TRIBES OF THE CONGO STATE
[Sidenote: Population of Congo State.]
The difficulty in arriving at an estimate of the native population
of the Congo Free State that tolerably approximates the truth is
very great. Some authorities place it at as high as 30,000,000, some
as low as 15,000,000, while other observers, equally entitled to
respect, assert that 20,000,000 is about accurate.
This wide divergence of opinion ceases to be matter for surprise when
we reflect that the population of an empire so important as China,
known to white men for centuries, is variously estimated by them at
anything between 300,000,000 and 400,000,000.
Compared with our knowledge of China, our acquaintance with the
countries and peoples comprised within the boundaries of the Congo
Free State is a thing of yesterday. The nomadic habits of the various
semi-savage tribes of which the population of the Congo Free State
consists renders their exact enumeration impossible. Besides, there
can be no doubt but that vast numbers of the dwarf (Pigmy) race
inhabit parts of the great Central African forest not yet penetrated
by the white man.
[Sidenote: Advancing Civilisation.]
It is certain, however, that all the vast region with which this book
is concerned contains no race or tribe that has not come in contact
with the civilising Belgians, or whose barbarous habits and customs
have not, in greater or lesser degree, been modified into some
semblance of conformity with the standard of civilisation exemplified
by their new masters. At present that conformity is far from being
general, and where it is found it is invariably more superficial than
real. To frankly admit so much is in nowise a reflection upon the
extent or value of the civilising influence exerted by the Belgians
upon their King’s dusky subjects. The complete transformation of the
barbarian into the civilised man is not possible in one generation. A
consideration of the principal tribes, their habits and customs, as
they were when the white strangers first appeared among them, and as
to some extent they continue to this day, cannot, therefore, fail in
interest.
[Sidenote: Origin of Congo Races.]
The nomadic habits of the native races inhabiting the Congo region,
discussed at length in another chapter, render an inquiry into their
origin a work of great difficulty and uncertain result. Sir Harry
Johnston, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., whose expert opinion upon this subject
is entitled to the utmost respect, believes that the Negro type
which originated in Southern Asia wandered across the peninsula of
Arabia into Eastern Africa, mingling, perhaps, on the way, with
the Caucasians from the north, evolving that negroid race known as
the Hamite, whence sprang the early Egyptians, and to which the
Somali, Gala, Abyssinian, and Nubian owe their origin.
[Illustration: Funeral at Bumba (Bangala).]
From Eastern Africa this primitive race is thought to have spread,
in the course of ages, throughout all Central Africa, and probably
to have penetrated almost to the southern and western coasts of
that continent, changing their physical characteristics according
to their environment, and again modifying those characteristics by
subsequent intermixture. The numerous Central African tribes, as they
exist to-day, exhibit marked differences in height, shape, language,
habits, customs, and even in colour, some being an intense black,
some of a chocolate hue, some reddish brown, and some of a bronze
aspect. The five main divisions, according to Johnston, appear to
be: (1) the forest Pigmy; (2) the Bantu; (3) the Nile Negro; (4) the
Masai, and (5) the Hamite.
The native tribes in the neighbourhood of Leopoldville consist
chiefly of the Musserongés, the Kakongos, the Baoilis, and the
Mayombés.
[Sidenote: Some Tribal Traits.]
The Musserongés are difficult of approach. Not only do they hold
themselves severely aloof from the white man, they are also very shy
and guarded in their intercourse with other native tribes, and are
never known to combine with any of them, even when threatened by a
common enemy. They are tall, strong, and better-looking than most
members of the Negro race, though this commendation must not be taken
for a certificate of beauty. They file their teeth to a point, or
cut them square, or into semicircles, their object being to provide
themselves thereby with a weapon for use as a last resort in a fight,
when they literally throw themselves upon their enemies and seize
them by the throat with their fangs, as a bulldog might do. They
wear their hair short, and indulge in the practice of tattooing, for
purposes of ornament, but not to any great extent. Strange to say,
the women are taller and stronger than the men, which may perhaps be
explained by the fact that all the work of the tribe, except hunting
and fishing, falls to their share.
The Kakongos and Mayombés are less intensely distrustful, but the
Baoilis are markedly hostile to the white man. They have been known
to refuse to barter oysters—their principal diet, of which they
frequently have supplies largely exceeding their requirements—for
European commodities which it has been certain that they ardently
desired to possess.
