A TALK WITH KING MOMBO’S SLAVES—WHY SLAVES DO NOT RUN AWAY—VARIOUS
FEATURES OF THE TRAFFIC—THE CANNIBALS OF THE INTERIOR—MY DAILY
OCCUPATIONS.
After the feast the slaves and I became more friendly than ever. The
following evening they all came to see me. I told them to fill their
pipes and sit down—that I was going to light the pipe of every one with
my sticks giving fire. The matches gave them great delight. Some wanted
their pipes lighted several times, but I could not afford this great
extravagance. I did not want to run short of matches.
We made a big blazing fire and I stood under the little piazza having
Regundo, Oshoria, Ngola, Ogoola, Quabi, and the medicine-man by me. I
had made friends with the medicine-man by giving him four of my long
hairs. The men and women and children formed a group in the shape of a
horseshoe.
At first nobody uttered a word, but all looked at me, and I said with a
loud voice, so that every one could hear me: “I have wandered in this
great forest for a long time—can any one here tell me how large it is,
and where it ends?” Then all shouted at the same time: “No one amongst
us can tell where this forest ends, but we think that it goes as far as
the country where the sun rises in the morning.”
A queer-looking slave tattooed all over then got up and said: “Oguizi,
it is so. Here are slaves that have come from very far countries, but
none of them has ever been out of this great forest. There are prairies,
but as soon as you get out of them you are once more in the forest.
Those prairies are like the islands, found in the rivers. When you leave
them there is water all round; when we leave the prairie there is the
forest all round.”
Next another slave rose and said: “Oguizi, I had to walk many months in
the forest before I came here. I was sold from tribe to tribe, and I had
to follow many of the paths. Sometimes I journeyed by rivers, at other
times by land. Once I was given with four other men as payment for
canoes. At another time I was sold for some salt—and still another, I
was exchanged for a tusk of ivory. It took me five rainy seasons [years]
on the way before I came here to belong to King Mombo. I thought all the
time I was travelling that I was coming to the country where the sun
set. King Mombo took me to see the big water [the sea]. I was much
frightened when I saw the big waves strike the land. I made sure they
would break the land and engulf me, but what frightened me more was to
see the sun disappear under the water. Then it became dark. In my
country we had never heard of the sea.”
I asked him where then he thought the rivers were going to; and he
replied: “Our people thought they became smaller and smaller as they ran
down and that they finally disappeared in the earth.”
Another slave who then rose said: “I was sold on account of witchcraft.
The people of my tribe thought I was a sorcerer. I was not, but they
sold me, and before I came here, I passed through many tribes. I am so
glad I am here, for I am contented. My only fear is that perhaps one of
these days King Mombo will sell me. He has been kind to me, for he has
given me a nice wife, and I have fine children, and I am happy to know
that my children cannot be sold, for the children of us slaves are free.
They are called ‘bambais.’ That is the name the free people give us,—and
the ‘bambais’ remain under their protection, and have to fight with the
men to whom their parents belonged; they belong to his clan and tribe,
but if King Mombo dies before we do, his slaves will be divided among
his brothers, and if his brothers are dead, among nephews or the nearest
of kin.”
He pointed out to me his wife and children, and had them come and sit by
me.
“When you are on the way from one tribe to another, don’t you sometimes
have chances to escape?” I asked.
“What is the use of trying to escape?” they replied. “Some men, it is
true, are foolish enough to try. But when you run away from your tribe
or from your master, you have no friends. Every man is against you. When
you have a master, he is like your father; he takes your part. A slave
that runs away is sure to be captured and be made a slave again.
Sometimes, when they think they are to be killed, they run away to save
their lives.”
One of the slaves then rose and said: “Oguizi, I do not come from a far
country,—only four tribes inland from here,—but I was sold by my
parents.”
“What?” said I. “Sold by your parents?”
“It is so, Oguizi. Not only in my tribe, but in many other tribes,
parents sell their children.”
