importance. The most common of these is a wooden harp with strings made
of a vegetable fibre, which respond to the fingers with tinkling notes.
There is also a xylophone consisting of a row of parallel wooden bars,
graduated in length, and placed upon a base of two parallel banana
stocks, which lie upon the ground. Banana stocks are used because
they are non-conducting. The wooden bars are hammered with sticks. The
notes are pleasant; but the Fang do not make much of it, as it is not
sufficiently noisy to impress them. There is still another in common use;
a harp with a single string, the sound of which is like the magnified
music of a Jew’s-harp.
Their singing, like their instrumental music, has not much “tune” to
it, but there is always a stirring rhythm and a certain weird and
touching quality, which impressed me the more because I could never quite
understand it,—the same elusive charm that characterizes the singing of
the negroes of the Southern States. I do not refer to the negro songs
composed by white men, which are entirely different, but the melodies
that the negro sings at his work. The native songs are of the nature of
chants, and turn upon several notes of a minor scale. But it is not quite
our minor scale. There is one prominent and characteristic note, which I
confess defied me, though it may have been a minor third slightly flat. I
found it very difficult to reduce their songs to musical notation.
The words of most of the songs are improvised by the leading voice, and
have a regular refrain in which all join. But if they wish to sing in
chorus, as in their dance-songs, any words will serve the purpose and the
same sentence may be repeated for an hour. “Our old cow she crossed the
road” were luminous with propriety and sentiment in comparison with the
words that they will sometimes sing in endless repetition. “The leopard
caught the monkey’s tail,” “The roots grow underneath the ground,” are
samples of their songs. Their canoe-songs I like best of all. The rhythm
is appropriate and one almost hears the sound of the paddles. They sing
nearly all the time as they use the paddle or the oar, and on a long
journey they say it makes the hard work easier. If they should take a
white man on a journey and, not being his regular workmen, should expect
a “dash”—a fee, or present, in African vernacular—the leading voice will
sing the white man’s praises on the journey, alluding in particular to
his benevolence, while the others all respond, seeking thus by barefaced
flattery and good-natured importunity to shame the meanness out of him.
Dancing, both with old and young, takes the place in general of our games
and sports, except that the men also hunt. The music used is that of
the two drums already described, especially the upright one, and they
usually sing as they dance. They can scarcely listen to the music without
indulging the movements of the dance.
Men and women never dance together; and they have nothing like our
conventional dances. There is something of the freedom and unrestrained
movements of the Italian and Hungarian peasant-dances; yet in comparison
with these latter the African dance is a very uncouth performance,
though frequently difficult, and extremely grotesque. Its peculiar
characteristic is that the feet are no more active than any other part of
the body; arms, shoulders, abdomen, head—all the parts and every muscle
are set in motion, sometimes including even the eyes and the tongue.
Their champions we would call contortionists rather than dancers.
Sometimes famous dancers from different towns, in fantastic and absurd
decorations and dress, will contend for the championship in a contest of
several days. They dance in the middle of the street before an audience
of almost the entire population of the different towns seated on the
ground on either side of the street. The music is not adapted to the
dance, but the dance to the changing music. The musicians have hard work,
and they make it harder. Streaming with perspiration they beat the drums
with changing time and increasing rapidity until they are almost as
nearly exhausted as the dancers, and one might think that the music had
gone mad. Without doubt the native dance is a fine bodily exercise; and
they dance so much that the exercise is perhaps the chief factor in the
development of the strength and athletic form of the native.
The women dance on the moonlight nights, and often through the entire
night. They all sing as they dance, most of them standing in a circle
while individuals one after another step into the middle of the circle
and lead the performance. The men are standing around looking on and when
a leader finishes her part one or several of her gentlemen friends will
step into the circle and embrace her. These dances have always appeared
innocent enough to me. But the native Christians, who know better than I,
and who also know the side-scenes that invariably attend the dance though
not a part of it, uniformly condemn the dance, and say that no Christian
ought to take part in it.
They dance on all festive occasions—a betrothal, a marriage, a victory
in war, the end of a war, or the end of a term of mourning for the dead.
The men decorate themselves with paint and feathers, and often they wear
around their ankles strings of native bells, consisting of the dried hull
of a certain nut, into which while still green they insert small stones,
which make a peculiarly metallic and pleasant noise.
They usually form in two long lines in the street, with the drums
across one end. Some great dancer will perform in the middle, down
the lines and back, sometimes in graceful movements, and sometimes in
contortions almost fiendish until his body seems to have no shape at all
“distinguishable in member, joint or limb.” Sometimes they all move
with him down the street and back. They sing and shout as they dance,
shaking the bells on their ankles, and occasionally all together suddenly
stamping upon the ground. They mark the time to perfection, and the
effect of so many men keeping the time perfectly while their movements
differ, together with the volume of wild song and shouting is quite
fascinating.
