untruthfulness, tells how that journeying one day in the forest he had
met two strange men who by fetish power had thrown him to the ground,
had opened his body, and removing his intestines, had stuffed him with
dry grass instead, which would have injured him for life, but that a
doctor of his own tribe found him, reopened him, removed the hay and put
real intestines in its place. I know a woman in Gaboon who claims and
evidently believes that she is constantly attended by several leopards,
invisible to all others but herself. There is a man in Gaboon of whom
the whole community believes that he frequently changes himself into a
leopard in order to steal sheep and to devour a whole sheep at a meal.
This he does also when he would avenge himself upon his enemies. This
particular man denies that he has any such power. But sometimes men
confess or claim that they themselves possess it; and in some cases they
seem to believe it. A broken-hearted chief once told Du Chaillu how that
his son, who had been his joy and hope, had been accused of killing two
men of the town by turning into a leopard. The old man at first
passionately defended his son. But to his horror, the son, stepping
forward, confessed the charge, and that he had turned himself into a
leopard and killed the two men—he did not know why. With the chief’s
consent the son was burnt to death over a slow fire. And the sight of
that horrible death was ever in the old man’s eyes.
One day the Rev. Dr. Nassau (who relates this incident in his book,
_Fetishism in West Africa_) arrived in a native village where he found
an extraordinary commotion, the people panic-stricken with fear. Upon
making an inquiry as to the cause, he was told that on the preceding day
the wife of the chief had borne a son, the only son of the chief, who in
his joy had this day made a great feast, which they were about to
celebrate, when suddenly another woman of the village, carrying at her
side a baby girl three months old, passed through the crowd straight to
the house in which was the new-born boy, and exchanging the children,
came out bearing the baby boy. Upon the loud protest of the people and a
demand for an explanation she told them the following story:
This baby boy, she said, although borne by the chief’s wife, really
belonged to her; while the baby girl which she had borne three months
ago belonged to the chief’s wife. She and the other woman, she said,
were both witches. Until recently they had been intimate friends and had
been accustomed to go off together in the night to witch-feasts and
witch-dances in neighbouring villages. Their unborn babes they were
accustomed to leave upon the grass while they joined in the dance. Her
babe, she said, was a boy, and the other was a girl. But one morning the
other woman, leaving the dance before her, took the male child and left
the other, thinking that she would not know the difference. After that
they had never gone out together; a coolness had sprung up between them,
and she had waited her time and kept her secret. In due time she had
borne the baby girl, which really belonged to the chief’s wife; and now
the chief’s wife had borne the baby boy, which belonged to her.
The chief’s wife stood dumb, as if in self-condemnation. No one doubted
the story; and the woman bore the child away.
The trial for witchcraft is by ordeal. In most cases poison is
administered. If the accused dies or is seized with vertigo this is
sufficient evidence of guilt; if no such result follows, it is a sign of
innocence.
The African believes in a God, who made all things; but his idea of God
is grossly anthropomorphic. God is a very big African chief with a great
many wives. Some of their fables in which God figures are not
repeatable. He regards men and women with contempt, and as a rule
ignores them. I do not know that they ever worship Him. Their worship is
directed to the innumerable spirits about them who infest the air, among
whom are their ancestors. The spirits are generally disposed to do them
harm; but they may be placated, and their own dead may even be rendered
favourable by certain ceremonies. But an incomparably greater number of
spirits are always hostile, and the impulse of African worship is fear.
Here, then, is a state of mental degradation that to us looks almost
like insanity. I have only touched upon the salient points of their
belief. One can never convey to others any adequate impression of the
stifling mental atmosphere of an African community, with its stagnation
and torpor, depressing even the mind of the missionary and in some
instances fairly threatening his faith. My experience of that atmosphere
has been such that I have the deepest sympathy and compassion for
traders and government officials living often solitary in such
communities; whose beliefs and morals are often not the result of
personal convictions, but merely a reflection of the beliefs, traditions
and moral restraints of the social community in which they have lived.
Upon the beliefs of such men there is a power of gravitation in the
mentality of an African community that acts like the Magnetic Mountain
of the Arabian fable, which, as ships approached it from the sea, drew
out of them every nail, bolt and rivet, and left them a wreck of
floating timbers, to be flung at random upon the lonely shore or buried
in its sand.
At the first approach the mind of the African seems utterly
inaccessible. His mental powers are paralyzed; he has forgotten how to
think. If his mental redemption is possible where must it begin?
One day long ago, when a fellow missionary and myself were together in
the Bulu interior, a native young man, in response to our inquiry,
expressed the African belief that the rainbow is a snake. It has the
power—which many men also have—of making itself invisible. The
missionary, reflecting that superstition is simply ignorance of nature
and nature’s laws, resolved to undertake immediately the boy’s
education. The sun was shining brightly, and the missionary, having sent
the native to fetch a bucket of water, told him that he himself would
then and there make a rainbow. He asked me to stand on the porch and
throw the bucketful of water in a certain direction, while he took his
stand on the ground with the boy by his side. Now it happens that in
matters of science I have an inveterate inclination to be content with
theory. I never attempted a practical experiment in my life that did not
miscarry. Besides, everybody knows that a bucket is an exceedingly
awkward instrument with which to take accurate aim. The water came down
on the upturned faces of the two eager scientists. The black man has an
abiding antipathy to the fourth element; and this native evidently
regarded the performance as a punishment for his unbelief in regard to
the substance of the rainbow. He ducked his head and shouted: “I
believe; I believe; master, please don’t do it again.”
Later in the day he might have been heard telling his friends not to let
the white man hear them say that the rainbow is a snake—if they did not
want a bucket of water thrown on them. So we made a conversion after the
Mohammedan fashion. But that native must have wondered what might be the
essential difference between the _reign of law_ and the _law of rain_.
A million such experiments, even if perfectly successful, would not be
worth while except as amusement; for the native mind is wrong not merely
in particulars, but fundamentally. The idea of God must be injected into
nature, as a basis for law, before a scientific attitude is possible.
Only the idea of God can expel the multitude of spirits whose activities
make of nature a haphazard warfare of conflicting forces. And how shall
we convey this idea to the degraded mind of the African?
Of course we should change his idea of nature if we could persuade him
of God’s _unity_, and that nature, therefore, is the product of a single
mind; His _spirituality_, and that He is therefore present everywhere,
in nature and the hearts of men; His _holiness_, and that God and nature
are therefore on the side of righteousness; His _love_, and that God and
nature are therefore benevolent and sympathetic with man. But to talk to
the African about God’s attributes is to speak in an unknown tongue. And
besides, God’s personality is something more than the sum of His
attributes, which no more make God, as some one has said, than arms and
legs and head and trunk make my father. But we can present to the
African mind the personal Christ—God incarnate—and the African heart
responding can love Him; and loving Him he can know Him; for love is
more knowing than reason. The African is, above all, still capable of
strong personal affection; and looking into the face of Jesus he sees
God—the _One God_ of conscience—and learns to call Him _Father_, a word
which even to the African mind implies _love_ and _care_. He knows
nothing of attributes, but like a child he can discern his Father’s
will.
