In which the Voyager discourses on the legal methods of natives of
this country, the ideas governing forms of burial, of their manner
of mourning for their dead, and the condition of the African soul in
the under-world.
Great as are the incidental miseries and dangers surrounding death
to all the people in the village in which a death occurs,
undoubtedly those who suffer most are the widows of a chief or free
man.
The uniform custom among both Negroes and Bantus is that those who
escape execution on the charge of having witched the husband to
death, shall remain in a state of filth and abasement, not even
removing vermin from themselves, until after the soul-burial is
complete--the soul of the dead man being regarded as hanging about
them and liable to be injured. Therefore, also to the end of
preventing his soul from getting damaged, they are confined to their
huts; this latter restriction is not rigidly enforced, but it is
held theoretically to be the correct thing.
They maintain the attitude of grief and abasement, sitting on the
ground, eating but little food, and that of a coarse kind. In
Calabar their legal rights over property, such as slaves, are
meanwhile considerably in abeyance, and they are put to great
expense during the time the spirit is awaiting burial. They have to
keep watch, two at a time, in the hut, where the body is buried,
keeping lights burning, and they have to pay out of their separate
estate for the entertainment of all the friends of the deceased who
come to pay him compliment; and if he has been an important man, a
big man, the whole district will come, not in a squadron, but just
when it suits them, exactly as if they were calling on a live
friend. Thus it often happens that even a big woman is bankrupt by
the expense. I will not go into the legal bearings of the case
here, for they are intricate, and, to a great extent, only
interesting to a student of Negro law.
The Bantu women occupy a far inferior position in regard to the
rights of property to that held by the Negro women.
The disposal of wives after the death of the husband among the
M'pongwe and Igalwa is a subject full of interest; but it is, like
most of their law, very complicated. The brothers of the deceased
are supposed to take them--the younger brother may not marry the
elder brother's widows, but the elder brothers may marry those of
the younger brother. Should any of the women object to the
arrangement, they may "leave the family."
I own that the ground principle of African law practically is "the
simple plan that they should take who have the power, and they
should keep who can," and this tells particularly against women and
children who have not got living, powerful relations of their own.
Unless the children of a man are grown up and sufficiently powerful
on their own account, they have little chance of sharing in the
distribution of his estate; but in spite of this abuse of power
there is among Negroes and Bantus a definite and acknowledged Law,
to which an appeal can be made by persons of all classes, provided
they have the wherewithal to set the machinery of it in motion. The
difficulty the children and widows have in sharing in the
distribution of the estate of the father and husband arises, I
fancy, in the principle of the husband's brothers being the true
heir, which has sunk into a fossilised state near the trading
stations in the face of the white culture. The reason for this
inheritance of goods passing from the man to his brother by the same
mother has no doubt for one of its origins the recognition of the
fact that the brother by the same mother must be a near relation,
whereas, in spite of the strict laws against adultery, the
relationship to you of the children born of your wives is not so
certain. Nevertheless this is one of the obvious and easy
explanations for things it is well to exercise great care before
accepting, for you must always remember that the African's mind does
not run on identical lines with the European--what may be self-
evident to you is not so to him, and vice versa. I have frequently
heard African metaphysicians complain that white men make great
jumps in their thought-course, and do not follow an idea step by
step. You soon become conscious of the careful way a Negro follows
his idea. Certain customs of his you can, by the exercise of great
patience, trace back in a perfectly smooth line from their source in
some natural phenomenon. Others, of course, you cannot, the traces
of the intervening steps of the idea having been lost, owing partly
to the veneration in which old customs are held, which causes them
to regard the fact that their fathers had this fashion as reason
enough for their having it, and above all to the total absence of
all but oral tradition. But so great a faith have I in the lack of
inventive power in the African, that I feel sure all their customs,
had we the material that has slipped down into the great swamp of
time, could be traced back either, as I have said, to some natural
phenomenon, or to the thing being advisable, for reasons of utility.