The chief dance of the men is that of their Secret Society, which is
performed only on very dark nights, the women being compelled to retire
to their houses and close the door lest they see it and die. In this
dance they deliberately try to be unhuman and hideous in their movements.
I once witnessed this dance when I had been but a short time in Africa
and did not know the serious nature of my intrusion; and I suppose I came
much nearer suffering violence at their hands than I knew at the time.
It is the height of indiscretion to show unnecessary contempt for native
customs, or to disregard their feelings for the sake of satisfying mere
curiosity. But I was not aware of their feelings until it was too late to
retreat.
Hearing the drumming and the roar of the gorilla-man I knew they were
having a characteristic dance and with a lantern in my hand I started
along the bush-path to see it and entered the town before they were aware
of my approach. The offense was double. I had turned the light upon the
performance, possibly allowing women to see the gorilla-man through the
chinks of the houses; and I myself had defied him by looking upon him
with uninitiated eyes, for which according to custom I ought to die. He
approached me whirling about and contorting his body, roaring the while
like a gorilla, and brandished his sword very close to my face, to one
side and then the other. But I was not intimidated for the sufficient
reason that I did not believe he would touch me. Then, as I stood my
ground, he thought to terrorize me by his supernatural powers, which the
native would fear far more than a sword. He brought out a number of human
bones and laying them on the ground before me he performed a ceremony
which was supposed to bring down upon me the wrath of his ancestors.
But of the two dangers I was rather more afraid of the sword than the
ancestors. They all saw my indifference and concluded that I had with me
some fetish stronger than theirs and powerful for my protection; and they
resumed the dance while I looked on, having first accommodated them by
turning down the light. It was a strange sight, these black phantom-forms
darting to and fro in the dark, like flitting shadows often with a
wriggling, reptile motion, and shrieking the while like hobgoblins.
I have already spoken at length of the African’s love of story-telling,
and have given many examples. The following two stories are types of a
large class.
The elephant and the gorilla hate each other, for each thinks himself
king of the forest. Meeting one day in the bush-path, each refused to
step aside to let the other pass.
“Let me pass,” said the elephant; “for these woods belong to me.”
The gorilla beat his breast and made a noise like the sound of a drum.
Then he replied: “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh! These woods do not belong to you. I am
master here.”
The elephant would not move aside; so the gorilla broke down a tree and
beat the elephant to death. And the proof of it is that the prostrate
tree was found beside the body of the dead elephant.
The sun and moon are great enemies. They are the same age but each
claims to be older than the other. The sun is the friend of the people
and brings daylight and gladness. The moon hates people and devours them
like insects; she brings darkness, witchcraft and death. One day the sun
and the moon had a palaver and got very angry at each other. The palaver,
as usual, began by each one claiming to be older than the other.
The moon said: “Who are you? You are nobody, for you are alone and have
no family. My equal? Indeed! Look at these countless stars. They are all
my people; but you are alone.”
The sun replied: “Oh, Moon, mother of darkness and of witchcraft! I would
have as many people as you if you had not killed them all. But now I have
taken the people of the world, men, women and children, to be my family;
and I love them all.”
XII
FETISHES
The Fang, like other tribes of West Africa, have a name for God and they
conceive that He is a personal being, who made the heavens and the earth,
and created man. The one thing that they will say of God and the only
fixed idea regarding Him is that He made everything. The world, even in
the mind of the African, is an effect which demands a cause; and that
cause is God. But since they have no conception of God’s eternity, by the
same principle of causality they must account for God Himself. So God has
a father and a grandfather. This notion of a divine ancestry is evidently
an effort of the mind to grope its way back to a First Cause.
They do not fear God, and they certainly do not love or reverence Him.
Nor do I know that they ever worship Him. The transient observer among
them sees wooden images, evidently objects of worship, and supposes that
they are images of God; but in most cases, if not in all, these are
images of ancestors or imaginary personages. He figures in some of their
fables; but His deeds are usually wanton, wicked, or immoral. Most of
these fables would not bear repetition. God is simply a magnified African
chief with a great number of wives, most of whom have been stolen in the
first instance. God takes no interest in the world that He has made. He
looks down with indifference upon all its cruelty, its sorrow, and its
sin. If He interferes in human affairs it is perhaps to make mischief,
or to confuse and distress men and women for His amusement. The most that
the natives desire of God is that He will let them alone, and to this end
they let Him alone.
Our teaching at this point is radical. They are surprised to learn that
God always does right; that He loves right and hates wrong; that He loves
them as a father loves his children; that their sins grieve Him and that
He will punish their cruelties. We divest the character of God of all
that is filthy and wicked, and teach them that God is such a one as Jesus
was while on earth, even as He said to Philip: “He that hath seen Me hath
seen the Father.” To them it is an entirely new conception.