God’s fatherhood includes His care. And this relates God to nature,
through which that care is largely exercised. His first lessons on
nature the African learns not from science, but directly from Jesus.
Jesus multiplies the loaves, and the value of the miracle for the
African, and for us, is not the wonder of it, but the lesson that it is
God who gives us our daily bread. Jesus stills the storm on Galilee and
thus teaches that the Father is present in all storms and always rules
the sea and the wind, which are not under the control of demons. Jesus
heals the leper, and we learn His power over all disease, and that a
loving will afflicts and heals. He raises Lazarus from the dead, and
reveals that death is never in the hands of a malignant foe, but under
the control of a sympathetic Power. The thought of the African is
completely reversed by this knowledge of God. Nature is not the result
of myriad spirits hostile to himself, but the product of one single
mind, and its laws, the expression of a constant and loving Will. It is
as if the forked lightning at which he trembles in the darkness should
flash upon the storm-cloud the word _Father_; and fear becomes faith. In
Jesus the _One God_ of conscience, the _Father_, becomes supreme over
nature.
A certain native named _Toko_, of the Mpongwe coast tribe, who had been
for some years a Christian, went back into the interior among the Fang,
preaching the Gospel. The Fang were notorious robbers, who at every
opportunity plundered the cargo of traders as it passed in boats up and
down the river. While Toko was preaching one day, some one interrupting
him said: “I don’t believe that God is good, as you say. For why did He
make this river so crooked that in order to reach the coast we have to
travel nearly twice the straight distance?”
“My friend,” replied Toko, “God knew that you wicked Fang were going to
live along this river and that you would plunder passing boats; and He
made the river crooked so that you can’t see the boat coming until it is
so near that you have not time to get out to it before it is past.”
The wit aside, and however defective the teleology, observe the
underlying attitude towards nature, and the fundamental change it
implies. God is in nature, which is therefore under law, is sympathetic
towards man, and working on the side of righteousness—a view that
excludes and dooms fetishism and witchcraft. This simple man, and his
fellow Christians with him, had the right basis for a scientific
knowledge of nature.
It is truly astonishing how the African mind, despite its rude
materialism, beginning with the idea of love, as revealed in Jesus,
grasps ultimately the spirituality of God and the spiritual nature of
true worship. One instance must suffice for illustration:
The women of West Africa, in preparing their food, bury it in the ground
beside a stream for several days. A fellow missionary, one day examining
an old woman who presented herself for baptism, and careful lest she
might regard the water of baptism as a fetish, asked her a question
regarding its significance, to which she replied:
“When I bury my food in the ground I mark the place. What use would the
mark be if there were no food there? Baptism is but the mark: God dwells
in the heart.”
XIV
THE MORAL DEGRADATION OF FETISHISM
An African woman was one day walking through the forest to her garden
when she found a little child who was apparently lost and was crying
with hunger. She took pity on the child and immediately carried him back
to her town where she comforted him and nursed him. The child remained a
few days and then mysteriously disappeared. Immediately a dreadful
plague broke out in the town and many people died and there was much
mourning. Then they knew that it was not a real child whom the woman had
found, but a spirit in the form of a child, who had appealed to the
woman’s pity and had lain on her bosom in order to bring death and
desolation upon the people.
With such spirits, wanton and wicked, the African mind has filled the
invisible world. The powers above him are hostile—all except the spirits
of his immediate ancestors.
The former worship of snakes in Dahomy (nearly extinct by this time)
throws a lurid light upon the African’s conception of the powers above
him. According to the belief of the Dahomians snakes were spirits
incarnate. The Dahomians have a peculiar interest for Americans since
the World’s Fair of Chicago, where the chief attraction of the Midway
Plaisance was an African village of real Dahomians, who regularly
entertained a gazing throng with war-songs and war-dances and also
scandalized feminine modesty. In one respect, however, the Chicago
village had been modernized, as we shall see.
When Leighton Wilson first went to Dahomy he found in each village a
house in the middle of the street, provided for the “exclusive” use of
snakes—there was probably not much difficulty in keeping it “exclusive”
considering the deadliness of many African snakes. The snakes, Dr.
Wilson tells us, were fed and better cared for than the inhabitants of
the town. If they were seen straying away they were brought back. At the
sight of them the people prostrated themselves upon the ground. It is
not improbable that during the World’s Fair Dahomians in far-away Africa
were offering prayers to snakes for the safety of their friends in
Chicago.
The snakes are spirits; and such are all the innumerable spirits which
infest the air, excepting only a man’s ancestors, who are more or less
kindly disposed towards him. The African, therefore, is not merely, like
the Mohammedan, the victim of inexorable fate; nor merely the plaything
of nature. But he is subject to the caprice of evil spirits, or the
object of their malignant hostility.
The following are chief factors in the demoralization of African
character: _first_, the African’s attitude towards the powers above him
is that of fear, for he deems them hostile to him; _second_, his
consequent attitude towards his fellow men is that of distrust,
culminating in the belief in witchcraft; _third_, his conception of his
own destiny is not hopeful nor ennobling: the future life is not better,
but worse, than this life.
Against the hostility of the spirits a man’s ancestors (especially his
immediate father) afford him some protection. But even such protection
is uncertain; for the ancestors themselves are very petulant and easily
offended, and when they are displeased they are as much to be feared as
other spirits. The favours which a son seeks from his father are not
spiritual blessings of any kind, but temporal benefits. It cannot be
said that the motive of this worship is entirely filial reverence. A
father is much more useful dead than living; and aged parents are
sometimes even afraid that their sons will put them to death in order to
procure the benefits which they could afterwards confer. The skull of
the father is the commonest ancestral fetish, but not the only one.
An old chief, one day when I was visiting in his town for the first
time, came and laid at my feet his most sacred fetish. It was contained
in a small cylindrical box of bark made for the express purpose of
holding this kind of fetish. The women, when they saw the box, screamed
with fear and fled for their lives, putting their hands on their ears
lest they should hear the old man’s words and die. They are not supposed
to know the contents of the box, and they are ready at any moment to
take a solemn oath that they do not know, though as a matter of fact
they know very well.
The following were the interesting if somewhat repulsive ingredients of
this very powerful fetish. There was first, and chiefly, the brains of
the old man’s father, who had gained eminence and success according to
Fang ideals. Some days after the father’s death, when the body was
partly decomposed, the son visited his grave at midnight—entirely
naked—opened the shallow grave, severed the head from the body, and hung
it up in a house, letting the decomposing brain drip upon some white
chalk. To this he added one of the old man’s teeth and a bit of his hair
and cuttings of his nails, also a strip of flesh cut from the dead man’s
arm and dried over the fire. When the owner of such a fetish is about to
engage in any considerable enterprise he rubs a portion of the brains
upon his forehead and thereby possesses himself of all the serviceable
qualities of the deceased—his adroitness in lying, his skill in
cheating, his cleverness in stealing goods or other men’s wives or in
killing his enemies. If he is going to talk a big palaver he places the
strip of dried flesh in his mouth, and keeps it there all the time he is
talking, that he may be eloquent and successful. A man possessing this
kind of fetish, if he were going to a trading-house, would not hesitate
to rub a portion of the brains and chalk upon his hand, so that in
shaking hands with the white man it might pass to the white man’s hand
and make him benevolent. Some of them think that having thus put
medicine on the white man’s hand he will give them anything they ask.
