BONNY.
THE PRINCIPAL TRADE OF BONNY -- KING PEPPEL AND HIS HISTORY --
THE DEFRAUDED EMIGRANTS -- MR. READE’S INTERVIEW WITH PEPPEL --
ARCHITECTURE OF BONNY -- THE JU-JU HOUSES, PRIVATE AND PUBLIC --
CANNIBALISM AT BONNY -- THE JU-JU EXECUTION -- WHY THE EXECUTIONER
DID NOT EAT THE HEAD -- DAILY LIFE OF A BONNY GENTLEMAN -- DRESS OF
MEN AND WOMEN -- SUPERSTITIONS -- MUMBO-JUMBO AND HIS OFFICE -- LAST
RESOURCE OF A HEN-PECKED HUSBAND -- A TERRIBLE GREGREE AND ITS RESULT
-- THE GREGREE MEN OR MAGICIANS -- INGENIOUS MODE OF WEAVING THEIR
SPELLS -- ESCAPE OF AN IMPOSTOR.
Passing a little southward along the west coast, we come to the
well-known Bonny River, formerly the great slave depot of Western
Africa, and now the centre of the palm-oil trade. Unfortunately there
is as much cheating in the palm-oil trade as in gold and ivory; the two
latter being plugged, and the former mixed with sand, so that it has to
be boiled down before it can be sent from the coast.
Bonny is familiar to English ears on account of the yellow-black chief
who was pleased to call himself king, and who was well known in England
as Pepper, King of Bonny. His name is varied as Pepper, Pimento, or
Peppel. He is descended from Obullo, an Ibo (or Eboe) chief, who
settled with his slaves on the Bonny River, and who was succeeded by
his son and grandson, each of whom took the name of Pepper.
Being of a quarrelsome disposition, the present king shot a wife
because she displeased him, murdered a chief called Manilla Peppel
because he was jealous, and was ruining the trade of the river by his
perpetual wars with the Calabars. So, at the request of all the native
chiefs and traders, he was deposed, and his nephew Daphe placed in his
stead. Daphe, however, died soon afterward,--poisoned, it is believed,
at Peppel’s instigation; and then the government was handed over to
four regents, while Pimento was transported to Ascension, a place which
he was afterward fond of calling his St. Helena. However, he proved
himself to be a clever savage, and, by dint of importunity, contrived
to be taken to England, where he arrived in 1857.
Possessing to the full the imitative capacity of the negro, he adopted
English customs with wonderful facility, abandoning, according to
Captain Burton, his favorite dish of a boy’s palms, and drinking
champagne and sherry instead of trade rum. Soon he became religious,
was baptized, and turned teetotaler, gaining thereby the good-will of a
large class of people. He asked for twenty thousand pounds to establish
a missionary station, and actually induced a number of English who knew
nothing of Africa, or the natural mendacity of the African savage, to
accompany him as his suite, promising them splendid salaries and high
rank at court.
No one who knows the negro character will be surprised to hear
that when the king and his suite arrived at Bonny the latter found
themselves cheated and ruined. They discovered that the “palace” was a
collection of hovels inside a mud wall; that Bonny itself was nothing
more than a quantity of huts in a mud flat; and that the best street
was infinitely more filthy than the worst street in the worst part of
London. As to the private life of the king, the less said about it the
better.
Their health rapidly failed under the privations which they suffered,
and the horrible odors of the Bonny River, which are so sickening that
even the hardened traveller Captain Burton had to stop his experienced
nostrils with camphorated cotton, as he was rowed up the river at low
water. As to the royal salaries and apartments in the palace, they were
found to be as imaginary as the palace itself and the rank at court,
the king presenting each of the officials with a couple of yams as an
equivalent for pay and lodging.
How genuine was the civilization and Christianity and teetotalism of
Peppel may be imagined from an interview which Mr. W. Reade had with
him after his return:--“I went ashore with the doctor on a visit to
Peppel, the famous king of Bonny.... In one of the hovels was seated
the monarch, and the scene was well adapted to the muse of his poet
laureate. The Africans have a taste for crockery ware, much resembling
that of the last generation for old china, and a predilection for dog
flesh, which is bred expressly for the table, and exposed for sale in
the public market.