Their belief in a future life is very clear, although there are
individuals who will deny it. Their belief finds strong support in
dreams. The African believes in dreams as actual occurrences, and they
relate them one to another with great earnestness, which perhaps tends to
make them more vivid and possibly more frequent. But no dreams are more
common and none more vivid than those in which friends and loved ones
appear who have recently died. Those who hold to the evolution of all our
ideas from natural antecedents have in the dream as regarded by primitive
people a plausible origin for the belief in a future life.
There were two Mpongwe women of Gaboon, Tito and Lucy, whom I used to
invite regularly every Saturday to come to my Bible-class on Sunday
morning. They were as regular in not coming as I was in inviting them,
although they invariably promised to come and their parting salutation
was usually: “Well, good-bye, till to-morrow morning.” The truth is that
Tito and Lucy were not Bible-class women. They had been taught in our
mission school in the early days before the French government forbade
the use of English; so they both spoke English fairly well. Lucy was
sometimes called the Mpongwe queen, for she was head of the family that
had ruled the entire tribe in former days. She became a victim of rum,
which sent her to an untimely grave. Her family told me that during the
last two years of her life it was doubtful whether she was ever sober.
Tito had been the mistress of several white men in succession, who had
either died or had gone home never to return, and as a result of her
career had acquired heaps of clothes, a miscellaneous assortment of
jewelry from glass to gold, and an awful temper.
At length one Sunday morning who should come to my Bible-class but Tito
and Lucy!—half an hour before the time. I felt something must have
happened, and probably something wrong. For I knew that my invitation had
not brought them; still less their promise. That same afternoon I was
passing through their town and I stopped to ask them why in the world
they had come to Bible-class. Then Tito explained that she had not had
any intention of coming and that she had promised me just because “it be
proper fashion to say Yes, more than No,” but on Saturday night she had a
dream in which an angel had appeared to her or at least had spoken to her
from the next room and had told her that she and Lucy “must go to-morrow
to Mr. Milligan’s Bible-class.” In the morning she told Lucy the dream
and they both decided at once that they would come to the class. Without
scruple they could disobey from week to week the mandate of normal
conscience, and the moral law of truth, but they rendered absolute
obedience to the invalid experience of a dream. Afterwards, however, Tito
became a regular attendant and finally she was received into the Gaboon
Church and became a faithful Christian. She was by nature generous and
she was especially skillful and kind in caring for the sick.
Another woman, Ayenwa, lived in Tito’s town, who had been educated in
the mission school but was now living as the mistress of a white man.
Ayenwa was a good-looking woman and she had the soft, pleasant voice that
is characteristic of the cultivated Mpongwe woman and distinguishes her
from other African women. I had talked to Ayenwa more than once and had
remonstrated with her in regard to the life she was living. But although
she was troubled about it, she had made no change. At length a brother of
hers died, and she was greatly afflicted by his death. He was a devout
Christian, and before he died he had pleaded with Ayenwa to abandon her
present way of living. Much as she loved him she did not yield to his
desire and counsel. But not long after his death she came to me and said
that she had left the white man and had renounced forever that kind of
life; although she was friendless since her brother’s death and did not
know how she would get a living. It was owing to a dream.
She told me very earnestly and in beautiful language how that she had
seen her brother in a dream. She had seen him in a forest, but the forest
was very beautiful and it was like a great church. He smiled when he saw
her and he called her by her name. She cried when she saw him and she
told him how she missed him. He told her not to weep for he was very
happy and was never sick any more. But he told her to remember his dying
words to her, and so to live that when she died she would come to him and
then they would never be separated any more. For several days the dream
was always in her mind. Then she resolved that at any cost she would
forsake evil and do right. And surely God would take care of her.
Ancestor-worship is the highest form of African fetishism, and it is only
called fetishism because the ancestor’s skull or other part of the body
is the medium of communication. In general it indicates reverence towards
age; and this is a striking characteristic of the African. Yet I have
known of an instance where an old woman was afraid that her son would
kill her in order to procure the help and favour which she could render
him after death. It is quite likely that such things really happen. At
any rate love is not the apparent motive in ancestor-worship; it is
simply the hope of gain by obtaining their favour.
The usual fetish of ancestor-worship is the skull of the father, which
the son keeps in a box. The father occasionally speaks to the son in
dreams and frequently communicates with him by omens. He helps him in
all his enterprises, good and evil, and secures his success in love, in
hunting and in war. All those who have these skulls are a secret society,
which, as I have said, is powerful to rule and to tyrannize over others.
