Governing, Marketing, and Trading Customs
The making and enforcing of laws--Fines imposed--Division of
fines--Congo week of four days probably named after their
markets--Raids and robberies--Preparing a caravan for the
road--Rules of the road--Arriving at a trading-station--Mode of
trading--Goods given and received.
From this time Satu could not engage in trading expeditions, but devoted
himself to governing the country by helping to make new laws or
administering old ones. As a noble of exalted rank he presided over the
chiefs of his district at the big palavers when difficult cases were
judged, or called them together to give their sanction to new
regulations.
Recently there had been much quarrelling on the markets, resulting in
severe wounds and a few deaths. After much thought and many talks with
his head men, Satu determined to stop these fatal fights by making a law
that in future no guns should be carried on a market-place nor force
used during market-time. He therefore sent for all the chiefs of the
district, and on their arrival laid clearly and forcibly before them the
new law and the reasons for it. He also suggested that for every breach
of the law a fine of three pieces of good cloth should be inflicted.
This was discussed, and it was finally settled that for taking a gun on
the market the fine should be two pieces of cloth, and for originating a
quarrel the fine should be five pieces, and the defaulter to pay all the
damages of the disturbance.
As soon as this was settled Old Plaited-Beard was nominated as the _N
enkondo_, or enforcer of the new law; and Satu divided the flesh of
three pigs among the assembled chiefs; and they accepted it as a proof
of their assent to the new law, and their promised aid in enforcing it.
After this the witnessing chiefs went to a cross-road and one of their
number proclaimed the new law. Lying on the ground he rubbed his mouth
in the dirt, and then striking his knees with his hands he called down a
bitter curse on any one who dared to break this edict.
This ceremony has often a very terrifying effect on the people, and he
will be a bold fellow who risks the curse.
Each chief returned to his village or town, and told all his people of
the new law and its penalties; thus, a day or two after the new rule was
made and promulgated at the cross-roads, every one affected by it had
heard of it.
It was now the duty of Old Plaited-Beard to follow up quickly any
infringement of the new command, no matter who the culprit might be; and
it was not long before a slave of a neighbouring chief carried a gun on
to a market and in a drunken quarrel severely wounded a man. Old
Plaited-Beard, the _N enkondo_, had to bestir himself at once to follow
up the man who had broken the law.
This activity was necessitated by a curious view taken by the natives of
laws in general. From the time a law was broken until the breaker of it
was punished, that particular law did not exist, it was broken, dead;
hence, for instance, any man could take a gun on a market and shoot
another person and go unpunished, because the law against that crime was
dead and could not be mended or brought again to life until the first
breaker of it was punished by paying the penalty. This ensured quick
dealing with culprits, and impartial administration of the law, for if a
chief broke the law he was judged immediately like an ordinary man and
paid the penalty, otherwise anarchy reigned until the law was vindicated
by the infliction of the fine on the law-breaker. To neglect to punish
the chief would mean that any one could repeat the crime with impunity,
for the law was dead.
The slave was quickly caught and brought before the chiefs; but as a
master is responsible for the actions of his slave, it was really the
owner who was on his trial and had to pay the fine of five pieces of
cloth and compensate the wounded man. On meeting all the demands the
master received his slave again, and did with him as he liked. The slave
was his property in the same sense as his goats, fowls or pigs, and
after cruelly punishing the man he sold him away from his wife and
children to a distant tribe of people, and we never saw nor heard of him
again.
The fines imposed on law-breakers are periodically divided among the
chiefs of the district. They are one source of their income, and repay
them for the trouble of administering the laws and governing the people.
Satu, of course, took a larger share of the fines than the other chiefs.
He not only presided over the palavers, but he also acted as treasurer
and stored the fines until the time of division, and if he had failed to
give the other chiefs their proper share at stated intervals, they would
have refused to judge cases with him, and the country would have quickly
become unmanageable and disorderly.
A share of the fines, however, would not support Satu as a chief and
noble; consequently he had to turn his attention to trading on the
markets and with the white men down at the coast. Bakula on account of
his smartness was often employed by his chief to sell pigs, cloth,
goats, gunpowder and other goods on the markets.
There are four days in a Congo week--_Konzo_, _N kenge_, _N sona_ and _N
kandu_, and these are also the names of the markets held on those days.
