CONTACT WITH SLAVERY.
By and by not only oppressed tribes but oppressed individuals looked
to the Missions for succour. In the interior the English name had
long been associated with opposition to slavery. The natives regarded
Livingstone and the members of the Universities’ Mission as the special
friends of the slave. Such of them as had visited the coast had picked
up information about English ships of war which were the terror of the
slave-drivers.
_The Free Church._—As early as February, 1877, we find Dr. Stewart
saying: “Livingstonia seems to have taken a start and begun to grow in
one of the directions we specially wish it to grow—as an anti-slavery
centre”. When the Mission party arrived, there were hardly any natives
settled at Livingstonia. Soon many came seeking protection, and were
received by the missionaries. It was proclaimed that any one that ran
away to escape being sold would be received. The great slaving chiefs,
as might be expected, would be against the Mission in this policy, but
they took no hostile steps. It was seldom that owners inquired after
refugees, and when they did they had to go away very crestfallen. They
were told that refugees proved guilty of any crime would be given up, but
that innocent men and women crying for English protection should not cry
in vain. Dr. Stewart had the Fugitive Slave Circular before his mind, and
recognised that many complications might arise, and yet he expressed his
conviction that the missionaries could not do otherwise than they were
doing.
_Church of Scotland._—In the same manner the Directors of the Blantyre
Mission proclaimed in their Reports: “No Arab gangs will come near an
Englishman, if they can help it. With them the English name is synonymous
with destroyer of slavery. When Livingstone was at Nyassa, they fled
from his neighbourhood and took to distant and circuitous paths to avoid
meeting him. This guilt and terror on their part is contrasted with
the confidence and reverence inspired by Englishmen in the breasts of
the natives. We are assured that a Mission once established, they will
settle around it, receive our instructions and our help, place themselves
under our authority, and rise by order and Christian observance into the
state of civilised communities. What is done on the coast, and at a vast
expense (yet most righteously), by vessels of war, will be done here by
Christian missions—with this difference, that in delivering the orphan,
the outcast, and the captive, they will introduce them to a home life of
security and freedom, will take them out of the low prison, and show them
‘the glorious liberty of the children of God’.”
An extract from a letter of Dr. Macklin’s, of 7th Dec., 1877, which was
published in March, 1878, in the _Missionary Record_, will show that
neither the Blantyre missionaries nor the Directors at home hesitated
to espouse the cause of the slave:—“Some time ago there were two boys
here supposed to be brothers: after they had been here some months their
father came and took them home because they got no calico. Well, not
a long time afterwards, one of them came back and told us he had run
away, and wanted to stay with us; said he was not the man’s son, but
a slave, and had been bought some years ago. He asked our protection,
and I said, ‘You shall now stay with us, and no man can touch you’.
Two days afterwards his father, as he called himself, came for him. I
brought Evangeli out and confronted him with the man, and asked him the
same questions which I had previously, and he gave the same answers. I
then said to the man, ‘He is not your son, but a slave, and he has my
protection, and is now free’. All this took place in public before a
great many Yao men. The man said he did not wish to be an enemy, but
that the boy was his. I told him we gave him his freedom and English
protection.”
_A Free Native Village._—Mr. Stewart, writing from Blantyre in
November, 1877, says:—“I must mention another very interesting and
promising circumstance. We have a native village growing up near us.
The first-comers were three or four families from the neighbourhood of
the Cataracts, who, on account of the insecurity of their village from
Mangoni raids, but without having been actually hunted from their homes,
came here, and spontaneously put themselves under our protection. Land
has been given them, and a site for their houses. They are required to
build substantial square houses; the size adopted is 20 feet by 14 feet.
Four such are now being erected by their unassisted labours. They have
been joined by one or two families from this district. The men are well
built and athletic, with open, smiling countenances. They and the women
frequently attend our meetings. They are, I think, a good beginning of
our future tenantry.” Of the school he says:—“It fluctuates in numbers,
and has not grown as fast as might be wished. Parents cannot be induced
to leave their boys here for long at one time. The boys are docile, and
willing to attend; the difficulty is with the parents.” Soon the children
of these refugees became the main hope of the school: while their parents
attended the religious meetings and formed a congregation. The state
of progress by March, 1878, is summed up in these words, where special
emphasis is given to the position on slavery:—“Our Mission at Blantyre
continues to prosper in its various operations; the natives are friendly,
and are impressed with a sense of its value; the school is well attended;
the area of cultivation has much increased, and Blantyre has become an
asylum for the slave.”
