West African studies Part 29

The lower-cla.s.s women are not troubled with too much clothing, but still ample enough for the country and decency's sake. As one strolls through the town to see the market or pay a visit to some chief, one often encounters young girls, and sometimes women, in long, loose, flowing robes, fitting tight round the neck, and on inquiring who these are, the reply generally comes, "Dem young gal be mission gal, dem tother one he be Saleone woman."

The mission here is the United Presbyterian Mission of Scotland,[92] and a great deal of good has been done by it for these people, and is being done now, and great hopes are expected from their industrial mission, started only a few years ago, therefore, it would be unfair to make further comment on the latter; it is a step in the right direction.

Some of the missionaries to Old Calabar have put in about forty years of active service, most of it pa.s.sed on the coast. Amongst others who have lived to a great age in this mission should be mentioned the Rev. Mr.

Anderson, who lived to the advanced age of between eighty and ninety years, greatly respected by both the European and native population.

Amongst the lady missionaries the name of Miss Slessor stands out very prominently, and, considering the task she has set herself, viz., the saving of twin children and protection of their mothers, her success has been marvellous, for the Calabarese is, like his neighbours, still a great believer in the custom that says twin children are not to be allowed to live. This lady has pa.s.sed about twenty years in Old Calabar, a greater part of the last ten years all alone at Okon, a district which the people of Duke Town and the surrounding towns preferred not to visit, if they could manage any business they had with the people of Okon without going amongst them. Many of these old customs will now be much more quickly stamped out than in the past, owing to the fact that it is in the power of the Consul-General to punish the natives severely who practise them. The preaching and exhortation of the missionaries to the people in the past was met by the very powerful argument, in a native's mind, that "it was a custom his father had kept from time immemorial, and he did not see why he should not continue it," the Ju-Ju priests being clever enough to point out to the natives that, though the missionaries preached against Ju-Juism, they could not punish its votaries. But that is all changed now, and even the Ju-Ju priests begin to feel that the power of the Consul-General is much greater than that of their grinning idols and trickery.

Though these people have been in communication with Europeans for at least two centuries, and under British influence for upwards of sixty years, and a mission has been established in their princ.i.p.al town for the best part of fifty years, it was a common thing to see human flesh offered for sale in the market within a very few years of the establishment of the British Protectorate.

In judging the result of missionary effort in this river, or, in fact, any other part of Western Africa, one is apt to exclaim, "What poor results for so much expenditure in lives and money!" The cause is not far to seek if one knows the native, and has sufficiently studied his ways and customs as to be able to understand or read what is working in his brain.

The upper or dominant cla.s.ses, consisting of the kings, the chiefs, the petty chiefs and the trade boys (the latter being the traders sent into the far distant markets to buy the produce for their masters, and it is from this cla.s.s that many of the chiefs in most of these rivers spring) are all, to a man, working either openly or secretly against the missionaries. Even when they have become converts and communicants, in very many cases they are as much an opponent as ever of the missionary.

I can fancy I see some enthusiastic missionary jumping up with indignation depicted in every feature to tell me I am not telling the truth about his particular converts. Well, as I expect to be called a liar, I have taken care to admit that a very few converts are not opposed to the missionary, in order that I may say to any missionary that particularly wishes to wipe the floor with me that perchance his special converts are included in the minority that is represented by the very few cases where the convert is wholly and solely for the mission.

What are the causes that lead these people to work against the missions?

First and foremost is Ju-Ju and its multifarious ramifications, consisting of Ju-Ju priests of the district, the Ju-Ju priests of the surrounding country, and the travelling Ju-Ju men, described by the natives as witch doctors, who keep up a communication of ideas and thought from end to end of the pagan countries of West and South-West Africa.

Secondly, not only is the teaching of Christianity opposed to Ju-Juism, but it is also opposed to the whole fabric of native customs other than Ju-Juism. Polygamy, for example, is an actual necessity, according to native custom, thus a wife after the birth of an infant retires from the companionship of her husband and devotes herself for the following two years to the cares of nursing. Then, again, at certain times, according to native custom, a woman is not allowed to prepare food that has to be eaten by others than herself. This would place the man with only one wife in a peculiar position, as it is a general custom in all these rivers, from the kings downwards, to have their food cooked by one of their wives. This custom arises from the fact that poisoning is known to be very much practised amongst all the Pagan tribes, and experience has taught the men that their greatest safety lies in the faithfulness of their wives, for the wives are aware that they have all to lose and nothing to gain by the death of their husbands.

