PART I
I.—The African “Porter.” II.—The Paddler and his Canoe. III.—The African Forest. IV.—A Medley of Customs:— (_a_) Cicatrization. (_b_) Personal Adornment. (_c_) “The Angel of Death.” (_d_) Peace and Arbitration. V.—The Native as a Money Maker. VI.—The African Woman.
I
THE AFRICAN “PORTER”
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the part which the African “porter” or carrier, plays in the history of the Dark Continent. The hinterland of the vast tropical regions—a death-trap to every beast of burden—has been opened up by the carrier together with his brother transport worker—the paddler. The heavier burden has, beyond question, been borne by the former, by the countless thousands of hard woolly heads which have sweated under the weight of innumerable bales and cases too often receiving as a reward of their labour an endless stream of abuse. It seemed justifiable to murmur when crossing those swamps and fighting one’s way through impenetrable forest, but at a distance, and with time for calm reflection, there can surely be no other thought in the mind of any African traveller than that of admiration, as he pictures those sons of Africa with heavy and cumbersome loads upon their heads, floundering through swamps, or toiling up steep hills and along stony paths, cutting and blistering the feet, while the fierce rays of the tropical sun scorch every living thing. Yet on that carrier goes, footsore, often foodless, yet ever ready to renew the march of to-morrow.
Railways and bridges, steamboats and bungalows, engines of war, machinery for drilling into the bowels of the earth, lofty windmills, telegraph wires and poles—these and other European conquerors of African air, land and water have by the thousands of tons found themselves hundreds of miles in the interior of Africa owing to the infinite endurance of the African carrier. Abuse him who will, but be sure of one thing, history will yet give him his due.
The railways, bridges and steamboats, would, so we were told, lessen the need for carriers. That they have shortened distances we grant, but so far from the need of the carrier being lessened, economic expansion has increased the demand. The opening up of the country has brought an insatiable civilization into close touch with vast uncultivated tracts of land, with the result that a great impetus has everywhere been given to agricultural development, which in turns calls for an unceasing stream of carriers to feed the railways and steam craft.
[Sidenote: THE CARRIER ON THE MARCH]
Thirty years ago the British colony of the Gold Coast possessed no railways, nor was there any export of cocoa. To-day she exports annually over a million pounds’ worth of cocoa-beans, requiring in the season over 100,000 carriers to convey the cocoa harvests to the railways. True statesmanship must always aim at releasing labour from the unproductive task of transport, in order that it may till the soil, but it is doubtful whether the African carrier will ever completely disappear.
Their long procession is never without interest; every man has some distinguishing mark upon which the white traveller may meditate as he trudges along, now in front, now in the centre, now again in the rear of a caravan. What a medley yonder man carries upon his head! There is the traveller’s “chop” box or his bundle of bedding, to which perhaps is lashed by means of a piece of forest vine, the sundry goods and chattels of that simple-hearted carrier—an old salmon tin filled with odd little packages of salt, chili peppers, bits of string, possibly a piece of soap, an old knife and the end of a native candle. There is also the “Sunday best,” whose owner, while looking happy enough in that strip of loin cloth held in place by a cheap European strap, yet strides the firmer and prouder because of that old cotton shirt and the patched white trousers so carefully protected by a bundle of forest leaves. Provisions, too, are there, carefully pounded, cooked and flavoured by the good wife at home. Those unsavoury manioca puddings for “her man” are generously accompanied by her catches of fish, smoked and set aside that he might each day have an appetizing morsel for his meal.
Other carriers are distinguished by the wounds and bruises of their calling—one limps along with a sore foot, but on he goes until the journey’s end; others there are with sore skin or nasty wounds, caused by forest thorns or rough stones, others whose chafed shoulders of yesterday now gape and become a resting-place for the torment of flies; yet, with it all, the impatient traveller too frequently falls to scolding and even cursing them for their “laziness”!
No white man should be allowed to travel beyond a day’s journey with a caravan unless he has a few medical aids for such bruised and wounded helpers, and it will repay him if human gratitude can be called a reward. Cuts and wounds are both the inevitable price of African travel, and it is a necessity and a duty to carry a few spare bandages and healing ointments. There is satisfaction too in gathering the sick men round in the evening and giving them a soothing plaster, ointment or a bandage. A little human kindness of this nature helps to make the journey a happier one for all, but alas too often what the Germans call _tropenkoller_ has no conception of a remedy for complaints beyond the whip or the boot.
The carrier is no more an angel than other human beings, no matter whether pink or black; he has all the imperfections and the love of self-preservation of the brother who calls himself white. I remember once having all the loads laid out ready for the start and then giving the order for each man to choose his load. It was evident the carriers had mentally marked the load each would like to seize, for a dash was made for a small box only about 18 inches square and having the appearance of a 20 lb. load—but it was a case of cartridges weighing 80 lbs.! How promptly they all discarded that box and dashed away for the larger but lighter loads!
Strangely enough the carrier seldom “pilfers” on a journey. The white man’s goods may suffer depredations on the steamer or on the train, but on the march there seems to be a sacred community of interest which safeguards the goods of most white men as effectively as if protected by the spirit-haunted herbs and parrot feathers of the witch doctor, but when civilization, in the shape of steamers and railway trains, enters barbarous regions away goes the eighth commandment. There is one respect in which every African traveller invariably suffers—hungry at the mid-day hour, he calls for “chop”; thirsty, he asks for filtered water; or at night, dead tired, he looks for his folding bed; he may call in vain, for either from set purpose with some definite object in view, or from stupidity, these essentials to the white man are generally “miles behind.”
[Sidenote: THE CARRIER AND NATURE]
Probably the carrier is at his best when travelling through the vast forests, where, shielded from the sun by the interlacing trees overhead, it is delightfully cool and the layers of dried leaves render the path as soft and springy as the richest carpet. Carriers and traveller are in high mood and as conversation flows freely the traveller realizes what great students of nature these sons of Africa are. As they walk along, they will name every tree and almost every plant; they will tell how many moons elapse before the trees begin to bear; they will give descriptions of edible fruits, the birds and animals which each kind of fruit attracts, varying these running comments by periodic dashes through the undergrowth in search of fruits to illustrate the conversation.
How closely, too, they watch the path for the footprints of animal life, never at a fault to identify the prints with their owners, or accurately gauge the time when the creature passed by, begging, if the traces are recent, to be allowed to track the “meat.” As time does not concern the hunter, it is generally wise, if there is any reasonable chance of obtaining food for the caravan, to camp for the night. This knowledge of forest life stands the natives in good stead, for not infrequently provisions run out on the long marches and in the absence of human habitations, the question of feeding the caravan becomes a serious matter.
At one time we had marched for days without any opportunity of obtaining a supply of food and the carriers were all suffering from hunger; in a whole day we seldom found more than a small handful of edible fruit. At last it became almost impossible to push on with the caravan so tired and hungry: I called together a few of the men and asked what we should do, whereupon one made the novel suggestion of “calling the meat.” The proposal was readily taken up and three of us pushed on ahead with guns. Arriving at a quiet spot, one of the men—a very son of the forest—fell on his knees, and, placing the tips of two fingers in his nostrils, emitted a series of calls which made that forest glen echo with, as it were, the joyous cries of a troop of monkeys! How anxiously the tops of trees were watched! After repeating these tactics in several places in the immediate vicinity for about half-an-hour, a man close to me whispered excitedly “here they come”! In the distance we could see the tree tops moving, and in a short time a score of monkeys could be seen skipping from tree to tree towards the inimitable monkey cries of our carrier. New life was infused into the whole caravan when they saw the gun bring down four monkeys for the evening meal; lowering countenances were wreathed with smiles, grumblings and cursings gave place to joyous songs in which even the sick and lame gladly joined. At dinner that night the men were so famished that they could not stop to cook the meat, but contented themselves with merely singeing off the skin and eating the uncooked flesh.
[Sidenote: THE CARRIER’S FRIENDS]
To emerge from the forest is generally to enter once more into habitable country, and there the carriers, no matter how far from home, generally discover a relative—a brother or a sister, a father or a mother. Their relationships are strangely elastic, many an African laying claim to as many mothers as wives, in point of fact the father’s brothers and the mother’s sisters all rank as the fathers and mothers of the children. The roving British tar may have a wife in every port, but he is surpassed by the African carrier who may have not only a wife but a mother and sometimes a father too in every village!
II
THE PADDLER AND HIS CANOE
Central Africa, the unexplored land of our childhood, is vested with a charm that never ceases to allure, and reveals her deepest secrets only to those who dig deep and risk much to discover them. The rivers with their shifting sandbanks, their treacherous rapids and whirlpools, entice again and again those whom the miasma has threatened to slay, as the rushing current threatens the unwary navigator. The native alone is in any degree immune to the former, and it is he who, with his simple knowledge of the shoals and currents, may venture with his inimitable dug-out where scientific navigation is baffled. Inseparable from the African river is the dug-out, unthinkable are the thousands of miles of navigable waterway without this primitive, though astonishingly effective, craft.
Canoeing in Central Africa may be not unpleasant, providing both canoe and paddlers are amiably inclined. The number of canoes available is so restricted that there is little choice, and comfort aside it is wise always to sacrifice size to reputation, for a canoe with a bad name will dispirit the paddlers. The trimmest and most seasoned craft, capable of holding twenty to twenty-five paddlers, is the traveller’s ideal, but the equipment is incomplete without a small pilot boat for surplus baggage, manned with four or five paddlers, who will keep ahead, but always in sight, forewarning of rocks, snags, or sandbanks, and generally discharging the functions of a scout. No less important is the selection of the crew, and these to complete a harmonious group should be volunteers—the best plan being that of getting three or four cheery spirits to select the remainder from amongst their friends.
[Sidenote: THE PADDLER AND MUSIC]
The African paddler readily responds to an appeal for a co-operative canoe journey, but he dislikes any such undertaking as a mere hired paddler. Make him part and parcel of the journey and a host of potential difficulties vanish. Erect in the bows of the canoe a tiny rush shelter with a bamboo bed for the white man, and only the two final though most important elements remain—music and provisions—the absence of either being equally fatal. For the latter, an ample supply of dried fish and cassava can be stored in the canoe, while a currency in the shape of beads, salt, cloth, pins and needles will do the rest. Without music the African can neither live nor die, nor yet be buried; walking, riding, eating, digging, paddling or dancing, he must have the rhythm of his music, devoid of charm it may be to the European, but vital to the good spirits of the African. To the accompaniment of an old biscuit tin or a couple of sticks, the gunwale of the canoe, or the leaves of the forest, any or all of which can be made to give forth a sufficiency of barbaric sounds to set in rhythmic motion the voices and bodies of all within range.