In Dr. Macklin’s letter we find the following:—“We have three more slave
refugees here at present, two women (one has a child) and a boy. The
first one came nearly two months ago, having run away from her master
because he abused her; no inquiries were made after her by any one. The
second one—the boy—came about three weeks ago, he having run away on his
being taken to join a gang of slaves from the Cherasulo district. A man
came after him next day and said he was his son; but this was an evident
falsehood, for the boy was not Yao at all. I dismissed farther hearing
of the case for four days, until Mr. Stewart should return with the
interpreter. But it seems after the boy had left the house the man had
attempted to seize him, but the boy eluded him and ran back to the house,
and the man after him; but my servant Ropa prevented him from getting
hold of the boy. I ordered the man off the place, but he would not go,
and continued to talk to me; at this I ordered Ropa to catch hold of
him, but the man resisted; whereupon both Mapas and myself rushed at the
man and disarmed him and sent him from the place. I need hardly say he
did not return again. The third—the woman with the child—came three days
afterwards, having escaped from the large gang. We learned that the gang
was going to Nyungwi on the Zambeze. Accordingly, we determined to try
and stop them; and so we sent a present of two blankets to the Magololo
chief, Chiputula, asking him not to allow them to cross the Shiré, by
refusing them canoes, but on no account to fight with them. It is a
fortnight nearly since the woman came, and no one has come after her. You
thus see that, in a measure, we are succouring the oppressed and setting
the captive free. Would that we could as easily set them free from the
bondage of sin and the darkness of ignorance!”
All the white men in the country disliked the system of slavery, and
struggled against it. In this they were applauded by the Directors at
home. They had no clergyman regularly at the station, and, although
evangelistic work was not neglected, the secular side of the Mission was
by far the more prominent. The Church of Scotland did not expect so much
at first from the religious side of the Mission, as from the Industrial.
It was felt, as in the days of Gregory the Great, that Mission work would
move by “steps and not by leaps”. The cultivation of the soil was eagerly
looked to, as a means of rendering the Mission self-supporting, and
the missionaries were urged to acquire land. By May, 1878, we find Dr.
Macklin writing—“There are evidences or indications that we are beginning
to influence the natives for good, by our conduct towards them and by our
example. We have now got five women and one boy, escaped from slavery,
under our protection. Concerning the acquisition of land as our own, I
may here state that I have succeeded in getting from the chief a large
grant, of which much of the land is excellent. In consideration of this
grant we must make some annual present to the chief.”
Besides espousing the cause of weakest, the Mission also commended
itself by acts of kindness. Dr. Macklin writes with reference to a
famine—“During the height of the distress I sent some hundredweights of
grain from our own store to Katunga, one of the Magololo chiefs, who is a
great friend of ours, and has supplied us with most of the sugar-cane we
have.”
We conclude this chapter by extracts from a letter of Dr. Macklin’s,
written in the end of March, 1878, which throws much light on the various
aspects of the work.
“The Mission in its civil and social aspects is making reasonable and
satisfactory progress. As an asylum for the poor, persecuted slave,
Blantyre is becoming known and prized. We have now six fellow-creatures
rescued from the lash of the slave driver, and miseries worse than death.
And this in turn, prepares them for giving a ready reception to the free
offers of the greater emancipation, salvation by grace through Jesus
Christ our Lord. My present circumstances give a new emphasis to the old
law of the city of refuge. Just think of the poor, fainting woman bearing
her child, fleeing for her life, but sustained by the hope that if only
she can reach the British flag, which already she sees fluttering in the
evening breeze, her child shall live and herself be free.
“I think I told you in my last, that we were annoyed with some pilfering,
but had not been able to bring the petty thefts home to any one.
Recently, however, we have found that the thieves do not belong to our
Africans, but to another tribe, namely, to Makukani’s people. Had we the
benefits of a good Glasgow reporter, your attention might be arrested by
some such heading as, ‘Daring, Exciting Chase, and Clever Capture’. The
story is as follows:—On the morning of the 13th February last, about four
o’clock, both Mapas and William Koyi were awakened by attempts being made
to pull the blankets off them. Mapas recognising at once the position of
affairs, waited for the arm being put in again at the window—nor had he
long to wait; but in the darkness he failed to secure the arm, and only
alarmed the thieves, who made off with the booty already secured, and
well packed in two large bundles. Mapas instantly roused the others in
that house—there are now eight houses—and gave chase. Koyi who waited to
put on some clothes, saw another man coming from the line of the stores,
where our white men, Walker and Fenwick, sleep. The thieves, observing
that some one was approaching, threw down the bundles and ran. Koyi,
being armed, threatened to fire on them if they did not stop, but on
hearing this the thieves plunged into the bush and were lost to sight.
