The Minor Tribes and the Mpongwe.
The tribes occupying the Gaboon country may roughly be divided
into two according to habitat--the maritime and those of the
interior, who are quasi-mountaineers. Upon the sea-board dwell
the Banôkô (Banaka), Bapuka, and Batanga; the Kombe, the Benga
and Mbiko, or people about Corisco; the Shekyani, who extend far
into the interior, the Urungu and Aloa, clans of Cape Lopez; the
Nkommi, Commi, Camma or Cama, and the Mayumba races beyond the
southern frontier. The inner hordes are the Dibwe (M. du
Chaillu's "Ibouay"), the Mbúsha; the numerous and once powerful
Bákele, the Cannibal Fán (Mpongwe), the Osheba or 'Sheba, their
congeners, and a variety of "bush-folk," of whom little is known
beyond the names. Linguistically we may distribute them into
three, namely, 1. the Banôkô and Batanga; 2. the Mpongwe,
including the minor ethnical divisions of Benga, and Shekyani;
the Urungu, the Nkommi, the Dongas or Ndiva, and the Mbúsha, and
3. the Mpongwe and the tribes of the interior. Lastly, there are
only three peoples of any importance, namely, the Mpongwe, the
Bákele, and the Fán.
The Mpongwe, whom the French call "les Gabons," are the
aristocracy of the coast, the Benga being the second, and the
Banôkô and Bapuka ranking third. They are variously estimated at
5,000 to 7,000 head, serviles included. They inhabit both sides
of the Gaboon, extending about thirty-five miles along its banks,
chiefly on the right; on the left only seawards of the Shekyani.
But it is a wandering race, and many a "mercator vagus" finds his
way to Corisco, Cape Lopez, Batanga, and even Fernando Po. The
two great families on the northern river bank are the Quabens and
the Glass, who style themselves kings and princes; the southern
side lodges King William (Roi Denis) near the mouth, and the
powerful King George, about twenty-five miles higher up stream.
There are also settlements scattered at various distances from
the great highway of commerce to which they naturally cling, and
upon the Coniquet and Parrot Islands.
Barbot (iv. 9) describes the "Gaboon blacks" as "commonly tall,
robust, and well-shaped;" they appeared to me rather below the
average of West Coast size and weight. Both sexes, even when
running to polysarcia, have delicate limbs and extremities, and
the features, though negroid, are not the negro of the
tobacconist's shop: I noticed several pyramidal and
brachycephalic heads, contrary to the rule for African man and
simiad. In the remarkable paper read (1861) by Professor Busk
before the Ethnological Society, that eminent physiologist proved
that the Asiatic apes, typified by the ourang-outang, are
brachycephalic, like the Mongolians amongst whom they live, or
who live amongst them; whilst the gorillas and the African
anthropoids are dolichocephalic as the negroes. The Gaboon men
are often almost black, whilst the women range between dark brown
and cafe au lait. The beard, usually scanty, is sometimes bien
fournie, especially amongst the seniors, but, whenever I saw a
light-coloured and well-bearded man, the suspicion of mixed blood
invariably obtruded itself. It is said that during the last
thirty years they have greatly diminished, yet their habitat is
still that laid down half a century ago by Bowdich, and all admit
that the population of the river has not been materially
affected.
The Mpongwe women have the reputation of being the prettiest and
the most facile upon the West African coast. It is easy to
distinguish two types. One is large-boned and heavy-limbed,
hoarse-voiced, and masculine, like the "Ibos" of Bonny and New
Calabar, who equal the men in weight and stature, strength and
endurance, suggesting a mixture of the male and female
temperaments. Some of the Gaboon giantesses have, unlike their
northern sisters, regular and handsome features. The other type
is quasi-Hindú in its delicacy of form, with small heads, oval
faces, noses à la Roxolane, lips sub-tumid but without
prognathism, and fine almond-shaped eyes, with remarkably thick
and silky lashes. The throat is thin, the bosom is high and well
carried, or, as the admiring Arab says, "nejdá;" the limbs are
statuesque, and the hands and feet are Norman rather than Saxon.
Many Europeans greatly admire these minois mutins et
chiffonés.[FN#8]
Early in the present century the Mpongwe braided whiskers and
side curls, tipping the ends with small beads, and they plaited
the front locks to project like horns, after the fashion of the
present Fán and other wild tribes. A custom noticed by Barbot,
but apparently obsolete in the days of Bowdich, was to bore the
upper lip, and to insert a small ivory pin, extending from nose
to mouth. The painting and tattooing were fantastic and
elaborate; and there was a hideous habit of splitting either lip,
so as to "thrust the tongue through on ceremonial occasions." A
curious reason is given for this practice. "They are subject to a
certain distemper very common there, which on a sudden seizes
them, and casts them into fits of so long a continuance, that
they would inevitably be suffocated, if by means of the split at
their upper lip they did not pour into their mouths some of the
juice of a certain medicinal herb, which has the virtue of easing
and curing the diseased person in a very short time."
All these things, fits included, are now obsolete. The men shave
a line in the hair like a fillet round the skull, and what is
left is coiffe au coup de vent. The head-dress is a cap, a straw
hat, a billy cock, or a tall silk "chimney pot," the latter
denoting a chief; he also sports in full dress a broad coat,
ending in a loin cloth of satin stripe or some finer stuff, about
six feet long by four and a half broad; it is secured by a
kerchief or an elastic waist belt; during work it is tucked up,
but on ceremonial occasions it must trail upon the ground. The
lieges wear European shirts, stuffed into a waist-cloth of
cheaper material, calico or domestics; This Tángá, or kilt, is,
in fact, an article of general wear, and it would be an airy,
comfortable, and wholesome travelling costume if the material
were flannel. The ornaments are necklaces of Venetian beads, the
white pound, and the black and yellow seed: Canutille or bugles
of various patterns are preferred, and all are loaded with
"Mengo," Grígrís (which old travellers call "gregories"), or
talismans, chiefly leopards' teeth, rude bells, and horns. The
Monda are hunting prophylacteries, antelope horns filled with
"fetish" medicines, leopard's hair, burnt and powdered heart
mixed with leaves, and filth; the mouths are stopped with some
viscid black stuff, probably gum. They are often attached to rude
bells of iron or brass (Igelenga, Ngenge, Nkendo, or Wonga), like
the Chingufu of the Congo regions and the metal cones which are
struck for signals upon the Tanganyika Lake.
A great man is known by his making himself a marvellous "guy,"
wearing, for instance, a dingily laced cocked hat, stuck athwart-
ships upon an unwashed night-cap, and a naval or military
uniform, fifty years old, "swearing" with the loin-cloth and the
feet, which are always bare.
The coiffure of the <Greek> is peculiar and
elaborate as that of the Gold Coast. These ladies seem to have
chosen for their model the touraco or cockatoo,--they have never
heard of "Kikeriki,"--and the effect is at first wondrously
grotesque. Presently the eye learns to admire pretty Fanny's
ways; perhaps the pleureuse, the old English corkscrew ringlet,
might strike the stranger as equally natural in a spaniel, and
unnatural in a human. Still a style so peculiar requires a
toilette in keeping; the "king" in uniform is less ridiculous
than the Gaboon lady's chignon, contrasting with a tight-bodied
and narrow-skirted gown of pink calico.