“And there sat Peppel, who had lived so long in England; behind him
a pile of willow-pattern crockery, before him a calabash of dog stew
and palaver sauce. It is always thus with these savages. The instincts
inherited from their forefathers will ever triumph over a sprinkling
of foreign reason. Their intellects have a _rete mucosum_ as well as
their skins. As soon as they return to their own country, take they
off all their civilization and their clothes, and let body and mind go
naked. Like most negroes of rank, Peppel has a yellow complexion, as
light as that of a mulatto. His features express intelligence, but of a
low and cunning kind. In every word and look he exhibits that habit of
suspicion which one finds in half-civilized natures.”
Peppel, although restored to Bonny, has scarcely any real power, even
in his own limited dominions, from which he dares not stir. Yet, with
the cool impudence of a thorough savage, he actually proposed to
establish a consul in London at a salary of 500_l._, stating as his
reason that he had always allowed the English consuls to visit his
dominions in the Bight of Benin.
The architecture of the Bonny country is not very elaborate, being
composed of swish and wattle, supported by posts. The floors and walls
are of mud, which can be obtained in any amount, and the general look
of the houses has been well compared to Africanized Swiss, the roofs
being very high, and the gables very sharp. Ordinary houses have three
rooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a Ju-ju room or chapel; but those
of the wealthy men have abundance of chambers and passages. There are
no chimneys, and as the door must therefore be kept open if a fire
is lighted, the threshold is at least eighteen inches high, in order
to prevent the intrusion of strange beasts. It is not thought to be
etiquette to step over the threshold when the master of the house is
sitting within, or he will be afflicted with sickness, thinking himself
bewitched.
The Ju-ju room or chapel is a necessary adjunct to every Bonny house,
and within it is the fetish, or Ju-ju, which is the guardian of the
house, and corresponds with the Lares and Penates of the ancients.
The negro contrives to utilize the ju-ju room, making it a storehouse
for his most valued property, such as cowries, or rum, knowing that
no one will touch it in so sacred a place. As to the Ju-ju itself,
anything answers the purpose, and an Englishman is sometimes troubled
to preserve his gravity when he sees a page of _Punch_, a cribbage peg,
a pill box, or a pair of braces, doing duty as the household god of the
establishment.
The great Ju-ju house of the place is a most ghastly-looking edifice,
and is well described by Captain Burton. It is built of swish, and is
an oblong roofless house, of forty or fifty feet in length. A sort of
altar is placed at the end, sheltered from the rain by a small roof of
its own. Under the roof are nailed rows of human skulls mostly painted
in different colors, and one of them is conspicuous by a large black
beard, which is doubtless a rude copy of the beard worn by the man
to whom it originally belonged. Between them are rows of goat skulls
streaked with red and white, while other skulls are strewn about the
floor, and others again are impaled on the tops of sticks. Under the
altar is a round hole with a raised clay rim, in which is received the
blood of the victims together with the sacred libations. Within this
Ju-ju house are buried the bodies of the kings.
This house well illustrates the character of the people--a race which
take a positive pleasure in the sight of blood, and in inflicting and
witnessing pain. All over the country the traveller comes upon scenes
of blood, pain, and suffering. There is hardly a village where he does
not come upon animals tied in some agonizing position and left to die
there. Goats and fowls are mostly fastened to posts with their heads
downward, and blood is the favorite color for painting the faces of
men. Even the children of prisoners taken in war--the war in question
being mostly an unsuspected attack on an unprepared village--are hung
by the middle from the masts of the canoes, while the parents are
reserved to be sacrificed and eaten.
About this last statement there has been much incredulity, and of
course, when questioned, the Bonny negroes flatly deny the accusation.
There is, however, no doubt of the fact, inasmuch as Europeans have
witnessed the act of cannibalism. For example, old King Peppel, the
father of the Pimento whose life has been briefly sketched, gave a
great banquet in honor of a victory which he had gained over Calabar,
and in which Amakree, the king of that district, was taken prisoner.
The European traders were invited to the banquet, and were most
hospitably entertained. They were, however, horrified to see the
principal dish which was placed before Peppel. It was the bleeding
heart of Amakree, warm and palpitating as it was torn from the body.
Peppel devoured the heart with the greatest eagerness, exclaiming at
the same time, “This is the way I serve my enemies.”
More recently, Dr. Hutchinson witnessed a scene of cannibalism. He had
heard that something of the kind was contemplated, although it was kept
very quiet. On the appointed morning he had himself rowed to the shore
at some distance from the Ju-ju house, near which he concealed himself,
and waited for the result. The rest of the adventure must be told in
his own words.
