DAHOMEY--SLAVISH SUBJECTION OF THE PEOPLE--DEPENDENCE OF THE KING
ON THE SLAVE-TRADE--EXHIBITION OF HUMAN SKULLS--ANNUAL HUMAN
SACRIFICES--LAGOS--THE CHANGES OF THREE CENTURIES.
Dalziel, in slave-trading times, shocked the world with details in
reference to Dahomey. Duncan and Forbes have again presented the
picture in the same hues of darkness and of blood. Ghezo is a good king
as things go, and rather particularly good for an African, for whom the
world has done nothing, and who, therefore, cannot be expected to do
much for the world. He has a threatening example before him. His elder
brother is a prisoner, with as much to eat and more to drink than is
good for him--caged up by a crowd of guards, who prevent him from doing
any thing else. He was deposed, and reduced to this state, because his
rule did not suit his subjects.
Ghezo, therefore, has the office of seeing men roll on the earth
before him, and scrape up dust over themselves; of being deafened
by vociferations of his dignity and virtue and glory and honor,
by court poets and parasites, on state occasions; the office of
keeping satisfied, with pay and plunder, the ferocious spirit of
a blood-thirsty people; the office of looking out for some victim
tribe, whom, by craft and violence, they may ruin; and the office of
procuring, catching and buying some scores of human victims, whom he
and his savages murder, at different set seasons, in public.
A good share of this used to be effected by means of the slave-trade.
But that is gone, or nearly so, and with it may go much of the atrocity
of Dahomean public life. Things are yet, however, and may long remain,
in a transition state. He and his people will not suddenly lose their
taste for the excitement of human suffering; and it would be a danger
for which, it is probable, he has not the moral courage, or a result
for which he has no real wish, to bring old national ceremonies to a
sudden pause. But there are circumstances likely to act with effect in
producing the change, which is a matter destined to occur at some time
or other, and to be obtained when it occurs only in one mode; and the
sooner the process is begun, the sooner it will end.
[Illustration:
_F.E. Forbes, delt._ _Lith. of Sarony & Co. N. Y._
SKULL ORNAMENTS & BANNERS OF DAHOMEY.]
As to what it is that higher principles must banish from the world,
Commander Forbes, of the British Navy, in 1850, the latest visitor of
that country who has given an account of it, tells us what he saw.
He says: “There is something fearful in the state of subjection
in which, in outward show, the kings of Dahomey hold their highest
officers; yet, when the system is examined, these prostrations are
merely keeping up of ancient customs. Although no man’s head in Dahomey
can be considered warranted for twenty-four hours, still the great
chief himself would find his tottering if one of these customs was
omitted.”
They were preparing for the ceremony of watering the graves of the
royal ancestors with blood; during which the king also presents some
victims as a royal gift to his people. This merely means that they are
knocked down in public, and their heads cut off, amidst trumpeting, and
clamor, and jesting.
“With much ceremony,” we read, “two large calabashes, containing the
skulls of kings,” conquered by the Dahomeans, “ornamented with copper,
brass, coral, &c., were brought in and placed on the ground. Some
formed the heads of walking-sticks, distaffs; while those of chiefs
and war-men ornamented drums, umbrellas, surmounted standards, and
decorated doorways. They were on all sides in thousands.”
“There was much to disgust the white man in the number of human
skulls and jaw-bones displayed; but can the reader imagine twelve
unfortunate human beings lashed hands and feet, and tied in small
canoes and baskets, dressed in clean white dresses, with a high red
cap, carried on the heads of fellow-men? These, and an alligator and a
cat, were the gift of the monarch to the people--prisoners of war.”...
“When carried round the court, they bore the gaze of their enemies
without shrinking. At the foot of the throne they halted, while the
_Mayo_ presented each with a head (bunch) of cowries, extolling the
munificence of the monarch, who had sent it to them to purchase a last
meal, for to-morrow they must die.”
Again: “But of the fourteen now brought on the platform, we the
unworthy instruments of the Divine will, succeeded in saving the lives
of three. Lashed as we have described before, these sturdy men met the
gaze of their persecutors, with a firmness perfectly astonishing. Not
a sigh was breathed. In all my life I never saw such coolness before,
so near death.... The victims were held high above the heads of their
bearers, and the naked ruffians thus acknowledged the munificence
of their prince.... Having called their names, the nearest one was
divested of his clothes; the foot of the basket placed on the parapet,
when the king gave its upper part an impetus, and the victim fell at
once into the pit beneath. A fall upwards of twelve feet may have
stunned him, and before sense could return, his head was cut off, and
the body thrown to the mob; who, now armed with clubs and branches,
brutally mutilated it and dragged it to a distant pit.” Forbes and his
companion had retired to their seats away from the sight. Two sons
of Da Souza, the notorious slayer, remained to look on.
[Illustration:
_F.E. Forbes, delt._ _Lith. of Sarony & Co. N. Y._
THE PLATFORM OF THE AH-TOH.]