The national "tire-valiant" is a galeated crest not unlike the
cuirassier's helmet, and the hair, trained from the sides into a
high ridge running along the cranium, not unfrequently projects
far beyond the forehead. Taste and caprice produce endless
modifications. Sometimes the crest is double, disposed in
parallel ridges, with a deep hollow between; or it is treble,
when the two lines of parting running along the mastoids make it
remarkably like bears' ears, the central prism rises high, and
the side hair is plaited into little pig-tails. Others again
train four parallel lines from nape to forehead, forming two
cushions along the parietals. The crest is heightened by padding,
and the whole of the hair is devoted to magnifying it,--at a
distance, some of the bushwomen look as if they wore cocked hats.
When dreaded baldness appears, rosettes of false hair patch the
temples, and plaits of purchased wigs are interwoven to increase
the bulk: the last resources of all are wigs and toupets of
stained pine-apple fibre. The comb is unknown, its succedaneum
being a huge bodkin, like that which the Trasteverina has so
often used as a stiletto. This instrument of castigation is made
of ivory or metal, with a lozenge often neatly carved and
ornamented at the handle. The hair, always somewhat "kinky," is
anointed every morning with palm-oil, or the tallow-like produce
of a jungle-nut; and, in full dress, it is copiously powdered
with light red or bright yellow dust of pounded camwood, redwood,
and various barks.
The ears are adorned with broad rings of native make, and, near
the trading stations, with French imitation jewellery. The neck
supports many strings of beads, long and short, with the
indispensable talismans. The body dress is a Tobe or loin-cloth,
like that of the men; but under the "Námbá," or outer wrapper,
which hangs down the feet, there is a "Siri," or petticoat,
reaching only to the knees. Both are gathered in front like the
Shukkah of the eastern coast, and the bosom is left bare. Few
except the bush-folk now wear the Ibongo, Ipepe, or Ndengi, the
woven fibres and grass-cloths of their ancestry; amongst the
hunters, however, a Tángá, or grass-kilt, may still be seen. The
exposure of the upper person shows the size and tumidity of the
areola, even in young girls; being unsupported, the mammae soon
become flaccid.
The legs, which are peculiarly neat and well turned, are made by
art a fitting set-off to the head. It is the pride of a Mpongwe
wife to cover the lower limb between knee and ankle with an
armour of metal rings, which are also worn upon the wrists; the
custom is not modern, and travellers of the seventeenth century
allude to them. The rich affect copper, bought in wires two feet
and a half long, and in two sizes; of the larger, four, of the
smaller, eight, go to the dollar; the brass are cheaper, as 5: 4;
and I did not see iron or tin. The native smiths make the
circles, and the weight of a full set of forty varies from
fifteen to nineteen pounds. They are separate rings, not a single
coil, like that used by the Wagogo and other East African tribes;
they press tightly on the limb, often causing painful chafes and
sores. The ankle is generally occupied by a brass or iron chain,
with small links. Girls may wear these rings, of which the
husband is expected to present a considerable number to his
bride, and the consequence is, that when in full dress she
waddles like a duck.
Commerce and intercourse with whites has made the Mpongwe, once
the rudest, now one of the most civilized of African tribes; and,
upon the whole, there is an improvement. The exact Barbot (iv. 9)
tells us "the Gaboon blacks are barbarous, wild, bloody, and
treacherous, very thievish and crafty, especially towards
strangers. The women, on the contrary, are as civil and courteous
to them, and will use all possible means to enjoy their company;
but both sexes are the most wretchedly poor and miserable of any
in Guinea, and yet so very haughty, that they are perfectly
ridiculous ... They are all excessively fond of brandy and other
strong liquors of Europe and America ... If they fancy one has
got a mouthful more than another, and they are half drunk, they
will soon fall a-fighting, even with their own princes or priests
... Their exceeding greediness for strong liquors renders them so
little nice and curious in the choice of them, that, though mixed
with half water, and sometimes a little Spanish soap put into it
to give it a froth, to appear of proof by the scum it makes, they
like it and praise it as much as the best and purest brandy."
Captain Boteler remarks, in 1827: "The women do not speak
English; though, for the sake of what trifles they can procure
for their husbands, they are in the habit of flocking on board
the different vessels which visit the river, and will permit them
to remain; and the wives are generally maintained in clothing by
the proceeds of their intercourse with the whites." He further
assures us, that mulatto girls thus born are not allowed to
marry, although there is no such restriction for the males; and
elsewhere, he concludes, that never having seen an infant or an
adult offspring of mixed blood, abortion is practised as at
Delagoa and Old Calabar, where, in 1862, I found only one child
of mixed blood. If so, the Mpongwe have changed for the better.
Half-castes are now not uncommon; there are several nice "yaller
gals" well known on the river; and the number of old and sick
speaks well for the humanity of the tribe.
Devoted to trade and become a people of brokers, of go-betweens,
of middle-men, the Mpongwe have now acquired an ease and
propriety, a polish and urbanity of manner which contrasts
strongly with the Kru-men and other tribes, who, despite
generations of intercourse with Europeans, are rough and
barbarous as their forefathers. The youths used to learn English,
which they spoke fluently and with tolerable accent, but always
barbarously; they are more successful with the easier neo-Latin
tongues. Their one aim in life is not happiness, but "trust," an
African practice unwisely encouraged by Europeans; so Old Calabar
but a few years ago was not a trust-river," and consequently the
consul and the gunboat had little to do there. Many of them have
received advances of dollars by thousands, but the European
merchant has generally suffered from his credulity or rapacity.
In low cunning the native is more than a match for the stranger;
moreover, he has "the pull" in the all-important matter of time;
he can spend a fortnight haggling over the price of a tooth when
the unhappy capitalist is eating his heart. Like all the African
aristocracy, they hold agriculture beneath the dignity of man and
fit only for their women and slaves; the "ladies" also refuse to
work at the plantations, especially when young and pretty,
leaving them to the bush-folk, male and female. M. du Chaillu
repeatedly asserts (chap xix.) "there is no property in land,"
but this is a mistake often made in Africa. Labourers are hired
at the rate of two to three dollars per mensem, and gangs would
easily be collected if one of the chiefs were placed in command.
No sum of money will buy a free-born Mpongwe, and the sale is
forbidden by the laws of the land. A half-caste would fetch one
hundred dollars; a wild "nigger" near the river costs from thirty
to thirty-five dollars; the same may be bought in the Apinji
country for four dollars' worth of assorted goods, the "bundle-
trade" as it is called; but there is the imminent risk of the
chattel's running away. A man's only attendants being now his
wives and serviles, it is evident that plurality and domestic
servitude will extend--
"Far into summers which we shall not see;"
in fact, till some violent revolution of society shall have
introduced a servant class.