“I know not of what kind are the sensations felt by those around
Newgate, waiting for an execution in the very heart of London’s great
city; but I know that on the banks of an African river, in the gray
dawn of morning, when the stillness was of that oppressive nature which
is calculated to produce the most gloomy impressions, with dense vapors
and foul smells arising from decomposing mangroves and other causes of
malaria floating about, with a heaviness of atmosphere that depressed
the spirits, amidst a community of cannibals, I _do_ know that,
although under the protection of a man-of-war, I felt on this occasion
a combined sensation of suspense, anxiety, horror, and indefinable
dread of I cannot tell what, that I pray God it may never be my fate to
endure again.
“Day broke, and, nearly simultaneous with its breaking, the sun shone
out. As I looked through the slit in the wall on the space between my
place of concealment and the Ju-ju house, I observed no change from
its appearance the evening before. No gibbet, nor axe, nor gallows,
nor rope--no kind of preparation, nothing significant of death, save
the skulls on the pillars of the Ju-ju house, that seemed leering at
me with an expression at once strange and vacant. It would have been
a relief in the awful stillness of the place to have heard something
of what I had read of the preparations for an execution in Liverpool
or London--of the hammering suggestive of driving nails into scaffold,
drop, or coffin, of a crowd gathering round the place before early
dawn, and of the solemn tolling of the bell that chimed another soul
into eternity. Everything seemed as if nothing beyond the routine of
daily life were to take place.
“Could it be that I had been misinformed; that the ceremony was
adjourned to another time, or was to be carried out elsewhere? No, a
distant murmur of gabbling voices was heard approaching nearer and
nearer, till, passing the corner house on my left, I saw a group of
negroes--an indiscriminate crowd of all ages and both sexes--so huddled
together that no person whom I could particularly distinguish as
either an executioner or a culprit was visible among them. But above
their clattering talk came the sound of a clanking chain that made one
shudder.
“They stopped in the middle of the square opposite the Ju-ju house, and
ceased talking. One commanding voice uttered a single word, and down
they sat upon the grass, forming a circle round two figures, standing
upright in the centre--the executioner and the man about to be killed.
The former was remarkable only by the black skull-cap which he had on
him, and by a common cutlass which he held in his hand. The latter
had chains round his neck, his wrists, and his ankles. There was no
sign of fear or cowardice about _him_--no seeming consciousness of
the dreadful fate before him--no evidence even upon his face of that
dogged stubbornness which is said to be exhibited by some persons about
to undergo an ignominious death. Save that he stood upright one would
scarcely have known that he was alive. Amongst the spectators, too,
there was a silent impassiveness which was appalling. Not a word, nor
gesture, nor glance of sympathy, that could make me believe I looked at
beings who had a vestige of humanity among them. (See illustration on
p. 619.)
“As the Ju-ju butcher stepped back and measured his distance to make an
effectual swoop at his victim’s neck, the man moved not a muscle, but
stood as if he were unconscious--till----
“Chop! The first blow felled him to the ground. The noise of a chopper
tailing on meat is familiar to most people. No other sound was
here--none from the man; not a whisper nor a murmur from those who were
seated about! I was nearly crying out in mental agony, and the sound of
that first stroke will haunt my ears to my dying day. How I wished some
one to talk or scream, to destroy the impression of that fearful hough,
and the still more awful silence that followed it!
“Again the weapon was raised to continue the decapitation--another blow
as the man lay prostrate, and then a sound broke the silence! But, O
Father of mercy! of what a kind was that noise--a gurgle and a gasp,
accompanying the dying spasm of the struck-down man!
“Once more the weapon was lifted--I saw the blood flow in gory horror
down the blade to the butcher’s hand, and there it was visible, in
God’s bright sunshine, to the whole host of heaven. Not a word had
yet been uttered by the crowd. More chopping and cleaving, and the
head, severed from the body, was put by the Ju-ju executioner into a
calabash, which was carried off by one of his women to be cooked. He
then repeated another cabalistic word, or perhaps the same as at first,
and directly all who were seated rose up, whilst he walked away.
“A yell, such as reminded me of a company of tigers, arose from the
multitude--cutlasses were flourished as they crowded round the body of
the dead man--sounds of cutting and chopping arose amidst the clamor
of the voices, and I began to question myself whether, if I were on
the other side of the river Styx, I should see what I was looking at
here through the little slit in the wall of my hiding-place: a crowd of
human vultures gloating over the headless corpse of a murdered brother
negro--boys and girls walking away from the crowd, holding pieces of
bleeding flesh in their hands, while the dripping life-fluid marked
their road as they went along; and one woman snapping from the hands
of another--both of them raising their voices in clamor--a part of the
body of that poor man, in whom the breath of life was vigorous not a
quarter of an hour ago.