With canoe packed, paddlers in position with their long spear-shaped paddles and musicians with their instruments, provisions piled high and carefully covered, the start is made. Farewells are shouted, and blessings pronounced which if measured by their volume should preserve the traveller for all time from hippos and snags, storms and mosquitos, sickness, accident and even death.
[Sidenote: CANOE CHARACTERISTICS]
One sees in the African canoe characteristics as distinct as those of the paddlers, for with a limited companionship comes a close acquaintance with nature and things inanimate. There is the leviathan among native craft shaped by the chief and his followers from a forest giant and bearing herself with the proud consciousness of regal ownership. In such a craft the passengers need have no fear for she rides majestically with her bows reared high, breasting the waves of the tornado-lashed river or lake, unmoved by the raging of the elements. She is seen at her best as she glides down stream under the combined influence of the current and the swinging impetus of her thirty stout paddlers. There is the rickety old canoe with broken stern and crippled sides, and her leaking bottom stuffed with clay, but there is life in her yet. She ships water fore and aft, and amidships too, soaking the traveller’s blankets and provisions, but her long experience gives her an ease in travel which her younger though stouter relatives cannot rival. Then there is the lumbering ungainly dug-out, with crooked nose and knotty sides, unreliable and ill-balanced, possessing an affinity for every submerged snag. “Hard on” she frequently goes and every effort to free her threatens to drown the occupants. Sandbanks she seeks out too and obstinately refuses to “jump” them. The paddlers will haul her off and curse her roundly for her crooked ways,—but as she was hewn so she will remain. At the other end of the scale is the tiny fishing dug-out of the Niger and the Congo, and their still smaller sister of Batanga in Spanish Guinea, the latter so small that the owner may with ease carry on his shoulder both canoe and fishing tackle, and whilst baiting hooks and catching fish he skilfully sits astride her and paddles with his feet.
Inseparable again from the dug-out is the paddler. Who that travelled with him can forget him? Humorous as the London Jehu of the twentieth century, dexterous as his civilized confrères of the ocean, as adaptable to his surroundings as the clay to the potter’s art; at home everywhere and in all conditions in his native land, swimming or standing, sitting or lying, squatting or reclining, sleeping as soundly on the nose of the canoe or the river bank as we in our downiest of feather beds. He is ready and alert with the earliest peep of dawn, as the mists rise from the surface of the river, presenting the appearance of a huge boiling cauldron. Peeping from beneath your mosquito net you see his figure outlined against the dawning light as he keeps a sharp look-out for the hidden snag, and shivers with the clinging chilly mist. His powers of endurance are unequalled, as the rising sun dispels the mists and mounting higher in the heavens becomes increasingly fierce. He still swings his paddle with steady persistence till his body steams with the effort; then after a little halt and refreshment in the friendly shade of the riverside forest, he will go on until the sun is sinking, and if need be, still on in the moonlight, singing his monotonous boat song, occasionally varied by a running commentary from the leader on the incidents of the journey, the peculiarities of a certain paddler, or the ways of the white occupants of the canoe.
During the whole day long the paddler will pursue his task, I see him now almost unconsciously bending his body with each dip of the paddle, till a sudden slowing down followed by a profound stillness arrests the attention. I can again hear those whispered voices as the gentle lapping of the water against the canoe side ceases, and the boat is still. A monkey has perhaps been seen overhead springing from bough to bough, or sitting nibbling the fruit of some forest tree, or it may be an edible bird with flesh as tough as its plumage is gorgeous, that watches us till the gun booms out and the creature is brought down. For a moment it struggles in the river, then with a sudden splash, a man is swimming with powerful strokes towards the prey which he a moment later lands in the canoe, while the rest look approvingly on at their prospective meal. With spirits heartened, on they go, singing of their capture and the feast which is to follow, till turning a bend in the river the destination is at last in sight.
[Sidenote: A CANOE RACE]
And how they love a race! Let them but see a competitor ahead bound for the same goal, and despite their long day’s paddle they will redouble their strokes. Caution is thrown to the winds and the canoe springs in a mad gallop, rocking to and fro, pitching and tossing against the current until the rival ahead, scenting a race, enters the competition with keen zest. At such times I have found all warnings are in vain. With a rapid girding up of the loin cloths as the boats proceed, a rearranging of the cargo, children, dogs, fowls, baggage and all—the race begins in real earnest. With much shouting and good-natured banter the one or the other will take advantage of every prospect of an up-current; now out again in midstream to avoid a snag; a paddle breaks in the effort, but is quickly discarded and another seized without lessening the speed—and on they go, each determined to win or sink their rival. The boats ship water, but are made to right themselves with marvellous ingenuity and then both stop to bale out, while the paddlers exchange good-humoured threats, gibes, curses and defiance.
On again they go with little advantage to either side, and the word is passed for the “master stroke.” Madder than ever is the race; the white man may shout but they pay no heed, for young manhood has lost all sense of danger. At last the opportunity occurs for the final advantage for the river must be crossed at yonder point. Often have I tried to avoid this danger, proceeding first to command, then to plead, but in vain. I might as effectively have tried to control a hurricane with a feather! To clear the point with its snags, one canoe must fall behind or cross the rival’s bows—to give up and fall back is impossible. The attempt is generally made by the smaller boat to cross the bows of her more powerful rival and though occasionally successful she is more often struck amidships and disappears completely—canoe, paddlers and all!
A great shout goes up and the victors splash in to the rescue, seizing the mats, baskets, provisions and sundries, which float off in every direction. The crew, as much at home in the water as on land, come up one by one and others dive to seize the stern of the sunken canoe. With vigorous pulling and pushing, the water is swished out till she floats again, and in the vanquished spring, again baling out the remaining water with their feet, till it is once more fit for occupation, and every one is prepared for the last lap of the journey. The men take their beating well, enjoying the laugh against themselves. That night all sleep together in a friendly fishing encampment, while the white man curls up in his canoe, and listens to the merry paddlers as they recount with evident enjoyment the story of their five-mile race.
Who that has found a home and nightly shelter in an African canoe will not, as he quits it after many days, feel that he is leaving an old acquaintance behind him. Through the twenty-four hours of sleeping and waking, the canoe and the traveller have adapted themselves to each other’s limitations, and the recently vacated canoe speaks as eloquently of emptiness as the vacant chair.
III
THE AFRICAN FOREST
There can hardly be any experience more exquisitely luxurious than that of wandering on through the primeval forests of Central Africa. The traveller whose daily round confines him to the great cities of a hustling civilization finds himself in perfect solitude, perhaps for the first time in his life. Every step he takes brings before him some new wonder in nature’s garden; every hour in the day is alive with fresh experiences.
Surely there is no language which aptly befits the transcendent beauty of nature awaking to greet the new-born day. During the night, giant forms have roamed at will through the silent glades and recesses of the forests, but with the peep of day they have retired to their lair. Those feathered sentinels, whose hoarse cry rings through the night hours, have perforce veiled their eyes at the awakening of their comrades who strike the sweeter chords befitting the glad hours of day. Throughout the night the trees made monotonous music by the incessant drip drip of their tears, but with the morning, the warm sun has bidden those tears begone.
When daylight breaks through the tree tops, the boughs sway here and there as the monkeys, springing from tree to tree, gambol with their fellows, only ceasing for a momentary peep at the strange intruders of their sylvan preserve, as the undergrowth crackles beneath the travellers’ feet and the squirrels dart across the pathway seeking a safer retreat. The sight of the white clad figure, moving rapidly through the mass of undergrowth, startles the mother bird from her nest, and off she goes shrieking for her mate and warning her fellows. Yet over all, a silence broods and the traveller falls to constant musing as he wends his way.
For miles the dense forests will shut out the sun, and then perhaps where a lofty giant tree has fallen in decay, a slanting ray of sun will gleam through the leafy roof turning the pathway into a smiling track of iridescent moss and fern. A few yards further and the path descends abruptly into a woodland stream, bridged by rustic logs, only possible of fording in mid-current by creeping warily along the trunk of a tree which some thoughtful passer-by has felled. The logs and trees which lie rotting in all directions are the home of shimmering mosses and tiny fern. Beside the slippery and tottering causeway there shines many a filigree globe of purest opal and cunning design like a fairy’s incandescent light guiding the steps of the unwary traveller. They are but insects’ nests, as fragile as delightsome, crumbling at the touch.
[Sidenote: THE BUSY ANTS]
The traveller can never proceed many miles on his journey without meeting the dark lines of driver ants. At a distance of fifty yards, all one sees is a uniform brown line, sometimes two inches wide, sometimes as many feet. Drawing nearer they are seen to be well-ordered regiments, thousands strong, with scouts, baggage bearers, captains and field-marshals. Their enemies have fled at their approach and they are masters of the field. On they will march, in faultless array, their countless thousands obediently passing at a double their immovable field-marshals, and as they proceed every living thing flees before them. Now perhaps they disappear through some subterranean passage, tunnelled out by their indomitable energy, to reappear on the surface when it suits their plan. You may scatter them if you dare, but you can daunt them never. Sweep them into heaps, kill them by the hundred, burn them by the thousand, and tens of thousands surge forward, to fill up the ranks, and remove the dead. Then the regiments will grimly move once more on their way—an incentive to higher organisms.
The African forests teem with life, for the most part silent; even the great beasts glide along in perfect quietude—not till you are upon them do you realize the proximity of the elephants; then, unless the traveller be a Nimrod, his greatest concern is to avoid a possible encounter. They love most a quiet glen near the forest stream, where they will plough the earth in all directions and everywhere leave the impress of their giant limbs stretched in gymnastics all their own; here and there scattered over their playground lie scores of trees athwart each other, evidence of no woodman’s axe, but of the entwining grip of the monster’s trunk, who in his unrivalled strength delights thus to shew his power in his own domain. Everywhere, too, the great forest apples lie idle after their sport, and the natives tell how they spend hours hurling these great balls at their fellows.
The rivers which everywhere feed the African forest, coupled with the tropical sun, give luxuriance to all nature. Vines are there as much as three feet in circumference, moss-grown and gnarled with age, born perhaps when the parent acorns of our oldest oaks were yet unformed. Sometimes like huge serpents they coil themselves in a tortuous grip round two or three trees, each of which may be ten times their own size.
