Man, Past and Present Part 7

Nevertheless the Protestant missionaries have carefully studied the Timni language, which possesses an oral literature rich in legends, proverbs, and folklore[149].

The Timni district is a chief centre of the so-called _porro_ fraternity[150], a sort of secret society or freemasonry widely diffused throughout the coastlands, and possessing its own symbols, skin markings, pa.s.swords, and language. It presents curious points of a.n.a.logy with the brotherhoods of the Micronesian islanders, but appears to be even more potent for good and evil, a veritable religious and political state within the state. "When their mandates are issued all wars and civil strife must cease, a general truce is established, and bloodshed stopped, offending communities being punished by bands of armed men in masks. Strangers cannot enter the country unless escorted by a member of the guild, who is recognised by pa.s.swords, symbolic gestures, and the like. Their secret rites are celebrated at night in the depths of the forest, all intruders being put to death or sold as slaves[151]."

In studying the social conditions prevalent amongst the Sierra Leonese proper, it should be remembered that they are sprung, not only from representatives of almost every tribe along the seaboard, and even in the far interior, but also to a large extent from the freedmen and runaways of Nova Scotia and London, besides many maroons of Jamaica, who were settled here under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company towards the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century.

Others also have in recent years been attracted to the settlements from the Timni and other tribes of the neighbouring districts. The Sierra Leonese are consequently not themselves a tribe, nor yet a people, but rather a people in course of formation under the influence of a new environment and of a higher culture. An immediate consequence of such a sudden aggregation of discordant elements was the loss of all the native tongues, and the subst.i.tution of English as the common medium of intercourse. But English is the language of a people standing on the very highest plane of culture, and could not therefore be properly a.s.similated by the _disjecta membra_ of tribes at the lowest rung of the social ladder. The resultant form of speech may be called ludicrous, so ludicrous that the Sierra Leonese version of the New Testament had to be withdrawn from circulation as verging almost on the blasphemous[152].

It has also to be considered that all the old tribal relations were broken up, while an attempt was made to merge these waifs and strays in a single community based on social conditions to which each and all were utter strangers. It is not therefore surprising that the experiment has not proved a complete success, and that the social relations in Sierra Leone leave something to be desired. Although the freedmen and the rescued captives received free gifts of land, their dislike for the labours of the field induced many to abandon their holdings, and take to huckstering and other more pleasant pursuits. Hence their descendants almost monopolise the petty traffic and even the "professions" in Freetown and the other colonial settlements. Although accused of laziness and dishonesty, they have displayed a considerable degree of industrial as well as commercial enterprise, and the Sierra Leone craftsmen--smiths, mechanics, carpenters, builders--enjoy a good reputation in all the coast towns. All are Christians of various denominations, and even show a marked predilection for the "ministry."

Yet below the surface the old paganism still slumbers, and vodoo practices, as in the West Indies and some of the Southern States, are still heard of.

Morality also is admittedly at a low ebb, and it is curious to note that this has in part been attributed to the freedom enjoyed under the British administration. "They have pa.s.sed from the sphere of native law to that of British law, which is brought to this young community like an article of ready-made clothing. Is it a wonder that the clothes do not fit? Is it a wonder that kings and chiefs around Sierra Leone, instead of wishing their people to come and see how well we do things, dread for them to come to this colony on account of the danger to their morals? In pa.s.sing into this colony, they pa.s.s into a liberty which to them is license[153]."

An experiment of a somewhat different order, but with much the same negative results, has been tried by the well-meaning founders of the Republic of Liberia. Here also the bulk of the "civilised aristocrats"

are descended of emanc.i.p.ated plantation slaves, a first consignment of whom was brought over by a philanthropic American society in 1820-22.

The idea was to start them well in life under the fostering care of their white guardians, and then leave them to work out their own redemption in their own way. All control was accordingly withdrawn in 1848, and since then the settlement has const.i.tuted an absolutely independent Negro state in the enjoyment of complete self-government.

Progress of a certain material kind was undoubtedly made. The original "free citizens" increased from 8000 in 1850 to perhaps 20,000 in 1898[154], and the central administration, modelled on that of the United States, maintained some degree of order among the surrounding aborigines, estimated at some two million within the limits of the Republic.