The hostility of spirits other than ancestors is appeased in various
ways. Arbitrary restraints and prohibitions are frequently imposed upon
children soon after birth, to be observed through life. Such
prohibitions usually have reference to a particular spirit which is
always present with the inhibited person. The commonest prohibition is
that of some particular food. Among my schoolboys there were always
several who could not eat plantain, although it is the food that they
like best. It was often difficult to provide other food for them; but
they would have died rather than eat plantain. Women are prohibited from
eating certain kinds of meat, or certain parts of an animal—usually (by
a strange coincidence) the very parts that the men like best. There is
scarcely a limit to the self-denial sometimes involved in the observance
of these arbitrary restrictions.
Among the Fang the offering of human sacrifice to placate the spirits is
not customary. Witchcraft probably usurps the place of this form of
human sacrifice. But among the more highly organized tribes of the
Calabar and the Niger, where individuals wield despotic power,
multitudes have been offered in sacrifice to appease the hostility of
the spirits: and they would still be offered but for the presence of
foreign governments. It took the English many years to suppress the
annual sacrifice of human beings to the crocodiles of the Niger. I once
had the pleasure of travelling with that great man and great missionary,
Mr. Ramseyer (_Father Ramseyer_, all white men called him), a member of
the Basle Mission, who for thirty years lived at Kumassi in the Ashantee
Territory; and I heard from Mr. Ramseyer himself the story of Prempeh,
that beastly king of Kumassi, whose fetish-trees were regularly watered
with the blood of human beings; and who, when at length his lust for
blood had become insatiable, had a slave put to death each night for his
entertainment—and probably, also, to appease the hostility of the
spirits. King Prempeh was finally captured by the English, and not long
afterwards died in the prison at Sierra Leone.
Next to fear of the spirits the most demoralizing factor is the
African’s distrust of his fellow men. The one is a corollary of the
other. The African, like other savages, before giving one a drink
swallows a mouthful of it himself to prove that it is not poisoned. In
some of the large tribes of the Niger, where a king _is_ a king, it was
the practice (until the English government interfered with custom) for a
king, upon his accession to the throne, to put to death all his brothers
and half-brothers. In one of those tribes the blood royal was held in
such reverence that under no circumstances would they shed it; so they
used to put the royal brothers to death by stuffing the mouth and
nostrils full of cotton. It was a far more horrible death than cutting
the throat; but it was respectful.
On one occasion, when my heart had been rent by the dreadful cruelty
inflicted upon a certain woman whom I knew very well, who had been
charged with witchcraft because of the death of her husband, I addressed
the whole population of the town, and after holding forth for some time
in wrathful denunciation of their unreasoning suspicion, I asked why a
man’s wives must always be the first to be charged with his death. An
elderly chief; rising to his feet, gently interrupted me, and using my
native name, _Mote-ke-ye_ (_Man-who-never-sleeps_), he said:
“Ah, Mote-ke-ye, I would like to ask one question: Are you a married
man?”
I was well aware, when I answered No, that the shrewd old man had routed
me. The guilty men looked at one another with a relieved and peculiarly
significant smile which said politely but unmistakably: “Then you are
not qualified to judge us; for you know nothing about the natural
hostility of wives, and we know all about it.”
A man’s wives are the first to be charged with his death, even without
evidence, because they are supposed to have a latent desire for it. As I
have already said, much of the witchcraft of Africa is straight poison
usually administered in food. Africa abounds with deadly poisons and
many Africans are skillful in their use. Wives do the cooking, and so
have the constant opportunity to inflict death by this powerful but
invisible weapon. One often finds that one bad custom is nothing more
than a pitiful attempt to correct another. And this may explain the
custom of killing wives at the death of the husband. At any rate it
tends to restrict a wife’s use of poison and to inspire an earnest
effort to keep her husband alive.
It has been estimated that, in those tribes that are beyond the
restraints of foreign governments, nineteen out of twenty Africans die
by violence. This accounts for the sparse population of Africa. For
although the African race is prolific, and the land in most parts
capable of sustaining a dense population, it is the most sparsely
populated country in the world.
Many of this number are killed in war, which is a chronic condition.
Nothing is too trivial to occasion a war. The usual beginning, however,
is the stealing of a woman by a man of another tribe or village.
Following this, the people of the two villages wage an aggressive
guerrilla warfare, killing each other at every opportunity, not sparing
women or children. The war usually continues until on either side
another woman is stolen by a third party and another war begins. Then
the first war is closed: a great palaver is talked between the two
parties in some neutral town; and after oceans of oratory it is usually
agreed that the side that has done the most killing shall pay over to
the other side a corresponding number of women and much goods, including
a proper dowry for the woman first stolen.
One of the first scenes that I witnessed in Africa was that in which, at
the end of a war, four women were thus delivered to the enemy. The
people were all gathered together when the chief announced the names of
the four women. Each woman, as she heard her name, sprang from the
ground with a shriek and tried to escape into the forest; but several
men were on hand to catch her. She struggled until they bound her. Then
the next name was called, and we heard another shriek. Finally the four
women were led away, all of them crying bitterly. In the town to which
they were taken they would be given as wives to certain men, and soon
they would begin to make the best of the situation, would probably form
new attachments and forget the old.
Women are thus bought and sold. A man’s wealth is reckoned by the number
of his wives. On one occasion in a native town a conversation with the
chief led me to preach on the future life; and I preached both heaven
and hell. The chief evidently inferred that he was bound for the latter
place. He asked me what I thought about it. I told him candidly that I
thought so too. For a moment he seemed troubled, and then his
countenance brightened with relief, and he exclaimed: “I know what I’ll
do. I’ll send my head-wife in my place.”
Belief in witchcraft is the extreme expression of mutual distrust. It is
supposed that as many Africans are put to death for witchcraft as those
who die in war. The African seems not to believe that there is any such
thing as a natural death. Even when a man is killed in war some one is
usually charged with having bewitched him; for it will be said that he
wore a fetish for safety, but that a witch had broken the spell of the
fetish. A witch’s spirit is “loose from her body.” In the night she
leaves her body and goes off to foregather with other witches with whom
she joins in wild and unspeakably wicked revels, during which they feast
upon the “hearts” of people. The people whose hearts have thus been
eaten sicken soon afterwards and die. A witch is always careful to
return to her body before daylight. If the vacant body be found during
her absence it would be wise to destroy it immediately.