There is beauty too in these silent forests, when at intervals on the march the traveller, almost unconsciously at first, begins to inhale the fragrant odour of some delicious perfume sent forth by modest blooms that shun the gaze of man. A little searching beneath the undergrowth, or in the tree tops overhead, reveals a bloom upon which the eye gladly lingers—trails of waxen jasmine hanging from the bush in exquisite profusion.
[Sidenote: BEAUTY IN DECAY]
There is beauty, too, in the forest decay, in the fallen tree trunk, whose rotting bark and ugly torn stump are transformed by tufts of gracefully drooping fern, while tiny rootlets smile from out every crevice. There is beauty, too, in the fungus growths, tinted and white, or the perfection of coral, or blooms whose purple depths suggest some cherished hot-house flower.
The experienced traveller is quick to note signs of a change; the pathway leads uphill and the absence of giant tree trunks denotes that he is treading a once cleared and populated region. That hill, whose summit is capped with foliage, was once a village landmark, beneath it, myriad termites live and pursue their daily toils through tunnels and chambers that they have shaped by their countless thousands. Were man’s three-score years and ten twice told devoted to the study of the ways and purposes of the unheeded occupants of our earth, he had but then begun to learn the alphabet of nature’s infinite resources.
Close to the termite hills the half-buried foundations of primitive dwellings speak of departed life, and in the Congo, hundreds, yea thousands, of these mark the spot where once the children of nature lived out their simple life, till civilization strode through the land treading ruthlessly down the souls of men. They have gone and their haunts lie deserted, but their monuments remain. The discarded kernels of the housewives’ palm nuts have taken root and now rear their graceful fronds on faultless trunks like capitals of Corinthian pillars in some cathedral aisle. As if by design they ranged themselves thus. In these silent groves the traveller treads reverently upon the grassy floor; no monk is here; there is no echo of the choristers’ song, but nature has reared her temple where myriad voices rejoice and sing their song of praise, unfettered by the forms and creeds of man.
The long day’s tramp is now over; the sun is setting and the birds are carolling their evening song, as the traveller emerges into the open space beside the gleaming river, flowing swiftly onwards with its errand to the sea. The glow of the departing sun tints the clouds with purple and gold outshining in glory the loveliness of the morning. Surely the heavenly regions are not far beyond, and this is a glimpse behind the veil. The afterglow has departed and the world of man falls asleep till the twittering of the birds heralds the approach of another day with another march through the inexhaustible forests of tropical Africa, where verily
“Earth is crammed with Heaven And every common bush ablaze with God.”
IV
A MEDLEY OF CUSTOMS
A lifetime spent amongst a single African tribe would scarcely exhaust its folklore and customs. Awaiting scientific investigation there is throughout the African continent a wealth of lore and superstition.
To him who would discover the hidden life of the African infinite patience is essential. It is useless to force information; the best plan is to wait until the “spirit moves” the old woman or chief to tell you something of the inner life of the tribe. Perhaps the time and conditions which most contribute to a flow of talk are a moonlight evening around the log fires and cooking pots.
I see them now—these simple Africans, seated around the great earthenware pot awaiting the meal of boiled cassava, pounded leaves or steamed Indian corn. I hear that grey-headed old chief, with low musical voice, passing on the traditions of past generations, so “that the boys may know something of the early history of their race.” All the old stories familiar to civilization are there. They all know that “man first went wrong through woman gathering fruit in the forest,” the only variation is that the kind of fruit differs in different parts of West Africa, but it is always a forest fruit, always the woman tempted the man; always man succumbed! Then the old chief will turn to the oft-told story—the sacrificial efficacy of the young kid. It is remarkable how closely this custom resembles even to-day that institution of the Pentateuch. The young kid must be free from all disease, a perfect animal in every respect. When killed the blood is carefully sprinkled on the lintel and on each door-post. Other familiar sacred institutions are passed under review. Then the animal kingdom comes under discussion, and the whole series of Uncle Remus, with but slight variations, secures the rapt attention of the listeners. It is at such times as these that the student gets beneath the surface of polygamy, burial and marriage dances, cicatrization and the more serious subjects of land tenure, tribal laws, social ties and domestic slavery.
Not all tribes are equally interesting, probably the Baketi tribes on the upper reaches of the Kasai river provide the greatest wealth of interesting customs and folklore. Their grotesque images, carved in wood, grin at the traveller from the door-posts of the houses, and passing through the villages one has to be extremely careful not to tread upon one of the fetishes which are scattered along the walks in great profusion. One day I saw three separate fetishes within a single square yard, and these, the father explained to us in his simple way, he had purchased at, to him, a heavy cost, hoping thereby to restore to health his only daughter. Not only does the Baketi fill his town with fetishes and wooden images, but in the forests which separate village from village, almost every tree along the pathway has rudely carved on its trunk the grinning face of some impossible human being.
[Sidenote: THE BAKETI FETISH]
The Baketi, too, is probably unique in his memorial grounds. Most African tribes bury the dead in the heart of the forest, but at the same time near the village a memorial ground is set apart on which are erected tiny memorial huts, which the restless spirits of the departed may inhabit if they so choose. There, when the spirit pays such visits—as all good spirits do nightly—he finds his loin cloth ready, the spoon with which he ate his food, the bottle from which he drank, his battle axe and cross bow which played havoc in many an affray; there is generally too a spread of Indian corn or other food, which the thoughtful and sorrowing wives have placed in readiness for his return visit to earth. How safe these memorial tombs are from desecration may be gathered from the fact that very frequently considerable sums of native currency are strewn upon the floor. These little tombs are also surrounded with numerous carved images erected on poles. The Baketi have another custom which is, I believe, quite unique in West Central Africa. Outside every village are large forest clearings covered with grass, and dotted over these meadow-like lands may be seen the strange sight of trees rooted up and planted upside down—the branches having been lopped off or the tree trunk cut through the middle and planted with the roots in the air. The sight of these clearings, involving a considerable expenditure of labour, covered with scores—sometimes hundreds—of these symbolic monuments, is most impressive.
The Baketi have elaborate ceremonials at births and marriages. A special house is always built for the birth of a child, the mother being conveyed to the dwelling an hour or so before the expected time, as is likewise the case with a dying person. Another curious custom which prevails amongst these people, and strangely enough we found precisely the same custom a thousand miles north amongst the Ngombe tribes of Bopoto, yet nowhere in the intervening territories, forbids any young woman to definitely enter into marriage relations until one end of the interior of her house is closely packed with neatly cut logs of firewood! This usually means about three hundred logs, measuring eighteen inches in length and two feet in circumference. The idea appears to be that of demonstrating the domestic capacity of the bride-elect.
With every West African tribe there are customs peculiar to the individual community, but they are generally trivial, or variations of customs prevailing amongst the surrounding tribes. Amongst Congo tribes only the Baketi apparently possess customs so completely unique.
(_a_) CICATRIZATION
[Sidenote: CICATRIZATION]
Cicatrizing is practised more or less over the whole of West Central Africa. In some parts like the Bangalla and Equatorial regions of the Congo, the patterns are extremely elaborate and involve much patient labour on the part of the artist and prolonged suffering by the individual.
Cicatrizing is often confounded with tattooing, but the latter process is entirely different, and is of course most largely in vogue amongst the Maoris and seafaring men. The word cicatrization is derived from the French medical term which designates the scars left by a healed wound and implies a raised portion of the flesh, whereas tattooing is an indentation coupled with the insertion of indelible dyes. Strangely enough the Baluba tribes south of the Congo tattoo themselves, and in this respect are unique in West Africa. Both men and women readily subject themselves to the cicatrizing knife, but generally speaking women are more liberally marked than men.
In the Bangalla regions of the Congo, the facial markings resemble the surface of a coarse rasp, whilst the women content themselves with large shell patterns on the lower part of the stomach. Along the main Congo and some of the tributaries, the marking which finds most favour is the “coxcomb” in the centre of the forehead; this is sometimes cut quite deeply. The hinterland tribes of the Equatorial rivers almost without exception adopt the oyster shell pattern just below the temple, but the women, in addition, are prodigally marked with “knobs,” small “oyster shells” and “bead strings” all over the body, particularly on the thighs. Amongst the Batetela, the forearm is usually covered with a pattern identical with the Cornish “one and all” motto, often also with a sunflower pattern running from the navel up to the shoulder, sometimes to the right, but more often to the left. In the Kasai territories there is first the one general cicatrice imposed on the people by the historic northern conqueror Wuta, a “white” chieftain of prodigious valour and energy, who, apparently more than five hundred years ago, swept through the whole region founding new dynasties and placing the tribes under tribute of soldiers and money. This hustling personage, it is said, reached what is now Rhodesia, but so great was, and is, the fear of his spirit that everyone to-day bears his cicatrice. The Bakuba, Bashilele, Baketi, Bushongos and Lulua, all bear their distinctive marks, many of the women having the whole thigh covered with a “herring bone,” and the men carrying a mark similar to the Grecian “key” pattern. In the Portuguese Enclave and the Mayumbe territory of the Congo, the whole of the back is frequently covered by a single pattern and on the back of one woman we found a marking which is clearly the Swastika.
[Sidenote: THE ARTIST IN BLOOD]
The operation is, of course, distinctly painful. The subject sits on the ground or on a log of wood, whilst the operator cuts deeply into the flesh with the knife held at such an angle that a considerable wound will result. Think of sitting still whilst this crude hand-made piece of native steel is dug into the flesh something like twenty or thirty times within half an hour! Once I was able to watch the process; the woman desired a “lace pattern” made from the shoulder blades to the waist, involving altogether four lines, which meant nearly two hundred cuts. She sat outside her hut, and bending down slightly to stretch the skin, the intended pattern was marked in chalk, and then the operator, taking his small cicatrizing knife in his right hand, proceeded to grasp between the thumb and forefinger of the left successive small portions of flesh, gashing each till the blood flowed freely. Then he started the other side of the body, returning again to cut the third line, and back to the second to link the pattern up with the fourth.
I watched the woman closely, and as the knife dipped into the flesh she made a grimace, but between the cuts, laughingly and with considerable spirit replied to my comments. At the conclusion of the operation, she calmly walked to the nearest tree and gathered a few leaves to wipe up the blood which by this time was streaming down her body. The operator, according to custom, threw over the wounds a handful of powdered camwood which, however, has less antiseptic than drying properties.