“It is so, Oguizi,” all shouted with one voice. “Yo, yo, yo, it is so.”
Then the slave continued: “When we are small and helpless, our parents
love us, and would not part from us, but as we grow to be big boys and
can help ourselves, they often sell us. This is the custom among many
tribes.”
“Do they sell their daughters also?” I asked.
“Yes, they do, but not as often as they do their sons, because when they
give their daughters in marriage, the suitor has to give them one or
more slaves for her. The more daughters they have, the richer they
become. A man has to give several slaves in order to marry the daughter
of a chief.”
Then another slave got up and said: “I was given away in that way. My
old master married one of King Mombo’s daughters, and I was given to the
king with three other slaves, as payment, before he could take her away.
Oguizi, when people want to sell their children or grown people, they
find plenty of excuses. The best of all is that you are a sorcerer, or a
witch; people would rather be sold as slaves than be killed as
sorcerers. But people cannot hold slaves of their own tribe, their
slaves must always belong to some other tribe.”
“What do people buy slaves with?” I asked.
“With guns, brass kettles, copper rods, iron bars, beads, and other
things. Far inland, sometimes a man is sold for salt.”
At these words, a slave got up and said: “I was sold for salt and
nothing else. My family wanted to get rid of me.”
After this, Regundo himself rose and said: “King Mombo is very good to
us all. He has given to each of us a wife, and when a man has no wife,
he buys one for him, and if one of our women has no husband, he buys a
man for her. He loves me, for I was given to him when a child as part
payment by my former master who married his daughter. He had to give
four more slaves to him before he took her to his village.
“Our wives attend to the cultivation of the soil, go fishing, and smoke
the fish. They prepare food for our master. We men cut down the trees
and burn them, for you see there are no open spaces in the forest.
Cutting down trees is very hard work. Only our wives cultivate the soil.
Plantain trees and manioc are only planted once in the same spot. Often
the wives of King Mombo come here. They also cultivate the soil.”
One old slave said: “Very few of us like to go to King Mombo, for fear
that if somebody should die while we are there we might be accused of
witchcraft, and our master might take it into his head to kill us
without trial, or to sell us. But our master always takes the part of
the slaves he loves and insists that they shall be tried by the poison
ordeal, the ‘mboundou,’ the same as if they were freemen.”
Then they all looked at the moon and thought it was time to go to bed,
and said good-night. When they left I said to them, “Come again
to-morrow evening,” to which they replied, “We will come.”
The following evening the slaves came again and seated themselves on the
ground. They said never a word, but kept gazing at me and looking at the
Waterbury clock by turns.
Then I said to them: “Friends of mine, yesterday we talked about the big
forest and about yourselves. Now tell me all about the people who live
in the great forest.”
A big fellow, tall and slender, rose. He was tattooed all over and had
teeth that were filed sharp to a point. It was believed by all that he
had come from the furthest part of the interior of the continent. After
a deep silence he said: “There are many tribes of men in the forests,
Oguizi. Some are fierce and warlike. There are also tribes of men that
are cannibals, who eat human flesh. These are the fiercest of all. They
are always fighting, and they eat many of the prisoners they capture,
for they prefer eating to selling them. They are great, powerful men.
Their villages are fenced outside with long poles, and on the top of
many poles are seen human skulls and skulls of wild beasts. They have
many powerful idols and are great witchcraft men. They are great smiths,
and make many terrible implements of war. Their spears are barbed. They
carry crossbows and use poisoned arrows; they have also many
terrible-looking axes of strange shape, which they can throw through the
air and with the sharp edge split in two the skulls of their enemies.
Their shields are square and are often made of the skin of the elephant;
they are as hard as iron.
[Illustration: “_A big fellow, tall and slender, rose. He was tattooed
all over_”]
“A cannibal bought me. He belonged to the Osheba tribe. I was dreadfully
afraid that I should be eaten up, but a few days afterwards he sold me
for some pieces of copper and beads to a man who belonged to a
neighboring tribe that was not cannibal.”
