“It took me three winters on St. Simon’s to hear a single slave song, three times as many winters to see the religious dance called the ring-shout, still more winters to unearth the Buzzard Lope and similar solo dances, and the game songs known as ring-play…The secretiveness of the Negro is, I believe, the fundamental reason for our ignorance of the race and its background, and this trait is in itself probably an African survival. Melville J. Herskovits…quotes a Dutch Guiana Bush Negro as saying: ‘Long ago our ancestors taught us that it is unwise for a man to tell anyone more than half of what he knows about anything.’ It is musing to question southerns as to the number of the times they remember hearing Negroes volunteer information. Not one so far has recalled an instance in which something has been told that was not common knowledge.” -From, “Slave Culture