Part 11
Somewhat differing explanations were offered me of the reasons for the constant guarding of the natives I observed during the course of the “market.” This was first said to be a necessary precaution to insure tranquillity and order within the trading factory during the presence there of so many raw and sturdy savages. But when I drew attention to the close guard kept upon the natives in the drying and cutting sheds, I was told that these were “prisoners.” If the rubber brought by its native vendor were found on the weighing machine to be seriously under the required weight, the defaulting individual was detained to be dealt with in the “maison des otages.” One such case occurred while I was on the ground. The defaulter was directed to be taken away, and was dragged off by some of the sentries, who forced him on to the ground to remain until the market was over. While being held by these men he struggled to escape, and one of them struck him in the mouth whence blood issued, and he then remained passive. I did not learn how this individual subsequently purged his offence, but when on a later occasion I visited the inclosure in front of the prison I counted fifteen men and youths who were being guarded while they worked at mat-making for the use of the station buildings. These men, I was then told, were some of the defaulters of the previous market day, who were being kept as compulsory workmen to make good the deficiency in their rubber.
Payments made to the rubber-bringers, depending on the quantity brought, consisted of knives, matchets, strings of beads, and sometimes a little salt. I saw many men who got a wooden handled knife of Sheffield cutlery, good and strong--others got a matchet. The largest of these knives with a 9-inch blade, and the smaller with a 5-inch, cost in Europe, I find, 2_s._ 10_d._, and 1_s._ 5_d._ per dozen respectively, less 2-1/2 per cent. cash discount. The men who got the knife of the larger kind, or a matchet, had brought in, I understood, a full basket of pure rubber, which may have represented a European valuation of some 27 fr. To the original cost of one of these knives, say 2-3/4_d._, should be added fully 100 per cent. to cover transport charges, so that their local cost would be about 6_d._ Among the natives themselves these knives pass at 25 rods (1·25 fr.) and 15 rods (75 centimes) each. From two of these rubber workers I later purchased two of these knives, giving twenty-five teaspoonfuls of salt for the larger, and six teaspoonfuls with an empty bottle for the smaller. From a third member of their party, whose payment had consisted of a string of thirty-nine blue and white glass beads (locally valued at 5 rods), I bought his fortnight’s salary for five teaspoonfuls of salt. This youth, indeed, confessed that his basket of rubber had not been so well filled as those of the others.
I went to the homes of these men some miles away and found out their circumstances. To get the rubber they had first to go fully a two days’ journey from their homes, leaving their wives, and being absent for from five to six days. They were seen to the forest limits under guard, and if not back by the sixth day trouble was likely to ensue. To get the rubber in the forests--which generally speaking are very swampy--involves much fatigue and often fruitless searching for a well-flowing vine. As the area of supply diminishes, moreover, the demand for rubber constantly increases. Some little time back I learned the Bongandanga district supplied 7 tons of rubber a-month, a quantity which it was hoped would shortly be increased to 10 tons. The quantity of rubber brought by the three men in question would have represented, probably, for the three of them certainly not less than 7 kilog. of pure rubber. That would be a very safe estimate, and at an average of 7 fr. per kilog. they might be said to have brought in 2_l._ worth of rubber. In return for this labour, or imposition, they had received goods which cost certainly under 1_s._, and whose local valuation came to 45 rods (1_s._ 10_d._). As this process repeats itself twenty-six times a-year, it will be seen that they would have yielded 52_l._ in kind at the end of the year to the local factory, and would have received in return some 24_s._ or 25_s._ worth of goods, which had a market value on the spot of 2_l._ 7_s._ 8_d._ In addition to these formal payments they were liable at times to be dealt with in another manner, for should their work, which might have been just as hard, have proved less profitable in its yield of rubber, the local prison would have seen them. The people everywhere assured me that they were not happy under this system, and it was apparent to a callous eye that in this they spoke the strict truth.