But these aborigines have not benefited perceptibly by contact with their "civilised" neighbours, who themselves stand at much the same level intellectually and morally as their repatriated forefathers.

Instead of attending to the proper administration of the Republic, the "Weegee," as they are called, have const.i.tuted themselves into two factions, the "coloured" or half-breeds, and the full-blood Negroes who, like the "Blancos" and "Neros" of some South American States, spend most of their time in a perpetual struggle for office. All are of course intensely patriotic, but their patriotism takes a wrong direction, being chiefly manifested in their insolence towards the English and other European traders on the coast, and in their supreme contempt for the "stinking bush-n.i.g.g.e.rs," as they call the surrounding aborigines. In 1909 internal and external difficulties led to the appointment of a Commission by President Roosevelt with the result that the American Government took charge of the finances, military organisation, agriculture and boundary questions, besides arranging for a loan of 400,000. The able administration of President Barclay, a pure blooded Negro, though not of Liberian ancestry, is perhaps the happiest augury for the future of the Republic[155].

The _Krus_ (Kroomen, Krooboys[156]), whose numerous hamlets are scattered along the coast from below Monrovia nearly to Cape Palmas, are a.s.suredly one of the most interesting people in the whole of Africa.

Originally from the interior, they have developed in their new homes a most un-African love of the sea, hence are regularly engaged as crews by the European skippers plying along those insalubrious coastlands.

In this service, in which they are known by such nicknames as "Bottle-of-Beer," "Mashed-Potatoes," "Bubble-and-Squeak,"

"Pipe-of-Tobacco," and the like, their word may always be depended upon.

But it is to be feared that this loyalty, which with them is a strict matter of business, has earned for them a reputation for other virtues to which they have little claim. Despite the many years that they have been in the closest contact with the missionaries and traders, they are still at heart the same brutal savages as ever. After each voyage they return to the native village to spend all their gains and pilferings in drunken orgies, and relapse generally into sheer barbarism till the next steamer rounds the neighbouring headland. "It is not a comfortable reflection," writes Bishop Ingham, whose testimony will not be suspected of bias, "as we look at this mob on our decks, that, if the ship chance to strike on a sunken rock and become unmanageable, they would rise to a man, and seize all they could lay hands on, cut the very rings off our fingers if they could get them in no other way, and generally loot the ship. Little has been done to Christianise these interesting, hard-working, cheerful, but ignorant and greedy people, who have so long hung on the skirts of civilisation[157]."

It is only fair to the Kru to say that this unflattering picture of them stands alone. "There is but one man of all of us who have visited West Africa who has not paid a tribute to the Kruboy's sterling qualities,"

says Miss Kingsley. Her opinion coincides with that of the old coasters based on life-long experience, and she waxes indignant at the ingrat.i.tude with which Kruboy loyalty is rewarded. "They have devoted themselves to us English, and they have suffered, laboured, fought, been ma.s.sacred and so on with us generation after generation.... Kruboys are, indeed, the backbone of white effort in West Africa[158]."

But the very worst "sweepings of the Sudanese plateau" seem to have gathered along the Upper Guinea Coast, occupied by the already mentioned _Tshi_, _Ewe_, and _Yoruba_ groups[159]. They const.i.tute three branches of one linguistic, and probably also of one ethnical family, of which, owing to their historic and ethnical importance, the reader may be glad to have here subjoined a somewhat complete tabulated scheme.

The _Ga_ of the Volta delta are here bracketed with the Tshi because A.

B. Ellis, our great authority on the Guinea peoples[160], considers the two languages to be distantly connected. He also thinks there is a foundation of fact in the native traditions, which bring the dominant tribes--Ashanti, Fanti, Dahomi, Yoruba, Bini--from the interior to the coast districts at no very remote period. Thus it is recorded of the Ashanti and Fanti, now hereditary foes, that ages ago they formed one people who were reduced to the utmost distress during a long war with some inland power, perhaps the conquering Muhammadans of the Ghana or Mali empire. They were saved, however, some by eating of the _shan_, others of the _fan_ plant, and of these words, with the verb _di_, "to eat," were made the tribal names _Shan-di_, _Fan-di_, now _Ashanti_, _Fanti_. The _seppiriba_ plant, said to have been eaten by the Fanti, is still called _fan_ when cooked.