The three grades of Mpongwe may be considered as rude beginnings
of caste. The first are the "Sons of the Soil," the "Ongwá ntye"
(contracted from Onwana wi ntye), Mpongwes of pure blood; the
second are the "Mbámbá," children of free-men by serviles; and
lastly, "Nsháká," in Bákele "Nsháká," represents the slaves. M.
du Chaillu's distribution (chap, iii.) into five orders, namely,
pure, mixed with other tribes, half free, children of serviles,
and chattels, is somewhat over-artificial; at any rate, now it is
not generally recognized. Like the high-caste Hindu, the nobler
race will marry women of lower classes; for instance, King
Njogoni's mother was a Benga; but the inverse proceeding is a
disgrace to the woman, apparently an instinctive feeling on the
part of the reproducer, still lingering in the most advanced
societies. Old travellers record a belief that, unlike all other
Guinea races, the Mpongwe marries his mother, sister, or
daughter; and they compare the practice with that of the polished
Persians and the Peruvian Incas, who thus kept pure the solar and
lunar blood. If this "breeding-in" ever existed, no trace of it
now remains; on the contrary, every care is taken to avoid
marriages of consanguinity. Bowdich, indeed, assures us that a
man may not look at nor converse with his mother-in-law, on pain
of a heavy, perhaps a ruinous fine; "this singular law is founded
on the tradition of an incest."
Marriage amongst the Mpongwe is a purely civil contract, as in
Africa generally, and so perhaps it will some day be in Europe,
Asia, and America. Clebs pays a certain sum for the bride, who,
where "marriage by capture" is unknown, has no voice in the
matter. Many promises of future "dash" are made to the girl's
parents; and drinking, drumming, and dancing form the ceremony.
The following is, or rather I should say was, a fair list of
articles paid for a virgin bride. One fine silk hat, one cap, one
coat; five to twenty pieces of various cottons, plain and
ornamental; two to twenty silk kerchiefs; three to thirty jars of
rum; twenty pounds of trade tobacco; two hatchets; two cutlasses;
plates and dishes, mugs and glasses, five each; six knives; one
kettle; one brass pan; two to three Neptunes (caldrons, the old
term being "Neptune's pots"), a dozen bars of iron; copper and
brass rings, chains with small links, and minor articles ad
libitum. The "settlement" is the same in kind, but has increased
during the last forty years, and specie has become much more
common.[FN#10]
After marriage there is a mutual accommodation system suggesting
the cicisbeo or mariage à trois school; hence we read that wives,
like the much-maligned Xantippe, were borrowed and lent, and that
not fulfilling the promise of a loan is punishable by heavy
damages. Where the husband acts adjutor or cavaliere to his
friend's "Omantwe"--female person or wife--and the friend is
equally complaisant, wedlock may hardly be called permanent, and
there can be no tie save children. The old immorality endures; it
is as if the command were reversed by accepting that misprint
which so scandalized the Star Chamber, "Thou shalt commit
adultery." Yet, unpermitted, the offence is one against property,
and Moechus may be cast in damages ranging from $100 to $200:
what is known in low civilization as the "panel dodge" is an
infamy familiar to almost all the maritime tribes of Africa. He
must indeed be a Solomon of a son who, sur les bords du Gabon,
can guess at his own sire; a question so impertinent is never put
by the ex-officio father. The son succeeds by inheritance to his
father's relict, who, being generally in years, is condemned to
be useful when she has ceased to be an ornament, and, if there
are several, they are equally divided amongst the heirs.
Trading tribes rarely affect the pundonor which characterizes the
pastoral and the predatory; these people traffic in all things,
even in the chastity of their women. What with pre-nuptial
excesses, with early unions, often infructuous, with a virtual
system of community, and with universal drunkenness, it is not to
be wondered at if the maritime tribes of Africa degenerate and
die out. Such apparently is the modus operandi by which Nature
rids herself of the effete races which have served to clear the
ground and to pave the way for higher successors. Wealth and
luxury, so generally inveighed against by poets and divines,
injure humanity only when they injuriously affect reproduction;
and poverty is praised only because it breeds more men. The true
tests of the physical prosperity of a race, and of its position
in the world, are bodily strength and the excess of births over
deaths.
Separation after marriage can hardly be dignified on the Gaboon
by the name of divorce. Whenever a woman has or fancies she has a
grievance, she leaves her husband, returns to "the paternal" and
marries again. Quarrels about the sex are very common, yet, in
cases of adultery the old murderous assaults are now rare except
amongst the backwoodsmen. The habit was simply to shoot some man
belonging to the seducer's or to the ravisher's village; the
latter shot somebody in the nearest settlement, and so on till
the affair was decided. In these days "violent retaliation for
personal jealousy always 'be-littles' a man in the eyes of an
African community." Perhaps also he unconsciously recognizes the
sentiment ascribed to Mohammed, "Laysa bi-zányatin ilia bi záni,"
"there is no adulteress without an adulterer," meaning that the
husband has set the example.
Polygamy is, of course, the order of the day; it is a necessity
to the men, and even the women disdain to marry a "one-wifer." As
amongst all pluralists, from Moslem to Mormon, the senior or
first married is No. 1; here called "best wife:" she is the
goodman's viceroy, and she rules the home-kingdom with absolute
sway. Yet the Mpongwe do not, like other tribes on the west
coast, practise that separation of the sexes during gestation and
lactation, which is enjoined to the Hebrews, recommended by
Catholicism, and commanded by Mormonism--a system which partly
justifies polygamy. In Portuguese Guinea the enceinte is claimed
by her relatives, especially by the women, for three years, that
she may give undivided attention to her offspring, who is rightly
believed to be benefited by the separation, and that she may
return to her husband with renewed vigour. Meanwhile custom
allows the man to co-habit with a slave girl.
Polygamy, also, in Africa is rather a political than a domestic
or social institution. A "judicious culture of the marriage tie"
is necessary amongst savages and barbarians whose only friends
and supporters are blood relations and nuptial connections;
besides which, a multitude of wives ministers to the great man's
pride and influence, as well as to his pleasures and to his
efficiency. When the head wife ages, she takes charge of the
girlish brides committed to her guardianship by the husband. I
should try vainly to persuade the English woman that there can be
peace in households so constituted: still, such is the case.
Messrs. Wilson and Du Chaillu both assert that the wives rarely
disagree amongst themselves. The sentimental part of love is
modified; the common husband becomes the patriarch, not the
paterfamilias; the wife is not the mistress, but the mère de
famille. The alliance rises or sinks to one of interest and
affection instead of being amorous or uxorious, whilst the
underlying idea, "the more the merrier," especially in lands
where free service is unknown, seems to stifle envy and jealousy.
Everywhere, moreover, amongst polygamists, the husband is
strictly forbidden by popular opinion to show preference for a
favourite wife; if he do so, he is a bad man.