The uncertainty in the parentage of offspring may seem to be such a
utilitarian underlying principle, but, on the other hand, it does
not sufficiently explain the varied forms of the law of inheritance,
for in some tribes the eldest or most influential son does succeed
to his father's wealth; in other places you have the peculiar custom
of the chief slave inheriting. I think, from these things, that the
underlying idea in inheritance of property is the desire to keep the
wealth of "the house," i.e. estate, together, and if it were allowed
to pass into the hands of weak people, like women and young
children, this would not be done. Another strong argument against
the theory that it arises from the doubtful relationship of the son,
is that certain ju-ju always go to the son of the chief wife, if he
is old enough, at the time of the father's death, even in those
tribes where the wealth goes elsewhere.
Certain tribes acknowledge the right of the women and children to
share in the dead man's wealth, given that these are legally married
wives, or the children of legally married wives; it is so in
Cameroons, for example. An esteemed friend of mine who helps to
manage things for the Fatherland down there was trying a palaver the
other day with a patience peculiar to him, and that intelligent and
elaborate care I should think only a mind trained on the methods of
German metaphysicians could impart into that most wearisome of
proceedings, wherein every one says the same thing over fourteen
different times at least, with a similar voice and gesture, the only
variation being in the statements regarding the important points,
and the facts of the case, these varying with each individual. This
palaver was made by a son claiming to inherit part of his father's
property; at last, to the astonishment, and, of course, the horror,
of the learned judge, the defendant, the wicked uncle, pleaded
through the interpreter, "This man cannot inherit his father's
property, because his parents married for love." There is no
encouragement to foolishness of this kind in Cameroon, where legal
marriage consists in purchase.
In Bonny River and in Opobo the inheritance of "the house" is
settled primarily by a vote of the free men of the house; when the
chief dies, their choice has to be ratified by the other chiefs of
houses; but in Bonny and Opobo the white traders have had immense
influence for a long time, so one cannot now find out how far this
custom is purely native in idea.
Among the Fans the uncle is, as I have before said, an important
person although the father has more rights than among the Igalwa,
and here I came across a peculiar custom regarding widows. M. Jacot
cited to me a similar case or so, one of which I must remark was in
an Ajumba town. The widows were inside the dead husband's hut, as
usual; the Fan huts are stoutly built of sheets of flattened bark,
firmly secured together with bark rope, and thatched--they never
build them in any other way except when they are in the bush rubber-
collecting or elephant-hunting, when they make them of the branches
of trees. Well, round the bark hut, with the widows inside, there
was erected a hut made of branches, and when this was nearly
completed, the Fans commenced pulling down the inner bark hut, and
finally cleared it right out, thatch and all, and the materials of
which it had been made were burnt. I was struck with the
performance because the Fans, though surrounded by intensely
superstitious tribes, are remarkably free from superstition {338}
themselves, taking little or no interest in speculative matters,
except to get charms to make them invisible to elephants, to keep
their feet in the path, to enable them to see things in the forest,
and practical things of that sort, and these charms they frequently
gave me to assist and guard me in my wanderings.
The M'pongwe and Igalwa have a peculiar funeral custom, but it is
not confined in its operation to widows, all the near relatives
sharing in it. The mourning relations are seated on the floor of
the house, and some friend--Dr. Nassau told me he was called in in
this capacity--comes in and "lifts them up," bringing to them a
small present, a factor of which is always a piece of soap. This
custom is now getting into the survival form in Libreville and
Glass. Nowadays the relatives do not thus sit, unwashed and
unkempt, keenly requiring the soap. Among the bush Igalwa, I am
told, the soap is much wanted.
It is not only the widows that remain, either theoretically or
practically unwashed; all the mourners do. The Ibibios seem to me
to wear the deepest crape in the form of accumulated dirt, and all
the African tribes I have met have peculiar forms of hair cutting--
shaving the entire head, not shaving it at all, shaving half of it,
etc.--when in mourning. The period of the duration of wearing
mourning is, I believe, in all West Coast tribes that which elapses
between the death and the burial of the soul. I believe a more
thorough knowledge would show us that there is among the Bantu also
a fixed time for the lingering of the soul on earth after death, but
we have not got sufficient evidence on the point yet. The only
thing we know is that it is not proper for the widow to re-marry
while her husband's soul is still in her vicinity.