When a number of deaths occur in close succession a council is held in
the presence of the witch-doctor. When he announces witchcraft as the
cause a panic ensues in which the people become fairly dehumanized with
fear and a thirst for vengeance. Each one suspects everybody else. The
witch-doctor sometimes names the guilty persons. And woe to any enemies
that he may have in that town! Usually, however, they resort to the
ordeal to find the guilty ones. The spectacle of such a panic is very
revolting. The horrors of war, even at the worst, are never comparable
to the horrors of witchcraft. It is the constant fear of the African,
and his most powerful fetishes are those which protect him against it.
Except in the vicinity of the foreign governments witches are put to
death and always by cruel means, wives charged with witchcraft being
buried alive with the dead body of the husband. In one town that I know
ten women, wives of one man, were thus buried with him; in another town,
twenty women. Their legs were broken before they were thrown into the
grave.
Even cannibalism, regarded as the lowest reach of degradation, is not
only a natural consequence of fetishism, but is one of its logical
forms. I doubt whether, among the Fang, it is ever practiced on the mere
impulse of hunger. It is rather the last desperate resort of fear
seeking fetish protection. The strongest protection against an enemy in
war is to eat one of their number. After that the enemy can do no harm
and need not be feared; unless (always this same dreadful
qualification)—unless some traitor in one’s own town should break the
spell even of this fetish by witchcraft.
The African is further demoralized by his idea of man’s destiny. He
believes in a future life. I never encountered a doubt on this subject.
But his belief is not ennobling, nor a source of moral inspiration.
Death is an unmitigated evil, and the dead are always wishing to be back
in the flesh. The future does not hold rewards or punishments for the
good or evil of the present life; nor has present goodness any future
advantage. There, as here, to have a great many wives and plenty to eat
are chief factors in happiness. They have big palavers there as well as
here. Sometimes palavers left unfinished here are settled there. In some
tribes (the Kru tribe, for instance) when smallpox or other scourge
visits a town, and many people die about the same time, it is supposed
that an unfinished palaver has been resumed in the other world and these
persons were needed as witnesses.
It will be perceived that beneath all this moral degradation of the
African, beneath his cruelty and licentiousness, there lies a degrading
conception of man’s nature. Man has no divine origin and no noble
destiny; therefore he has no intrinsic value and human nature has no
inherent worth.
But to this seeming hopeless ruin of humanity Christ in His own person
imparts a new conception, _first_, of the dignity of man’s nature;
_second_, of the possibilities of his character; _third_, of the
greatness of his destiny.
In Jesus, God takes upon Himself this despised human nature, and reveals
the divine character in a human life. That same life is at once a
revelation of God and an example to men; and without incongruity Jesus
could say, in words perhaps the sublimest ever uttered in the ears of
men: “Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Man,
therefore, even the most degraded and the slave, is akin to God and the
object of His tender regard. The light of this revelation extinguishes
all minor differences between men; a human soul is of more value than
the whole world, and neither wealth nor power can add anything to a
man’s worth.
Much is added to this new conception of man when Jesus reveals in
Himself the possibilities of human character. It was always a surprise
to me to find how readily the African recognizes in Jesus the human
ideal; how he accepts Him as the true moral standard, by which
henceforth he judges himself and realizes what he is and what he ought
to be.
The great destiny of man which Jesus discloses seems not only credible,
but even natural, in the light of man’s kinship with God and the
possibilities of human character. Instead of the poor African’s fear of
death and his degrading conception of the future life, Jesus sets before
him a hope that thrills his heart with joy. Man has many present faults
and frailties, but he does not belong to the present. He is not a
finality, but a possibility; a possibility to be realized only in the
perspective of an infinite future, in which death itself is but an
incident, the end of nothing worth while; and beyond it is the
consummation of all our hopes, a consummation which language becomes
rhapsody when it would describe.
Is it wonderful that this new conception of humanity should be morally
transforming? that, for instance, it should impress even the African
mind with the sanctity of human life?
Cannibalism disappears as soon as the Gospel becomes intelligible, and
long before they accept it as individuals. A war arose between two
villages, in a community where I had preached not more than a year, for
the people had recently come from the far interior where cannibalism was
commonly practiced. The town making the attack came on a very dark
night, intending to set fire to the other town, which only required that
the blaze be started in one place, the houses being so close that all
must burn together. They were led by two young men whom I knew. While
the rest of the party were hiding, these two, going forward, saturated
the thatch roof of the first house with kerosene, and were striking a
match, when the noise was heard by the man inside. He quietly arose,
moving stealthily as a cat, opened the door, and discovered the two
young men standing a few yards in front of him. He took deliberate aim
and fired twice. One man fell dead instantly; the other, frightfully
wounded, reached his friends, who put him in a canoe and took him back
to his town, where he died a few days later. I have said that one of the
two fell in the street. A few years ago they would have eagerly devoured
the body, both as a feast, and as a fetish protection against the enemy.
The fetish belief still remained strong as ever, but they revolted from
the practice; and having cut the body in pieces and boiled it, they
smeared the grease upon their foreheads and breasts, hoping that it
would thus avail for their protection. But they did not taste it. In
former times they would actually boast of eating an enemy; now these
same people are ashamed to confess it, and it is the most offensive
charge that one town can make against another.
The old chief to whom I have already referred, who laid at my feet the
sacred fetish of his father’s brains, told me how that he was persuaded
to give it up by a neighbouring chief (one whom I had instructed) who
had come to his town, not to make war and kill, as formerly, but in a
spirit of peace, and had stayed many days in order to tell the people
the things which he had recently learned. He had said that he and they
must stop making war with each other; that one God was Father of them
all, who also loved them all; that they must throw away their fetishes,
entrust themselves to God’s care, believe in His Son and do right; and
even if they suffered for it in this world there was a life to come in
which they would be fully rewarded. This same chief, who was speaking to
me, had had seven wives; but at the instance of his new faith he put
away six of them and refused to accept a dowry for those whom he put
away.
The Christians among them refuse to accept the dowry for daughter or
sister; and polygamy of course is forbidden. Wars are less and less
frequent; and the sanctity of human life has taken such a hold of mind
and heart that it must henceforth be a governing principle among them.
How completely the Gospel of Christ can transform the invisible world to
the mind of the African and vanquish his abject and demoralizing fear of
spirits was proved by the numbers of men who began coming to me, some of
them from towns far away, in order to surrender the skulls of their
fathers, the most potent fetish known to the African for protection
against the hostility of the spirits. I found myself in possession of
heaps of these uncanny skulls, and I did not quite know what to do with
them. One day, a man, having heard that I was going to bring them to
America, came to me in alarm to ask whether I had considered the
possible consequences of confusion at the resurrection if the heads of
these Africans should be transported to the other side of the sea.
The voluntary surrender of a father’s skull is the strongest possible
evidence of the sincerity of an African’s faith in Christ, and his
salvation from the paralyzing fear of spirits.