But polygamy here has not rendered the women, as theoretically it
should, a down-trodden moiety of society; on the contrary, their
position is comparatively high. The marriage connection is not
"one of master and slave," a link between freedom and serfdom;
the "weaker vessel" does not suffer from collision with the pot
de fer; generally the fair but frail ones appear to be, as
amongst the Israelites generally, the better halves. Despite the
Okosunguu or cow-hide "peacemaker," they have conquered a
considerable latitude of conducting their own affairs. When poor
and slaveless and, naturally, when no longer young, they must
work in the house and in the field, but this lot is not singular;
in journeys they carry the load, yet it is rarely heavier than
the weapons borne by the man. On the other hand, after feeding
their husbands, what remains out of the fruits of their labours
is their own, wholly out of his reach--a boon not always granted
by civilization. As in Unyamwezi, they guard their rights with a
truly feminine touchiness and jealousy. There is always, in the
African mind, a preference for descent and inheritance through
the mother, "the surer side,"--an unmistakable sign, by the by,
of barbarism. The so-called royal races in the eight great
despotisms of Pagan Africa--Ashanti, Dahome, and Benin; Karagwah,
Uganda, and Unyoro; the Mwátá yá Nvo, and the Mwátá Cazembe--
allow the greatest liberty even to the king's sisters; they are
expected only to choose handsome lovers, that the race may
maintain its physical superiority; and hence, doubtless, the
stalwart forms and the good looks remarked by every traveller. As
a rule, the husband cannot sell his wife's children whilst her
brother may dispose of them as he pleases--the vox populi
exclaims, "What! is the man to go hungry when he can trade off
his sister's brats?"
The strong-minded of London and New York have not yet succeeded
in thoroughly organizing and popularizing their clubs; the belles
sauvages of the Gaboon have. There is a secret order, called
"Njembe," a Rights of Woman Association, intended mainly to
counterbalance the Nda of the lords of creation, which will
presently be described. Dropped a few years ago by the men, it
was taken up by their wives, and it now numbers a host of
initiated, limited only by heavy entrance fees. This form of
freemasonry deals largely in processions, whose preliminaries and
proceedings are kept profoundly secret. At certain times an old
woman strikes a stick upon an "Orega" or crescent-shaped drum,
hollowed out of a block of wood; hearing this signal, the
worshipful sisterhood, bedaubed, by way of insignia, with red and
white chalk or clay, follow her from the village to some remote
nook in the jungle, where the lodge is tiled. Sentinels are
stationed around whilst business is transacted before a vestal
fire, which must burn for a fortnight or three weeks, in the awe-
compelling presence of a brass pipkin filled with herbs, and a
basin, both zebra'd like the human limbs. The Rev. William Walker
was once detected playing "Peeping Tom" by sixty or seventy
viragos, who attempted to exact a fine of forty dollars, and who
would have handled him severely had he not managed to escape. The
French officers, never standing upon ceremony in such matters,
have often insisted upon being present.
Circumcision, between the fourth and eighth year, is universal in
Pongo-land, and without it a youth could not be married. The
operation is performed generally by the chief, often by some old
man, who receives a fee from the parents: the thumb nails are
long, and are used after the Jewish fashion:[FN#10] neat rum with
red pepper is spirted from the mouth to "kill wound." It is
purely hygienic, and not balanced by the excisio Judaica, Some
physiologists consider the latter a necessary complement of the
male rite; such, however, is not the case. The Hebrews, who
almost everywhere retained circumcision, have, in Europe at
least, long abandoned excision. I regret that the delicacy of the
age does not allow me to be more explicit.
The Mpongwe practise a rite so resembling infant baptism that the
missionaries have derived it from a corruption of Abyssinian
Christianity which, like the flora of the Camarones and
Fernandian Highlands, might have travelled across the Dark
Continent, where it has now been superseded by El Islam. I
purpose at some period of more leisure to prove an ancient
intercourse and rapprochement of all the African tribes ranging
between the parallels of north latitude 20° and south latitude
30°. It will best be established, not by the single great family
of language, but by the similarity of manners, customs, and
belief; of arts and crafts; of utensils and industry. The baptism
of Pongo-land is as follows. When the babe is born, a crier,
announcing the event, promises to it in the people's name
participation in the rights of the living. It is placed upon a
banana leaf, for which reason the plantain is never used to stop
the water-pots; and the chief or the nearest of kin sprinkles it
from a basin, gives it a name, and pronounces a benediction, his
example being followed by all present. The man-child is exhorted
to be truthful, and the girl to "tell plenty lie," in order to
lead a happy life. Truly a new form of the regenerative rite!
A curious prepossession of the African mind, curious and yet
general, in a land where population is the one want, and where
issue is held the greatest blessing, is the imaginary necessity
of limiting the family. Perhaps this form of infanticide is a
policy derived from ancestors who found it necessary. In the
kingdom of Apollonia (Guinea) the tenth child was always buried
alive; never a Decimus was allowed to stand in the way of the
nine seniors. The birth of twins is an evil portent to the
Mpongwes, as it is in many parts of Central Africa, and even in
the New World; it also involves the idea of moral turpitude, as
if the woman were one of the lower animals, capable of
superfetation. There is no greater insult to a man, than to point
at him with two fingers, meaning that he is a twin; of course he
is not one, or he would have been killed at birth. Albinos are
allowed to live, as in Dahome, in Ashanti, and among some East
African tribes, where I have been "chaffed" about a brother
white, who proved to be an exceptional negro without pigmentum
nigrum.
There is no novelty in the Mpongwe funeral rites; the same system
prevails from the Oil Rivers to Congo-land, and extends even to
the wild races of the interior. The corpse, being still sentient,
is accompanied by stores of raiment, pots, and goats' flesh; a
bottle is placed in one hand and a glass in the other, and, if
the deceased has been fond of play, his draught-board and other
materials are buried with him. The system has been well defined
as one in which the "ghost of a man eats the ghost of a yam,
boiled in the ghost of a pot, over the ghost of a fire." The
body, after being stretched out in a box, is carried to a lonely
place; some are buried deep, others close to the surface. There
is an immense show of grief, with keening and crocodiles' tears,
perhaps to benefit the living by averting a charge of witchcraft,
which would inevitably lead to "Sassy" or poison-water. The wake
continues for five days, when they "pull the cry," that is to
say, end mourning. If these pious rites be neglected, the
children incur the terrible reproach, "Your father he be hungry."
The widow may re-marry immediately after "living for cry," and,
if young and lusty, she looks out for another consort within the
week. The slave is thrown out into the bush--no one will take the
trouble to dig a hole for him.
The industry of the Mpongwe is that of the African generally;
every man is a host in himself; he builds and furnishes his
house, he makes his weapons and pipes, and he ignores division of
labour, except in the smith and the carpenter; in the potter, who
works without a wheel, and in the dyer, who knows barks, and who
fixes his colours with clay. The men especially pride themselves
upon canoe-making; the favourite wood is the buoyant Okumeh or
bombax, that monarch of the African forest. I have seen a boat,
45 feet 10 inches by 5 feet 11 inches in beam, cut out of a
single tree, with the Mpáno or little adze, a lineal descendant
of the Silex implement, and I have heard of others measuring 70
feet. These craft easily carry 10 tons, and travel 200 to 300
miles, which, as Mr. Wilson remarks, would land them, under
favourable circumstances, in South America. Captain Boteler found
that the Mpongwe boat combined symmetry of form, strength, and
solidity, with safeness and swiftness either in pulling or
sailing. And of late years the people have succeeded in launching
large and fast craft built after European models.
The favourite pleasures of the Mpongwe are gross and gorging
"feeds," drinking and smoking. They recall to mind the old woman
who told "Monk Lewis" that if a glass of gin were at one end of
the table, and her immortal soul at the other, she would choose
the gin. They soak with palm-wine every day; they indulge in rum
and absinthe, and the wealthy affect so-called Cognac, with
Champagne and Bordeaux, which, however, they pronounce to be
"cold." I have seen Master Boro, a boy five years old, drain
without winking a wineglassful of brandy. It is not wonderful
that the adults can "stand" but little, and that a few mouthfuls
of well-watered spirit make their voices thick, and paralyze
their weak brains as well as their tongues. The Persians, who
commence drinking late in life, can swallow strong waters by the
tumbler.