It is not easy to light upon such operations, which are generally carried out more or less privately, and in all my years of residence in Africa, this was the only occasion on which I have been able to watch throughout an elaborate cicatrization. It is, however, a familiar sight to meet natives with their bodies newly cut. On the day after the incisions have been made the wounds swell and suppurate, greatly to the delight of the hosts of insect life which swarm everywhere in Central Africa. These surround the wounded body of the native and only by a continuous flicking of grass or twig brushes can the suffering victim obtain even comparative freedom from the tortures which every movement of the body imposes, but in the course of a few months the pattern originally cut in the body stands out firm and clear. In those cases where still more emphatic designs are desired, the cicatrice will be re-opened and raised higher still until the prominence is quite pronounced, in others, after a lapse of a few months, still more lines and still more “knobs” will be added until the age of twenty to thirty. After this the desire for adornment ceases and the body rests from its tortures.
What is it that attracts? What power is it which buoys up the spirit under these painful operations? What is the secret which gives this insatiable desire for fleshy adornment?—a desire firmly rooted in the breast of every section of the community and shared by young and old alike. I well remember an orphan child, of about three summers, standing in the roadway crying bitterly, and upon my asking the cause, she told me that being an orphan no one had enough interest in her to cut a “coxcomb” on her forehead. Secreting a small bottle of red ink, I told her to sit on the table, and by a series of pinchings and finger-nail marks on her forehead, coupled with a smearing of red ink over my white hands, calmed the little mite into the belief that her heart’s desire was being gratified. After about ten minutes she was supremely happy in the thought that she too possessed a “coxcomb.” Her delight was unbounded, until the little mischief caught sight of her natural forehead in a mirror!
[Sidenote: MARRIAGE AND TRIBAL MARKINGS]
No doubt the principal motive for this passion is the love of personal adornment, of which the African assuredly does not retain a monopoly. Hitherto the hinterland tribes have had no access to those artificial aids to personal adornment, which are laid so temptingly before the youth of civilization. They will tell you they have had no alternative but to “adorn” their only garb—nature’s dusky skin, and none would deny, that there is a certain beauty even in these barbarous forms of embellishment. The critic may observe that the beauty of womanhood is obviously not enhanced by the bold use of the cicatrizing knife, but I would remind that critic that the wife without a body fairly well covered with cicatrization finds but scant favour with the other sex. In Africa the European youths of fashion have their counterpart, and in the direction of the most daintily cicatrized maiden, are cast the most amorous glances, and offers of handsome dowries to the admiring parents for the hand of their captivating daughter.
Other reasons doubtless play a part, among them the question of tribal ownership of wives, and the necessity of placing a distinctive and indelible mark upon the body. Constant internecine warfare, too, demanded a mark which would make easy the task of discriminating the warriors of the respective combatants.
Patriotism, relationship and love of adornment, combine in giving to the African the extraordinary fortitude which this prolonged operation demands, but the disappearance of internal warfare, the increasing importation of cheap jewellery and gaudy clothing, and the advance of Christian civilization, is robbing this custom of its _raison d’être_, and in another generation the little African boys and girls will only learn from books of this curious custom of their grandfathers and grandmothers, for cicatrization, as practised to-day, will have perished within another twenty-five years.
(_b_) PERSONAL ADORNMENT
Left to nature, the African, dissatisfied with his personal charms, looks about him for some means for adding adornment to his body. In the absence of finely woven cloths and silks, he covers his person with ornamental markings, and his woolly hair he makes to take the place of head-gear. In two respects only his tastes accord with those of the European—metal ornaments and rouge powder.
Most African tribes wear some cloth. The wild Ngombe on the southern banks of the main Congo, skilled in ironwork but ignorant of weaving, wear a vegetable cloth which they strip from the inner side of the coarse bark of a forest tree. Many of their women content themselves with only a few cicatrized patterns, and this is most noticeable in the hinterland of Bangalla, north of the Congo. A peculiar feature, however, is that all these women, though completely nude, wear a thin piece of string round the loins. When photographing a group, I suggested the removal of these strings, because they seemed to imply that normally a cloth or leaf was thereby suspended; but the women, at this, to me, most innocent suggestion, all became exceedingly angry and threatened to run away. Finally, I managed to restore good relations, and we succeeded in obtaining an excellent photograph. It was evident that some deep significance attached to wearing this almost invisible cord, but what that significance was I could not discover.
[Sidenote: HAIRDRESSING]
Hairdressing ranks almost equal in importance with cicatrization, and practically any day the traveller passing through the villages may see some native stretched lazily upon a mat on the ground, the head resting on the lap of the hairdresser—generally one of the opposite sex. In Spanish Guinea, and on the islands off Batanga, the style of hairdressing is that of long plaits, sometimes a dozen in number, running out in all directions from the top of the head. In French and Belgian Congo the style most favoured is the helmet and in some cases the mitre form; in these the hair is braided up until it adds apparently about five or six inches to the stature. In many parts of the Cameroons, as well as in French and Belgian Congo, the hair thus built up is covered with a mixture of oil and camwood powder, and thus offers a solid protection against the fierce rays of the tropical sun.
Amongst the Boela people of Bangalla, the custom prevails of binding the crown of an infant’s head with tough cord soon after birth, and this head-binding is maintained throughout life. The effect is that of an elongated or sugar-loaf skull which is greatly emphasized when the hair is prominently braided around it. We observed men of all ages with their heads bound in this manner, but they did not appear to suffer any discomfort, and the mental powers of the tribe were in no sense below the average.
Rouge finds great favour in the personal adornment of the African. The powder is obtained from the camwood tree, and in almost every well-regulated household in the forest regions may be seen let into the ground a log of wood some eighteen inches in diameter, while a piece of smaller dimensions lies near at hand. The housewife, in order to obtain the colouring, rubs—or more correctly grinds—one piece on the other, which, with the aid of either water or oil, causes a thick red paste to exude, which is then made into cones and placed in the sun. When thoroughly dry, it is either pressed into a powder and sprinkled over the body, or the person is anointed with a mixture of the powder and palm oil; in either case imparting a bright red appearance.
In war times, at festivals, and on feast days, an enormous amount of rouge is used, and the red bodies of the tribes are rendered extremely grotesque by the addition of white clay markings which stand out very clearly on the red background.
For the most part the West African tribes extract all the hair from the body with the exception of the head, the beard and moustache. The task is almost a daily one, and in the case of a man is generally undertaken by one or more of his wives. Little boys and girls submit willingly to the removal of their eyebrows and eyelashes.
Brass anklets and necklaces are much prized by the natives throughout West Africa. The Mongo tribes of the Congo wear anklets weighing sometimes 10 pounds on each ankle, and the whole set of ornaments, including the collar, will turn the scale at 35 pounds. In the Leopoldian régime these valuable ornaments were a contributory cause to the atrocities, for the rubber soldiery would always seek out the women in possession of such anklets and collars, and, as they were welded on the body, would not hesitate to chop off the foot, the hand, or even the head in order to obtain the ornaments.
[Sidenote: THE PRICE OF ADORNMENT]
I once heard a neat retort from an African woman. The questioner was a white lady who had been pointing out the pain caused by wearing these heavy articles of adornment. The dialogue ran as follows:—
_White Woman_: Why do you wear anklets which cause you so much pain? _African Woman_: Beauty is worth pain.
_White Woman_: Surely you do not suffer such torture in order to appear beautiful?
_African Woman_: Tell me then, white woman, why do you suffer pain by tying yourself so tightly in the waist, like a woman suffering the pangs of hunger?
How far these simple customs should be checked has always seemed to me a matter of doubt, but in the internal government of missions they cause serious dissensions among the staff. Not a few missionaries, and some government officials, seem to feel called upon to place these old-time customs almost on the level of criminal offences.
In one mission no natives may sit down to Holy Communion with their hair braided and oiled, nor may they enjoy the full privileges of Church membership if they use camwood powder on their bodies; this is the more outrageous when, within a few days’ canoe journey, there is another Christian mission where one lady missionary at least is evidently well acquainted with the use of delicately scented rouge. In another mission, cicatrizing, the extraction of the eyelashes, men dressing the hair of women or vice versâ, are sufficient to warrant suspension from Church membership.
In all conscience there is enough that is evil in humanity, both white and coloured, to make the decalogue sufficiently hard of attainment, without human agencies arbitrarily introducing non-essentials which make it grievous to be borne.
(_c_) “THE ANGEL OF DEATH”
[Sidenote: THE DEATH OF THE AFRICAN]
The wildness of the African hinterland, the frequency of bloody feuds, the ever present unhealthiness, almost daily materializes the hand of death. From the moment the traveller touches the coast of Sierra Leone, he is never far from the tragedy of early and violent deaths, accounts of which reach him at every port.
The native’s fear of death is immortalized in his many boat songs, his legends and traditions, as well as in those elaborate systems of fetishism which are used to ward off the imaginary proximity of Death’s angel.
This was the feature of African life which so impressed Du Chaillu on his first visit to West Africa. “Are you ready for death?” he sometimes asked the natives. “No,” would be the hasty reply, “never speak of that,” and then, says Du Chaillu, “a dark cloud settled on the poor fellow’s face; in his sleep that night he had horrid dreams, and for a few days he was suspicious of all about him, fearing for his poor life lest it should be attacked by a wizard.”
Cursing in West Africa, which almost invariably takes the form of invoking death upon some relative, is one of the most frequent causes of trouble. A curse hurled at himself, the African merely resents, and returns the compliment, but let a man invoke death upon another’s mother or sister, and the dagger leaps instantly from its scabbard, or the spear goes hurtling through the air with deadly precision.
“May you die” is the most common form of cursing, which brings the sharp retort, “And you also.” The curses, “May the leopard catch your mother,” “May the crocodile eat your sister,” call forth instant battle. The explanation of this strong resentment and intensity of feeling is found in the fact that the African firmly believes that when a curse is pronounced the unfortunate person is thereby accursed.
No man ever goes on a journey, no matter how short, without a string of charms about his neck, to ward off the grim form of death, which he believes lurks in every forest, along every river, in every home. There is one charm to protect from violent death through wild animals, there is one to protect from death at the hands of strangers, but chiefest of all is that little charm stuffed away in the ram’s horn, which is a perfect safeguard against the death curse of strangers whom the traveller may meet when on his way from village to village.