In September I visited a native village called D**, situated some miles from the A.B.I.R. factory at Bongandanga. I went there to see one of the natives, who, with his wife and little children, had come to visit me. My going to his town was solely a friendly visit to this man’s household, since I was told that he was an excellent character, and one who set a good example to his countrymen. On the way, at some 4 or 5 miles only from the A.B.I.R. factory, I passed through a part of D** (which is a very long town) where were several sentries of the A.B.I.R. Society. One of these had a 6-chamber revolver loaded with six 4·50 Ely cartridges--doubtless given, like the shot-gun at A**, for intimidation rather than for actual use. Another sentry present had only his cap-gun. He said there were in this one village six sentries of the A.B.I.R., but that the other four had just gone into Bongandanga guarding some prisoners. These were, it was explained to me, some of the natives of the country side who had not brought in what was thought to be a sufficiency of india-rubber. A little further on I met two more sentries of the A.B.I.R. in this town. Coming home from D** by another road I found two other sentries apparently acting as judges and settling a “palaver” among the natives, this being one of the commonest uses to which these men put their authority in their own interest, levying blackmail and interfering in the domestic concerns of the natives by compelling payment for their “judicial” decisions.
The following day my host at D** came in to say that the sentries were making trouble with him on account of my visit of the previous day, declaring that they would inform the agent of the A.B.I.R. that he and others had told me lies about their treatment by that Company, and that they would all be put in the prison gang and sent away out of their country. That evening C E spoke to me of my visit to D** of the previous day, assuring me that the natives were all liars and rogues. The fact that I had personally gone to see a native community, theoretically as free as I was myself, and that I had spoken at first hand to some of these natives themselves, caused, I could not but perceive, considerable annoyance.
That the fears of my native host were not entirely groundless I subsequently learned by letter from Bongandanga, wherein I was informed that two of his wives and one of the children I had seen had fled in the middle of the night for refuge to the Mission evangelist--the sentries quartered at D** having arrested my friend at midnight, and that he had been brought in a prisoner to the A.B.I.R. factory.
As to the condition of the men who paid by detention in the “maison des otages” their shortcomings in respect of rubber, I was assured by the local agent that they were not badly treated and that “they got their food.” On the other hand, I was assured in many quarters that flogging with the chicotte--or hippopotamus-hide whip--was one of the measures used in dealing with refractory natives in that institution. I was told that men have frequently been seen coming away from the factory, after the rubber markets, who had been flogged, and that on two occasions this year, the last of them in March, two natives had been so severely flogged that they were being carried away by their friends.
The A.B.I.R. Society effectually controls the movements of the natives both by water as well as by land. Since almost every village in the Concession is under control, its male inhabitants are entered in books, and according to age and strength have to furnish rubber or, in the villages close to the factory, food-stuffs, such as antelope meat or wild pig (which the elders are required to hunt), as also the customary kwanga bread, or bananas, and fowls and ducks. An agent showed me some of these village lists, during the purchasing of the rubber, of the 242 E** men, explaining that the impositions against the individuals named are fixed by the Government, and are calculated on the bodily service each man owes it, but from which he is exempted in the Concession in order to work rubber and assist the progressive development of the A.B.I.R. Company’s territory. He added that it was not the few guns he disposed of at F** which compelled obedience to this law, but the power of the Congo State “Force Publique,” which, if a village absolutely refuses obedience, would be sent to punish the district to compel respect to these civilized rights. He added that, as the punishment inflicted in these cases was terribly severe, it was better that the milder measures and the other expedients he was forced to resort to should not be interfered with. These measures, he said, involved frequent imprisonment of individuals in his local “house of hostages.” A truly recalcitrant man, he said, who proved enduringly obstinate in his failure to bring in his allotted share of rubber, would in the end be brought to reason by these means. He would find, I was assured, as a result of his perversity that the whole of his time must be spent either in the prison or else in being marched under guard between it and his native town. Terms of fifteen days, from “market” day to “market” day, were the usual period of detention, and generally proved sufficient--during which time the prisoners worked around the factory--but longer periods were not at all unknown. My informant added that an excellent project for dealing with obstinate opponents to the rubber industry had recently been mooted, but had not been carried into practice. This was to transport to the Upper Lopori, or the Upper Maringa, far from their homes and tribes, such men as could not be reclaimed by milder methods. In these distant regions they would have no chance of running away, but would be kept under constant guard and at constant work. This proposal had, however, been disapproved of by the local authorities. In one town I visited, the Chief and some thirty people gave me the names of several men of the town who had, about eighteen months previously, been transported in this manner to G**, an A.B.I.R. post, some 340 miles by water from Bongandanga. Three, whose names were stated, had already died, only two had returned, the others being still detained.
