OBTAINED BY THE PUNITIVE EXPEDITION IN 1897, AND NOW IN GENERAL PITT
RIVERS'S MUSEUM AT FARNHAM, DORSET.
Benin is situated on the Guinea Coast, near the mouth of the Niger, in
latitude 6·12 north, and longitude 5 to 6 east.
It was discovered by the Portuguese at the end of the fourteenth or
commencement of the fifteenth centuries. The Portuguese were followed
by the Dutch and Swedes, and in 1553 the first English expedition
arrived on the coast, and established a trade with the king, who
received them willingly.
Benin at that time appears by a Dutch narrative to have been quite
a large city, surrounded by a high wall, and having a broad street
through the centre. The people were comparatively civilized. The king
possessed a number of horses which have long since disappeared and
become unknown. Faulkner, in 1825, saw three solitary horses belonging
to the king, which he says no one was bold enough to ride.
In 1702 a Dutchman, named Nyendaeel, describes the city, and speaks
of the human sacrifices there. He says that the people were great
makers of ornamental brass work in his day, which they seem to have
learnt from the Portuguese. It was visited by Sir Richard Burton,
who went there to try to put a stop to human sacrifices, at the time
he was consul at Fernando Po. In 1892 it was visited by Captain H.
L. Galloway, who speaks of the city as possessing only the ruins of
its former greatness; the abolition of the slave trade had put a
stop to the prosperity of the place, and the king had prohibited any
intercourse with Europeans. The town had been reduced to a collection
of huts, and its trade had dwindled down to almost nil. The houses have
a sort of impluvium in the centre of the rooms, which has led some to
suppose that their style of architecture may have been derived from the
Roman colonies of North Africa.
In 1896 an expedition, consisting of some 250 men, with presents and
merchandise, left the British settlements on the coast, and endeavoured
to advance towards Benin city. The expedition was conducted with
courage and perseverance, but with the utmost rashness. Almost
unarmed, neglecting all ordinary precautions, contrary to the advice of
the neighbouring chiefs, and with the express prohibition of the King
of Benin to advance, they marched straight into an ambuscade which had
been prepared for them in the forest on each side of the road, and as
their revolvers were locked up in their boxes at the time, they were
massacred to a man with the exception of two, Captain Boisragon and
Mr. Locke, who, after suffering the utmost hardships, escaped to the
British settlements on the coast to tell the tale.
Within five weeks after the occurrence, a punitive expedition entered
Benin, on 18th January, 1897, and took the town. The king fled, but
was afterwards brought back and made to humiliate himself before his
conquerers, and his territory annexed to the British crown.
The city was found in a terrible state of bloodshed and disorder,
saturated with the blood of human sacrifices offered up to their Juju,
or religious rites and customs, for which the place had long been
recognised as the "city of blood."
What may be hereafter the advantages to trade resulting from this
expedition it is difficult to say, but the point of chief interest in
connection with the subject of this paper was the discovery, mostly in
the king's compound and the Juju houses, of numerous works of art in
brass, bronze, and ivory, which, as before stated, were mentioned by
the Dutchman, Van Nyendaeel, as having been constructed by the people
of Benin in 1700.
These antiquities were brought away by the members of the punitive
expedition and sold in London and elsewhere. Little or no account of
them could be given by the natives, and as the expedition was as usual
unaccompanied by any scientific explorer charged with the duty of
making inquiries upon matters of historic and antiquarian interest,
no reliable information about them could be obtained. They were found
buried and covered with blood, some of them having been used amongst
the apparatus of their Juju sacrifices.
A good collection of these antiquities, through the agency of Mr.
Charles Read, F.S.A., has found its way into the British Museum; others
no doubt have fallen into the hands of persons whose chief interest in
them has been as relics of a sensational and bloody episode, but their
real value consists in their representing a phase of art--and rather
an advanced stage--of which there is no actual record, although no
doubt we cannot be far wrong in attributing it to European influence,
probably that of the Portuguese some time in the sixteenth century.