“The whole of the body was at length divided, and nothing left behind
but the blood. The intestines were taken away to be given to an
iguana--the Bonny-man’s tutelary guardian. But the blood was still
there, in glistening pools, though no more notice was taken of it by
the gradually dispersing crowd than if it were a thing as common in
that town as heaven’s bright dew is elsewhere. A few dogs were on the
spot, who devoured the fragments. Two men arrived to spread sand over
the place, and there was no interruption to the familiar sound of
coopers’ hammering just beginning in the cask-houses, or to the daily
work of hoisting palm-oil puncheons on board the ships.”
On passing the Ju-ju house afterward, Dr. Hutchinson saw the relics
of this sacrifice. They consisted of the larger bones of the body and
limbs, which had evidently been cooked, and every particle of flesh
eaten from them. The head is the perquisite of the executioner, as has
already been mentioned. Some months afterward, Dr. Hutchinson met the
same executioner, who was said to have exercised his office again a
few days previously, and to have eaten the head of his victim. Being
upbraided with having committed so horrible an act, he replied that he
had not eaten the head--his cook having spoiled it by not having put
enough pepper to it.
The whole life of the Bonny-man, and indeed of all the many tribes
that inhabit the neighborhood of the Niger and live along it, is in
accordance with the traits which have been mentioned. Of course,
the women do all the real work, the man’s working day being usually
employed in coming on board some trading ship early in the morning,
chaffering with the agent, and making bargains as well as he can. He
asks for everything he sees, on the principle that, even if it be
refused, he is no worse after than before: contrives to breakfast as
many times as possible at the ship’s expense, and about mid-day goes
home to repose after the fatigues of the day.
As to his dress, it consists of a cloth, in the choice of which he is
very fastidious. A handkerchief is folded diagonally and passed through
the loop of his knife belt, so as to attach it to his right side, and
this, with a few strings of beads and rings, completes his costume. His
woolly hair is combed out with the coarsest imaginable comb, made of a
few wooden skewers lashed side by side, and diverging from each other
toward the points, and his skin is polished up with palm oil.
The women’s working day is a real fact, being begun by washing clothes
in the creek, and consisting of making nets, hats, lines, and mats,
and going to market. These are the favorites, and their life is a
comparatively easy one; while the others, on whom their despotic master
does not deign to cast an eye of affection, are simply his slaves, and
are subjected to water drawing, wood cutting, catching and curing fish.
The dress of the women is not unlike that of the opposite sex, the
chief distinction being that their fashionable paint is blue instead
of red. The coloring is put on by a friend, usually one who regularly
practises the art of painting the human body in patterns. Checkers,
like those that were once so common on the door posts of public houses,
are very much in favor, and so are wavy stripes, beginning with lines
scarcely thicker than hairs, and swelling out to half an inch or more
in breadth. Arabesque patterns, curves, and scrolls are also largely
used.
Throughout a considerable portion of that part of Western Africa which
is inhabited by the negroes there is found a semi-human demon, who is
universally respected, at least by the feminine half of the community.
His name is MUMBO JUMBO, and his sway is upheld by the men, while the
women have no alternative but to submit to it.
On the branch of a tree near the entrance of each town hangs a dress,
made of slips of bark sewed rudely together. It is the simplest
possible dress, being little more than a bark sack, with a hole at
the top for the head and another at each side for the hands. Close
by it hangs an equally simple mask, made of an empty gourd, with two
round holes for the eyes of the wearer, and decorated with a tuft of
feathers. In order to make it more fantastically hideous, the mask is
painted with scarlet, so that it looks very much like the face of a
clown in a pantomime.
At night the people assemble as usual to sing and dance, when suddenly
faint distant howlings are heard in the woods. This is the cry of
Mumbo Jumbo, and all the women feel horribly frightened, though they
are obliged to pretend to be delighted. The cries are heard nearer
and nearer, and at last Mumbo Jumbo himself, followed by a number
of attendants armed with sticks, and clothed in the dress which is
kept for his use, appears in the noisy circle, carrying a rod in
his hand. He is loudly welcomed, and the song and dance go on around
him with delight. Suddenly, Mumbo Jumbo walks up to one of the women
and touches her with his rod. His attendants instantly seize on the
unfortunate woman, tear off all her clothes, drag her to a post which
is always kept for such occasions, tie her to it, and indict a terrific
beating on her. No one dares to pity her. The men are not likely to
do so, and the women all laugh and jeer at their suffering companion,
pointing at her and mocking her cries: partly because they fear that
should they not do so they might be selected for the next victims, and
partly because--like the savages that they are at heart--they feel
an exultation at seeing some one suffering a penalty which they have
escaped. (See engraving.)
