge. He was famed as a healer. He obtained his freedom in 1755. Quassi participated in the colonial wars against the

Saramaka The Saramaka, Saamaka or Saramacca are one of six Maroon peoples (formerly called "Bush Negroes") in the Republic of Suriname and one of the Maroon peoples in French Guiana. In 2007, the Saramaka won a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Hum ...

maroons Maroons are descendants of African diaspora in the Americas, Africans in the Americas who escaped from slavery and formed their own settlements. They often mixed with indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous peoples, eventually ethnogenesi ...

as a scout and negotiator for the Dutch. He lost his right ear during the fighting. For this reason the Surinamese Maroons remember him as a traitor. In the late 1760s, he was owner of a plantation. In February 1772, he visited the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, and was given an audience by

William V, Prince of Orange William V (Willem Batavus; 8 March 1748 – 9 April 1806) was a prince of Orange and the last stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. He went into exile to London in 1795. He was furthermore ruler of the Principality of Orange-Nassau until his death in ...

. He returned to Suriname in September 1772. On 12 March 1787, Governor Wichers announced that Quassi had died in

at the age of at least 95. He was buried by the Free Negro Corps.

Legacy

One of his remedies was a bitter tea that he used to treat infections by intestinal parasites, this concoction was based on the plant ''

Quassia amara ''Quassia amara'', also known as amargo, bitter-ash, bitter-wood, or hombre grande (spanish for ''big man'') is a species in the genus ''Quassia'', with some botanists treating it as the sole species in the genus. The genus was named by Carl Linn ...

'' which

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

named after him, as the discoverer of its medicinal properties. Quassia continues to be used in industrially produced medicines against intestinal parasites today.Promoting Interest in Plant Biology with Biographies of Plant Hunters. Peggy Daisey. The American Biology Teacher , Vol. 58, No. 7 (Oct., 1996), pp. 396-406 In contemporary accounts he was described as "one of the most extraordinary black men in Suriname, and perhaps the world"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Quassi, Graman 1692 births 1787 deaths 18th-century Dutch botanists 18th-century Surinamese people Dutch people of Akan descent Dutch slaves Kidnapped African children Saramaka Surinamese botanists Surinamese emigrants to the Netherlands Surinamese people of Akan descent Surinamese slaves

Biography

Legacy

See also

References