All the markets on a certain day all over our part of the Congo are
called _Konzo_, and all the markets next day are called _N kenge_, and
so on. These markets are all held in different places, _e. g._ all the
_Konzo_ markets are held in different places from all the rest of the
markets on the other three successive days; and these markets are so
arranged that one in four comes within two to five miles of every town
or village on the Lower Congo.
Thus one of the _Konzo_ markets was only four miles from our town; the
nearest _N kenge_ one was nine miles away from us, but near some other
towns, the nearest _N sona_ market was sixteen miles away, and the _N
kandu_ market was nearly twenty miles distant from us, but not far from
some other villages. Again, some of these markets were famous for
certain articles that were always to be found on sale at them. For
instance, at one _N kenge_ a person could always find pigs, and buyers
and sellers of pigs consequently travelled to that particular _N kenge_;
another _N kenge_ was noted for pots, calabashes and sauce-pans. One _N
sona_ would be noted for cloth and another for palm-wine. At all the
markets cassava roots, _kwanga_, or native bread, peanuts, beans and
various other food-stuffs were on sale, besides the speciality of the
market.
There are also five important markets that are held every eight days,
not on the same but on the successive eighth days. These are called _N
kenge_ _Elembelo_, held not far from the King’s town; _Konzo Kinsuka_,
about two days north of the previous one; two days farther north is
_Konzo Kikandikila_; three days north of that is _Konzo Makwekwe_, and
about another two days north, but on the other side of the great river,
is the _N kenge N kila_. Perhaps these great markets are to be found
well established much farther north and south of the points I have
named, and are only limited by the boundaries of the old kingdom of
Congo, which formerly included Landana on the north and Bihe on the
south.
While there were stringent laws against fighting, raiding, quarrelling
and capturing people on the markets, no law could be enforced to guard
small, unprotected parties on the way to or from the markets. Rowdy
rascals would lie in wait and pounce on any defenceless child or adult,
and, hurrying them away to some distant place, sell them into slavery,
to the intense grief of their relatives.
I heard Bakula once tell how his young sister was sent by her mother to
buy a saucepan at a market only four miles from home. She had bought the
vessel and was returning to her town in the company of some neighbours,
when, in a forest, she strayed from the path and was never heard of
again, although the whole town turned out to search the forest.
Now and again some of these daring, reckless scamps were caught, and the
whole countryside would wreak its vengeance on them, for there was
scarcely a family but had lost one or more of its members or some of its
goods by these kidnappings and robberies.
Bakula and some of the men were sent to the various markets far and near
to buy up rubber and tusks of ivory. Sometimes they would take pigs and
goats to sell, and having sold them would then buy what rubber and ivory
there were for sale on the market. At other times they would take cloth
and gunpowder to give in exchange for those products that white men
bought at the coast--rubber and ivory. Occasionally they had to go to
distant markets to buy pigs for cloth, and then travel to another market
to exchange the pigs for rubber, peanuts and tusks.
Thus the rubber and ivory were gradually accumulated by the richer
natives, and when enough were gathered a large caravan of men, from
eighty to a hundred and twenty in number, was dispatched to the trading
houses at the coast. As the natives could neither read nor write, it
needed a clear head and a complicated system of knots and notches to
keep a record of what was spent in pigs, goats, cloth and gunpowder in
buying up the little stores of rubber and ivory on the markets. A man
would tie a knot in a string for every pig sold, another string was used
for every goat, another for every keg of gunpowder, and a notch was cut
in a stick for every piece of cloth. By counting the knots and notches
he knew just how much the ivory, rubber and peanuts had cost him; he
also knew how much each man would “eat” on the road, and therefore he
was quite able to ask of, and only accept from, the white traders a
price that would pay for his stuff, meet the expenses of his carriers,
and leave him a fair margin of profit for his risk of capital and
trouble.
After months of petty trading on the markets, sufficient rubber, peanuts
and ivory were collected to warrant a journey to the coast. Satu himself
could not go, so he sent one of his head men, and told him how much he
wanted for the produce he was sending, which would require forty men to
carry it. Satu’s agent had ten loads, and neighbouring chiefs and head
men joined the caravan with their porters, so that when all were ready
to start there were nearly one hundred and forty men and lads in the
party, and as most had knives, guns or spears they were well able to
protect themselves on the long, wearisome road.