Many people who have visited Western Africa will say that the reports of secret poisoning on the coast are travellers' yarns; but to refute that I will here describe a custom met with still in many places on the coast, and invariably practised amongst all natives in the purely native towns in the immediate vicinity of the coast towns. Even the coast towns people practise it still in every case amongst themselves and in some cases with the Europeans. Of course, I don't say that the educated negro or coloured missionary will do it with Europeans, but many of the educated natives will do it with the uneducated native, and this custom is that your native host will never offer you food or drink without first tasting it to show you it is not poisoned. While I am on this topic, let me give any would-be travellers amongst the Pagans a bit of advice. Once they strike in amongst the purely native, always follow this custom; it will do no harm and may save them from unpleasant experiences.

Thirdly, the native instinct of self-preservation is as much the first law of nature to the negro as it is to the rest of mankind. At first sight it might be said, "Where is the link between self-preservation and missionary effort, and how comes it to work against the missions?" I will try to explain this point as clearly as possible.

Naturally the first people the missionary came in contact with were the coast tribes. These people, in almost if not every case, are non-producers, being simply the brokers between the white man and the interior; in not a few cases behind the coast tribes are other tribes who are again non-producers and are the brokers of the coast brokers, or make the coast brokers pay a tribute to them for pa.s.sing through their country. No place so well ill.u.s.trated this system as the trade on the lower Niger as it used to be conducted by the Bra.s.s, New Calabar and Bonny men. Previous to the advent of the Royal Niger Company in that river, these people paid a small tribute to perhaps a dozen different towns on their way up to Abo on the Niger--some of the Bra.s.s men used even to get as far as Onicha or Onitsha. Now that the Royal Niger Company is trading on the Niger, none of these people can go to the Niger to trade. Well, there you have one of the great objections to mission effort. Each of these small tribes who were non-producers have lost the tribute they used to exact from the Bra.s.s, Bonny and New Calabar native brokers, therefore all the non-producers are averse to the white man pa.s.sing beyond them, be he missionary or trader. Of course, the greatest objectors to the white man penetrating into the interior are the coast middlemen, for it strikes at once at the source of all their riches, all the grandeur of their chieftainship, and for the rising generation all hope of their ever arriving to be a chief like their father or their masters, and have a large retinue of slaves, for the favourite slaves are in no way anxious to see slavery abolished, because with its abolition they only foresee ruin to their ambitious views.

Thus you will understand me when I point out to you the weak spot in nine-tenths of the mission effort. They have been trying to look after the negro's soul and teaching him Christianity, which in the native mind is cutting at the root, not only of all their ancient customs, but actually aims at taking away their living without attempting to teach them any industrial pursuit which may help them in the struggle for life, which is daily getting harder for our African brethren as it is here in England.

When I am speaking of mission effort I ought to include Government effort in the older colonies. No attempt has been made, as far as I am aware of, to open technical schools or to a.s.sist the natives to learn how to earn their living other than by being clerks or petty traders.

SECRET SOCIETIES AND FESTIVALS IN OLD CALABAR--AND THE COUNTRIES UP THE CROSS RIVER

To describe all the customs of the Old Calabar people would take up more s.p.a.ce than I am allowed to monopolise in this work.

They have numerous plays or festivals, in which they delight to disguise themselves in masks of the most grotesque ugliness. These masks are, in most cases, of native manufacture, and seem always to aim at being as ugly as possible. I never have seen any attempt on the part of a native manufacturer of masks to produce anything pa.s.sably good looking.

Egbo, the great secret society of these people, is a sort of freemasonry, having, I believe, seven or nine grades. To attempt to describe the inner working of this society would be impossible for me, as I do not belong to it. Though several Europeans have been admitted to some of the grades, none have ever, to my knowledge, succeeded in being initiated to the higher grades. The uses of this society are manifold, but the abuses more than outweigh any use it may have been to the people. As an example, I may mention the use which a European would make of his having Egbo, viz., if any native owed him money or its equivalent, and was in no hurry to pay, the European would blow[93] Egbo on the debtor, and that man could not leave his house until he had paid up. Egbo could be, and was, used for matters of a much more serious nature than the above, such as the ruin of a man if a working majority could be got together against him. This society could work much more swiftly than the course adopted in other rivers to compa.s.s a man's downfall; _vide_ Will Braid's trouble with his brother chiefs in New Calabar.