Among the Calabar tribes the burial of his spirit liberates the
woman. Among the Tschwi she requires special ceremonies on her own
account. In Togoland, among the Ewe people, I know the period is
between five and six weeks, during which time the widow remains in
the hut, armed with a good stout stick, as a precaution against the
ghost of her husband, so as to ward off attacks should he be ill-
tempered. After these six weeks the widow can come out of the hut,
but as his ghost has not permanently gone hence, and is apt to
revisit the neighbourhood for the next six months, she has to be
taken care of during this period. Then, after certain ceremonies,
she is free to marry again. So I conclude the period of mourning,
in all tribes, is that period during which the soul remains round
its old possessions, whether these tribes have a definite soul-
burial or devil-making or not.
The ideas connected with the under-world to which the ghost goes are
exceedingly interesting. The Negroes and Bantus are at one on these
subjects in one particular only, and that is that no marriages take
place there. The Tschwis say that this under-world, Srahmandazi, is
just the same as this world in all other particulars, save that it
is dimmer, a veritable shadow-land where men have not the joys of
life, but only the shadow of the joy. Hence, says the Tschwi
proverb, "One day in this world is worth a year in Srahmandazi."
The Tschwis, with their usual definiteness in this sort of detail,
know all about their Srahmandazi. Its entrance is just east of the
middle Volta, and the way down is difficult to follow, and when the
sun sets on this world it rises on Srahmandazi. The Bantus are
vague on this important and interesting point. The Benga, for
example, although holding the absence of marriage there, do not take
steps to meet the case as the Tschwis do, and kill a supply of wives
to take down with them. This reason for killing wives at a funeral
is another instance that, however strange and cruel a custom may be
here in West Africa, however much it may at first appear to be the
flower of a rootless superstition, you will find on close
investigation that it has some root in a religious idea, and a
common-sense element. The common-sense element in the killing of
wives and slaves among both the Tschwi and the Calabar tribes
consists in the fact that it discourages poisoning. A Calabar chief
elaborately explained to me that the rigorous putting down of
killing at funerals that was being carried on by the Government not
only landed a man in the next world as a wretched pauper, but added
an additional chance to his going there prematurely, for his wives
and slaves, no longer restrained by the prospect of being killed at
his death and sent off with him would, on very slight aggravation,
put "bush in his chop." It is sad to think of this thorn being
added to the rose-leaves of a West Coast chief's life, as there are
99.9 per cent. of thorns in it already.
I came across a similar case on the Gold Coast, when a chief
complained to me of the way the Government were preserving vermin,
in the shape of witches, in the districts under its surveillance.
You were no longer allowed to destroy them as of old, and therefore
the vermin were destroying the game; for, said he, the witches here
live almost entirely on the blood they suck from children at night.
They used, in old days, to do this furtively, and do so now where
native custom is unchecked; but in districts where the Government
says that witchcraft is utter nonsense, and killing its proficients
utter murder which will be dealt with accordingly, the witch
flourishes exceedingly, and blackmails the fathers and mothers of
families, threatening that if they are not bought off they will have
their child's blood; and if they are not paid, the child dies away
gradually--poison again, most likely.
I often think it must be the common-sense element in fetish customs
that enables them to survive, in the strange way they do, in the
minds of Africans who have been long under European influence and
education. In witching, for example, every intelligent native knows
there is a lot of poison in the affair, but the explanation he gives
you will not usually display this knowledge, and it was not until I
found the wide diffusion of the idea of the advisability of
administering an emetic to the bewitched person, that I began to
suspect my black friends of sound judgment.
The good ju-juist will tell you all things act by means of their
life, which means their power, their spirit. Dr. Nassau tells me
the efficacy of drugs is held to depend on their benevolent spirits,
which, on being put into the body, drive away the malevolent
disease-causing spirits--a leucocytes-versus-pathogenic-bacteria
sort of influence, I suppose. On this same idea also depends the
custom of the appeal to ordeal, the working of which is supposed to
be spiritual. Nevertheless, the intelligent native, believing all
the time in this factor, squares the commonsense factor by bribing
the witch-doctor who makes the ordeal drink.