The circumstance most likely to have effect in restraining these
barbarities, is the value which slaves will now bear as the means
of cultivating the ground, and raising exportable produce, to which
alone the monarch and people must look, in the diminished state of the
slave-trade, to furnish means for their expenses. Victims and slaves
will also be more difficult to be procured by warfare, inasmuch as
civilized people have more general access to the country, and will
introduce a better policy, and more powerful defensive means among
the people. Christianity also is adventuring there, and carrying its
peaceful influence and nobler motives with it.
Lagos plundered recaptured slaves returning to their homes. The
authorities deserved no favor. A better man--perhaps a more legitimate
claimant for the royal dignity--was found, and after a severe fight,
in which the British cruisers warmly participated, he was seated on
the throne. A severe blow was given to the slave-trade. Affairs seemed
to be going on smoothly until early in the autumn of 1853, when a
revolution broke out, amidst which the king died, and the country, as
far as is known, remains in confusion.
The present is an interesting period in the history of the world.
Changes are rapid and irrevocable. Circumstances illustrative of
the condition of our race as it has been, are disappearing rapidly.
The future must trust to our philosophic observation, and faithful
testimony, for its knowledge of savage life. The helplessness, and
artlessness, and miserable shifts of barbarism are becoming things
of the past. There is perhaps no region of the earth which is now
altogether beyond the reach of civilized arts. Shells, and flints, and
bows, and clubs, and bone-headed spears are everywhere giving way to
more useful or more formidable implements. Improvements in dress and
tools and furniture will soon be universal. The history of man as he
has been, requires therefore to be written now, while the evidence
illustrative of it has not altogether vanished.
The changes of the last three centuries have, to only a slight degree,
influenced the African races. An inaccessible interior, and a coast
bristling with slave-factories, and bloody with slaving cruelties,
probably account for this. The slight progress made shows the obduracy
of the degradation to be removed, and the difficulty of the first
steps needed for its removal. Wherever the slave-trade or its effects
penetrated, there of course peace vanished, and prosperity became
impossible. This evil affected not only the coast, but spread warfare
to rob the country of its inhabitants, far into the interior regions.
There were tribes, however, uninfluenced by it, and some of these
have gained extensive, although but temporary authority. Yet nowhere
has there been any real civilization. It is singular that these people
should have rested in this unalloyed barbarism for thousands of years,
and that there should have been no native-born advancement, as in
Mexico, or Peru, or China; and no flowing in upon its darkness of any
glimmering of light from the brilliant progress and high illumination
of the outside world. It has been considered worthy of note, that a few
years ago one of the Veys had contrived a cumbrous alphabet to express
the sounds of his language; but it is surely, to an incomparable
degree, more a matter of surprise, that centuries passed away in
communication with Europeans, without such an attempt having been made
by any individual, of so many millions, during so many generations of
men.
The older state of negro society, therefore, still continues. With
the exception of civilized vices, civilized arms, and some amount of
civilized luxuries, life on the African coast, or at no great distance
from it, remains now much the same as the first discoverers found it.
As it was two hundred years ago, the food of the people consists of
rice, maize and millet; or the Asiatic, the American and the African
native grains. A few others, of comparatively little importance, might
be added to these. Many fruits, as bananas, figs and pumpkins, compose
part of their subsistence.
Flesh of all kinds was used abundantly before European arms began
to render game scarce. Fish along the coast, and beside the rivers
and interior lakes, are used, except by some tribes, who regard them
as unclean. The Bushmen south of Elephants’ Bay, reject no kind of
reptile. The snake’s poison arms their weapon, and its body is eaten.
As the poisons used act rapidly, and do not affect the flesh of the
animal, it is devoured without scruple and without danger. Throughout
all the deserts, as in ancient times, the locust, or large winged
grasshopper, is used as an article of food, not nutritive certainly,
but capable of sustaining life. The wings and legs are pulled off, and
the bodies are scorched, in holes heated as ovens, and having the hot
sand hauled over them.
In Dahomey, according to Duncan, there is some improvement in
agriculture, traced to the return from the Brazils of a few who had
been trained as slaves in that empire. This influence, and that of
ideas imported from civilized society, seem to be more prevalent in
Dahomey than elsewhere. The present sovereign has mitigated the laws,
diminished the transit duties, and acted with such judicious kindness
towards tribes who submitted without resistance, that his neighbors,
tired of war and confusion, have willingly, in some instances,
preferred to come under his jurisdiction.
These circumstances, together with the treaty formed by England with
the King of Dahomey, in 1852, for the suppression of the slave-trade,
indicate that a new destiny is opening for the African races. It may
be but rarely that a man of so much intelligence gains power; and the
successor of the present king may suffer matters to decline; but still
great sources of evil are removed, and the people are acquiring a taste
for better practices. Human sacrifices have, to a great extent, been
abolished; and the wants of cultivation will of themselves render human
life of higher value. The two great states of Ashantee and Dahomey, now
both open to missionary influence, are likely to run an emulative race
in the career of improvement.