[Illustration: Women Beating Rice, Uelle.]
[Sidenote: Modes et Robes à la Congo.]
All these four tribes are of cleanly habits; and their practice
of bathing daily, when the proximity of a river or lake puts it
in their power to do so, may put to shame some of the inhabitants
of great cities. The forest tribes, to whom cleanliness by water
is impossible, smear their bodies with palm oil and a kind of red
ochre, which they afterwards scrape off. The original costume of a
few leaves, or an exceedingly small apron made from fibrous bark,
for women, and a loincloth of the same material for men, has yielded
to the superior attraction of common cotton goods, which now reach
them from far-away Manchester or Saxony. These stuffs, ornamented
by large patterns in flaming reds or yellows, delight the eye and
rejoice the heart of the Congolese maid and matron, while such of
the men as desire to stand well with the gentler (?) sex will also
condescend to use them. No time and skill are devoted to making a
garment. A piece of the gaudy stuff wound in loose folds around the
loins suffices both for men and women. In every tribe, children of
both sexes are entirely nude until they reach the age of puberty. In
at least one tribe, neither men nor women wear any covering. In a
few tribes it is customary for the women to remain nude until they
are married. Some women denote their married state by covering their
breasts with strange ornaments, while others secure this object by
elaborately dressing their hair, which they build up to a great
height by aid of palm fibre and gum. Both men and women, of whatever
tribe, ornament themselves with just as many collars, bangles, and
anklets as they can obtain. Without exception, the possession of a
few strings of coloured beads is to them a source of great happiness.
They gaze upon such treasures with delight and guard them with
jealous care. Some of their customs are very peculiar. Men and women
will not eat together. A man guilty of eating in company of his wives
would be hopelessly disgraced. In time past they have eaten one
another, and would doubtless do so again should existing restraint be
removed, but they may not eat together. After their separate repast,
the sexes mingle again freely, and both engage in smoking their
long-stemmed pipes.
[Sidenote: Congo Pigmies.]
All the males of the Congo Pigmies seen by Sir Harry Johnston were
circumcised, and all in both sexes had their upper incisor teeth and
canines sharpened to a point. In their forest homes they go naked,
both men and women; but in presence of strangers the men usually don
a small covering of genet, monkey, or antelope skin, or a wisp of
bark-cloth, and the women leaves or bark-cloth.
The Pigmies [says Johnston] have practically no religion, and no
trace of spirit- or ancestor-worship. They have some idea that
thunder, lightning, and rain are the manifestations of a Power or
Entity in the heavens, but a bad Power, and when (reluctantly)
induced to talk on the subject, they shake their heads and clack
their tongues in disapproval, for the mysterious Something in
the heavens occasionally slays their comrades with his fire
[lightning]. They have little or no belief in a life after death,
but sometimes think vaguely that their dead relations live again in
the form of the red bushpig, whose strange bristles are among the
few brightly coloured objects that attract their attention. They
have no settled government or hereditary chief, merely clustering
round an able hunter or cunning fighter, and accepting him as
law-giver for the time. Marriage is only the purchase of a girl
from her father. Women generally give birth to their offspring in
the forest, severing the navel string with their teeth, and burying
the placenta in the ground. The dead are usually buried in dug
graves, and if men of importance, food, tobacco, and weapons are
buried with the corpse.
[Illustration: Tribunal at Boma. Sentencing a Native to Death for
Cannibalism Committed in the Upper Congo.]
[Sidenote: Cicatrisation.]
The same authority has observed that all the Bantu-speaking forest
folk on the Upper Congo practise cicatrisation. Scores and weals
of skin are raised either by burning or cutting with a knife, and
introducing the irritating juice of a plant into the wound. The
effect of this is to raise on the surface of the body large or small
lumps of skin. Sometimes these raised weals are so small that they
produce almost the effect of tattooing; at other times they are
large, ugly excrescences. The Babira people cicatrise their chests
and stomachs; but in the forest, toward the waters of the Congo,
their faces are hideously scarred. Both men and women of the Bantu
Kavirondo extract the two middle incisor teeth from the lower jaw,
in the belief that if a man retains all his lower incisor teeth he
will be killed in warfare, and that if the wife fails to pull out
her teeth it may cause her husband to perish. For the same reason
of averting ill-fortune, a woman inflicts cuts on the skin of her
forehead, which leave small scars. The women also, as a means of
securing good fortune for themselves and their husbands, make a
number of small incisions, usually in patterns, in the skin of the
abdomen, into which they rub an irritant, so that huge weals rise up
into great lumps of skin. The Kavirondo husband, before setting out
to fight or starting on a journey attended with great risks, usually
makes a few extra incisions on his wife’s body.