The feeling regarding the importance of funeral observances is quite
Greek in its intensity. Given a duly educated African, I am sure
that he would grasp the true inwardness of the Antigone far and away
better than any European now living can. A pathetic story which
bears on this feeling was told me some time ago by Miss Slessor when
she was stationed at Creek Town. An old blind slave woman was found
in the bush, and brought into the mission. She was in a deplorable
state, utterly neglected and starving, her feet torn by thorns and
full of jiggers, and so on. Every care was taken of her and she
soon revived and began to crawl about, but her whole mind was set on
one thing with a passion that had made her alike indifferent to her
past sufferings and to her present advantages. What she wanted was
a bit, only a little bit, of white cloth. Now, I may remark, white
cloth is anathema to the Missions, for it is used for ju-ju
offerings, and a rule has to be made against its being given to the
unconverted, or the missionary becomes an accessory before the fact
to pagan practices, so white cloth the old woman was told she could
not have, she had been given plenty of garments for her own use and
that was enough. The old woman, however, kept on pleading and
saying the spirit of her dead mistress kept coming to her asking and
crying for white cloth, and white cloth she must get for her, and so
at last, finding it was not to be got at the Mission station, she
stole away one day, unobserved, and wandered off into the bush, from
which she never again reappeared, doubtless falling a victim to the
many leopards that haunted hereabouts.
To provide a proper burial for the dead relation is the great duty
of a negro's life, its only rival in his mind is the desire to avoid
having a burial of his own. But, in a good negro, this passion will
go under before the other, and he will risk his very life to do it.
He may know, surely and well, that killing slaves and women at a
dead brother's grave means hanging for him when their Big Consul
knows of it, but in the Delta he will do it. On the Coast, Leeward
and Windward, he will spend every penny he possesses and, on top, if
need be, go and pawn himself, his wives, or his children into
slavery to give a deceased relation a proper funeral.
This killing at funerals I used to think would be more easily done
away with in the Delta than among the Tschwi tribes, but a little
more knowledge of the Delta's idea about the future life showed me I
was wrong.
Among the Tschwi the slaves and women killed are to form for the
dead a retinue, and riches wherewith to start life in Srahmandazi
(Yboniadse of the Oji), where there are markets and towns and all
things as on this earth, and so the Tschwi would have little
difficulty in replacing human beings at funerals with gold-dust,
cloth, and other forms of riches, and this is already done in
districts under white influence. But in the Delta there is no
under-world to live in, the souls shortly after reaching the under-
world being forwarded back to this, in new babies, and the wealth
that is sent down with a man serves as an indication as to what
class of baby the soul is to be repacked and sent up in. As wealth
in the Delta consists of women and slaves I do not believe the
under-world gods of the Niger would understand the status of a chief
who arrived before them, let us say, with ten puncheons of palm oil,
and four hundred yards of crimson figured velvet; they would say,
"Oh! very good as far as it goes, but where is your real estate?
The chances are you are only a trade slave boy and have stolen these
things"; and in consequence of this, killing at funerals will be a
custom exceedingly difficult to stamp out in these regions. Try and
imagine yourself how abhorrent it must be to send down a dear and
honoured relative to the danger of his being returned to this world
shortly as a slave. There is no doubt a certain idea among the
Negroes that some souls may get a rise in status on their next
incarnation. You often hear a woman saying she will be a man next
time, a slave he will be a freeman, and so on, but how or why some
souls obtain promotion I have not yet sufficient evidence to show.
I think a little more investigation will place this important point
in my possession. I once said to a Calabar man, "But surely it
would be easy for a man's friends to cheat; they could send down a
chief's outfit with a man, though he was only a small man here?"
"No," said he, "the other souls would tell on him, and then he would
get sent up as a dog or some beast as a punishment."
My first conception of the prevalence of the incarnation idea was
also gained from a Delta negro. I said, "Why in the world do you
throw away in the bush the bodies of your dead slaves? Where I have
been they tie a string to the leg of a dead slave and when they bury
him bring the string to the top and fix it to a peg, with the
owner's name on, and then when the owner dies he has that slave
again down below."
"They be fool men," said he, and he went on to explain that the
ghost of that slave would be almost immediately back on earth again
growing up ready to work for some one else, and would not wait for
its last owner's soul down below, and out of the luxuriant jungle of
information that followed I gathered that no man's soul dallies
below long, and also that a soul returning to a family, a thing
ensured by certain ju-jus, was identified. The new babies as they
arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles
belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent; the
thing the child catches hold of identifies him. "Why he's Uncle
John, see! he knows his own pipe;" or "That's cousin Emma, see! she
knows her market calabash," and so on.