The disciples, that stormy night on Galilee, thought they saw a ghost,
and in their fear of the ghost they forgot their fear of the tornado
that was threatening to engulf them. But at the sound of a well-known
voice, “It is I; be not afraid,” their fear becomes joy, and Peter even
cries out: “Lord, bid me come unto Thee.”
The story is one that always appealed to the Fang of the Gaboon. For, in
bringing their garden produce to the morning market, they must cross the
bay at night in their frail canoes, and they all know what it means to
be overtaken by the sudden fury of a tropical storm until they have
despaired of reaching the land. And it is with the African as with the
disciples, his fear of the supernatural is always greater than his fear
of the natural, and confidence in Christ casts out all fear. So also in
the last hour, when about to pass out of this life into the dread world
of spirits, I have seen him meet death without fear. For he hears the
voice of Jesus saying: “It is I; be not afraid,” and he responds: “Lord,
bid me come unto Thee.”
XV
FETISHISM AND THE CROSS
During my study of the language of the Fang I was one day talking to a
young boy and searching for a better word for _mercy_ than the very
vague word in general use. He was a bright lad, with beautiful eyes and
frank manner. I said to him:
“A man was hunting in the forest, when he discovered a woman of a
neighbouring town alone in her garden. He decided to steal her and add
her to the number of his wives. He caught her and tied a bush-rope
around her, and himself holding the end of it he made her walk ahead of
him through the forest towards his town. On the way, the woman,
recovering from her first fright, began to cry and to plead with him to
let her go. She told him that she had three little children and that the
youngest was sick and would probably die without its mother. The man for
some time hardened his heart, but the woman continued to plead and to
cry more bitterly. Then at last the man’s heart was softened. He began
to think that perhaps two wives were enough for the present; and he let
the woman go.
“Now, when he reaches his town and tells the people what he has done
what will they say about him?”
Promptly came the answer: “They will call him a fool.”
“Why will they call him a fool?” I asked.
“Because he is not a real man. He has a soft heart like a woman’s heart.
All women are fools.”
“And how about small boys?” I asked.
“Oh,” said he, “small boys are very much like women; but of course we
will be real men when we grow up.”
Not that the African is destitute of the instinct of humanity—by no
means; but a false ideal calls for the repression of his best instincts.
In the course of a war between two villages, in which I knew nearly all
the people, a young man named _Minkoa_, a bright and rather manly young
fellow, was one day out in the forest hunting when he was shot to death
by a party who were in hiding near the path. Minkoa’s sister was married
to the very man who first shot him, and they had been intimate friends,
like brothers in each other’s regard, and had visited much together; but
the man did not know that it was Minkoa when he fired the shot in the
dark forest. Having wounded him, and seeing him fall to the ground, he
sprang forward to complete the work, and instantly recognized his friend
Minkoa. The savage heart is never wholly savage. With a cry of grief he
fell beside the wounded man and with his own body would have saved him
from further injury; but the rest of the party having come up, they
dragged him back, flung him aside with a curse, and standing over
Minkoa, fairly riddled his body with bullets. Compassion, or even
natural affection, under such circumstances, is a weakness and must be
suppressed as incompatible with what they regard as manly courage.
All heathendom suffers for want of a perfect human ideal. The first
result is a variety of ideal and type in different nations and different
religions. Not only does the Confucian type, the Mohammedan type, the
Buddhist type, differ from the Christian type, but they also differ
essentially from each other. In each, some one virtue, parental
authority, for instance, or courage, occupies almost the entire
foreground, while other virtues recede in the perspective of character.
In Africa virtue is almost identified with courage, and power is
worshipped. Woman, therefore, who in all lands represents the gentler
virtues—compassion, devotion, patience—is contemptible; and the child
also; for where power is worshipped feebleness can have no claim. Woman,
thus relegated to a place of inferiority and contempt, sinks to a lower
level of degradation than the man. Cruelty is the characteristic of the
men; licentiousness, of the women.
But notwithstanding the imperfection of his ideal the African is
essentially moral. He knows the difference between right and wrong; he
knows that it is wrong to lie and to steal. Sometimes I was disposed to
doubt it; when he told me lies for no possible advantage, or when he
committed wanton wickedness.
For instance, I ask a man what town he comes from, and he answers that
he comes from Jamanen, when he really came from Atakama; and there is no
conceivable reason why he should deceive me, except that he lies by
preference. In the first days among the Bulu, before there was an
established friendship between them and ourselves, when I have asked the
road to a certain town the men have directed me the opposite way, and I
have inferred the truth from the suppressed exclamations of the
tittering women. A man steals a woman, instead of offering a proper
dowry; and when I remonstrate, indignant that he should precipitate a
war with all its bloodshed and suffering rather than pay a dowry, he
amazes me by confessing that he expects to pay the dowry all the
same—after the war. Why not pay it in the first place and save the lives
of his people? And why does the African tell me a lie when the truth
would serve his purpose better? Has he sunken to such a depth that “Fair
is foul, and foul is fair?” So it sometimes seemed. But a more intimate
knowledge of him always compels one to abandon this theory. It is never
the love of bloodshed that leads him to act thus, but an excessive
admiration of courage. His attitude of distrust towards his fellow men
has bred in him a disposition to secretiveness and deception, so that he
lies even when there is no occasion, not from preference but from force
of habit.
Let him discover that another has lied to him, or stolen from him, and
he will resent it as readily and as naturally as ourselves. On occasion
I have heard him preach a fairly good extemporaneous sermon on these
subjects. In Old Calabar I was shown the leaf of a certain tree, the
lower side of which is like sandpaper, and I was assured that it is
frequently used upon the lips of persons convicted of lying—though I did
not observe that trees of this kind were being rapidly defoliated by
reason of this custom. The African lies in self-defense, and steals in
the interest of success; but what he practices himself he condemns in
others; for he knows that it is wrong.
Again, the universal practice of the _ordeal_ is evidence of the moral
nature of the African; though at first sight it would seem rather to
indicate moral imbecility. Sometimes a hen is set on eggs and the
accused person is adjudged guilty or innocent according as the greater
number of chickens hatched are male or female. This is a mode of trial
for less serious offenses. More commonly in the case of witchcraft a
mild poison is administered to the accused in a drink. Sometimes it only
produces vomiting and does him no harm. But if he is seized with vertigo
and staggers, he is adjudged guilty.
Since the establishment of foreign governments it is seldom that a white
man is allowed to witness this ordeal; but in earlier days they
witnessed it frequently. Du Chaillu tells of such a trial at which he
was present, in a town near Gaboon. There lived in the town a woman,
Ogondaga, an unusual woman among her people, he says; the one also who
had kept his house and cooked his food and had been exceedingly kind to
him. A number of deaths occurred in the town, and when the witch-doctor
was consulted he announced witchcraft as the cause. The usual panic
ensued. The terrified people, exclaiming, “There are those among us who
eat people,” ran through the streets with drawn swords, athirst for
blood. The witch-doctor named three persons as possible witches; and
last among them he named Ogondaga. As they dragged her from her house
towards the river she caught sight of her white friend and piteously
begged him to save her. The lonely white man, pale and trembling, looked
on, but could do nothing. They made her drink the poison. There was a
moment’s terrible suspense; then she was seized with vertigo and
staggered. But even before she fell they sprang upon her with savage
yells, cut her body to pieces, and with curses flung it piece by piece
into the river. And yet I am citing the ordeal as evidence of a moral
nature!
