African American Ironworkers

African men with iron making skills were imported to the Chesapeake to work as blacksmiths on plantations and in the iron industry that, by the early 18th century, had begun to develop in Colonial America. Ironworkers were an elite group in West and West Central Africa, (de Barrios 2000:148; Barnes and Ben-Amos 1989). In West Africa, the rise of the Edo, Fon and a series of Yoruba kingdoms between 1400 and 1700, owed their political dominance to heavily equipped armies, using a highly developed iron technology. Blacksmiths are attributed central roles in the mythical origins of numerous West Central African and West African peoples.

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http://www.cr.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aahe...