The offence for which the woman has suffered is perfectly well known
by all the spectators, and by none better than by the sufferer
herself. The fact is, she has been bad-tempered at home, quarrelling,
in all probability, with her fellow wives, and has not yielded to
the admonitions of her husband. Consequently, at the next favorable
opportunity, either the husband himself, or a man whom he has
instructed, indues the dress of Mumbo Jumbo, and indicts a punishment
which serves equally as a corrective to the disobedient wife and a
warning to others that they had better not follow her example.
Mumbo Jumbo does not always make his appearance on these nocturnal
festivities, as the men know that he inspires more awe if he is
reserved for those instances in which the husband has tried all the
means in his power to keep the peace at home, but finds that his
unsupported authority is no more respected. The reader will remember
that a demon of a similar character is to be found in Dahome.
It is to be wished that all the superstitions of the land were as
harmless as that of Mumbo Jumbo, which nobody believes, though every
one pretends to do so, and which, at all events, has some influence
on the domestic peace. Some of them, however, are very terrible, and
involve an amount of human suffering which would deter any but a savage
from performing them. It is very difficult to learn the nature of
these superstitions, as the negroes always try to conceal them from
Europeans, especially when they involve the shedding of blood. One
astounding instance has, however, been related. A town was in danger of
attack from a powerful tribe that inhabited the neighborhood, and the
king was so much alarmed that he sent for the magicians, and consulted
with them as to the best method of repelling the enemy.
Accordingly, the people were summoned together in front of the
principal gate, when two holes were dug in the ground close to each
other. Songs and dances began as usual, until suddenly the chief
magician pointed to a girl who was standing among the spectators. She
was instantly seized, and a leg thrust into each hole, which was then
filled up with earth so that she could not move. By command of the
magicians, a number of men brought lumps of wet clay, which they built
around her body in a pillar-like form, kneading them closely as they
proceeded, and gradually covering her with clay. At last even her head
was covered with the clay, and the poor victim of superstition soon
ceased to breathe. This clay pillar with the body of the girl within it
stood for years in front of the gate, and so terrified were the hostile
tribes at so powerful a fetish, or gregree, that they dared not carry
out their plan of attack.
The natives erect these gregrees on every imaginable occasion, and so
ward off every possible calamity; and, as they will pay freely for such
safeguards, the fetish men are naturally unwilling to refuse a request,
and so to break up a profitable trade. They are, of course, aware
that their clients will in many cases suffer from the very calamity
which they sought to avoid, and that they will come to make bitter
complaints. They therefore take care to impose on the recipient some
condition by way of a loop-hole, through which they may escape. On one
such instance the man bought a fetish against fever, which, however,
seized him and nearly killed him. The condition which had been imposed
on him was abstinence from goat’s flesh, and this condition he knew
that he had fulfilled. But the fetish man was not to be baffled by such
a complaint, and utterly discomfited his angry client by asserting
that, when his patient was dining at another town, a personal enemy,
who knew the conditions on which the gregree was given, dropped a
little goat’s-flesh broth into his bowl, and so broke the spell.
Absolute faith in the gregree is another invariable condition. On one
stormy day a party of natives had to cross the river, and applied
for a gregree against accidents. They crossed safely enough, but on
recrossing the boat was upset, and some of the party were drowned.
The survivors went in a body to the gregree maker, and upbraided him
with the accident. He heard them very patiently, and then informed the
complainants that the misfortune was entirely caused by the incredulity
of the steersman, who tried to sound the river with his paddle in order
to discover whether they were in shallow water. This action indicated
mistrust, and so the power of the spell was broken. The cunning fellow
had seen the accident, and, having ascertained that the steersman had
been drowned, made the assertion boldly, knowing that the men had been
too frightened to observe closely, and that the accused could not
contradict the statement.
[Illustration: (1.) THE ALAKÉ’S COURT. (See page 599.)]
[Illustration: (2.) MUMBO JUMBO. (See page 604.)]