TRIBES OF TSHI TRIBES OF EWE TRIBES OF YORUBA AND GA SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH

_Gold Coast_ _Slave Coast West_ _Slave Coast East_ _and Niger Delta_

Ashanti Dahomi Yoruba[161]

Safwhi Eweawo Ibadan Denkera Agotine Ketu Bekwai Anfueh Egba Nkoranza Krepe Jebu Adansi Avenor Remo a.s.sin Awuna Ode Wa.s.saw Agbosomi Ilorin Ahanta Aflao Ijesa Fanti Ataklu Ondo Agona Krikor Mahin Akwapim Geng Benin (Bini) Akim Attakpami Kakanda Akwamu Aja Wari Kwao Ewemi Ibo[161]

Ga Appa Efik[161]

Other traditions refer to a time when all were of one speech, and lived in a far country beyond Salagha, open, flat, with little bush, and plenty of cattle and sheep, a tolerably accurate description of the inland Sudanese plateaux. But then came a red people, said to be the Fulahs, Muhammadans, who oppressed the blacks and drove them to take refuge in the forests. Here they thrived and multiplied, and after many vicissitudes they came down, down, until at last they reached the coast, with the waves rolling in, the white foam hissing and frothing on the beach, and thought it was all boiling water until some one touched it and found it was not hot, and so to this day they call the sea _Eh-huru den o nni shew_, "Boiling water not hot," but far inland the sea is still "Boiling water[162]."

To A. B. Ellis we are indebted especially for the true explanation of the much used and abused term _fetish_, as applied to the native beliefs. It was of course already known to be not an African but a Portuguese word[163], meaning a charm, amulet, or even witchcraft. But Ellis shows how it came to be wrongly applied to all forms of animal and nature worship, and how the confusion was increased by De Brosses'

theory of a primordial fetishism, and by his statement that it was impossible to conceive a lower form of religion than fetishism, which might therefore be a.s.sumed to be the beginning of all religion[164].

On the contrary it represents rather an advanced stage, as Ellis discovered after four or five years of careful observation on the spot.

A fetish, he tells us, is something tangible and inanimate, which is believed to possess power in itself, and is worshipped for itself alone.

Nor can such an object be picked up anywhere at random, as is commonly a.s.serted, and he adds that the belief "is arrived at only after considerable progress has been made in religious ideas, when the older form of religion becomes secondary and owes its existence to the confusion of the tangible with the intangible, of the material with the immaterial; to the belief in the indwelling G.o.d being gradually lost sight of until the power originally believed to belong to the G.o.d, is finally attributed to the tangible and inanimate object itself."

But now comes a statement that may seem paradoxical to most students of the evolution of religious ideas. We are a.s.sured that fetishism thus understood is not specially or at all characteristic of the religion of the Gold Coast natives, who are in fact "remarkably free from it" and believe in invisible intangible deities. Some of them may dwell in a tangible inanimate object, popularly called a "fetish"; but the idea of the indwelling G.o.d is never lost sight of, nor is the object ever worshipped for its own sake. True fetishism, the worship of such material objects and images, prevails, on the contrary, far more "amongst the Negroes of the West Indies, who have been christianised for more than half-a-century, than amongst those of West Africa. Hence the belief in Obeah, still prevalent in the West Indies, which formerly was a belief in indwelling spirits which inhabited certain objects, has now become a worship paid to tangible and inanimate objects, which of themselves are believed to possess the power to injure. In Europe itself we find evidence amongst the Roman Catholic populations of the South, that fetishism is a corruption of a former _culte_, rather than a primordial faith. The lower cla.s.ses there have confused the intangible with the tangible, and believe that the images of the saints can both see, hear and feel. Thus we find the Italian peasants and fishermen beat and ill-treat their images when their requests have not been complied with.... These appear to be instances of true fetishism[165]."