The traveller cannot escape the sorrow and despair of death which surely is nowhere so marked as at the death of the African. For days, maybe, the sufferer has lain without any perceptible change, either for better or worse; then, perhaps, the watcher observes a sign which shews that the end is not far off, and the word goes round the village that Bomolo cannot live long.
Silently, one after another, the relatives creep into the hut and sit upon cooking pots, mats, stools and logs of wood, until the hut is filled with men and women knit together with a common sorrow. The strong man they have remembered in the sylvan chase, the keen fisherman, or possibly the courageous warrior they have known and admired, and in their beautiful simplicity loved, is stretched upon the hard bamboo bed which his busy hands had made. The watchers can see that it is only a matter of hours and the general weeping is at first silent, occasionally ceasing when the sick one speaks or calls for something. The nearer relatives rub and bathe the limbs which begin to chill; one or two affectionately hold a foot, a hand, or a finger; the favourite wife, as her right and duty, tenderly nurses the head.
In proportion as the weakness increases, the crying becomes more audible; then louder still the women cry, invoking all the spirits of the other world to surrender their grip and restore to life and vigour their beloved tribesman. Some momentarily cease crying and call to Bomolo to “speak words of farewell,” and the fact that the dying man is unable to reply is a signal for louder wailing still. At last comes the dreadful moment when their friend ceases to breathe. For the space of a few seconds, a breathless and awful silence prevails, whilst brother and wife listen to the heart beat; then, with a terrible shriek which rends the air, the wife cries, “He is gone!”
Words fail to describe this scene! How can the pen adequately portray the bursting of the pent-up misery of these scores of relatives as, in their agony, they twist and writhe in the dust. Wildly despairing, they grasp in frenzy the corpse or the bed, and then releasing their hold, they throw up their arms and again roll in the dust, not infrequently into the log fire which smoulders on the floor of the hut, scattering the embers amongst the tumbling and twisting mass of wailing humanity. What matter those burning scars?—the frenzy of a terrible sorrow consumes reason and chases into oblivion the pains of cut, bruised, scalded and burnt bodies.
An hour later, the storm having spent its fury, the body is washed and prepared for the grave, but the wailing still goes on rising and falling in a monotonous cadence like the moan of a dying gale at sea. There is no escape from that never-ceasing death wail until the body is buried, which, in most villages, is generally within forty-eight hours. Then the tide of weeping turns. A reaction sets in and the weird dancing to drive away the evil spirits continues throughout the night, until mourners and relatives revive sufficiently for the task of partitioning the wives and other worldly goods of the deceased.
The death customs differ with almost every tribe. In the watershed of the Lopori, Aruwimi and Maringa rivers of the Congo towards the Egyptian and Uganda borders, the corpse is frequently hung for weeks over a fire and thoroughly smoke dried. A similar custom prevails in certain parts of the middle and lower Congo. The corpse, however, is dressed in the best clothes and placed for a day or two in a life-like sitting posture—a gruesome and unnerving sight for the passing European. A hut in which a traveller was resting on his journey was seen to have suspended from the roof a deep wicker basket, from which a dark round object protruded. This, on inquiry, he found to be the head of a child whose body, after being smoke-dried, was hung there by the mother that she might look upon the features of her cherished infant. Amongst the Bakwala tribe, the custom prevails of smoking the body of a deceased wife who may be the daughter of a distant tribe, in order that she may be sent home and find burial amongst her own people.
Some of the Bakuba tribes on the Kasai, before life is actually extinct, seize the body, bundle it unceremoniously out of the hut, and then raising it shoulder high rush off to a distant and unoccupied hut that the spirit may there take flight, and not from the home which they believe the spirit would henceforward haunt. It is there prepared for burial, the whole village meanwhile gathering at the house of the deceased to take part in the general wailing.
(_d_) PEACE AND ARBITRATION
Most African tribes set the civilized world an example in their unwritten methods of preventing war, or, after war has been declared, of bringing it to an early termination. If it were possible to exile the Foreign Ministers of the Great Powers of Europe to the hinterland of their respective colonies—Sir Edward Grey to remote Barotseland, Baron von Kilderlen Waechter to the Sanga in German Cameroons, and Monsieur De Sélves to the Ubangi—where they could divide their time between fishing and studying the peace principles of barbarous tribes, I have little doubt they would return to civilization with more practical ideas upon peace than they will ever learn in the despatch encrusted offices of London, Berlin and Paris.
[Sidenote: THE “PALAVER”]
The African detests war and will make great sacrifices to prevent the outbreak of hostilities. The two principal causes of war are (1) land; (2) wives. Slave raiding does not belong to the African; the Arab imported it. Before war breaks out there is first the “palaver,” which may last many days or weeks. In palaver the debates differ but little from the parliaments of the world, except perhaps that custom keeps womanhood out of general debates, although where the particular interests of women are concerned, I have seen them throw themselves into the debates in a manner no whit less collected and impressive than the men.
The African revels in debate, and possibly this accounts to some extent for the admitted passion for litigation which now animates the civilized centres of the African colonies. The orators of the primitive tribes are no less masters of the art than their eloquent compeers at Lagos and Freetown. I was once asked to visit a first-class palaver and found a huge semi-circle of people closely massed together. Soon after my arrival the chief took his seat and one could almost hear the policemen of St. Stephen’s calling out, “Speaker in the chair!” for a similar signal was given for the palaver to commence.
The chief, surrounded by his advisers, called upon the speakers in turn; first to the right, then to the left, so that all sides might be heard. The “palaver” had commenced about nine o’clock, and at mid-day sun only four speakers had been heard. The fifth, who was an orator of some repute, rose from his stool where he had been reclining, drank from the calabash of water handed him by his wife, and then adjusting his loin cloth and picking up his notes—a bundle of twigs as remembrancers of the various points—he stepped forward. With an air of complete mastery of his facts, he sped on quietly for the first quarter of an hour; at the close of every period he turned to his supporters for approving applause, which was given in a chorus of assenting “Oh’s.” From calm and reasoned recital of facts, he then passed on to his deductions, and for another quarter of an hour he drove his points home amid the now increasing interest and applause of his own side and the derisive laughter of the opposition.
At the end of half an hour, excitement was beginning to run high. The orator now threw himself into a final effort; gathering up his facts and deductions, he charged the other side with every species of deception and fraud, and as he did so he danced to and fro with his body bathed in perspiration. Every sentence now was punctuated by the almost frenzied applause of his supporters. In his concluding sentences he made a fervid appeal for justice, all the while moving backward towards his expectant friends and wives. He uttered his concluding sentence with arms waving aloft and then swooned into the arms of half a dozen wives who emptied their calabashes over that quivering perspiring body. This man had never read the trial of Warren Hastings, but I could not help recalling Sheridan as the African orator lay there apparently in a dead swoon—I knew of course that he was inwardly rejoicing in his great feat and in the applause which awoke the echo and re-echo in the great forests immediately behind us.
If this “full dress” palaver fails to secure an amicable settlement, the tribes in the Congo basin do not abandon their efforts. They surround the villages with sentinels and adopt various defensive measures, but before hostilities actually begin, they select a sort of “daysman,” who, to act in this capacity, must be of peculiar relationship to both tribes; that is to say he must be able to claim parentage in both dissentient communities.
The daysman goes forth wearing a fringed and partially dried plantain leaf sash thrown over the shoulder so that the sentinels of both tribes immediately recognize him and his sacred office. It is very seldom this arbitrator fails to secure a peaceful termination of the dispute. If he does fail and hostilities break out causing loss of life, he immediately renews his efforts; indeed he never ceases that constant passing to and fro on his errand of peace and goodwill.
[Sidenote: PEACE CONFERENCE]
The proposal to sheathe the sword, or, more accurately, to unstring the bows and cleanse the poisoned arrow heads, is followed by another palaver. It was once my good fortune to be invited to act as arbitrator at one of these interesting proceedings.
The drums in all the surrounding country were beaten at cockcrow and immediately the two tribes, under their respective chiefs and headmen, began marching towards the rendezvous—a clearing in the forest outside the village at which we were staying.
I was rather alarmed at the fact that though this was a peace conference, every member of that great concourse carried not only spears, but bows and arrows, and I knew that the slightest indiscretion would precipitate a bloody fight.
All the old history was retailed again through that long and burning hot day. Once or twice a speaker raised the devil in his opponents; spears were gripped and arrows snatched from their quivers, but at last better counsels prevailed and terms were agreed upon. The question at issue was a boundary dispute, but lives had been lost and prisoners taken on both sides. The boundary was readjusted to the apparent satisfaction of both parties, prisoners exchanged and compensation paid for the killed on either side—this latter surely an advance on “civilized” terms of peace by the way!
The ceremony of “signing the peace” is not the least interesting part. First a strip of leopard skin was secured and then a bunch of palm nuts. The skin was pinned to the ground by a dagger, and each chief and headman followed me in driving the dagger deeper into the earth. When it was firmly fixed the leopard skin was drawn first one way, then the other, until it had been completely severed. A half was given to a young chieftain of each tribe, and they were instructed to “haste to the river, young men, throw the separated skins upon the waters that all men may know the quarrel is now cut in pieces (_i.e._, is destroyed).” This done, the bunch of palm nuts was taken and a spear from each party driven into the head of nuts. Two more men were selected, again from each tribe, and instructed to “Carry that head of nuts carefully, young men, throw them into the river that all men may know that our spear heads are buried, that fighting is over and peace made for ever and for ever.”
In this exceptional case the “for ever and for ever” only lasted three months! but in the great majority of such cases peace though threatened is maintained for many a year.
V
THE NATIVE AS A MONEY MAKER
If the African woman is a prudent banker, the man is the money maker. The range of remuneration they receive for their labour is no less divergent than one finds in Europe. The Sierra Leone native will obligingly row you ashore to Freetown in fifteen minutes “for two bob, Sah”; but his brother paddler on the Chiloango, or the Congo, will paddle for you throughout a week for 5_d._ a day, coupled with a plump bat or the leg of a monkey by way of rations.
There is one form of money making which is fastening its fell grip ever more firmly upon the middle-class African—money lending. It is extremely difficult to deal with this question in West Africa by legislation, but a good deal can be accomplished in various directions by a watchful administration. One case brought to my notice was that of a cook who was compelled to pay £2 10_s._ interest on a loan of £4 for six months. Another one was that of a teacher who required a loan of £6, for which he had to pay 12_s._ per month interest. I was also assured that frequently 10_s._ a month interest is exacted for small loans of £1. In some parts of the Gold Coast borrowers find themselves in such straits that they are often compelled to pawn their children.