“Do you know by what name those cannibal tribes are called?” I asked.
“I know the names of two of them,” he replied. “One is called Fan, the
other Osheba.”
“We have an Osheba man and woman amongst us, also a Fan and his wife,”
they all shouted at once. Regundo told these two couples to get up and
come before me. I looked at them. The men were fierce-looking fellows
and as fine negroes as I had ever seen. They were very tall, over six
feet in height, and their skin was of the color of chocolate. Their
front teeth were filed to a fine point and colored black. The mouths of
these two cannibals looked horrid when they laughed. Each wore a long
queue of hair hanging down his back. They wore round their ankles two
large, heavy iron rings. Their bodies were tattooed. They had been owned
by King Mombo for over twelve years, and were amongst his bravest
warriors. When they went out to fight they would not use guns, but armed
themselves with barbed spears which they made themselves, turning the
iron into steel by forging it in charcoal. Their shields were made of
the hide of an elephant that they had trapped in a pit.
I asked them where they came from, and they said that their village was
situated on the shores of a big river, that they had been sold for two
brass kettles, and had come to King Mombo all the way by water, being
bartered from one tribe to another, each tribe giving more and more
goods for them as they came down the river, the price of slaves
increasing always as they come nearer the sea.
Here an Ishogo slave got up, and said: “Oguizi, the strangest people who
live in the forest are the Obongos, a race of pigmies. They never grow
tall, never plant anything like other men, and live only on fruits,
berries, and nuts. They wander continually in the forest in search of
these, and do not even live one moon [month] at the same place.
“They have little villages, but their houses are not like ours, they are
so small”—and, raising his hands to a certain height, I understood that
the houses of the pigmies were not more than three feet in height, and
the doors or openings of these through which they go inside were not
more than twelve or fifteen inches from the ground.
“How can that be?” I said. “Then the Obongos must be scarcely more than
a foot in height.”
“They are taller than that,” the Ishogo replied, “but when they enter
their houses they lie flat on their stomachs and creep like snakes, or
bend very low.” Then, making a gesture with his hands, he gave me to
understand that they were between three feet and a half and four feet
tall.
Then an Apinji and an Oshango slave rose and testified to the truth of
the narrative and the Apinji said: “These little people are called
Ashoongas by us.”
“Who amongst all the tribes are the best fighters?” I inquired.
“The cannibals first,” they all shouted—“then the Bakolai, then the
Shekianis.”
“Do all the tribes when they make war kill only warriors?”
“No,” they replied; “they kill old men, women, and children also.”
It was getting late, and time for them to disperse, and as they rose to
do so they gave a last suspicious glance at the Waterbury clock.
The mode of life I led on the plantation was the same every day. I got
up before sunrise and bathed in a little stream of clear water running
in the forest at a short distance from my little cabin. By that time
Regundo’s wife had my breakfast ready. The meal varied according to the
game on hand—but I always had plantain. Immediately after this early
breakfast, generally about 6.30 A. M., I started for the forest.
Some days I went for birds, others for butterflies and other insects,
and once in a while for big game. I generally returned towards noon,
then had another meal—after which I went into the shade of trees and
stuffed the birds I had killed. I often went again into the forest in
the afternoon. I had a very busy life, and very little time to feel
lonely. Every morning when I awoke I was filled with the hope of
discovering some new animals or birds. When I had time to spare I
studied the habits of the people, and their ways of thinking. Still,
though I was much occupied, I often thought of my friends, and at times
was homesick enough.
Part of my time was also spent in learning from different slaves the
languages of their tribe, so that I might be able to speak to people
during my wanderings. None, of course, had a written language. So I had
to write the words, with my pencil, on paper. I made a sort of
dictionary, writing the words as I understood the people to pronounce
them. There were many dialects, belonging, no doubt, to a single
language in former times. They had not many words, as their needs were
few, but all these languages had grammatical forms, handed down from one
generation to another.