ABSTRACT
In a moving passage in her magnificent 1705 Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, the German-born naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian records how the African slave and Indian populations in Surinam, then a Dutch colony, used the seeds of a plant she identified as the flos pavonis, literally “peacock flower,” as an abortifacient:
The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the seeds [of this plant] to abort their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves. 1