Men, women, and children when hardly "cremnobatic," have always
the pipe in mouth. The favourite article is a "dudheen," a well
culotté clay, used and worn till the bowl touches the nose. The
poor are driven to a "Kondukwe," a yard of plantain leaf,
hollowed with a wire, and charged at the thicker end. The "holy
herb" would of course grow in the country, and grow well, but it
is imported from the States without trouble, and perhaps with
less expense. Some tribes make a decent snuff of the common trade
article, but I never saw either sex chew--perhaps the most
wholesome, and certainly the most efficacious form. The smoking
of Lyámbá, called Dyámbá in the southern regions, is confined to
debauchees. M. du Chaillu asserts that this Cannabis sativa is
not found wild, and the people confirm his statement; possibly it
has extended from Hindostan to Zanzibar, and thence across the
continent. Intoxicating hemp is now grown everywhere, especially
in the Nkommi country, and little packages, neatly bound with
banana leaves, sell on the river for ten sous each. It is smoked
either in the "Kondukwe" or in the Ojo. The latter, literally
meaning a torch, is a polished cow-horn, closed at the thick end
with wood, and banded with metal; a wooden stem, projecting from
the upper or concave side, bears a neat "chillam" (bowl), either
of clay or of brown steatite brought from the upper Gaboon River.
This rude hookah is half filled with water; the dried hemp in the
bowl is covered with what Syrians call a "Kurs," a bit of metal
about the size of half-a-crown, and upon it rests the fire. I at
once recognized the implement in the Brazil, where many slave-
holders simply supposed it to be a servile and African form of
tobacco-pipe. After a few puffs the eyes redden, a violent cough
is caused by the acrid fumes tickling the throat; the brain,
whirls with a pleasant swimming, like that of chloroform, and the
smoker finds himself in gloriâ. My Spanish friends at Po tried
but did not like it. I can answer for the hemp being stronger
than the Egyptian hashísh or the bhang of Hindostan; it rather
resembled the Fasúkh of Northern Africa, the Dakha and Motukwane
of the southern regions, and the wild variety called in Sind
"Bang i Jabalí."
The religion of African races is ever interesting to those of a
maturer faith; it is somewhat like the study of childhood to an
old man. The Jew, the high-caste Hindú, and the Guebre, the
Christian and the Moslem have their Holy Writs, their fixed forms
of thought and worship, in fact their grooves in which belief
runs. They no longer see through a glass darkly; nothing with
them is left vague or undetermined. Continuation, resurrection,
eternity are hereditary and habitual ideas; they have become
almost inseparable and congenital parts of the mental system.
This condition renders it nearly as difficult for us to
understand the vagueness and mistiness of savage and unwritten
creeds, as to penetrate into the modus agendi of animal instinct.
And there is yet another obstacle in dealing with such people,
their intense and childish sensitiveness and secretiveness. They
are not, as some have foolishly supposed, ashamed of their tenets
or their practices, but they are unwilling to speak about them.
They fear the intentions of the cross-questioner, and they hold
themselves safest behind a crooked answer. Moreover, every
Mpongwe is his own "pontifex maximus," and the want, or rather
the scarcity, of a regular priesthood must promote independence
and discrepancy of belief.
Whilst noticing the Fetishism of the Gaboon I cannot help
observing, by the way, how rapidly the civilization of the
nineteenth century is redeveloping, together with the "Religion
of Humanity" the old faith, not of Paganism, but of Cosmos, of
Nature; how directly it is, in fact, going back to its oldergods.
The UNKNOWABLE of our day is the Brahm, the Akarana-Zaman, the
Gaboon Anyambía, of which nothing can be predicated but an
existence utterly unintelligible to the brain of man, a something
free from the accidents of personality, of volition, of
intelligence, of design, of providence; a something which cannot
be addressed by veneration or worship; whose sole effects are
subjective, that is, upon the worshipper, not upon the
worshipped. Nothing also can be more illogical than the awe and
respect claimed by Mr. Herbert Spencer for a being of which the
very essence is that nothing can be known of it. And, as the idea
grows, the several modes and forms of the UNKNOWABLE, the Hormuzd
and Ahriman of the Dualist, those personifications of good and
evil; the Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, creation, preservation, and
destruction; the beginning, the middle, and the end of all
things; the Triad, adored by all Triadists under some
modification, as that of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, father, mother,
and son, type of the family; or Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, the
three great elements; these outward and visible expressions lose
force and significance, making place for that Law of which they
are the rude exponents. The marvellous spread of Spiritualism,
whose god is the UNKNOWABLE, and whose prophet was Swedenborg, is
but the polished form of the Mpongwe Ibambo and Ilogo; the
beneficent phantasms have succeeded to the malevolent ghosts, the
shadowy deities of man's childhood; as the God of Love formerly
took the place of the God of Fear. The future of Spiritualism,
which may be defined as "Hades with Progress," is making serious
inroads upon the coarse belief, worthy of the barbarous and the
middle ages, in an eternity of punishment, easily expressed by
everlasting fire, and in ineffable joys, which no one has ever
successfully expressed. The ghosts of our childhood have now
become bonâ fide objective beings, who rap, raise tables, display
fireworks, rain flowers, and brew tea. We explain by "levitation"
the riding of the witch upon the broom-stick to the Sabbath; we
can no longer refuse credence to Canidia and all her spells. And
the very vagueness of the modern faith serves to assimilate it
the more to its most ancient forms, one of which we are studying
upon the Gaboon River.
The missionary returning from Africa is often asked what is the
religion of the people? If an exact man, he will answer, "I don't
know." And how can he know when the people themselves, even the
princes and priests, are ignorant of it? A missionary of twenty
years' standing in West Africa, an able and conscientious student
withal, assured me that during the early part of his career he
had given much time to collecting and collating, under
intelligent native superintendence, negro traditions and
religion. He presently found that no two men thought alike upon
any single subject: I need hardly say that he gave up in despair
a work hopeless as psychology, the mere study of the individual.
Fetishism, I believe, is held by the orthodox to be a degradation
of the pure and primitive "Adamical dispensation," even as the
negro has been supposed to represent the accursed and degraded
descendants of Ham and Canaan. I cannot but look upon it as the
first dawn of a faith in things not seen. And it must be studied
by casting off all our preconceived ideas. For instance, Africans
believe, not in soul nor in spirit, but in ghost; when they
called M. du Chaillu a "Mbwiri," they meant that the white man
had been bleached by the grave as Dante had been darkened by his
visit below, and consequently he was a subject of fear and awe.
They have a material, evanescent, intelligible future, not an
immaterial, incomprehensible eternity; the ghost endures only for
awhile and perishes like the memory of the little-great name.
Hence the ignoble dread in East and West Africa of a death which
leads to a shadowy world, and eventually to utter annihilation.
Seeing nought beyond the present-future, there is no hope for
them in the grave; they wail and sorrow with a burden of despair.
