African American folktales provide some of the strongest evidence for African cultural continuities in the New World. The majority of tales on both sides of the Black Atlantic are animal trickster tales, which focus of the breaking of friendship or family norms by an asocial comic figure.
The percentage of such tales in the total repertoire is further dramatized by the relative scarcity of those that feature the small animal or the little boy as hero. The centrality of a figure who is more clever than those who otherwise appear to be superior has been interpreted by many to mean that the stories are responses to enslavement and the need to live by one's wits. This may be so, though there is little evidence that this was the dominant message as the tales were performed within African American communities. They are primarily stories about how not to act when around other people. These trickster tales came to popular notice through the publications of the Uncle Remus tales by Joel Chandler Harris beginning in 1882. The books were read to children in middle-class homes throughout North America. Their content is strongly affected by the need to make the stories acceptable to adults who read the stories to children. More commonly in live storytelling situations among African Americans in villages and towns, the trickster is portrayed as unrelentingly selfish and more malicious. He has a number of ingenious ways of stealing food or committing outrageous physical acts that bring physical harm and even death to trickster's targets. He is not clever enough to evade capture; but he does escape in many stories, thus demonstrating how quick his wits are. In some of his adventures, the upset he causes leads to death or banishment.
The Br'er Rabbit trickster figure of Harris's books is perhaps most widely identified with his adventure with the Tar Baby. Caught by his enemies when he gets physically stuck while trying to fight the figure they have constructed (ATU 175, The Tarbaby and the Rabbit), Br'er Rabbit manages to escape by cleverly getting thrown into the briar patch. While the details of this tale vary from one community to another, this is indeed one of the stories most often found in African American communities. Ironically, unlike most of the other common trickster stories, it is not uniquely African in origin, for it occurs in other places as well. Many stories depict the trickster's mastery of larger and more powerful creatures through the operation of his wits. He engineers this with elaborate fictions or by pulling off a seemingly magical task. For instance, making a bet that he can teach the lion to be his riding horse, he shams sickness and persuades Lion to carry him into town (ATU 4, Sick Animal Carries the Healthy One; Motif K1241, Trickster rides dupe horseback). In allowing trickster to ride on his back, Lion was committing an act of basic friendship. Equally widely found is the trick of making the stone smoke (ATU 1060, Squeezing the [Supposed] Stone). In turning that act into an awareness by the other animals that the trickster had subdued his larger and more powerful friend, the trickster breaks one of the paramount rules of community understanding, for work was carried out as a common enterprise which relied on friendship contracts. Having a best friend on whom one can rely is central to male life throughout the region. The friends often farm together or carry out some other set of tasks in everyday life.
The betrayal of community norms goes even deeper, for the trickster also consumes and contaminates everything that he sees as being valuable. His eating is voracious, and so are his sexual appetites. He even consumes his own children and those of his friends. These stories, then, are cautionary tales, fascinating in their focus on this protean figure but surely not to be emulated. As the storytellers say, “When the people don't do what they're told to do, they always get in trouble.”
Somewhat less widely found on both sides of the Atlantic are stories concerned with the courtship and marriage of the unnamed “King's Beautiful Daughter” who has been hidden or kept in a glass box. The courtship calls for candidates to pass tests of ingenuity. The victor in this contest is actually an animal who has assumed human form (Motif D314, Transformation: ungulate animal [wild] to person). After the wedding, however, the winner carries the princess into the bush and transforms himself into an animal or a supernatural creature. He is revealed by a clever little boy who uses this discovery not only to kill the creature, but to better his own lot in life (ATU 300, The Dragon-Slayer). More commonly, however, the boy (old witch boy or chiggerfoot boy) enjoys no benefit from the recovery. His sole reward seems to reside in the demonstration of his cleverness. The boy in this tale is the king's son, though he has no status in the king's household and lives under a bed or in the ash heap and sneaks around the yard spying on everybody. He has witching powers and thus is able to recognize the character of his sister's suitor; however, when he tries to warn their father, no one listens. He stealthily follows his sister and her lover into the bush and discovers the magical formula the animal uses to take on his human disguise. When the spy says the magical formula, the animal returns to his natural form and is killed.