Another phase of religious belief in Upper Guinea is ancestry worship, which has here been developed to a degree unknown elsewhere. As the departed have to be maintained in the same social position beyond the grave that they enjoyed in this world, they must be supplied with slaves, wives, and attendants, each according to his rank. Hence the inst.i.tution of the so-called "customs," or anniversary feasts of the dead, accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims, regulated at first by the status and afterwards by the whim and caprice of chiefs and kings. In the capitals of the more powerful states, Ashanti, Dahomey, Benin, the scenes witnessed at these sanguinary rites rivalled in horror those held in honour of the Aztec G.o.ds. Details may here be dispensed with on a repulsive subject, ample accounts of which are accessible from many sources to the general reader. In any case these atrocities teach no lesson, except that most religions have waded through blood to better things, unless arrested in mid-stream by the intervention of higher powers, as happily in Upper Guinea, where the human shambles of k.u.ma.s.si, Abomeh, Benin and most other places have now been swept away.

On the capture of Benin by the English in 1897 a rare and unexpected prize fell into the hands of ethnologists. Here was found a large a.s.sortment of carved ivories, woodwork, and especially a series of about 300 bronze and bra.s.s plates or panels with figures of natives and Europeans, armed and in armour, in full relief, all cast by the _cire perdue_ process[166], some barbaric, others, and especially a head in the round of a young negress, showing high artistic skill. Many of these remarkable objects are in the British Museum, where they have been studied by C. H. Read and O. M. Dalton[167], who are evidently right in a.s.signing the better cla.s.s to the sixteenth century, and to the aid, if not the hand, of some Portuguese artificers in the service of the King of Benin. They add that "casting of an inferior kind continues down to the present time," and it may here be mentioned that armour has long been and is still worn by the cavalry, and even their horses, in the Muhammadan states of Central Sudan. "The chiefs (_Kash.e.l.lawa_) who serve as officers under the Sultan [of Bornu] and act as his bodyguard wear jackets of chain armour and cuira.s.ses of coats of mail[168]." It is clear that metal casting in a large way has long been practised by the semi-civilised peoples of Sudan.

Within the great bend of the Niger the veil, first slightly raised by Barth in the middle of the nineteenth century, has now been drawn aside by L. G. Binger, F. D. Lugard and later explorers. Here the _Mossi_, _Borgu_ and others have hitherto more or less successfully resisted the Moslem advance, and are consequently for the most part little removed from the savage state. Even the "Faithful" wear the cloak of Islam somewhat loosely, and the level of their culture may be judged from the case of the Imam of Diulasu, who pestered Binger for nostrums and charms against ailments, war, and misfortunes. What he wanted chiefly to know was the names of Abraham's two wives. "Tell me these," he would say, "and my fortune is made, for I dreamt it the other night; you must tell me; I really must have those names or I'm lost[169]."

In some districts the ethnical confusion is considerable, and when Binger arrived at the Court of the Mossi King, Baikary, he was addressed successively in Mossi, Hausa, Songhai, and Fulah, until at last it was discovered that Mandingan was the only native language he understood.

Waghadugu, capital of the chief Mossi state, comprises several distinct quarters occupied respectively by Mandingans, Marengas (Songhai), Zang-wer'os (Hausas), Chilmigos (Fulahs), Mussulman and heathen Mossis, the whole population scarcely exceeding 5000. However, perfect harmony prevails, the Mossi themselves being extremely tolerant despite the long religious wars they have had to wage against the fanatical Fulahs and other Muhammadan aggressors[170].

Religious indifference is indeed a marked characteristic of this people, and the case is mentioned of a nominal Mussulman prince who could even read and write, and say his prayers, but whose two sons "knew nothing at all," or, as we should say, were "Agnostics." One of them, however, it is fair to add, is claimed by both sides, the Moslems a.s.serting that he says his prayers in secret, the heathens that he drinks _dolo_ (palm-wine), which of course no true believer is supposed ever to do.

CENTRAL SUDANESE.

In Central Sudan, that is, the region stretching from the Niger to Wadai, a tolerably clean sweep has been made of the aborigines, except along the southern fringe and in parts of the Chad basin. For many centuries Islam has here been firmly established, and in Negroland Islam is synonymous with a greater or less degree of miscegenation. The native tribes who resisted the fiery Arab or Tuareg or Tibu proselytisers were for the most part either extirpated, or else driven to the southern uplands about the Congo-Chad water-parting. All who accepted the Koran became merged with the conquerors in a common negroid population, which supplied the new material for the development of large social communities and powerful political states.