"Ame-kwisha"--he is finished--is the East African's last word
concerning kinsman and friend. "All is done for ever," sing the
West Africans. Any allusion to loss of life turns their black
skins blue; "Yes," they exclaim, "it is bad to die, to leave
house and home, wife and children; no more to wear soft cloth,
nor eat meat, nor "drink" tobacco, and rum." "Never speak of
that" the moribund will exclaim with a shudder; such is the ever-
present horror of their dreadful and dreary times of sickness,
always aggravated by suspicions of witchcraft, the only cause
which their imperfect knowledge of physics can assign to death--
even Van Helmont asserted, "Deus non fecit mortem." The peoples,
who, like those of Dahome, have a distinct future world, have
borrowed it, I cannot help thinking, from Egypt. And when an
African chief said in my presence to a Yahoo-like naval officer,
"When so be I die, I come up for white man! When so be you die,
you come up for monkey!" my suspicion is that he had distorted
the doctrine of some missionary. Man would hardly have a future
without a distinct priestly class whose interest it is to teach
"another and a better,"--or a worse.
Certain missionaries in the Gaboon River have detected evidences
of Judaism amongst the Mpongwe, which deserve notice but which
hardly require detailed refutation. 1. Circumcision, even on the
eighth day as amongst the Efik of the old Calabar River; but this
is a familiar custom borrowed from Egypt by the Semites; it is
done in a multitude of ways, which are limited only by necessity;
the resemblance of the Mpongwe rite to that of the Jews, though
remarkable, is purely accidental. 2. The division of tribes into
separate families and frequently into the number twelve; but this
again appears fortuitous; almost all the West African people have
some such division, and they range upwards from three, as amongst
the Kru-men, the Gallas, the Wakwafi,and the Wanyika.[FN#11] 3.
Exogamy or the rigid interdiction of marriage between clans and
families nearly related; here again the Hindu and the Somal
observe the custom rigidly, whilst the Jews and Arabs have ever
taken to wife their first cousins. 4. Sacrifices with blood-
sprinkling upon altars and door-posts; a superstition almost
universal, found in Peru and Mexico as in Palestine, preserved in
Ashanti and probably borrowed by the Hebrews from the African
Egyptians. 5. The formal and ceremonial observance of new moons;
but the Wanyamwezi and other tribes also hail the appearance of
the lesser light, like the Moslems, who, when they sight the
Hilal (crescent), ejaculate a short prayer for blessings
throughout the month which it ushers in. 6. A specified time of
mourning for the dead (common to all barbarians as to civilized
races), during which their survivors wear soiled clothes (an
instinctive sign of grief, as fine dresses are of joy), and shave
their heads (doubtless done to make some difference from every-
day times), accompanied with ceremonial purifications (what
ancient people has not had some such whim?). 7. The system of
Runda or forbidden meats; but every traveller has found this
practice in South as in East Africa, and I noticed it among the
Somal who, even when starving, will not touch fish nor fowl.
Briefly, external resemblances and coincidences like these could
be made to establish cousinhood between a cockney and a cockatoo;
possibly such discovery of Judaism dates from the days about
1840, when men were mad to find the "Lost Tribes," as if they had
not quite enough to do with the two which remain to them.
The Mpongwe and their neighbours have advanced a long step beyond
their black brethren in Eastern Africa. No longer contented with
mere Fetishes, the Egyptian charms in which the dreaded ghost
"sits,"[FN#12] meaning, is "bound," they have invented idols, a
manifest advance toward that polytheism and pantheism which lead
through a triad and duad of deities to monotheism, the finial of
the spiritual edifice. In Eastern Africa I know but one people,
the Wanyika near Mombasah, who have certain images called
"Kisukas;" they declare that this great medicine, never shown to
Europeans, came from the West, and Andrew Battel (1600) found
idols amongst the people whom he calls Giagas or Jagas, meaning
Congoese chiefs. Moreover, the Gaboon pagans lodge their idols.
Behind each larger establishment there is a dwarf hut, the
miniature of a dwelling-place, carefully closed; I thought these
were offices, but Hotaloya Andrews taught me otherwise. He called
them in his broken English "Compass-houses," a literal
translation of "Nágo Mbwiri," and, sturdily refusing me
admittance, left me as wise as before. The reason afterwards
proved to be that "Ologo he kill man too much."
I presently found out that he called my pocket compass, "Mbwiri,"
a very vague and comprehensive word. It represents in the highest
signification the Columbian Manitou, and thus men talk of the
Mbwiri of a tree or a river; as will presently be seen, it is
also applied to a tutelar god; and I have shown how it means a
ghost. In "Nágo Mbwiri" the sense is an idol, an object of
worship, a "medicine" as the North-American Indians say, in
contradistinction to Munda, a grigri, talisman, or charm. Every
Mpongwe, woman as well as man, has some Mbwiri to which offerings
are made in times of misfortune, sickness, or danger. I
afterwards managed to enter one of these rude and embryonal
temples so carefully shut. Behind the little door of matting is a
tall threshold of board; a bench lines the far end, and in the
centre stands "Ologo," a rude imitation of a human figure, with a
gum-torch planted in the ground before it ready for burnt
offerings. To the walls are suspended sundry mystic implements,
especially basins, smeared with red and white chalk-mixture, and
wooden crescents decorated with beads and ribbons.
During worship certain objects are placed before the Joss, the
suppliant at the same time jangling and shaking the Ncheke a rude
beginning of the bell, the gong, the rattle, and the instruments
played before idols by more advanced peoples. It is a piece of
wood, hour-glass-shaped but flat, and some six inches and a half
long; the girth of the waist is five inches, and about three more
round the ends. The wood is cut away, leaving rude and uneven
raised bands horizontally striped with white, black, and red. Two
brass wires are stretched across the upper and lower breadth, and
each is provided with a ring or hinge holding four or five strips
of wire acting as clappers.
This "wicker-work rattle to drive the devil out" (M. du Chaillu,
chap, xxvi.) is called by the Mpongwe "Soke," and serves only,
like that of the Dahomans and the Ashantis (Bowdich, 364) for
dancing and merriment. The South American Maraca was the sole
object of worship known to the Tupi or Brazilian "Indians."
[FN#13]
The beliefs and superstitions popularly attributed to the Mpongwe
are these. They are not without that which we call a First Cause,
and they name it Anyambia, which missionary philologists consider
a contraction of Aninla, spirit (?), and Mbia, good. M. du
Chaillu everywhere confounds Anyambía, or, as he writes the word,
"Aniambié," with Inyemba, a witch, to bewitch being "punga
inyemba." Mr. W. Winwood Reade seems to make Anyambía a
mysterious word, as was Jehovah after the date of the Moabite
stone. Like the Brahm of the Hindus, the god of Epicurus and
Confucius, and the Akárana-Zaman or Endless Time of the Guebres,
Anyambia is a vague being, a vox et præterea nihil, without
personality, too high and too remote for interference in human
affairs, therefore not addressed in prayer, never represented by
the human form, never lodged in temples. Under this "unknown God"
are two chief agencies, working partners who manage the business
of the world, and who effect what the civilized call
"Providence." Mbwírí here becomes the Osiris, Jove, Hormuzd or
Good God, the Vishnu, or Preserver, a tutelar deity, a Lar, a
guardian. Onyámbe is the Bad God, Typhon, Vejovis, the Ahriman or
Semitic devil; Shiva the Destroyer, the third person of the Aryan
triad; and his name is never mentioned but with bated breath.