The roots of certain shrubs, the bark of certain trees, and, above all,
the notorious Calabar bean are used as ordeal poisons. Sometimes both
the accused and the accuser are compelled to submit to the ordeal. In at
least one African tribe, when one person charges another with certain
serious offenses they are both (accused and accuser) tied to stakes some
distance apart, on the brink of the river in the neighbourhood of
crocodiles, and whichever of the two is seized first is adjudged guilty.
The other is then set free.
The ordeal is a form of judicial trial in which supernatural aid is
relied upon to take the place of evidence and to determine guilt or
innocence. We must not forget that the ordeal was a medieval practice in
Europe; and that our fathers were required to prove their innocence by
dipping their hands into boiling water, or carrying a red-hot iron nine
paces. But our fathers believed in a righteous God, and when evidence
was wanting the ordeal was a direct appeal to His judgment. It is very
different, and more strange, to find the African relying upon the
ordeal, who does not believe in a righteous God. The God of African
belief made the world; but in character He is no better than the
Africans themselves; and, moreover, he is a God afar off and inactive,
while the spirits who are near and active are also evil and hostile.
The principle of the African ordeal is that there is an eternal
connection between guilt and retribution; and knowing of no righteous
God to execute vengeance, they attribute wrath to the dumb forces of
nature; these, they conceive, are in league against the wrong-doer and
will execute vengeance. The belief is the more impressive because it is
directly contradicted by the facts of experience. Fire burns the
innocent; the lightning-stroke is no respecter of persons; the fury of
the tornado is not partial to the good. And yet the belief persists. It
persists because of the irrepressible instinct that wrong-doing deserves
punishment, and that somewhere at the heart of the universe there is a
moral power that connects guilt and retribution.
The same instinct accounts for the sleepless Nemesis and the whips and
scorpions of the Furies of ancient mythology. There is a peculiar and
striking instance of it in the Scriptures: Paul, having been shipwrecked
on the island of Melita, gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on
the fire which the natives had kindled; but a viper, by reason of the
heat, came out and fastened on his hand. Then the natives said one to
another: “No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped
the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.”
But when, instead of falling dead suddenly, they saw no harm come to
him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god.
One still night, as we lay at anchor in the middle of the broad river,
amidst profound darkness, a deep-voiced man related to the crew a story
of how a certain man, whose father and sisters had been killed by
another man in a tribal war, not being able to avenge himself, at last
“threw his face on his enemy.” It is not necessary to repeat the
unpleasant details of how this is done; but in many tribes they believe
that where a great wrong has been unavenged it really can be done, and,
intentionally or otherwise, it illustrates in a gruesome manner a
principle of remorse of which some suppose that the African is
incapable. Ever after the man threw his face on his enemy the enemy saw
that face. It haunted him in the midst of all his joys, made his sorrows
the heavier, and poisoned all the pleasures of his life. Fetishes,
prayers, incantations were all in vain; he still saw it, saw it alike in
the darkness and the light, and saw it always. At last, when madness
threatened him because of this haunting face, he killed himself to
escape from it. But it is very doubtful whether he would escape it even
in death; for there are those who say that a face thrown upon a man will
continue to haunt him in the next life even as in this.
Again, even more clearly does the African prove that he is essentially
moral by the ceremonies which he has instituted for the relief of a
sense of guilt. I once witnessed a peculiar ceremony of this kind in a
native town. A series of dire misfortunes, which had exhausted the usual
resources of fetishism, led them at length to search their own hearts
for the cause. By some means it was concluded that the infidelity of the
wives of the town was the cause of their calamities. Thereupon a fetish
medicine was prepared in a large bucket. An individual who played the
part of priest was hidden in a green booth in the middle of the street.
He was supposed by the women to be a spirit, and not a human being. He
spoke in a false voice that was inhuman enough for any spirit. The women
as he called them by name, one by one, approached and sat down on a seat
a few yards from the booth. The “spirit” within the booth held one end
of a rope of vine, while the woman seated without held the other. Then
he asked her whether she was guilty of the sin that had wrought so much
evil. The women believed that the spirit already knew their guilt or
innocence, and they were afraid to lie. They all confessed their guilt
in the hearing of the people—probably every woman in the town. Then an
assistant, at the command of the priest, dipped a bunch of grass into
the medicine and sprinkled it upon the guilty, thereby removing the
curse.
Since that time they have all heard of the blood that was shed on
Calvary; and by its sprinkling some of those some women, I trust, have
been cleansed from a guilty conscience.
Blood itself is often used in these ceremonies; the fresh blood of
fowls, or of sheep or goats. In such a ceremony the people are seated on
the ground, one behind another, and the priest passing along pours the
blood over their heads and shoulders. To most of them it is a mere
ceremonial and removes the curse without reference to the heart. Such a
scene often recalled the observation of George Adam Smith, that the
essence of heathenism is not idolatry but ritualism. Many of them shrink
from the blood, lowering their heads to keep it off their faces and
evidently desiring as little of it as possible. But occasionally one may
see a woman welcome it with eager, upturned face, and eyes of infinite
and pathetic longing; in the spirit of that disciple who said: “Lord,
not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
“Out of the depths,” said the psalmist—“Out of the depths have I cried
unto Thee, O Lord.” And must we not believe that this inarticulate cry
from the abysmal depths of the poor African woman’s darkness and
degradation is heard by the attentive ear of Him who sitteth upon the
throne of the heavens and is very nigh unto them that are of a contrite
heart?
In nothing else does the African reveal his essentially moral nature
more than in his immediate recognition and acceptance of the character
of Jesus as the human ideal; although it is an ideal that traverses all
his former conceptions, that subverts those ideas which are the basis of
his dearest social customs, and condemns utterly that conduct which has
been his very boast. Jesus is so immediately understood by the African
that we are often asked whether Jesus was a black man. He is understood
by every tribe and nation, because He unites in Himself the ideals of
all. He also unites in Himself individual qualities of seeming
incompatibility. In Him the most masculine qualities are united with
those which are usually regarded as feminine, such as gentleness,
patience, devotion. Christ redeems woman from oppression and bondage by
rescuing from contempt those virtues in which she excels, and even
giving them preëminence. He is the ideal of woman as well as man.
But that which concerns us just now is the strange fact that the African
immediately accepts the new ideal. He recognizes the character of Jesus
as the authoritative standard even when he refuses to conform to it; and
its authority is based wholly on his perception of its intrinsic
superiority. The African finds in Jesus the complete definition of his
own conscience. We shall not find a better explanation of this fact than
that of the Bible; that he was made in the image of God and has not
forgotten his origin.