I remember discoursing with a very charming French official on the
difficulty of eradicating fetish customs.
"Why not take the native in the rear, Mademoiselle," said he, "and
convert the native gods?"
I explained that his ingenious plan was not feasible, because you
cannot convert gods. Even educating gods is hopeless work. All
races of men through countless ages, have been attempting to make
their peculiar deities understand how they are wanted to work, and
what they are wanted to do, and the result is anything but
encouraging.
As I have dwelt on the repellent view of Negro funeral custom, I
must in justice to them cite their better view. There is a custom
that I missed much on going south of Calabar, for it is a pretty
one. Outside the villages in the Calabar districts, by the sides of
the most frequented roads, you will see erections of boughs. I do
not think these are intended for huts, but for beds, for they are
very like the Calabar type of bed, only made in wood instead of
clay. Over them a roof of mats is put, to furnish a protection
against rain.
These shelters--graves or fetish huts they are wrongly called by
Europeans--are made by driving four longish stout poles into the
ground while at the height of about three feet or so four more poles
are tied so as to make a skeleton platform which is filled in with
withies and made flat. Another set of five poles is tied above, and
to these the roof is affixed. On the platform, is placed the
bedding belonging to the deceased, the undercloth, counterpane,
etc., and at the head are laid the pillows, bolster-shaped and
stuffed with cotton-tree fluff, or shredded palm-leaves, and covered
with some gaily-coloured cotton cloth. In every case I have seen--
and they amount to hundreds, for you cannot take an hour's walk even
from Duke Town without coming upon a dozen or so of these erections-
-the pillows are placed so that the person lying on the bed would
look towards the village.
On the roof and on the bed, and underneath it on the ground, are
placed the household utensils that belonged to the deceased; the
calabashes, the basins, the spoons cut out of wood, and the boughten
iron ones, as we should say in Devon, and on the stakes are hung the
other little possessions; there is one I know of made for the ghost
of a poor girl who died, on to the stakes of which are hung the
dolls and the little pincushions, etc., given her by a kind
missionary.
Food is set out at these places and spirit poured over them from
time to time, and sometimes, though not often, pieces of new cloth
are laid on them. Most of the things are deliberately damaged
before they are put on the home for the spirit; I do not think this
is to prevent them from being stolen, because all are not damaged
sufficiently to make them useless. There was a beautifully made
spoon with a burnt-in pattern on one of these places when I left
Calabar to go South, and on my return, some six months after, it was
still there. On another there was a very handsome pair of market
calabashes, also much decorated, that were only just chipped and in
better repair than many in use in Calabar markets, and I make no
doubt the spoon and they are still lying rotting among the debris of
the pillows, etc. These places are only attended to during the time
the spirit is awaiting burial, as they are regarded merely as a
resting-place for it while it is awaiting this ceremony. The body
is not buried near them, I may remark.
In spite, however, of the care that is taken to bury spirits, a
considerable percentage from various causes--poverty of the
relations, the deceased being a stranger in the land, accidental
death in some unknown part of the forest or the surf--remain
unburied, and hang about to the common danger of the village they
may choose to haunt. Many devices are resorted to, to purify the
villages from these spirits. One which was in use in Creek Town,
Calabar, to within a few years ago, and which I am informed is still
customary in some interior villages, was very ingenious, and
believed to work well by those who employed it.
In the houses were set up Nbakim,--large, grotesque images carved of
wood and hung about with cloth strips and gew-gaws. Every November
in Creek Town (I was told by some authorities it was every second
November) there was a sort of festival held. Offerings of food and
spirits were placed before these images; a band of people
accompanied by the rest of the population used to make a thorough
round of the town, up and down each street and round every house,
dancing, singing, screaming and tom-toming, in fact making all the
noise they knew how to--and a Calabar Effik is very gifted in the
power of making noise. After this had been done for what was
regarded as a sufficient time, the images were taken out of the
houses, the crowd still making a terrific row and were then thrown
into the river, and the town was regarded as being cleared of
spirits.
The rationale of the affair is this. The wandering spirits are
attracted by the images, and take shelter among their rags, like
earwigs or something of that kind. The charivari is to drive any of
the spirits who might be away from their shelters back into them.