They have not only fear of, but also a higher respect for him
than for the giver of good, so difficult is it for the child-
man's mind to connect the ideas of benignity and power. He would
harm if he could, ergo so would his god. I once hesitated to
believe that these rude people had arrived at the notion of
duality, at the Manichaeanism which caused Mr. Mill (sen.)
surprise that no one had revived it in his time; at an idea so
philosophical, which leads directly to the ne plus ultra of
faith, El Wahdaníyyeh or Monotheism. Nor should I have credited
them with so logical an apparatus for the regimen of the
universe, or so stout-hearted an attempt to solve the eternal
riddle of good and evil. But the same belief also exists amongst
the Congoese tribes, and even in the debased races of the Niger.
Captain William Alien ("Niger Expedition," i. 227) thus records
the effect when, at the request of the commissioners, Herr Schon,
the missionary, began stating to King Obi the difference between
the Christian religion and heathenism:
"Herr Schön. There is but one God.
"King Obi. I always understood there were two," &c.
The Mpongwe "Mwetye" is a branch of male freemasonry into which
women and strangers are never initiated. The Bakele and Shekyani,
according to "Western Africa" (Wilson, pp. 391-2), consider it a
"Great Spirit." Nothing is more common amongst adjoining negro
tribes than to annex one another's superstitions, completely
changing, withal, their significance. "Ovengwá" is a vampire, the
apparition of a dead man; tall as a tree, always winking and
clearly seen, which is not the case with the Ibámbo and Ilogo,
plurals of Obambo and Ologo. These are vulgar ghosts of the
departed, the causes of "possession," disease and death; they are
propitiated by various rites, and everywhere they are worshipped
in private. Mr. Wilson opines that the "Obambo are the spirits of
the ancestors of the people, and Inlâgâ are the spirits of
strangers and have come from a distance," but this was probably
an individual tenet. The Mumbo-Jumbo of the Mandengas; the Semo
of the Súsús; the Tassau or "Purrah-devil" of the Mendis; the
Egugun of the Egbas; the Egbo of the Duallas; and the Mwetye and
Ukukwe of the Bakele, is represented in Pongo-land by the Ndá,
which is an order of the young men. Ndá dwells in the woods and
comes forth only by night bundled up in dry plantain
leaves[FN#14] and treading on tall stilts; he precedes free adult
males who parade the streets with dance and song. The women and
children fly at the approach of this devil on two sticks, and
with reason: every peccadillo is punished with a merciless
thrashing. The institution is intended to keep in order the
weaker sex, the young and the "chattels:" Ndá has tried visiting
white men and missionaries, but his visits have not been a
success.
The civilized man would be apt to imagine that these wild African
fetishists are easily converted to a "purer creed." The contrary
is everywhere and absolutely the case; their faith is a web woven
with threads of iron. The negro finds it almost impossible to rid
himself of his belief; the spiritual despotism is the expression
of his organization, a part of himself. Progressive races, on the
other hand, can throw off or exchange every part of their
religion, except perhaps the remnant of original and natural
belief in things unseen--in fact, the Fetishist portion, such as
ghost-existence and veneration of material objects, places, and
things. I might instance the Protestant missionary who, while
deriding the holy places at Jerusalem, considers the "Cedars of
Lebanon" sacred things, and sternly forbids travellers to gather
the cones.
The stereotyped African answer to Europeans ridiculing these
institutions, including wizard-spearing and witch-burning is,
"There may be no magic, though I see there is, among you whites.
But we blacks have known many men who have been bewitched and
died." Even in Asia, whenever I spoke contemptuously to a Moslem
of his Jinns, or to a Hindu of his Rákshasa, the rejoinder
invariably was, "You white men are by nature so hot that even our
devils fear you."
Witchcraft, which has by no means thoroughly disappeared from
Europe, maintains firm hold upon the African brain. The idea is
found amongst Christians, for instance, the "reduced Indians" of
the Amazonas River; and it is evidently at the bottom of that
widely spread superstition, the "evil eye," which remains
throughout Southern Europe as strong as it was in the days of
Pliny. As amongst barbarians generally, no misfortune happens, no
accident occurs, no illness nor death can take place without the
agency of wizard or witch. There is nothing more odious than this
crime; it is hostile to God and man, and it must be expiated by
death in the most terrible tortures. Metamorphosis is a common
art amongst Mpongwe magicians: this vulgar materialism, of which
Ovid sang, must not be confounded with the poetical Hindu
metempsychosis or transmigration of souls which explains
empirically certain physiological mysteries. Here the adept
naturally becomes a gorilla or a leopard, as he would be a lion
in South Africa, a hyena in Abyssinia and the Somali country, and
a loup-garou in Brittany.[FN#15]
The poison ordeal is a necessary corollary to witchcraft. The
plant most used by the Oganga (medicine man) is a small red
rooted shrub, not unlike a hazel bush, and called Ikázyá or
Ikájá. Mr. Wilson (p. 225) writes "Nkazya:" Battel (loc. cit.
334) terms the root "Imbando," a corruption of Mbundú. M. du
Chaillu (chap. xv.) gives an illustration of the "Mboundou leaf"
(half size): Professor John Torrey believes the active principle
to be a vegeto-alkali of the Strychnos group, but the symptoms do
not seem to bear out the conjecture. The Mpongwe told me that the
poison was named either Mbundú or Olondá (nut) werere--perhaps
this was what is popularly called "a sell." Mbundú is the
decoction of the scraped bark which corresponds with the "Sassy-
water" of the northern maritime tribes. The accused, after
drinking the potion, is ordered to step over sticks of the same
plant, which are placed a pace apart. If the man be affected, he
raises his foot like a horse with string-halt, and this convicts
him of the foul crime. Of course there is some antidote, as the
medicine-man himself drinks large draughts of his own stuff: in
Old Calabar River for instance, Mithridates boils the poison-nut;
but Europeans could not, and natives would not, tell me what the
Gaboon "dodge" is. According to vulgar Africans, all test-poisons
are sentient and reasoning beings, who search the criminal's
stomach, that is his heart, and who find out the deep hidden sin;
hence the people shout, "If they are wizards, let it kill them;
if they are innocent, let it go forth!" Moreover, the detected
murderer is considered a bungler who has fallen into the pit dug
for his brother. Doubtless many innocent lives have been lost by
this superstition. But there is reason in the order, "Thou shalt
not suffer a witch to live," without having recourse to the
supernaturalisms and preternaturalisms, which have unobligingly
disappeared when Science most wants them. Sorcery and poison are
as closely united as the "Black Nightingales," and it evidently
differs little whether I slay a man with my sword or I destroy
him by the slow and certain torture of a mind diseased.