[Sidenote: WAGES AND WIVES]
The wages of agricultural labourers vary very considerably. In Southern Nigeria labourers working for native employers receive from 15_s._ to 20_s._ per month. The contracted labourers on the islands of the Gulf of Guinea—that is Fernando Po, San Thomé and Principe—are all “contracted” at paper wages, varying from 10s. to 15_s._ per month, but neither under the Spanish or Portuguese Administrations do they receive more than half their pay when it is due, the other half being placed in the hands of the Curador. In German Cameroons the wage is seldom more than 10_s._ a month, and more often the labourers only receive 8_s._ In the hinterland of Belgian and French Congo, the unskilled labourer receives from 6_s._ to 8_s._ per month. All these wages are exclusive of board and lodging, but generally a certain amount of clothing is supplied freely. In many parts of the various colonies, however, stores are opened by the plantation owners to tempt the labourer into purchasing goods which usually carry a respectable profit.
The hardest work and the poorest pay falls to the carrier; that patient burden bearer rarely gets, in any part of Africa, more than about 9_d._ per day for his heavy task. The Upper Congo was thrown open to the advance forces of civilization by a continuous stream of carriers, who occupied from a fortnight to three weeks reaching Stanley Pool from Matadi, a journey for which they seldom received more than a sovereign a load. “Big money,” however, is earned by the cocoa carriers of the Gold Coast, but the conditions are entirely abnormal. The cocoa carrying enterprise as at present organized cannot be other than a temporary expedient and the general army of African carriers will have to be content with a wage varying from 4_s._ 6_d._ to 7_s._ a week.
The African is by nature a trader, and no more honest than many Europeans in his business transactions, and on the whole I am afraid less honest than the reputable business houses of West Africa. It is only fair to say that the native merchants trained under the rigid standard of European firms—particularly the Basel Mission of the Gold Coast—maintain a standard of honest trading which does credit to the firms under which they received their commercial education.
The ambition of most young men on the Upper Congo is focussed upon wives. Without earthly possessions, their only hope of matrimonial bliss is in the death of a relative from whom they may “inherit” a partner, if there is a disparity in age an “exchange” is always possible, subject, of, course, to an additional dowry. But this chance is remote and the waiting time is always long, tedious, and full of social complications. One day a young man in the Congo endowed with more than the usual share of courage and trading instinct, hit upon a plan which has for years found increasing favour. The captains of steamers could only with difficulty work their boats up and down that 2000 miles of waterway between Stanley Pool and the great tributaries of the Upper Congo, for lack of wood fuel from the forests. Here, then, was the chance for the enterprising native. He bargained with the white man upon the following basis. To travel with him to Stanley Pool and back again, a journey occupying four weeks, to cut a square yard of wood every night on the journey, and to be allowed to sleep during the day. The wages for this enterprise to be ten francs payable at Stanley Pool, and the free transport back again of one bag of salt and one box of sundries. This suggestion, sound in its common-sense, giving the white man fuel without trouble, was promptly agreed upon, and with ten others on the same terms the contract was confirmed. The white man went to his bunk that night, happy in the thought that for one journey at least he would be saved the eternal “wooding palaver.” The native youths, too, went to sleep, and possibly dreamed of the wedded bliss which was now so unexpectedly within sight.
Four weeks later the “Stern Wheeler” returned and put the respective wood cutters ashore at their different villages, each with a bag of salt and a few sundries purchased at Stanley Pool with the 10 francs. The eyes of certain comely young African women shone brightly that night as they heard of the brilliant enterprise of their prospective mates. A few days later two or three parties in small canoes pushed away from the banks and started on a ten days’ journey up one of the small tributaries which abound everywhere on the Upper Congo. In each canoe were precious bags of salt and a tiny spoon for retailing the “white powder” to distant tribes. A fortnight later family palavers were held and a sufficient dowry laid at the feet of the damsel’s father. The nightly wood-chopping enterprise had produced 10 francs which had in turn obtained a bag of salt, a hundred common safety pins and a cheap mirror. The salt and pins had disappeared and there lay on the ground in their place the coveted dowry of £2 sterling in native money for the father, and a mirror for the mother of the native bride who now gladly joined her husband for better or for worse. There is your African trading instinct!
Since that day many a young man has followed that example, but with competition dowries have risen and the value of European produce fallen. Nevertheless, to-day, many a native on the Congo waterways is cutting firewood to and from the ports in the hope of raising the wherewithal to obtain his heart’s desire.
It is said of the Indian coolie that anywhere he will make two blades grow to the one blade the white man can produce. In this respect the African follows hard on the heels of his Indian rival. The white man will often select what seems a most promising piece of land, but for some reason his crops fail. The native will choose a little out-of-the-way patch and cultivate it in a style which calls forth a pitying, almost contemptuous smile from the white, but somehow that native has struck fertility and his crops flourish amazingly.
[Sidenote: AGRICULTURAL WAGES]
In Southern Nigeria I met several successful native farmers, who seem in some respects to outdo their friends in the neighbouring colony of the Gold Coast. One of these had some years ago bought 200 acres of land at 4_s._ per acre, and soon it was discovered that he had obtained a very fertile patch and he was offered no less than £5 an acre and his crops at valuation, but Mr. X. has a keen business head upon his shoulders and finds it more profitable to cultivate cocoa, palm nuts and rubber than to sell his land even at an enhanced price. Every time he makes a few pounds he extends his plantation, “pulls down his barns and builds greater.” This man has now a turnover of nearly £20,000 a year.
[Sidenote: THE KEEN TRADER]
There are scattered all down the coast in British colonies native traders pressing on to positions of dominating influence. These men can handle cargoes of four figures and pay at an hour’s notice. They receive regular cable information of the prices of different commodities on the European market, and several of them have branches which connect by telephone. Most of them conduct their business on modern principles with typists, cashiers, messenger boys and so forth. Not a few of them are frequently in a financial position to strike a bargain and settle a transaction before the European firm can get a cable reply from the home directors. They are up-to-date traders in being able to supply anything which may be demanded of them, or if not in stock they will promise it—and keep the promise—on a given day. If an order is specially urgent and has to come from Europe, a messenger will meet the ship, take off the package and deliver it to the client within an hour or two of the ship’s arrival. One of the most interesting transactions I know of occurred in a certain British colony. A chief, for some reason, was in great need of a large elephant’s tusk, and after fruitless endeavours to obtain one, a native trader relieved the old man’s anxiety by offering to deliver a tusk the required size, to cost about £80, within a month. Promptly to time the tusk was delivered—the cute trader had cabled to Europe for it! “Holts,” “Millers,” and other all-wise competitors in that town knew how imperative it was that this old chief should have a big tusk, and I was told they tried their “up country” stores, but it never occurred to them to order from Europe. There again is the African trading instinct, which put a clear £10 note in the trader’s pocket!
The legal profession is beyond question the most lucrative in West Africa, but this does not obtain in Africa alone. The mass of the people have not yet learned to settle their troubles without the aid of the legal community. The fees paid to the coast barristers are surprising. I was informed that in one colony more than one native barrister has an income of close on five figures. I had no reliable evidence upon this and should think it an exaggeration, but the style in which the coast barrister lives and moves must certainly require a substantial income. Certain it is too that none are more generous with their money.
Unlike the medical profession, no colour-bar stands between the barrister and the free exercise of his ability. Surely the position of these medical men calls loudly for redress, the profession which, above all others, is needed in the fever-haunted colonies of Africa, yet between the increase of these men and the countless sufferers there is firmly fixed the detestable colour-bar of prejudice.
Though the native has not yet become convinced of the safety of banking, the sums placed by them on deposit in the three British colonies—Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria, are nearly £80,000.
When we reflect upon these natives rising to positions of greater power and influence in British colonies, and when we are prone to criticize British administrations, it will not hurt any of us, either native or European, to remember that less than a century ago these centres were amongst the principal slave markets of the world.
VI
THE AFRICAN WOMAN
There is assuredly no country whose women are more interesting than those of Central Africa. Certainly there can be no place on the habitable globe where women are so continuously industrious. Amongst African women there are no unemployed and no unemployables. In all the hinterland, the women are the agriculturists. In the early morning, often before sunrise, they file out of the village to their plots, perhaps a mile away from the town, where there is always something to do; weeding and planting being almost an integral part of the daily routine. When the gardens have received attention, meals must be considered and the woman proceeds to dig up the manioca tubers, but only to bury them beneath the water in some forest stream or pool to extract the injurious element. In a few days hence the load of sodden tubers will be ready for the native culinary art.
[Sidenote: DAILY BREAD]
Ten minutes in the forest and the woman has gathered the fuel required for her cooking; then loading her basket with the manioca left to soak six days before, she places a layer of leaves between it and the firewood, and shoulders her burden. She steps out brightly for home, in company with perhaps another twenty matrons.
It is not every day that she is able to finish by noon, for in the planting season the gardens demand her labour for whole days at a stretch. Some weeks before the husband has perhaps started a new field by cutting down at immense labour hundreds of trees, which lie there scattered in all directions till the tropical sun dries up the leaves and smaller branches. Then a torch at one end of the clearing starts the whole area in a blaze.
It is at this stage that the wife comes along with her seeds and cuttings, digging little mounds all over the area and raising the soil by heaping upon it the cinders, dead leaves and ash, which provide the only manure these primitive folk possess. Between the rows of manioca she may plant gourds, Indian corn and ground nuts, and thus secure a general crop all over her cultivated field.
From Sierra Leone right away to the north bank of the Kasai, these domestic crops vary but little, but on arriving at the southern bank of the Kasai, the change becomes very marked, for the extensive fields of manioca and cassava give way to mealies as the staple food.
The field is the first charge, so to speak, upon the time of the African woman, but to her belongs also the major responsibility for providing the daily meals. The primitive African is almost a vegetarian, though he dearly loves meat. Trapping edible fish is by no means frequent, and the wife, knowing with her civilized sister how important it is to feed the man, will often snatch an hour or two from her busy life and run to the nearest stream and catch some “small fry,” with which to make savoury the evening meal of cassava and pottage. In season she will hunt through the forests for the caterpillars which abound on certain trees and which by some tribes are regarded as great delicacies, particularly those tribes inhabiting French and Belgian Congo and the Cameroons. The Gold Coast people substitute large snails, of which they appear inordinately fond.