[Sidenote: A Gross Fraud.]
The traveller in the Congo will frequently observe repulsive
disfigurements in the natives, and is very liable to attribute to the
cruelty of oppression what are but manifestations of old-time tribal
customs. The danger is accentuated by the organised campaign of
slander now proceeding against the Congo Free State, which does not
scruple to make capital out of such an opportune circumstance.
Almost all the tribes entertain a hazy notion of an invisible Supreme
Being; but they regard themselves as of no account in His estimation,
and direct their petitions for supernatural aid to their fetiches,
which they endeavour to propitiate by gifts through the medium of
their witch doctor or medicine man, a kind of priest who pretends to
possess supernatural powers and abuses the credulity of his followers
to an extraordinary extent.
[Sidenote: Strangling Widows.]
Among the Mangbettus, a dead chief is buried in a sitting posture,
in the centre of a new hut specially built on the banks of a stream.
Five of his widows are strangled and their bodies laid out with their
feet towards their dead husband. The bodies are then covered with
bark-cloth saturated with palm oil, after which the spot is held to
be sacred and must not be approached, under penalty of death, by
anybody but the ruling chief and one attendant.
[Sidenote: The Azandé.]
At the mouth of the Uelle is found the great mass of the Azandé,
a very numerous and important tribe, who range the country from
23 degrees east to 30 degrees west, and from 6 degrees north to
3 degrees south. There are three subdivisions of the Azandé—the
Abandjia, the Avongura, and the Makraka, born fighters all, and
devoted to cannibalism. Some of the Azandé men, however, will eat
only the flesh of their enemies whom they have slain in battle,
declining a diet of human flesh otherwise obtained, though they
all (except such of them as dwell south of the Uelle) forbid their
women and children to touch it.
[Illustration: Kassai Women Returning from Market.]
[Illustration: Batetela Women (Lualaba-Kassai).]
And here arises a curious subject for speculation. The cannibalistic
Azandé are much farther advanced in the arts of peace and war than
many other tribes that are not cannibal—the forest Pigmies, for
instance. Notwithstanding some peculiar customs concerning them, they
hold their women in high regard, and never barter them for goats
and cows, the almost universal practice among other Central African
tribes. Their skill, too, in agriculture, pottery, and in the making
and playing of their musical instruments, seems quite incompatible
with their abhorred anthropophagy.
Each Azandé chief is really a despotic king. His power over his
subjects is absolute, and any one of them who is so unfortunate as
to offend him is simply handed over to the executioner, a procedure
which to the Azandé mind seems the most natural thing in the world.
The courage of the Azandés is beyond praise. They know no fear; and
when assailed by a murderous fire, against which they have no chance
of success, they will rush right up to their enemy and grapple with
him hand to hand, though nine-tenths of their fellows fall by the
way. Their favourite weapons are the lance and light throwing-spear,
and each warrior carries, in addition, a shield.
[Sidenote: Ordeal by Poison.]
Among the Azandé, criminals condemned to death are despatched with
the lance. Occasionally, however, they employ a peculiar method of
trial, known as the ordeal by poison, which precludes this method of
execution. On such occasions the chief acts as judge, and the person
accused is made to drink a cup of poison, the theory being that if
the accusation is baseless the accused survives unharmed. Of course,
the invariable result is that the drinker falls dead within a minute
or so. It is safe to assume that an Azandé chief is sufficiently
intelligent never to subject one of his tribe to this ordeal whose
death he has not previously determined upon.
[Sidenote: Blood-Brotherhood.]
Another singular custom, not peculiar to the Azandé, but common to
all Central African tribes, is the ceremony of blood-brotherhood.
Two men who are in no way related having agreed to become
“blood-brothers,” _i. e._, to live in peace and amity for ever after,
meet in the open air, in the presence of the chiefs and people,
when a small incision is made in the forearm of each “brother,”
sufficiently deep to cause a little blood to flow. Each mutilated one
then licks the blood from the other’s arm, and thenceforth they are
related as brothers.
[Illustration: African Belles. Hairdressing of Sango Women at
Banzyville, 1894 (Ubanghi).]