Deaths even in the local prison are not, however, unknown. I heard of several. The late Chief of H**, a town I visited with the agent of the A.B.I.R. station had died some months before as the result, it was said, of imprisonment. He had been arrested because another man of the town had not brought in antelope meat when required. After one and a-half months’ imprisonment the Chief was released. He was then so weak that he could not walk the 2 miles home to H**, but collapsed on the way and died early the following morning. This was on the 14th June last.
On the [blank space in text] September a man named T came to see me. He had been very badly wounded in the thigh, and walked with difficulty. He stated that a sentry of the A.B.I.R., a man named U, had shot him, as I saw; and at the same time had killed V, a friend. The sentries had come to arrest the Chief of H** on account of meat, which was short for the white man--not the present white man, but another--and his people had gathered around the Chief to protect him. An inquiry I gathered had been held by a Law Officer into this and other outrages committed the previous year, and as a result the sentry U had been removed from the district. T went on to say to me that this sentry was now back in the country at large, and a free man. When I asked him if he himself had not been compensated for the injuries entailing partial disablement he had received, he said: “Four months ago I was arrested for not having got meat, and was kept one and a-half months in prison on that account. U, who killed V, and shot me here in the thigh, is a free man, as all men know; but I, who am wounded, have to hunt meat.”
This statement I found on fuller inquiry in other quarters was confirmed; and it became apparent that while the murderer was at large, one of those he had seriously injured, and almost incapacitated, was still required to hunt game, and paid for his failure by imprisonment. On further inquiry, I gathered that this occasion was the only one locally known when a qualified Law Officer had ever visited the Lopori, although charges from that region involving very grave accusations had, on several occasions, been preferred. There being no Magistrate resident in the whole of the A.B.I.R. Concession, inquiries, unless conducted by the agents of the A.B.I.R. themselves, have to be investigated at Coquilhatville--distant fully 270 miles from Bongandanga, and over 400 miles from some parts of the Concession.
It is true an officer of the Congo Executive is deputed to exercise a qualified surveillance within this Concession; but he is not a qualified Magistrate or legally empowered to act as such.
The occupant of this post is a military officer of inferior rank, who is quartered, with a force of soldiers, near to Bassankusu, the chief station of the A.B.I.R. Company.
This officer, when he enters the A.B.I.R. territory, is accompanied by soldiers, and his actions would appear to be generally confined to measures of a punitive kind, the necessity for such measures being that which almost everywhere applies--namely, a refusal of or falling off in the supplies of india-rubber.
At the date of my visit to the Lopori he was engaged in a journey, not unconnected with fighting, to the Maringa River. His independence is not complete, nor is his disassociation from the A.B.I.R. Company’s agencies as marked as, in view of the circumstances attending the collection of rubber, it should be.
His journeys up the two great rivers, the Maringa and Lopori, which drain the A.B.I.R. territory, are made on the steamers of that Company, and he is, to all intents, a guest of the Company’s agents.
The supervision of this officer extends also over the course of the Lulongo river, outside the A.B.I.R. Concession, and he it was who had occupied the town of Z* on an occasion some months before my visit, when two native men had been killed.
The Commissaire-Général of the Equator District has also, at recent periods, visited the A.B.I.R. Concession, but this officer, although the Chief of the Executive and the President of the Territorial Court of the entire district, came as a visitor to the A.B.I.R. stations and as guest on the steamer of that Company.
No steamer belonging to the Congo Government regularly ascends either the Lopori or Maringa rivers, and the conveyance of mails from the A.B.I.R. territory depends, for steamer transport, on the two vessels of that Company.
On the 15th June last, the Director of this Company by letter informed the Missions of Bongandanga and Baringa that he had given orders to the steamers of the Company to refuse the carriage of any letters or correspondence coming from or intended for either of those Mission stations, which are the only European establishments, not belonging to the A.B.I.R. Company, existing within the limits of the Concession.
Resulting from this order the missionaries at these two isolated posts are now compelled, save when, some three times a year, the Mission steamer visits them, to dispatch all their correspondence by canoes to their agent at Tkau, lying just outside the Concession.
This involves the engagement of paddlers and a canoe journey of 120 to 130 miles from each of these Missions down to Tkau.
But as the A.B.I.R. Company claims a right to interrogate all canoes passing up or down stream, this mode of transport leaves some elements of insecurity, apart from the delay and inconvenience otherwise entailed.
