African tribes used costumed figures to represent elements such as fertility, witch doctors, and describing routes of commercial transportation, as well as having survived difficult times.
In the Barbados Tuk Band, the regular costumed figures are Shaggy Bear (who is sometimes called the Bank Holiday Bear), the Donkey Man, Mother Sally, a masked man dressed up like a woman with an exaggerated behind, and the Stiltman.
Eighty Englishmen and ten Africans were captured from a Spanish galleon and settled in Barbados in February in 1627.
The English slave owners instituted a law in the late 1600s to outlaw the playing of drums, with one of the penalties being death.
No doubt the slaves did figure out a way to communicate with their drums, and Barbados was one of the earlier islands to abolish slavery.