Young boys are initiated into this society by rites and ceremonies that
are revolting. The initiation varies widely in different tribes and even
in the same town there is no uniform ceremony. No white man could ever
witness the ceremony, and there are very few natives that would tell
him all about it. But a general idea he may get from some; and single
details from others at different times. In the mild ceremony of the more
civilized Fang towns, the boy who is to be initiated is made very drunk
and taken blindfolded to the bush, to a place set apart for the use of
the society. The ceremony continues several days. In one part of it the
bandage is removed from his eyes at midnight, a low fire is burning which
gives a feeble light, and he finds himself surrounded by the members
of the society with faces and bodies frightfully distorted and all the
skulls of their ancestors exposed to view, together with the heads of
persons who have recently died. Some one asks him what he sees. He
replies that he sees only spirits and solemnly declares that these are
not men.
Boys are often initiated against their will. One of my schoolboys, a
handsome lad of about fifteen, during a vacation was initiated and died
before it was over. It is his initiation that I have just described—at
least the very small part of it that I was able to find out. His death
made them more unwilling to tell me. His initiation lasted several
days during which he was compelled to remain in the bush. Further up
the river a boy, during the initiation, is usually placed for several
days in a house alone, after being made to look at the sun so long that
sometimes he faints, and when he is taken into the house he cannot at
first see anything. Meantime the door is closed and they all go away.
Gradually he sees things around him and at length discovers opposite him
a corpse, in an early stage of decomposition. He is kept there day and
night during the ceremony. The men visit him and subject him to all sorts
of indignities in order to impress him with the necessity of absolute
obedience to the society. They defile him with filth, and that the vilest
of filth. But I presume that the reader will gladly excuse me from any
further description of this disgusting practice. One cannot omit all
reference to such things if he would describe the African as he really is.
They believe that the skull of the father or other ancestor when it
has been properly prepared becomes the residence of the ancestor, who,
however, is not confined to it, but wanders about returning to it as to
his home. The son, in order to avoid the wrath of the departed father,
and to obtain his help, will keep the skull comfortably warm and dry,
occasionally rubbing it with oil and redwood powder, and will feed it
bountifully. The process of feeding it is interesting. The son before
going on a hunting expedition will open the box, and addressing his
father in audible words will ask his favour and will promise that in
return for success he will give him a goodly portion of the game. If
he should neglect this duty for a length of time he may find when he
meets an animal in the forest that his gun will not fire, and he may
even find himself helpless before his enemies. The white man knowing the
kind of guns they use, does not think it necessary to go so far for an
explanation of the fact that they often fail in a critical moment. When
the son returns with game he will again open the box and place the meat
before the skull. Then he will close the house against all possibility
of intrusion and he himself will go away while the father eats. After a
while he comes back, and although he finds the meat exactly as he left
it, he supposes that in some mysterious way his father has eaten it
and yet left it, that is, has eaten the spirit of it. He then eats it
himself, sharing it also with the men of the society. But since it has
been offered to the dead father it is now sacred, and he cannot allow his
wife or children to taste it under any circumstances. The men, being of a
religious turn of mind, offer to the father, all, or nearly all, the game
they procure, and if women and children are left hungry they can at least
admire the fervent piety of husbands and fathers.
It is only the skulls of men, not of women, that are used by the Secret
Society. But the spirits of women return after death, like those of men,
and frequently become very troublesome. On Corisco Island there lives a
man who has been in contact with civilization all his lifetime and is
fairly educated though he is not a Christian. His wife died; and shortly
afterwards she began playing pranks in his town and even in his house.
She broke nearly all his dishes. Then, one night, she struck him in the
neck, and he instantly recognized her. His neck was stiff in the morning.
That proved it! Not being able to strike back in this unequal warfare and
preferring an enemy whom he could kick (for this individual wore shoes
and scarcely anything else) he lost spirit and finally pulled down the
entire town and built in another place. Women and children never possess
the skulls of ancestors. The power of the ancestor is more often used
against women than others. Among the Mpongwe and some other tribes a
woman may worship her ancestors; for which purpose she uses not skulls
but wooden images, which she never exhibits.
The African conception of nature may be inferred from what we have said
of their view of God and their worship of ancestors. God having made the
world seems to take no more interest in it. Other spirits innumerable
control it and continually interfere with its normal operations.
Since there is no single intelligence ever present and presiding it
follows that there is no uniformity in nature and no reign of law.
Those phenomena which attract the African’s attention he ascribes
immediately to a supernatural cause. He does not look for a natural
cause. If a tree falls across his path, somebody threw it. The activity
of spirits accounts for everything. There is no line between nature and
the supernatural; miracles are always happening. The causes of natural
phenomena being supernatural are also inscrutable. The study of nature
and the investigation of her laws is precluded by this conception.