Under these conditions the old tribal organisations were in great measure dissolved, and throughout its historic period of about a millennium Central Sudan is found mainly occupied by peoples gathered together in a small number of political systems, each with its own language and special inst.i.tutions, but all alike accepting Islam as the State religion. Such are or were the Songhai empire, the Hausa States, and the kingdoms of Bornu with Kanem and Baghirmi, and these jointly cover the whole of Central Sudan as above defined.

_Songhais_[171]. How completely the tribe[172] has merged in the people[172] may be inferred from the mere statement that, although no longer an independent nation[172], the negroid Songhais form a single ethnical group of about two million souls, all of one speech and one religion, and all distinguished by somewhat uniform physical and mental characters. This territory lies mainly about the borderlands between Sudan and the Sahara, stretching from Timbuktu east to the Asben oasis and along both banks of the Niger from Lake Debo round to the Sokoto confluence, and also at some points reaching as far as the Hombori hills within the great bend of the Niger.

Here they are found in the closest connection with the Ireghenaten ("mixed") Tuaregs, and elsewhere with other Tuaregs, and with Arabs, Fulahs or Hausas[173], so that exclusively Songhai communities are now somewhat rare. But the bulk of the race is still concentrated in Gurma and in the district between Gobo and Timbuktu, the two chief cities of the old Songhai empire.

They are a distinctly negroid people, presenting various shades of intermixture with the surrounding Hamites and Semites, but generally of a very deep brown or blackish colour, with somewhat regular features and that peculiar long, black, and ringletty hair, which is so characteristic of Negro and Caucasic blends, as seen amongst the Trarsas and Braknas of the Senegal, the Bejas, Danakils, and many Abyssinians of the region between the Nile and the Red Sea. Barth, to whom we still owe the best account of this historical people, describes them as of a dull, morose temperament, the most unfriendly and churlish of all the peoples visited by him in Negroland.

This writer's suggestion that they may have formerly had relations with the Egyptians[174] has been revived in an exaggerated form by M. Felix Dubois, whose views have received currency in England through uncritical notices of his _Timbouctou la Mysterieuse_ (Paris, 1897). But there is no "mystery" in the matter. The Songhai are a Sudanese people, whose exodus from Egypt is a myth, and whose Kissur language, as it is called, has not the remotest connection with any form of speech known to have been at any time current in the Nile Valley[175]. Nor has it any evident affinities with any group of African tongues. H. H. Johnston regards the Songhai as the result of the mixing of "the Libyan section of the Hamitic peoples, reinforced by Berbers (Iberians) from Spain," with the pre-existing Fulah type and the Negroids; as also from the far earlier intercourse between the Fulah and the Negro[176].

The Songhai empire, like that of the rival Mandingans, claims a respectable antiquity, its reputed founder Za-el-Yemeni having flourished about 680 A.D. Za Kasi, fifteenth in succession from the founder, was the first Muhammadan ruler (1009); but about 1326 the country was reduced by the Mandingans, and remained throughout the fourteenth and a great part of the fifteenth century virtually subject to the Mali empire, although Ali Killun, founder of the new Sonni dynasty, had acquired a measure of independence about 1335-6. But the political supremacy of the Songhai people dates only from about 1464, when Sonni Ali, sixteenth of the Sonni dynasty, known in history as "the great tyrant and famous miscreant," threw off the Mandingan yoke, "and changed the whole face of this part of Africa by prostrating the kingdom of Melle[177]." Under his successor, Muhammad Askia[178], "perhaps the greatest sovereign that ever ruled over Negroland[179]," the Songhai Empire acquired its greatest expansion, extending from the heart of Hausaland to the Atlantic seaboard, and from the Mossi country to the Tuat oasis, south of Morocco. Although unfavourably spoken of by Leo Africa.n.u.s, Askia is described by Ahmed Baba as governing the subject peoples "with justice and equity, causing well-being and comfort to spring up everywhere within the borders of his extensive dominions, and introducing such of the inst.i.tutions of Muhammadan civilisation as he considered might be useful to his subjects[180]."

Askia also made the Mecca pilgrimage with a great show of splendour. But after his reign (1492-1529) the Songhai power gradually declined, and was at last overthrown by Mulay Hamed, Emperor of Morocco, in 1591-2.