The Mpongwe have also some peculiarities in their notions of
justice. If a man murder another, the criminal is put to death,
not by the nearest of kin, as amongst the Arabs and almost all
wild people, but by the whole community; this already shows an
advanced appreciation of the act and its bearings. The penalty is
either drowning or burning alive: except in the case of a chief
or a very rich man, little or no difference is made between
wilful murder, justifiable homicide, and accidental manslaughter-
-the reason of this, say their jurists, is to make people more
careful. Here, again, we find a sense of the sanctity of life the
reverse of barbarous. Cutting and maiming are punished by the
fine of a slave.
And now briefly to resume the character of the Mpongwe, a nervous
and excitable race of negroes. The men are deficient in courage,
as the women are in chastity, and neither sex has a tincture of
what we call morality. To commercial shrewdness and eagerness
they add exceptional greed of gain and rascality; foreign rum and
tobacco, dress and ornaments, arms and ammunition have been
necessaries to them; they will have them, and, unless they can
supply themselves by licit, they naturally fly to illicit means.
Yet, despite threats of poison and charges of witchcraft, they
have arrived at an inkling of the dogma that "honesty is the best
policy:" the East African has never dreamed it in the moments of
his wildest imagination. Pre-eminent liars, they are, curious to
say, often deceived by the falsehoods of others, and they fairly
illustrate the somewhat paradoxical proverb:
"He who hates truth shall be the dupe of lies."
Unblushing mendicants, cunning and calculating, their obstinacy
is remarkable; yet, as we often find the African, they are at the
same time irresolute in the extreme. Their virtues are vivacity,
mental activity, acute observation, sociability, politeness, and
hospitality: the fact that a white man can wander single-handed
through the country shows a kindly nature. The brightest spot in
their character is an abnormal development of adhesiveness,
popularly called affection; it is somewhat tempered by capricious
ruffianism, as in children; yet it entitles them to the gratítude
of travellers.
The language of the Mpongwe has been fairly studied. T. Edward
Bowdich ("Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee," London,
Murray, 1819) when leaving the West Coast for England, touched at
the Gaboon in a trading vessel, and visited Naango (King George's
Town), on Abaaga Creek, which he places fifty miles up stream. He
first gave (Appendix VI.) a list of the Mpongwe numerals. In 1847
the "Missionaries of the A. B. C. F. M." Gaboon Mission, Western
Africa, printed a "Grammar of the Mpongwe Language, with
Vocabularies" (New York,Snowden and Pratt, Vesey Street), perhaps
a little prematurely; it is the first of the four dialects on
this part of the coast reduced to system by the American
Missionaries, especially by the Rev. Mr. Leighton Wilson, the
others being Bakele, Benga, and Fán.
In 1856, the same gentleman, who had taken the chief part in the
first publication, made an able abstract and a comparison with
the Grebo and Mandenga tongues ("Western Africa," part iv. chap.
iv.). M. du Chaillu further abridged this abridgement in his
Appendix without owning his authority, and in changing the
examples he did all possible damage. In the Transactions of the
Ethnological Society of London (part ii. vol. i. new series), he
also gave an abstract, in which he repeats himself. A
"vocabulaire de la langue Ponga" was printed in the "Mémoires de
la Société Ethnologique," tome ii., by M. P. H. Delaporte.
The other publications known to me are:--
1. The Book of Proverbs, translated into the Mpongwe language at
the mission of the A. B. C. F. M., Gaboon, West Africa. New York.
American Bible Society, instituted in the year MDCCCXVI. 1859.
2. The Books of Genesis, part of Exodus, Proverbs, and Acts, by
the same, printed at the same place and in the same year.
The missionary explorers of the language, if I may so call them,
at once saw that it belongs to the great South African family
Sichwáná, Zulu, Kisawahíli, Mbundo (Congoese), Fiote, and others,
whose characteristics are polysyllabism, inflection by systematic
prefixes, and an alliteration, the mystery of whose reciprocal
letters is theoretically explained by a euphony in many cases
unintelligible, like the modes of Hindú music, to the European
ear.[FN#16] But they naturally fell into the universally accepted
error of asserting "it has no known affinities to any of the
languages north of the Mountains of the Moon," meaning the
equatorial chain which divides the Niger and Nile valleys from
the basin of the Congo.
This branch has its peculiarities. Like Italian--the coquette who
grants her smiles to many, her favours to few--one of the easiest
to understand and to speak a little, it is very difficult to
master. Whilst every native child can thread its way safely
through its intricate, elaborate, and apparently arbitrary
variations, the people comprehend a stranger who blunders over
every sentence. Mr. Wilson thus limits the use of the accent:
"Whilst the Mandenga ("A Grammar of the Mandenga Language," by
the Rev. R. Maxwell Macbriar, London, John Mason) and the Grebo
("Grammar," by the Right Rev. John Payne, D.D. 150, Nassau
Street, New York, 1864), distinguish between similar words,
especially monosyllables, by a certain pitch of voice, the
Mpongwe repel accent, and rely solely upon the clear and distinct
vowel sounds." But I found the negative past, present, and future
forms of verbs wholly dependent upon a change of accent, or
rather of intonation or voice-pitch, which the stranger's ear,
unless acute, will fail to detect. For instance, Mi Taund would
mean "I love;" Mi taundá, "I do not love." The reverend linguist
also asserts that it is almost entirely free from guttural and
nasal sounds; the latter appeared to me as numerous and
complicated as in the Sanskrit. Mr. Wilson could hardly have had
a nice ear, or he would not have written Nchígo "Ntyege," or
Njína "Engena," which gives a thoroughly un-African distinctness
to the initial consonant.
The adjectival form is archaically expressed by a second and
abstract substantive. This peculiarity is common in the South
African family, as in Ashanti; but, as Bowdich observes, we also
find it in Greek, e.g. <Greek> , "heresies of
destruction" for destructive. Another notable characteristic is
the Mpongwe's fondness for the passive voice, never using, if
possible, the active; for instance, instead of saying, "He was
born thus," he prefers, "The birth that was thus borned by him."
The dialect changes the final as well as the initial syllable, a
process unknown to the purest types of the South African family.
As we advance north we find this phenomenon ever increasing; for
instance in Fernando Po; but the Mpongwe limits the change to
verbs.
Another distinguishing point of these three Gaboon tongues, as
the Rev. Mr. Mackey observes, is "the surprizing flexibility of
the verb, the almost endless variety of parts regularly derived
from a single root. There are, perhaps, no other languages in the
world that approach them in the variety and extent of the
inflections of the verb, possessing at the same time such rigid
regularity of conjugation and precision of the meaning attached
to each part." It is calculated that the whole number of tenses
or shades of meaning which a Mpongwe radical verb may be made to
express, with the aid of its auxiliary particles, augmentatives,
and negatives--prefixes, infixes, and suffixes--is between twelve
and fifteen hundred, worse than an Arabic triliteral.
Liquid and eminently harmonious, concise and capable of
contraction, the Mpongwe tongue does not deserve to die out. "The
genius of the language is such that new terms may be introduced
in relation to ethics, metaphysics, and science; even to the
great truths of the Christian religion."
The main defect is that of the South African languages generally-
-a deficiency of syntax, of gender and case; a want of vigour in
sound; a too great precision of expression, rendering it clumsy
and unwieldy; and an absence of exceptions, which give beauty and
variety to speech. The people have never invented any form of
alphabet, yet the abundance of tale, legend, and proverb which
their dialect contains might repay the trouble of acquiring it.