The shouting of the mob is to keep the spirits from venturing out
again while they are being carried to the river. The throwing of
the images, rags and all, into the river, is to destroy the spirits
or at least send them elsewhere. They did not go and pour boiling
water on their earwig-traps, as wicked white men do, but they meant
the same thing, and when this was over they made and set up new
images for fresh spirits who might come into the town, and these
were kept and tended as before, until the next N'dok ceremony came
round.
It is owing to the spiritual view which the African takes of
existence at large that ceremonial observances form the greater part
of even his common-law procedure.
There is, both among the Negro and Bantu, a recognised code of law,
founded on principles of true but merciless justice. It is not
often employed, because of the difficulty and the danger to the
individual who appeals to it, should that individual be unbacked by
power, but nevertheless the code exists.
The African is particularly hard on theft; he by no means "compounds
for sins he is inclined to by damning those he has no mind to," for
theft is a thing he revels in.
Persons are tried for theft on circumstantial evidence, direct
testimony, and ordeal. Laws relating to mortgage are practically
the same among Negroes and Bantu and Europeans. Torts are not
recognised; unless the following case from Cameroon points to a
vague realisation of them. A. let his canoe out to B., in good
order, so that B. could go up river, and fetch down some trade. B.
did not go himself, but let C., who was not his slave, but another
free man who also wanted to go up for trade, have the canoe on the
understanding that in payment for the loan of the said canoe C.
should bring down B's. trade.
A. was not told about this arrangement at all. B. says A. was, only
A. was so blind drunk at the time he did not understand. Well, up
river C. goes in the canoe, and fetches up on a floating stump in
the river, and staves a hole you could put your head in, in the bow
of the said canoe. C. returns it to B. in this condition. B.
returns it to A. in this condition. A. sues B. before native chief,
saying he lent his canoe to B. on the understanding, always implied
in African loans, that it was to be returned in the same state as
when lent, fair wear and tear alone excepted. B. tries first to get
C. to pay for the canoe, and for the rent of the canoe on top, as a
compensation for the delay in bringing down his, B's., trade. C.
calls B. the illegitimate offspring of a greenhouse-lizard, and
pleads further that the floating log was a force majeure--an act of
God, and denies liability on all counts. B. then pleads this as his
own defence in the case of A. and B. (authorities cited in support
of this view); he also pleads he is not liable, because C. is a free
man, and not his slave.
The case went on for a week; the judge was drunk for five days in
his attempt to get his head clear. The decision finally was that B.
was to pay A. full compensation. B. v. C. is still pending.
The laws against adultery are, theoretically, exceedingly severe.
The punishment is death, and this is sometimes carried out. The
other day King Bell in Cameroon flogged one of his wives to death,
and the German Government have deposed and deported him, for you
cannot do that sort of thing with impunity within a stone's throw of
a Government head-quarters. But as a general rule all along the
Coast the death penalty for murder or adultery is commuted to a
fine, or you can send a substitute to be killed for you, if you are
rich. This is frequently done, because it is cheaper, if you have a
seedy slave, to give him to be killed in your stead than to pay a
fine which is often enormous.
The adultery itself is often only a matter of laying your hand, even
in self-defence from a virago, on a woman--or brushing against her
in the path. These accusations of adultery are, next to witchcraft,
the great social danger to the West Coast native, and they are often
made merely from motives of extortion or spite, and without an atom
of truth in them.
It is customary for a chief to put his wives frequently to ordeal on
this point, and this is almost always done after there has been a
big devil-making, or a dance, which his family have been gracing
with their presence. The usual method of applying the ordeal is by
boiling palm-oil--a pot is nearly filled with the oil, which is
brought to the boil over a fire; when it is seething, the woman to
be tried is brought out in front of it. She first dips her hands
into water, and then has administered to her the M'biam oath saying
or having said for her that long elaborate formula, in a form
adjusted to meet the case. Then she plunges her hand into the
boiling oil for an instant, and shakes the oil off with all possible
rapidity, and the next woman comes forward and goes through the same
performance, and so on. Next day, the hands of the women are
examined, and those found blistered are adjudged guilty, and
punished. In order to escape heavy punishment the woman will accuse
some man of having hustled against her, or sat down on a bench
beside her, and so on, and the accused man has to pay up. If he
does not, in the Calabar district, Egbo will come and "eat the
adultery," and there won't be much of that man's earthly goods left.