Ahmed Baba, the native chronicler, was involved in the ruin of his people[181], and since then the Songhai nation has been broken into fragments, subject here to Hausas, there to Fulahs, elsewhere to Tuaregs, and, since the French occupation of Timbuktu (1894), to the hated Giaur.

_Hausas._ In everything that const.i.tutes the real greatness of a nation, the Hausas may rightly claim preeminence amongst all the peoples of Negroland. No doubt early in the nineteenth century the historical Hausa States, occupying the whole region between the Niger and Bornu, were overrun and reduced by the fanatical Fulah bands under Othman Dan Fodye. But the Hausas, in a truer sense than the Greeks, "have captured their rude conquerors[182]," for they have even largely a.s.similated them physically to their own type, and the Hausa nationality is under British auspices a.s.serting its natural social, industrial and commercial predominance throughout Central and even parts of Western Sudan.

It could not well be otherwise, seeing that the Hausas form a compact body of some five million peaceful and industrious Sudanese, living partly in numerous farmsteads amid their well-tilled cotton, indigo, pulse, and corn fields, partly in large walled cities and great trading centres such as Kano[183], Katsena, Yacoba, whose intelligent and law-abiding inhabitants are reckoned by many tens of thousands. Their melodious tongue, with a vocabulary containing perhaps 10,000 words[184], has long been the great medium of intercourse throughout Sudan from Lake Chad to and beyond the Niger, and is daily acquiring even greater preponderance amongst all the settled and trading populations of these regions.

But though showing a marked preference for peaceful pursuits, the Hausas are by no means an effeminate people. Largely enlisted in the British service, they have at all times shown fighting qualities of a high order under their English officers, and a well-earned tribute has been paid to their military prowess amongst others by Sir George Goldie and Lieut.

Vandeleur[185]. With the Hausas on her side England need a.s.suredly fear no rivals to her beneficent sway over the teeming populations of the fertile plains and plateaux of Central Sudan, which is on the whole perhaps the most favoured land in Africa north of the equator.

According to the national traditions, which go back to no very remote period[186], the seven historical Hausa States known as the "Hausa bokoy" ("the seven Hausas") take their name from the eponymous heroes _Biram_, _Daura_, _Gober_, _Kano_, _Rano_, _Katsena_ and _Zegzeg_, all said to be sprung from the Deggaras, a Berber tribe settled to the north of Munyo. From Biram, the original seat, the race and its language spread to seven other provinces--_Zanfara_, _Kebbi_, _Nupe_ (_Nyffi_), _Gwari_, _Yauri_, _Yariba_ and _Kororofa_, which in contempt are called the "Banza bokoy" ("the seven Upstarts"). All form collectively the Hausa domain in the widest sense.

Authentic history is quite recent, and even Komayo, reputed founder of Katsena, dates only from about the fourteenth century. Ibrahim Maji, who was the first Moslem ruler, is a.s.signed to the latter part of the fifteenth century, and since then the chief events have been a.s.sociated with the Fulah wars, ending in the absorption of all the Hausa States in the unstable Fulah empire of Sokoto at the beginning of the nineteenth century. With the fall of Kano and Sokoto in 1903 British supremacy was finally established throughout the Hausa States, now termed Northern Nigeria[187].

_Kanembu_; _Kanuri_[188]; _Baghirmi_, _Mosgu_. Round about the sh.o.r.es of Lake Chad are grouped three other historical Muhammadan nations, the Kanembu ("People of Kanem") on the north, the Kanuri of Bornu on the west, and the Baghirmi on the south side. The last named was conquered by the Sultan of Wadai in 1871, and overrun by Rabah Zobeir, half Arab, half Negro adventurer, in 1890. But in 1897 Emile Gentil[189], French commissioner for the district, placed the country under French protection, although French authority was not firmly established until the death of Rabah and the rout of his sons in 1901. At the same time Kanem was brought under French control, and shortly afterwards Bornu was divided between Great Britain, France and Germany.

In this region the ethnical relations are considerably more complex than in the Hausa States. Here Islam has had greater obstacles to contend with than on the more open western plateaux, and many of the pagan aborigines have been able to hold their ground either in the archipelagos of Lake Chad (_Yedinas, Kuri, Buduma_[190]), or in the swampy tracts and uplands of the Logon-Shari basin (_Mosgu_, _Mandara_, _Makari_, etc.).