If this depiction of the mind and heart of the African be true, it will
be almost a foregone conclusion that the gospel which inspires his faith
and becomes the power of God unto his salvation is the gospel of the
cross and the atoning Saviour. Those who are called to preach Christ to
the most degraded of mankind are ever in accord with the persistent
instinct of the Church in all ages, embodied in the beautiful tradition
that the spear which wounded our Saviour’s side on Calvary had
henceforth the power to heal every wound that it touched.
This gospel of the atonement, in the first place, relieves his sense of
guilt. His sense of guilt is very vague, indeed; but the ceremonies
which he has instituted for its removal are the most concrete expression
of his moral nature. He knows nothing of the theological implications of
the atonement, nor does he understand the philosophy of his own
salvation; but he knows that the crucified Christ satisfies his heart
and relieves his conscience. For man is always greater than his
reasoning faculty, and sometimes when it is impotent he still may know
the truth by faith direct. The justice of vicarious atonement is not
incredible to the African because he already has the idea. In common
with most oriental races he has an idea of human solidarity which the
occidental has lost (though he is regaining it) by reason of his
excessive emphasis upon individualism. The African represents the
opposite extreme. Each member of a family or tribe may be held justly
accountable for any misdeed of any other member. If, for instance, in
conducting a caravan through the forest one of them should desert, it
would be in strict accord with African justice to shoot all the
remaining members of that man’s tribe. White men (including some
missionaries) have occasionally won a reputation for generosity by
foregoing their rights in this respect. The human mind will never
exhaust the divine mystery of the cross; but somewhere in its
neighbourhood society will probably find the true mean between the two
extremes of individualism and social solidarity. The voluntary sacrifice
of Christ as our representative and its procurement of our pardon is
credible to the African and relieves his sense of guilt.
Again, it is Christ as the atoning Saviour who secures his repentance.
Nowhere else but at the cross have men united the ideas of holiness and
love, God’s hatred of sin and love of men. In heathen religions, when
love is attributed to God, as in some forms of Hinduism, He is indulgent
and indifferent to sin; when holiness is attributed to Him, as in
Mohammedanism, He is remote and indifferent to men, because they are
sinful. And even the Pharisees were scandalized, not understanding how
that Jesus, while professing to be holy, could receive sinners and eat
with them. But the atoning death of Jesus, in which the divine goodness
is concreted, unites holiness and love, hatred of sin and love of
righteousness, and makes them inseparable.
Those who have acquired an intimate knowledge of the mind and heart of
the heathen know that it is the consequences of sin, rather than sin
itself, which they would escape. There is but little real abhorrence of
sin. And the missionary feels instinctively that to proclaim to such an
audience a gospel of forgiveness on a basis of repentance alone, without
either penalty or atoning sacrifice, would only give license to
indulgence, and make repentance itself impossible. The atonement of
Christ, while offering free pardon, impresses even the mind of the
African with the enormity of sin and the impossibility of pardon to the
impenitent.
And again, Christ the atoning Saviour is the highest impulse to
self-sacrificing service. The love of the atonement is more than the
love of complacence. The atonement is love actualized as service.
It seems to me one must have lived among the heathen in order to realize
how this principle of self-sacrifice stands over against the world’s
principle of self-assertion. It is claimed, and with some truth, that
Buddhism also has this principle of self-sacrifice. But, according to
that religion, self-sacrifice leads to death, practical annihilation,
which is therefore more desirable than life. In Christianity
self-sacrifice leads to more abundant life and is the way not to a grave
but to a throne. In Revelation a Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world is seated upon the throne and rules: self-sacrifice is the
principle not of death but of life, the way to power and glory; and this
is not merely a temporal discipline, but an eternal principle—“from the
foundation of the world.”
The African has a capacity for devotion not surpassed in the world. And
he easily construes Christian duty in terms of service.
Ndong Koni was one of the first of the Fang Christians. He chose Christ
early in life, and his mind was as completely purged of fetishism as was
his heart of heathen cruelty. He was gentle and affectionate; and
through all the years in which he was my constant companion, in frequent
sickness, and in toils long and hard, I received from him so much
kindness and affection that my heart still grows tender when I think of
him. Ndong Koni was accounted very poor because he had no sisters. A man
gives his sisters in marriage, and with the dowry which he obtains he
procures for himself as many wives as he has sisters. Ndong Koni had not
even one sister; and since he would not elope with another man’s wife
his domestic future was a problem which neither he nor his friends could
solve. Therefore, when he came to the mission and asked for work, I
supposed that he had resolved to procure a dowry by working for it—which
would require the labour of years. But I found, when I visited his town,
that, with only the assistance of an old uncle, Ndong Koni had built a
little church in his town; and in order that it should be far better
than any house in town they had decided that it should have real
carpenter-made windows and doors swinging on real hinges. This grandeur
would be very costly, and Ndong Koni had sought work at the mission in
order to earn money to pay for it. From that time, as long as I remained
in Africa, he never left me, except for an occasional brief interval. He
rose from one position to another until he was captain of the crew of
the _Dorothy_, and, finally, a catechist. Many of the towns near Ndong
Koni’s home were new, the people having come recently from the interior.
I was the first white man to visit most of these; but I always found
that Ndong Koni had preceded me and was the first missionary.
One of Ndong Koni’s converts was Onjoga, a remarkable man, who
afterwards became an elder in the Fang church. Onjoga had reached middle
age when he became a Christian, and for a long time he was the only
Christian in his town. It was a peculiarly bad town. Soon after his
conversion he came to the mission to ask me if I could send a teacher to
his town; for, he said, he would like to learn to read the Bible that he
might instruct his people. I had no teacher whom I could send; but
Onjoga was so determined that I concluded to keep him at Baraka for a
while and give him special instruction. He remained several months
during which I taught him daily; and half of each day he worked in the
yard to earn the price of his food.
He winced perceptibly when I told him that the only work which I could
give him at the time was that of cutting grass. This is the one kind of
work, above all others, that the African soul abhors. The coarse, rank
grass grows with astonishing rapidity in that moist, hot climate. But
for reasons of health it must be kept down. A lawn-mower is useless: it
is cut with a short, straight cutlass—the English matchet—and in
wielding this cutlass one must stoop to the very ground. It is extremely
hard work, and regarded also as peculiarly menial. To keep half a dozen
natives working at it steadily for half a day is the final test of the
white man’s power of command in Africa.
One day I set the crew of the _Evangeline_ at this work. Makuba, the
captain, was very resentful; and the next day when I ordered him to get
the boat ready for a missionary journey he was still resentful—so much
so that he could scarcely walk. In answer to my stare of amazement at
his snail pace he informed me that he had rheumatism as a result of
cutting grass. Makuba was an incomparable boatman and a faithful friend;
but in that mood he was sufficiently exasperating to demoralize both
crew and missionary and to make the heathen rage. When we got well under
way, and the _Evangeline_ had spread her white wings to the wind, the
other men began to eat; but Makuba would not even touch his food. At
length I said to him:
“Makuba, I am very sorry that your rheumatism is so bad you can’t eat;
for I am going to have a fried chicken for my dinner and I was expecting
to give you a portion of it—about half, perhaps.”