When all was arranged for the journey a “medicine man,” named _N gang’ a
mpungu_, or the Luck-giver, was called. He came with his bag, containing
pieces of leopard’s skin, hyæna’s skin, lion’s skin, and, in fact, a
piece of the skin of every strong animal he could procure, and also some
albino’s hair; and he carried with him his wooden fetish image with
grass tied round its neck, knotted back and front.
The “medicine man” sat in the middle of the caravan, which stood round
him with their bundles tied ready for the journey, and put the fetish
image in front of him. The _nganga_ spoke to the image, telling it to
give the traders good luck on the road and at the trading-station. A man
then held a fowl by the head and the “medicine man” took it by the body
and cut its head off and let the blood drop on the image. After this the
fowl was cooked and eaten outside the houses; and during and after this
ceremony no one could enter a house or turn back from the road.
The fowl having been eaten, a shell was brought containing very small
pieces of everything that was in the fetish bag of charms, and this
shell was placed on the road by which the men had to travel to the
coast. Every one in the caravan had then to step carefully over the
shell, for if any one had touched it he would not have been allowed to
proceed or he would die on the journey. Having passed safely over the
shell of charms, we were not to look back or our luck would have been
destroyed. Bakula performed these various rites in a very half-hearted
manner, for he was losing faith in them.
As we were starting the members of our party shouted to the people left
in the town: “Good health to you, and let no one follow us to give us
bad luck in trading”; and those left behind said: “Good journey to you,
and do not any of you return to bewitch us, or carry us to sell to the
white traders.” The idea behind these requests was that any living
person who is a _ndoki_, or witch, can visit a place by his _nkwiya_, or
evil spirit, and take a person away, or work them great harm by his
witchcraft. Hence they live in constant fear of each other, and all
their charms, fetishes, and witch-doctors are employed in protecting
them from one another. Before Bakula reached the shell his mother came
hurrying towards him, and, pretending to spit on his face, said: “May
you have all that you desire, may you have happiness and good luck, and
may your words find favour with the people.” It was her mode of saying
farewell to her son.
We were now fairly started on the road, and as all the omens were in our
favour and the _nganga_ had performed his ceremonies without the
slightest hitch, everybody was in good spirits, and more ready to laugh
and sing than grumble at the weight of the loads. Many points of
etiquette had to be remembered as we passed through the numerous towns
and villages on our road to the coast.
On passing through a village we were not allowed to let our sticks touch
the ground or we should destroy the luck of that place and that would
mean a heavy fine. While in the open country or bush many of the men
hitched up their cloths (exposing their thighs) to give greater freedom
to their legs; but on passing through a town they dropped their cloths
out of respect to the town, or otherwise they would have been taken to
the chief’s house and well beaten. In passing through any town every
carrier was careful not to put his load on his head, as that was
regarded as an exhibition of insolent pride, and would have aroused the
anger of the towns-people, and a fight, with heavy fines, would have
resulted. If we sat resting on the ground in any town we had to be
careful not to shake off the dust from our cloths until we got outside
the town, as such an action was regarded as putting a curse on the
place.
Tolls had to be paid for using all bridges and canoes in crossing the
larger rivers in our path; and a tax, according to the number of
carriers and the value of their loads, was demanded by the overlords of
the districts through which we passed. The non-observance of these
customs and points of etiquette led sometimes to quarrels and fights
between insolent travellers and insulted townsfolk.
On our arrival at the coast we were met by a native interpreter, who had
visited our town and given Satu twenty pieces of cloth on the
understanding that he was to have the privilege of selling our chief’s
“trade produce” to one of the white traders. This interpreter showed us
much hospitality, hoping thereby to be seller for the whole caravan.
The morning after our arrival we sorted Satu’s stuff into three
lots--ten loads of ivory, eight loads of peanuts, and twenty-two loads
of rubber. It was decided to sell the rubber first, so the men carried
their loads to the trader’s store accompanied by the interpreter. The
following conversation then took place, the white man and the
interpreter talking Portuguese, and the native trader and the
interpreter talking the vernacular--
Interpreter to white man: “How much for this rubber?”
The rubber was carefully examined and weighed.
White man: “I will give 200 pieces of cloth.”
Interpreter to native trader: “He will give you 80 pieces of cloth.”
Native trader: “That is not enough, I want 170 pieces.”
Interpreter to white man: “They want 250 pieces of cloth.”
White man: “That is too much; I will give 210 pieces.”
Interpreter to native trader: “He will give you 90 pieces.”