There are four principal dishes which, with slight variations, prevail throughout Western Africa:—
1. There is the staple food of manioca, which is sometimes boiled and pounded into puddings, resembling a lump of glazier’s putty. Cassava or sweet manioca is never soaked, but cooked fresh from the ground and is much liked by Europeans.
2. The plantain, which is prepared in many forms by roasting, baking, frying and boiling.
3. There is pottage, the body of which is composed of pounded leaves from the manioca plant, closely resembling spinach. In most parts of the tropics, green Indian corn is introduced freely into this dish.
4. There is the palm oil chop, which, as I have shewn in another part of this book, is not a “chop” at all, but anything from a caterpillar or a beetle to the leg of a dog or buffalo.
Perhaps next in importance to the position of agriculturist is that of cook. Give the African woman a clay pot, a pestle and mortar and a few leaves, and she will produce in quick time a meal which even a European can relish. She is a trifle too fond of chili peppers and palm oil for a sensitive palate and fully believes that a fair proportion of earth and other etceteras add to the flavour and digestibility. Her husband, with a natural weakness for chili peppers and oil, and himself not averse to “foreign bodies” in his food, readily consumes nearly two pounds of prepared manioca and pottage at a single meal.
[Sidenote: THE WOMAN IN THE HOME]
With cockcrow, the woman rises, steps outside the hut and in lieu of washing herself, yawns two or three times, then stretches herself in several directions, and is ready for the day’s work. She will first sweep her hut, open the chicken-house, pluck a few dew-covered leaves to wipe over the faces of the children, and then pick up her basket and set out for the gardens. Returning, she will pull the fire logs together and again shoulder her basket and go off to catch fish, or to hunt caterpillars. Some of the older wives may stay in the village to fashion clay cooking pots, weave baskets and mats, or crack palm kernels.
About four o’clock, “when the monkeys in the forest begin to chatter,” the women return to their huts and commence preparing for the principal meal of the day. Above the hum of conversation, the passing jest, or the humorous repartee, the clear ringing thud, thud, of pestle and mortar is distinctly heard. Most dishes at some stage or the other are pounded. The boiled manioca, the pottage leaves, the palm nuts, the plantains, all find their way to the mortar, and no doubt the muscular physique of many of the women is largely the result of the perpetual wielding of the heavy wooden pestle.
The African woman is at home with any industry, hardly anything comes strange to those deft fingers and muscular arms. The husband may go on a journey by canoe, and his wife, or wives, will be there paddling amidships and cooking the meals at intervals. The husband, however, always takes the post of danger, which may be bow or stern, according to the weather, the current, or the district through which they may be passing.
Much has been written, backed by little knowledge, about the brutality of man in making the woman carry the loads when on an overland journey. To the uninitiated European, it may seem callous for a strong able-bodied man to walk in front of a line of women every one of whom is struggling along with a 50-pound load on her back. But make them change positions, force the man to take the load, tell the women to walk in front, and before you have gone many yards the women will all have bolted into the bush, for the “Lord Protector” under a load is no longer ready to shield them from the danger which lurks behind every tree and beneath almost every leaf in the African forests. The African knows his business when on a journey, and his first duty, from which no matter what the odds, he never shrinks, is that of protecting his family from the ravages of wild animals no less than the violence of hostile tribes. But to do this he must be unencumbered and alert.
[Sidenote: WOMAN A MONEYMAKER]
The women of West Africa, by reason of their thrifty natures, are frequently the bankers. To them the husband entrusts the keeping of his worldly goods, and right sacredly they guard anything placed in their keeping. Not only are the women trustworthy bankers, but as moneymakers they are extremely keen. The finest business woman it has been my lot to meet was a farmer woman of Abeokuta. This old lady could tell at sight, almost to a penny, the value of a pile of kernels without weighing them. I fell to discussing with her so technical a question as the possibility of cotton in Southern Nigeria, and she was adamant in her opinion upon this: “Unless they can guarantee me 1_d._ per pound for unginned cotton and 4½_d._ per pound for the ginned, I would even prefer to grow yams.” I gathered that on the whole she was not likely to become a shareholder in any cotton producing company.
In the mart the women excel. It may be in the streets of Accra, Abeokuta, Freetown, or in that finest of all marts in West Africa—Loanda, or again in some wayside market of a tributary river in the far distant hinterland. Wherever you find the market, the women are in control and right merrily goes the auction. The din amounts to a pandemonium, the tricks of the trade are to be looked for in every basket of fruit or pile of vegetables. The eggs are probably old ones, carefully washed and possibly doctored; that fowl tied by the legs could not walk from sickness if it were free. Billingsgate, Smithfield, Covent Garden, rolled into one could not be at once more entertaining, more noisy and more novel than those African markets where you may buy almost everything you want, and receive a great deal gratis that is not welcome.
THE AFRICAN WIFE
Is there any feature, social, political or religious so important in West Africa as the wife and mother? No “teeming millions” are to be found in the African tropics and every colony is crying out for more native workers as the development of her industries gets beyond the fringe. As a wife the African woman is generally but one of a number. In most coast towns to-day the stress of modern competition has forced up the cost of living, which together with the absorption of civilized ideas has made monogamy—oftentimes, alas, only surface monogamy—the passport into respectable society. But away from the coast towns, though it be only a few miles away, polygamy is prevalent almost throughout West Africa.
Christian converts profess an abhorrence, and in many cases I am satisfied a sincere abhorrence, of polygamy, but the fact remains that this causes more trouble in the Christian Churches in West Africa than all other evils put together. In the purely pagan areas there is no doubt that the woman regards polygamy as a desirable condition; she argues that the position of the husband is gauged by his many possessions—wives and cattle, and that she prefers being the wife of a great man to that of some insignificant fellow who can afford to keep but one! Again she will point out, and with obvious truth, that if a man possesses several wives, the burden of agriculture, of fishing, of kernel-cracking, and the domestic duties spread over four, five or more persons is proportionately lighter upon each individual.
Into the sentiment of polygamy there is also the practical consideration of offspring. No matter how plain the daughters, no matter how slightly cicatrized they may be, no matter what imperfections the boys may have, if they are the children of a much married man they are certain to make “good matches.” The sons may be certain of securing the daughters of chiefs no less famous than their father; if a girl, her dowry will not be her intrinsic worth, but will be gauged likewise by the position and possessions of her father.
[Sidenote: INHERITED WIVES]
It does not seem to be generally recognized that there is both voluntary polygamy and in a very real sense obligatory polygamy. A man inherits wives from his father or uncle, just as he inherits other possessions. In most cases of course he gladly accepts his inheritance. This, I know, is a revolting custom to the European, but to the African not merely desirable but the only honourable future for his father’s wives. His own mother reigns as a sort of dowager Queen in the household and keeps order in the harem of her son. I have often discussed this feature with the women themselves and find that invariably they regard any other course with the utmost repugnance. Why, they say, should they suffer the disgrace of being passed on to other husbands; what evil have they done that their rightful husband should disown them and refuse to accept them as his wives? his father loved and cherished them, and why should the son disgrace his father’s name by refusing to follow in his steps!
In one or two cases Christian men have actually put away wives whom they have inherited in this manner, but the women concerned have always felt that the shadow of disgrace has fallen upon them and that they are outcasts from the social life of the tribe.
This custom, like most extreme polygamous concomitants, finds its fullest development in the upper reaches of the Congo river, but it is also found practically throughout the whole of the Congo basin.
[Sidenote: CHRISTIANITY AND POLYGAMY]
The general attitude adopted by missionaries in West Africa is that of rigidly excluding the husband of more than one wife from Church membership, and this no doubt accounts for the apparent lack of success which statistics seem at first sight to demonstrate. Almost every missionary, however, will point out to the traveller, man after man who, though not a member of his church is, he declares, with a regretful sigh, “more of a Christian than the majority of our members.” The German Basel Mission in the Cameroons excludes all polygamists from Church membership and they have been fortunate in obtaining King Bell as a monogamist member. In the “oil rivers” of the Niger, the same rigorous position is taken up by the missionaries.
In not a few churches in Southern Nigeria, polygamists are certainly admitted to membership of the churches. These men if not openly polygamous are notoriously so in private life.
The Christian Church has, in polygamy, a problem which at present defies solution; the custom is so much an integral part of African life that a conversion to Christianity involves an abrupt termination of the convert’s former habits, the effects of which reach far beyond the individual most intimately concerned. One of the greatest difficulties is that of the outcast wives. In one Mission in Southern Nigeria if a man becomes a Christian convert he is asked to call his wives together and explain his position, then to select one, put the others away and provide for their maintenance. But even this involves a sense of injustice and is, I am told, fruitful in many cases of deplorable results. The women thus set aside regard themselves not unnaturally as outcasts, as they have lost the affection of their husbands and are therefore in disgrace. In many cases, I am told, these women become either temporarily or permanently the mistresses of other men who do not hesitate to taunt them with the fact that they are outcasts from ordinary native society.
No doubt there are exceptional cases where women so put away find mates amongst the bachelor members of the Christian community, but even these young fellows—and more particularly their parents—are not always over anxious to accept as a wife for their son the woman whom another man has set aside.
The Honourable Sapara Williams, one of the ablest men in West Africa, expressed the opinion that it is imperative the Christian Church should find some other solution than exists to-day for this difficulty if it is to maintain and increase its hold upon the native tribes of tropical Africa. We see already a native Christian Community in Southern Nigeria known as the African Church existing avowedly upon a polygamous basis and growing rapidly in membership and influence. This Church is entirely self-supporting and is becoming more and more propagandist. In the course of time it may easily produce what will be called an “African Wesley,” or an “African Spurgeon,” and the result we can foresee. The African _en masse_ is inflammable material and intensely patriotic; let such a man emerge from their ranks and the doctrines he preaches will spread like wildfire.
It is universally recognized that in case of any modification of the attitude now adopted by the European government of Christian Churches, thousands of adherents would be secured in every colony. The heroic attitude hitherto adopted surrenders to Mohammedanism a potent factor in the propagation of its beliefs, hence the extraordinary advance made by the apostles of the prophet.