I had already learned that the chicken is the one African fetish whose
potency survives all changes. Makuba’s countenance was a study; but he
replied:
“Mr. Milligan, chicken no be same as other chop. I be fit to eat
chicken.” (Makuba was not a Fang, so he always addressed me in English.)
“But do you think it would cure your rheumatism?” I asked; “I am not
sure that I can spare it unless it is going to effect a complete cure.”
Makuba assured me that fried chicken was the specific for his kind of
rheumatism. And he was right; for it cured him completely. We had a
successful missionary tour, Makuba doing extra service at every
opportunity and singing as he held the helm.
The reader will understand, therefore, that Onjoga, the Fang Christian,
a man of middle age, and of real importance in his town and tribe, did
an extraordinary thing when he consented to cut grass that he might stay
at Baraka and be instructed in the Christian religion. He was distinctly
a man of brains. Before I left Africa I saw him stand before a large
audience and read a chapter from the Gospel of Matthew; and he read it
well. It was he, by the way, who, after one of our missionary tours,
first gave me my African name, _Mote-ke-ye_: _Man-who-never-sleeps_.
While Onjoga was living at Baraka I often took him as one of the
boat-crew in my work of itinerating. On one occasion, after a long
journey and a futile effort to reach a certain town during the
afternoon, we lost our way; for there was a network of small rivers. We
could neither find that particular town nor any other. Our predicament
became serious when darkness approached and the air became dense with
mosquitoes. At length we espied a canoe in the distance with several
persons in it. We pulled as fast as possible in order to overtake them;
but they evidently thought that we were pursuing them and they tried to
escape from us. Then Onjoga, rising in the boat and calling to them as
loud as he could yell (loud enough to be heard at any finite distance)
told them that we were lost and that we would like to go with them to
their town for the night. Having observed my helmet, they knew that
there was a white man in the boat and they were afraid, and refused to
take us to their town; for the French had recently burned some of their
towns. Onjoga assured them that I was not a government officer. Then
they asked who I was.
Onjoga shouted back: “He is a missionary.”
Across the distance came the question: “What is a missionary?”
Then Onjoga, shouting with all the strength of his powerful lungs, gave
them an outline of my work, a brief character-sketch of myself, and a
rapid synopsis of the Gospel which would have laid the world under
lasting obligation if I could have preserved it. Much to my surprise it
had the desired effect. They waited for us and took us to their town,
one of considerable size of which I had not before known the existence.
We spent the night there and preached to the people. In the evening,
when all the people were assembled, one of their own number started a
Fang hymn (one that I had translated) in which they all joined, to my
astonishment. Then they sang another, and another. The explanation was
that Ndong Koni had frequently visited the town in order to teach them.
Onjoga’s wife, Nze, was a great trial to him after he became a
Christian. At length he told me that he was going to put her away and
asked me to come to his town and judge the palaver. For he wished me to
know that he was folly justified. I went to his town and held a great
palaver and heard many witnesses. I listened half a day to the very
unpleasant story of Nze’s infidelity. Onjoga said that he did not care
so much about it before he became a Christian, but now it was revolting
to him and intolerable. After a long talk with Nze I asked Onjoga to
take her back once more. He was at first very unwilling. I said:
“I know it is hard; but she promises to do right in the future; and
besides, if you put her away you will probably marry some one else just
as bad; for they are all alike, or nearly so.” This was before there
were any conversions among the women.
“I know it,” he replied; “but I shall procure a very young wife and I am
going to beg you to take her to Baraka and raise her for me.”
His heart was so set upon this project that I had some difficulty in
persuading him that training wives for other men was not exactly my
specialty.
At last he consented to take Nze back once more. “But,” he said, “I know
she will not keep her promise.”
He was right. It was only a little while until Nze was living as badly
as ever. He put her away and remained single for some time. Then he
married a woman who had become a Christian under his teaching, and they
lived most happily together. Shortly before I left Africa I went to his
town and baptized their infant daughter. That service is still a sweet
memory.
It was not a great move for Nze. She married a man in the same town and
lived next door to Onjoga. Onjoga was a natural leader of men, and the
influence of his life transformed that town. Each time I visited him he
told me of men and women who had renounced their fetishes, together with
their cruelties and adulteries, and had confessed the Christian faith.
But the last time I visited his town he came walking down the street to
greet me, leading by the hand none other than Nze, whom he presented
saying: “She is now a Christian; and she is in the class that I am
teaching.” When I left Africa Nze was still a faithful member of
Onjoga’s class.
He was a man of evangelistic fervour. He regarded himself as a debtor to
all his people to make known the gospel of Christ crucified, which was
always the burden of his preaching. There were but few towns on the
Gaboon where his voice was not heard. Ndong Koni was gentle and winsome;
but Onjoga was aggressive and forceful. They represented extreme types;
and there are other types among the Fang equally pronounced. For Christ
lifted up upon the cross draws all men unto Him.
Onjoga’s own town instead of being one of the worst became one of the
best towns on the Gaboon. In the early days when I first visited it the
characteristic sound which greeted me as I approached it (usually in the
early night) was perhaps the bitter cry of a woman who was being
tortured for witchcraft; or the uncouth howling of a leopard-man whom
women and children may not see lest they die; or the weird wail of their
mourning for the dead; or the noise of war-drums and the savage shouts
of warriors who were keeping an expected enemy warned that they were on
the watch. Such were the sounds that ascended in the darkness like the
smoke of their torment. A few years later, in that town one would hear
every evening at a regular hour the people, young and old, singing
hymns, and singing them as they ought to be sung, from the heart. Nor
was there any cry of torture, nor any howl of a leopard-man, nor beating
of war-drums, nor any other sound that would strike fear into the heart
or quench the laughter of children at play.
XVI
MISSIONS AND SOCIAL PROGRESS[1]
The “untutored child of nature” whom we meet in the pages of Rousseau
and Cooper, the “noble savage” of sentimental fiction, is not the savage
of missionary literature.
Henry George, while repudiating the sentimental view, contrasts the
personal independence of the savage with the dependence of the labourer
of civilization whose skill is specialized until his labour becomes but
an infinitesimal part of the varied processes which are required to
supply even the commonest wants. The following is Mr. George’s
attractive picture of the savage:
“The aggregate produce of the labour of a savage tribe is small, but
each member is capable of an independent life. He can build his own
habitation, hew out or stitch together his own canoe, make his own
clothing, manufacture his own weapons, snares, tools and ornaments. He
has all the knowledge of nature possessed by his tribe—knows what
vegetable productions are fit for food, where they may be found; knows
the habits and resorts of beasts, fishes and insects; can pilot himself
by the sun or the stars, by the turning of blossoms or the mosses on the
trees; is in short capable of supplying all his wants. He may be cut off
from his fellows and still live.”[2]
Footnote 2:
_Progress and Poverty_, p. 256.
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