William Koyi, being a man who can endure a great deal of comfort, now
gave up the pursuit; but brave Mapas and Kumlomba, the headman of the
village, who had been roused by the noise, knowing the thieves would try
to strike the road at another point, pushed on to anticipate them, and
were just in time to meet them face to face. On being challenged they
again plunged into the bush, whereupon Mapas fired. The report of the gun
brought us all to that point, and I, having posted sentinels at several
points, led a small party into the bush for the purpose of scouring it
thoroughly, but we came upon no man. In the meantime, Mapas had come upon
the trail of one man, and had pursued him for a space of eight miles,
and that, too, in his shirt and bare feet, through tall, wet grass and
stumps. It was, indeed an exciting chase, the thief ran for dear life,
Mapas for the glory of victory, and the good of our Colony. You will say
he deserved to win, and he did win, and bring back the thief a prisoner.
We are Britons, and we are fond of British pluck, but in what is this
man’s blood and spirit inferior to our own? And surely there is good
hope of the race which can furnish such men. The thief, when brought
back, was called into ‘Court,’ got a trial, in which, according to the
phraseology of Scotch forms, he emitted, admitted former thefts, and
implicated his chief in a charge of reset and participation. This, in all
probability was a false charge, and made in order to throw the shield
of his chief’s protection over himself. I hope this part of his story
is not true. In the afternoon, however, he was sentenced to get nine
dozen lashes, and before all the people he got five dozen that day, and
was then led to the stocks. Three days after, he received the remaining
four dozen, but the flogging was nothing like the flogging which used
to be for British sailors and soldiers. Some skin only came off on the
second day. We kept him in all about a month, and then the people being
all assembled, we made proclamation that, if after two days the prisoner
should be found on the Yao territory, or on this side the Kabula river,
the people were at liberty to kill him. Of course, this proclamation was
made by the Yao headman. After this proclamation was made, the prisoner
was escorted out of the Yao country by armed men. The other thief was
never seen, and did not return home; neither, indeed, need our prisoner
go back, for his people would kill him—probably on the old Spartan
principle, not because he stole, but because he was so inexpert as to
allow himself to be caught. The chief denies all knowledge of the thefts,
and declared that we ought to have shot the man. Mr. Stewart spoke to
him on the subject, and that is his statement; but it is not right to
shoot the poor creatures; and if they would let us, we could show them a
more excellent way; and I hope the day is not far, at all events, very
far distant, when the law of the eighth commandment will reach further in
Africa than the commands of any chief.
“The people among whom we live were delighted at the capture of the
thief, and they came up to me and said proudly, ‘Now, you see it is not
Yao people who steal your things; we are friends, it is the Anyasa who
steal. They are thieves.’ This affair has undoubtedly been of use in
clearing away those clouds of suspicion which had settled down, impairing
our confidence and making all our intercourse less happy and enjoyable.
Horses, I think, would give a great impulse to civilisation in this part
of Africa, and, of course, would more than double man’s ability in every
question of time and space. Will anybody bestow even one horse on the
Mission, and make a fair trial of the horse in Eastern Africa? The cows
we got are doing well. Senhor Nunes, of Quilimane, says a good horse
could be brought from Port Elizabeth for £50 or £60—that includes all
charges of conveyances. Do not some of your merchant princes spend that
sum on a single party?
“I had almost omitted to state that the brave Mapas belongs to the
Livingstonia Mission and Dr. Laws, and that we made him a present of
£10 in all. What I may call the subscription sheet bore the following
heading:—‘Testimonial to Mr. Mapas Ntintili, as a mark of personal
respect and recognition of his perseverance and bravery on the morning
of February 13th, 1878.’ His feet were so cut and torn with the long
race, rough ground, and tree stumps concealed among the tall grass, that
he was lame for several days. Hitherto we have had to carry our goods
from the river to this place, but we expect the time will soon come when
we will have a bullock waggon ‘trecking’ our goods from the rivers.
Convey my thanks to the kind friends who, through Mr. Mackeith, have
sent some things very valuable for working the Mission and attracting
the natives; and assure them that Dr. Laws, of the Livingstonia Mission,
shall have the free use of everything alternately with myself. Just now,
he is here writing beside me, and the co-operation of the two Missions,
as only different branches of one, is very pleasant, and I think very
useful. Christianity ought to be presented as one thing—not many—as our
Lord’s outer garment without seam, woven from the top throughout, all
one piece. Our water course is now completed, and we have water flowing
throughout our station, and channels are cut in several directions,
enabling us to run water to our wheat, corn, rice, and maize fields, and
to our terraces where our garden produce is raised. This supply of water
is an unspeakable advantage. Our Cape gooseberries have done well, we
have now an abundant supply of them, and also of French beans, lettuce,
beetroot, tomatoes.
“Of all these and others we expect to have a supply all the year round,
now that we can water the beds. Let me add one thing more. We have got
upwards of fifty orange, lemon, and lime trees—young, of course, but
all doing well, so that in three years we may be eating our own oranges.
As for bananas, we have three or four hundred of them, many of which are
already bearing fruit.”