There is evidence that the position maintained by the Christian Churches as a whole upon this aspect of its work leads to widespread immorality amongst Church members, but wherever it becomes too notorious, the delinquents are, with certain exceptions, excluded from membership. It will be readily seen therefore that should any single Christian denomination once lower its standard in this respect, converts would flock to it in thousands. The African Church does this, and springing from the people themselves, meets the situation. Its members probably represent the Christian natives of the near future in Southern Nigeria, men for the most part commercially successful, boldly solving their own problems, living an easy-going and comfortable life, their religious standard lowered to their own desires. Can we criticize them? If we do, we must beware, for they will tell us that it is more honest to live open polygamous lives than the fraudulent lives of professing Christians—white and black—whose hypocritical attitude, particularly on sex questions, is a by-word on the West Coast of Africa. I fear there is too much truth in this retort. White men, at least, must hold their peace, and there lies the greatest danger!
[Sidenote: POLYGAMY AND THE BIRTH RATE]
It is generally accepted that polygamy is productive of a high birth rate, and Sir William Muir has given this as one reason for the almost miraculous advance of Mohammedanism. It may have been, and may still be true to-day of Mohammedanism that polygamy produces a high birth rate, but that existing polygamists in tropical Africa to-day produce a greater number of births than monogamists is, I am satisfied, open to serious question. At the same time I think it is clear that prior to European occupation, polygamist Africa maintained a higher birth rate than is possible under modern conditions.
The reason for this is not far to seek, for the chiefs, possessing as they did unrestricted power over the community, could terrorize into complete submission every unit of the tribe. Wherever polygamy existed the wife was kept faithful to the one husband by the knowledge that unchastity was forthwith rewarded by instant death. The young men also knew that a _liaison_ meant either that they were sold into slavery, involving in all probability ultimate sacrifice, or they would be hanged on the nearest tree.
This is so even to-day amongst those tribes beyond the reach of white men. One day, when crossing towards the main Congo river, I suddenly heard wild shrieks from a person evidently in great danger. Rushing to the spot, I found a woman bound hand and foot, and standing over her was a burly young chief with an executioner’s knife raised aloft. In a moment more that woman’s head would have been hacked off had I not promptly gripped the man’s arm. With a terrible oath he attempted to spring upon me, but the headmen of the village, who had also hurried to the scene, fell upon him and wrenched the knife from his hand. For a quarter of an hour nothing would stay the man’s fury; it took six of us to hold him. Ultimately, however, he calmed down and explained to me that his wife had been unfaithful and that she merited the death penalty. I gave him some presents to appease him further and he agreed to forgive the woman if I would “reward him.” As the gift he asked was to me a trivial matter, and the only chance of saving the woman’s life, I gave it to him. The woman herself, in gratitude, at once wrenched from off her wrists a bracelet which she presented to me as a keepsake. I fear, however, that after I left the village, she suffered a cruel death for her unfaithfulness. It will be readily seen that these conditions are only possible in regions where there is no restraining hand.
The question of the birth rate under monogamist and polygamist marriages in West Africa has always been of absorbing interest to me and my diaries are full of jottings bearing upon the subject, but very few are worth a permanent record. Amongst the Christians of Accra many monogamists have considerable families and from personal observation twins appeared to be fairly frequent. In the hinterland, we were informed, that the “baku”—or tenth child—is by no means rare amongst the “Twi” people. The largest family we found amongst the monogamists of the Bangalla region of the Congo was five children, the average appearing to be three. But West Africa is very weak in reliable statistics.
In our recent journeys, I selected four areas and obtained with some accuracy the composition of several groups of villages. It was impossible to accept the figures from some districts because the people, fearing there was some subtle move behind our requests, either gave evasive replies or figures which were obviously inaccurate.
The following six groups, however, are reliable. They were gathered from areas hundreds, and in one case over a thousand miles apart:—
Average Average Average woman Offspring. per per Men. Women. per man. Boys. Girls. Total. man. woman.
_Five Hinterland Villages of the Kasai._ A 241 316 1.315 70 81 151 0.626 0.477 (201 monogamists)
_River-side Villages on the Upper Congo._ B 26 45 1.875 14 15 29 1.115 0.644 C 41 54 1.317 5 4 9 0.222 0.166 D 16 42 2.625 10 6 16 1 0.380
_Hinterland Village, Upper Congo._ E 31 69 2.225 23 20 43 1.387 0.623
_Remote Hinterland Village, Upper Congo._ F 196 319 1.627 171 148 319 1.627 1
In group “C,” the principal polygamist possessed fifteen wives, but only two children. Sixteen monogamists had no children.
Group “A” is taken from the Kasai, where monogamy most widely prevails, but of the two hundred and one monogamists, one hundred and three had no children. The principal polygamists possessed six, eight and thirteen wives respectively. The two first had no children at all and the chief with thirteen wives had two boys and three girls.
From these figures no deduction is possible as to the advantage of either polygamy or monogamy upon the question of birth rate. One deduction only is clear.
The birth rates in the following order are with estimated distance from effective civilized Government:—
Average birth-rate Distance from effective per woman. civilized Government.
Group C 0.166 10 minutes’ walk ” D 0.380 30 ” ” ” A 0.477 1 hour’s ” ” E 0.623 1 ” ” ” B 0.644 1½ ” ” ” F 1 2 days’ ”
The birth rate figures are lamentably low, and being selected from areas so widely apart give anything but an encouraging indication for the future of the Congo. The deductions from these figures is unmistakable and only confirms what one hears everywhere, not only in the Congo but all over the West Coast of the utter demoralization which is flooding these territories.
The Congo is by far the worst. Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian atrocities and they were terrible indeed, but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror—in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes.
[Sidenote: THE ONLY HOPE]
To-day one sees the havoc which King Leopold created when he let loose upon the Congo tribes the scum of Europe. None have escaped the infection; girls of tender years and even boys not yet in their teens delight in practices of which in the old days the chiefs would have kept them in complete ignorance for another five years. Upon the women the results have been by far the most revolting, for in the Congo the majority of women have lost their womanhood and have fallen into a daily condition from which even the beasts of the forest refrain.
The truth is that in the greater part of West Africa neither monogamy nor polygamy is the prevailing relationship between man and woman. Doctors, administrators and missionaries all know it, and are all powerless at present to bring the situation under control. It is useless for the administration to make laws for practices beneath the surface, the only thing the officials can do, and should do without delay, is to see to it that an ever higher example is set to the natives. This is where the Belgian and French Congo officials have failed so utterly.
The Christian missionary alone touches the evil, and though he is defeated again and again, he plods steadily on preaching a perfect chastity—too lofty a standard for most natives at present—but without doubt gathering round him an ever increasing number not only of men but of women who, apart from occasional lapses, set a bright example to the whole countryside.
[Sidenote: MOTHERHOOD]
The birth of children is in primitive Africa rarely attended by anything abnormal. If a native nurse is confronted with complications, she immediately throws up the case in despair and appeals to the witch doctor, but normally the birth of children is taken as quite an ordinary part of the daily life. One day we were passing through a native village, and there, lying on a plantain leaf, were two chubby little twin girls but half-an-hour old; the mother was sitting close by “resting.” This picture was so beautifully simple that my wife went with a boy to bring up the camera and plates, but on arriving at the spot in about twenty minutes the woman had picked up her twins and carried them home! That is primitive Africa, but in the coast towns where African womanhood delights in corsets and other European follies, the suffering at childbirth is in many cases almost as acute as that amongst the European community. With several Congo tribes, the belief is firmly rooted and put into practice that in order to change the colostrum flow to that of milk, co-habitation is essential.
With many tribes throughout West Africa, the period of lactation is prolonged; frequently the mother nurses the child until it is two, three, and even four, years old. A case of adultery was brought before the District Commissioner’s Court at Ikorodu in Southern Nigeria in April last year, and in the evidence it came out that the accused woman was suckling a child four years of age. The District Commissioner ordered her to cease nursing the child within three months.
The death rate amongst the young children in West Africa is very high and no doubt arises from the deplorable manner in which they are brought up. There is practically no attention given to diet or cleanliness, with the result that any disease which attacks a family quickly spreads through the community.
Amongst the Dagomba of the Northern territories of the Gold Coast colony, the woman who has given birth to a child leaves her husband’s compound and goes to that of the father-in-law, taking the child with her, where they stay for a year. At the end of this period the wife and child return to the home of the husband and father.
TWINS
[Sidenote: TWINS]
It is a mistake to assume, as some writers do, that the taboo on twins is a prevailing custom amongst West African tribes. The distribution of the taboo is extremely erratic. Twins are unwelcome in the Northern territories of the Gold Coast, yet the reverse is the case amongst the Egbas of Nigeria. In the Congo territories, twins cause the greatest joy to a tribe and the mother is lauded wherever she goes, whilst amongst the tribes of the oil rivers of Nigeria, the birth of twins is regarded as the most fearful calamity which can fall upon the community.
In the Upper Congo regions, the traveller may frequently see two earthenware pots hoisted on forked stakes which have been driven in the ground, one on either side of the path, and these are in honour of twins born in the nearest compound. Every person passing by those pots will religiously pluck two leaves and throw one at the foot of each forked pole as a votive offering to “Bokecu” and “Mboyo,” as all good twins are named.
The tragedy of the oil rivers is one of the most distressing in West Africa. Throughout the Eastern, and to a considerable extent of the Central Province, the cruel custom prevails of putting to death one, sometimes both twins. The British Government spares no pains in the effort to combat and overcome these practices, but though much good has resulted, the custom still holds its own.
Not only are the children killed, but the mother is immediately driven from home for she is no longer regarded as a chaste woman and rapidly becomes an outcast from Society, living upon the proceeds of prostitution. In some districts, however, this custom is less rigorous, and the mothers of twins are allowed to form isolated villages and to engage in trade. Some tribes, again, whilst driving them from the homes of their husbands, permit them to engage in agricultural pursuits upon the husband’s lands.
The missionaries are doing much towards weaning the tribes from this murderous practice. One missionary society working amongst the Ibunos, a tribe of five thousand people, claims that through the conversion to Christianity of a large section of this tribe, the horrible practice of murdering the twins and making the women outcasts has ceased. It is of course difficult to control absolutely a statement of that kind, but it is only the Christian missionary who can hope to deal effectively and permanently with a subterranean evil like twin murder.
An interesting custom which survives in the Upper Congo is that a man may never see or speak to his mother-in-law, and should he by accident turn a corner in the village compound and meet her face to face, he must at once send a propitiatory offering. If she should come into the house where he is sitting, he will promptly raise a mat and hold it between them, so that they may not see each other.
On the whole the lot of the African woman is a hard one. She has her occasional pleasures it is true, but from childhood hers is a lifelong drudgery with, however, the one sure recompense, that in old age it is the joy and the privilege of the younger generation to support her.