After much haggling the white man reached his limit of 220 pieces; and
after much talking, lasting nearly the whole day, the native trader
brought his price down to 150 pieces, and the interpreter worked his up
gradually to that amount. Being now agreed, the interpreter told the
white man to take the rubber, and pay 150 pieces to Satu’s agent. Satu
had instructed his agent not to take less than 135 pieces of cloth, and
had also informed him what goods he was to select from the store. Having
received fifteen pieces more than they anticipated, they reckoned that
they had sold to great advantage.
Having settled the price, we went over to the store to draw the goods.
Arranged round the store were the trade goods: cloths of various
colours, lengths and qualities; plates, dishes, basins, ewers, mugs,
cups, glasses, looking-glasses of different sizes, bright beads of
gorgeous colours, machets, knives and guns. In another store was a huge
pile of bags of salt, and isolated from the other houses was a store
full of gunpowder.
Satu’s agent, according to his instructions, picked out fifty pieces of
cloth; gunpowder to the value of fifty pieces, and fifty pieces worth of
beads, mugs, trinkets, rum and gin.
All these articles were carried over to the shed in which we were living
while transacting our business with the trader. Then the ivory was sold
in the same manner, and, the price having been settled, guns, powder,
liquor, blankets, cloth, etc., were selected up to the agreed amount.
The sale of the peanuts was a very simple matter. We put the nuts on the
scale, and salt was weighed against them, and when they balanced a gaudy
coloured plate was put on top and the sale was completed, _i. e._ we
received weight for weight in salt for our peanuts and a make-weight of
a plate on top of each load.
[Illustration: WHITE TRADER AND NATIVE TRADERS AND THEIR PRODUCE.]
Every article in the white man’s store had a price on it. It was either
equivalent to one piece of cloth, or to two or more pieces, or so many
of it equalled the value of one piece. The first kind of cloth taken to
Congo was probably of a common quality worth about 2_s_. for a piece of
twelve yards. By and by other qualities were taken, and they were
reckoned as equal to one and a half, two, or three pieces of the
original quality. Then the natives wanted other things besides cloth,
and as they were introduced the traders put a cloth value on them, _e.
g._ six knives were equal to one piece of cloth, eight looking-glasses
ditto, four strings of one kind of beads, or twenty strings of another
sort, were priced at one piece; and thus through the whole list of goods
stocked by the traders.
If a trader priced his goods high it was quickly known, and his store
was avoided by the natives. They always went to that store where they
received the best prices for their produce, where the articles in the
store were cheapest, and where they were treated properly.
We remained ten days at the coast, selling the rubber, peanuts and ivory
our caravan had brought from the interior. Some of the native traders
were dissatisfied with the prices offered by the white trader, or were
suspicious that the interpreter was retaining too much for himself, and
for these reasons went to other white men and employed other
interpreters; others of our party thought the prices of the store goods
were too high, and went to those traders whom they thought sold their
barter goods at reasonable rates.
It took us, as I have already stated, ten long, wearisome days of
haggling, bargaining and chaffering to dispose of our produce to the
best advantage. During this time our food supply was running low, and we
often had not half enough to eat. Food at the coast was very dear, and
we were all glad when our business was concluded and we could turn our
faces homeward.
The return journey was accomplished without any incident more serious
than the breaking of a few china ornaments belonging to Old
Plaited-Beard, who had seen such things in the King’s house and had
instructed his men to buy him similar ones with some of the produce he
had sent for sale. The man, however, who carried them slipped on some
huge boulders while crossing a river, and down he fell, cutting his own
knees and smashing the fragile contents of his load. The old man, when
he saw the results of the accident, did not blame his carrier of
carelessness, but rather accused some one of bewitching him and thus
causing the destruction of the goods. And with a look of hate in his
eyes and a curse on his lips he threatened to punish the witch.
All the men and lads of our party were glad to be again among their own
families. During the whole journey to and from the coast, and while at
the trading centre, they had eaten very sparingly, as food was heavy to
carry and very dear on the road; but now that they had returned they
made amends for lost time and hungry days. Huge dishes of food quickly
disappeared, and those who had become thin during the twenty-five days
of short rations began to fill out again, and those who were feeling
exhausted by the heavy loads they carried up and down hill and along
rugged, narrow tracks began, after some refreshing, restful sleeps, to
feel strong and active again and ready for the next trading expedition.