A slight modification of this ceremony was early conceded by the
various chiefs to accommodate the pardonable squeamishness of
Europeans; and now, instead of licking each other’s blood, the
“brothers” merely rub their incisions together, so that their blood
may mingle. Stanley was made blood-brother to so many African chiefs
that at last his arm was well scored with incisions. Several Belgian
commandants, and a few Englishmen, have submitted to this operation;
always, it is almost needless to remark, from motives of policy,
for it has been proved that Africans regard the rite with real
veneration, and esteem the “brother” they acquire by it at least as
highly as they would a natural brother.
It is not necessary in this place to give the names of all the tribes
of which the native population of the vast Congo region is composed.
They are numerous, and for the most part not easily pronounceable. Of
the tribes not already referred to, the Basundis, Bakuendas, Batekas,
Bayanzis, Bangalas, Batetelas, Mongos, Bantu, and Mombettus are most
prominent. While differing in personal appearance, prowess, habits,
and customs, clearly denoting that they are not descended from a
common stock, there are not wanting certain traits which distinguish
them all. _All_ are polygamous, _nearly all_ are cannibal, and
the morals of the most advanced among them such as shock the
average civilised man upon his first contact with them. Strangely
inconsistent with the low moral sense which prevails among most of
the tribes, some of them punish the crime of adultery with death,
others by horribly mutilating the male offender.
[Sidenote: Cannibalism.]
Cannibalism has long been suppressed by the Congo Government just
as murder is suppressed among civilised communities; but the horrid
practice is still indulged here and there, as opportunity occurs
for evading the vigilance of the authorities. So recently as 1898,
and possibly to the present day, it was necessary to maintain a
constant guard at the cemetery in Leopoldville, the chief station
on the Upper Congo, to prevent the Bangalas unearthing the dead
and carrying them off to feast upon. Several such cases were proved
against them, and capital punishment had to be resorted to in order
to stamp it out. This horrid subject is sickening to contemplate; but
no description, however brief or superficial, of the Congo people,
can ignore a fact which has occasioned, and still presents, such
a tremendous difficulty for civilisation to surmount. This is but
one of many difficulties with which the Congo Free State has had to
contend, and those who sit in judgment upon that State should bear
in mind that the Central African black is not by nature predisposed
to civilisation. Not all the cannibal tribes are so repulsive and
cruel as the Bangalas. Most of them eat no other human flesh but that
of their enemies slain in battle. That source of supply will not
suffice for the Bangalas, who make up its deficiency with prisoners
or slaves. Having broken their victim’s limbs, they place him in a
pool of water, with his head supported just above its surface so that
he may not drown. After having left him in that position for three
days (if he survives so long), he is killed and eaten. Another method
is to behead the victim, singe all the hair from the body over an
ember fire, and then cut it into pieces for cooking. The portions not
immediately eaten are smoke-dried and put aside for another occasion.
The teeth are extracted and made into necklaces by the women.
Sometimes the skin is used for drumheads.
[Illustration: Bakusu Chiefs, Stanleyville.]
[Illustration: Bangala Women.]
[Sidenote: Polygamy.]
It is the general opinion of competent observers that polygamy will
for many years survive the extinction of cannibalism. Nothing but
the spirit of Christianity will overcome that evil. The native mind
cannot be induced by ordinary argument to see any wrong in it. Why a
man should not have just as many wives as he can afford to buy and
keep is too much for his comprehension. He regards woman as created
solely for his pleasure and profit, and trades in her accordingly. He
buys her from her father for one or two goats or a cow; she becomes
the mother of his children, and prepares and cooks his food for him.
That is her career, and she shares it with as many other wives as
her husband’s inclination and resources permit him to buy. When she
dies she is buried—sometimes. Certain Central African tribes regard
burial after death as a superfluous ceremony for women, and place
their bodies where they will be devoured by hyænas and vultures. From
two to three wives is the average _quantum_ of the ordinary Central
African barbarian, and between thirty and forty for a chief.
After their prodigious effort and expense in suppressing the slave
trade, the Belgians set to work to weld into a homogeneous civilised
State a vast region full of warring tribes with attributes such as
these, utterly oblivious to all sense of right and truth as readers
of these pages understand these words.
[Sidenote: A Reflection.]
Looking at the Congolese as they were in 1876, and again as they are
in 1905, who can honestly deny that King Leopold has, so far, well
performed his arduous mission?