At the date of my visit to the Concession, the Mission at Baringa, situated 120 miles up the Maringa river, had despatched a canoe manned by native dependents with mails intended for the outer world--the nearest post office being at Coquilhatville, some 260 miles distant.
When seeking to pass the A.B.I.R. station at Waka, situated half-way down the Maringa river, this canoe was required by the European agent there to land and to deliver to him its correspondence.
The native canoe men reported that this agent had opened the packet and questioned them, and that the letters intrusted to them for delivery to the Mission representative at Tkau were not restored to them without delay and much inconvenience.
It might not be too much to expect that, in return for the very extensive privileges it enjoys of exploitation of public lands and a large native population, the A.B.I.R. Company should be required, in the entire absence of the public flotilla, to discharge the not onerous task of conveying the public mails by its steamers which so frequently navigate the waterways of the Concession in the collection of india-rubber.
Were a qualified Magistrate appointed to reside within the limits of this Concession--as within the other Upper Congo Concessions, some of them territories as large as a European State, and still containing a numerous native population--the public service could not but be the gainer.
As it is to-day, no Court is open to the appeals of these people that lies at all within their reach, and no European agency, save isolated Mission stations, has any direct influence upon them except that immediately interested in their profitable exploitation.
It is only right to say that the present agent of the A.B.I.R. Society I met at Bongandanga seemed to me to try, in very difficult and embarrassing circumstances, to minimize as far as possible, and within the limits of his duties, the evils of the system I there observed at work.
The requisitions of food-stuffs laid on the villages adjoining the factories were said to be less onerous than those affecting the rubber towns. They rested, I was informed, on the same legal basis as that authorizing rubber working, and a failure to meet them involved the same desultory modes of arrest and imprisonment. During my stay at Bongandanga several instances of arrest in failures of this kind came to my notice.
On a Sunday in August, I saw six of the local sentries going back with cap-guns and ammunition pouches to E**, after the previous day’s market, and later in the day, when in the factory grounds, two armed sentries came up to the agent as we walked, guarding sixteen natives, five men tied neck by neck, with five untied women and six young children. This somewhat embarrassing situation, it was explained to me, was due to the persistent failure of the people of the village these persons came from to supply its proper quota of food. These people, I was told, had just been captured “on the river” by one of the sentries placed there to watch the waterway. They had been proceeding in their canoes to some native fishing grounds, and were espied and brought in. I asked if the children also were held responsible for food supplies, and they, along with an elderly woman, were released, and told to run over to the Mission, and go to school there. This they did not do, but doubtless returned to their homes in the recalcitrant village. The remaining five men and four women were led off to the “maison des otages” under guard of the sentry.
An agent explained that he was forced to catch women in preference to the men as then supplies were brought in quicker; but he did not explain how the children deprived of their parents obtained their own food supplies.
He deplored this hard necessity, but he said the vital needs of his own station, as well as of the local missionaries, who, being guests of the A.B.I.R. Society, had to be provided for, sternly imposed it upon him if the peopled failed to keep up their proper supplies.
While we thus talked an armed sentry came along guarding four natives--men--who were carrying bunches of bananas, a part of another food imposition. This sentry explained to his master that the village he had just visited had failed to give antelope meat, alleging the very heavy rain of the previous night as an excuse for not hunting.
The agent apologized to me for his inability to give me meat during my stay, pointing out the obvious necessity he now was under of catching some persons without delay. He should certainly, he said, have to send out and catch women that very night.
On leaving the A.B.I.R. grounds, still accompanied by this gentleman, another batch of men carrying food supplies were marched in by three armed guards, and were conducted towards the “maison des otages,” which two other sentries apparently guarded.
At 8 P.M. that evening, just after the Sunday service, a number of women were taken through the Mission grounds past the church by the A.B.I.R. sentries, and in the morning I was told that three such seizures had been effected during the night. On the 2nd September I met, when walking in the A.B.I.R. grounds with the subordinate agent of the factory, a file of fifteen women, under the guard of three unarmed sentries, who were being brought in from the adjoining villages, and were led past me. These women, who were evidently wives and mothers, it was explained in answer to my inquiry, had been seized in order to compel their husbands to bring in antelope or other meat which was overdue, and some of which it was very kindly promised should be sent on board my steamer when leaving. As a matter of fact, half an antelope was so sent on board by the good offices of this gentleman.