Sometimes the accusation is volunteered by the woman, and frequently
the husband and wife conspire together and cook up a case against a
man for the sake of getting the damages. There is nothing that
ensures a man an unblemished character in West Africa, save the
possession of sufficient power to make it risky work for people to
cast slurs on it.
The ownership of children is a great source of palaver. The law
among Negroes and Bantus is that the children of a free woman belong
to her. In the case of tribes believing in the high importance of
uncles considerable powers are vested in that relative, while in
other tribes certain powers are vested in the father.
The children of slave wives are the only children the father has
absolute power over if he is the legal owner of the slave woman.
If, as is frequently the case, a free man marries a slave woman who
belongs to another man, all her children are the absolute property
of her owner, not her husband; and the owner of the woman can take
them and sell them, or do whatsoever he chooses with them, unless
the free man father redeems them, as he usually does, although the
woman may still remain the absolute property of the owner,
recallable by him at any time.
This law is the cause of the most brain-spraining palavers that come
before the white authorities. There is naturally no statute of
limitations in West Africa, because the African does not care a row
of pins about time. The wily A. will let his slave woman live with
B. without claiming the redemption fees as they become due--letting
them stand over, as it were, at compound interest. All the male as
well as the female children of the first generation are A.'s
property, and all the female children of these children are his
property even unto the second and third generation and away into
eternity. A. may die before he puts in his claim, in which case the
ownership passes on into the hands of his heir or assignees, who may
foreclose at once, on entering into their heritage, or may again let
things accumulate for their heirs. Anyhow, sooner or later the
foreclosure comes and then there is trouble. X., Y., Z., etc., free
men, have married some of the original A.'s slave woman's
descendants. They have either bought them right out, or kept on
conscientiously redeeming children of theirs as they arrived. Of
course A., or his heirs, contend that X., Y., Z., etc. have been
wasting time and money by so doing, because the people X., Y., Z.
have paid the money to had no legal title to the women. Of course
X., Y., Z. contend that their particular woman, or her ancestress,
was duly redeemed from the legal owner.
Remember there is no documentary evidence available, and squads of
equally reliable and oldest inhabitants are swearing hard--all both
ways. Just realise this, and that your Government says that
whenever native law is not blood-stained it must be supported, and
you may be able to realise the giddy mazes of a native palaver,
which if you conscientiously attempt to follow with the
determination that justice shall be duly administered, will for
certain lay you low with an attack of fever.
The law of ownership is not all in favour of the owner, masters
being responsible for damage done by their slaves, and this law
falls very heavily and expensively on the owner of a bad slave.
Indeed, when one lives out here and sees the surrounding conditions
of this state of culture, the conviction grows on you that, morally
speaking, the African is far from being the brutal fiend he is often
painted, a creature that loves cruelty and blood for their own sake.
The African does not; and though his culture does not contain our
institutions, lunatic asylums, prisons, workhouses, hospitals, etc.,
he has to deal with the same classes of people who require these
things. So with them he deals by means of his equivalent
institutions, slavery, the lash, and death. You have just as much
right, my logical friend, to call the West Coast Chief hard names
for his habit of using brass bars, heads of tobacco, and so on, in
place of sixpenny pieces, as you have to abuse him for clubbing an
inveterate thief. It's deplorably low of him, I own, but by what
alternative plan of government his can be replaced I do not quite
see, under existing conditions. In religious affairs, the affairs
which lead him into the majority of his iniquities, his real sin
consists in believing too much. In his witchcraft, the sin is the
same. Toleration means indifference, I believe, among all men. The
African is not indifferent on the subject of witchcraft, and I do
not see how one can expect him to be. Put yourself in his place and
imagine you have got hold of a man or woman who has been placing a
live crocodile or a catawumpus of some kind into your own or a
valued relative's, or fellow-townsman's inside, so that it may eat
up valuable viscera, and cause you or your friend suffering and
death. How would you feel? A little like lynching your captive, I
fancy.
I confess that the more I know of the West Coast Africans the more I
like them. I own I think them fools of the first water for their
power of believing in things; but I fancy I have analogous feelings
towards even my fellow-countrymen when they go and violently believe
in something that I cannot quite swallow.