The country up the Cross River, which is the main stream into the interior, improves a very few miles after leaving Old Calabar; in fact, the mangrove disappears altogether within twenty miles of Duke Town, being replaced by splendid forest trees and many clearings, the latter being, in some instances, the farms of Old Calabar chiefs. On arriving at Ikorofiong, which is on the right bank of the river, you find yourself on the edge of the Ikpa plain, which extends away towards Opobo as far as the eye can see. I visited this place thirty-five years ago, and stayed for a couple of days in the mission house, the gentleman then in charge being a Dr. Bailey. At that time this was the farthest station of the Old Calabar mission; since then they have established themselves in Umon, and have done great service amongst these people, who were previously to the advent of the mission terribly in the toils of their Ju-ju priests. The people of Umon speak a language quite different from the Calabarese. Umon is about one hundred miles by water from Old Calabar.

Twenty or thirty miles further up the Cross River you come to the Akuna-Kuna country, inhabited by a very industrious race of people, great producers and agriculturists, and having abundance of cattle, sheep, goats and poultry. These people received one of Her Majesty's consuls with such joy and good feeling, and so loaded him with presents of farm produce, that his Kroo boatmen suffered severely from indigestion while they remained in the Akuna-Kuna country. A little farther up the river is the town of Ungwana, a mile or so beyond which is now to be found a mission station. This district is called Iku-Morut, and a few years ago the inhabitants were never happy unless they were at war with the Akuna-Kuna people. This state of things has been much modified by the presence in the country of protectorate officials.

About sixty miles by river beyond Iku-Morut is the town Ofurekpe, in the Apiapam district. This place, its chief and people are everything to be desired, the town is clean, the houses are commodious, the inhabitants are friendly, and their country is delightful. They are a little given to cannibalism, but, I am very credibly informed, only practise this custom on their prisoners of war.

Beyond this point the river pa.s.ses through the Atam district, a country inhabited, so I was informed, by the most inveterate of cannibals. Not having visited these people, I am not able to speak from personal experience; but as I have generally found in Western Africa that a country bearing a very bad character does not always deserve all that is said against it, I shall give this country the benefit of the doubt, and say that once the natives get accustomed to having white people visit them, and have got over the fearful tales told them by the interested middlemen about the ability of the white men to witch them by only looking at them, then they will be as easy to deal with, if not easier, than the knowing non-producers.

I know of one interior town, not in Old Calabar, where the princ.i.p.al chief had given a warm welcome to a white man and allotted him a piece of ground to build a factory on, which he was to return and build the following dry season. Before the time had elapsed the chief died, without doubt poisoned by some interested middleman. When the white man went up to the country according to his agreement, the new chief would not allow him to land, and accused him of having bewitched the late chief. The white trader was an old bird and not easily put off any object he had in view, so stuck to his right of starting trade in the country, and by liberal presents to the new chief at last succeeded in commencing operations, with the result that the new chief died in a very short time and the white man, who was put in charge of the factory, was shot dead whilst pa.s.sing through a narrow creek on his way to see his senior agent, this being done in the interior country so as to throw the blame upon the people he was trading with. No one saw who fired the fatal shot, and the body was never recovered, as the boys who were with him were natives belonging to the coast people and in their fright capsized the small canoe he was travelling in, so they reported; but some months after the white man's ring mysteriously turned up, the tale being it was found in the stomach of a fish.

I will here describe one other very practical custom that used to be observed all over the Old Calabar and Cross River district, but which has disappeared in the lower parts of the river, owing no doubt to the efforts of the missionaries having been successful in instilling into the native mind a greater respect for their aged relatives than formerly existed. If it ever occurs nowadays in the Calabar district it can only take place in some out of the way village far away in the bush, from whence news of a little matter of this kind might take months to reach the ears of the Government or the missionary; but this custom is still carried on in the Upper Cross River, and consists in helping the old and useless members of the village or community out of this world by a tap on the head, their bodies are then carefully smoke-dried, afterwards pulverised, then formed into small b.a.l.l.s by the addition of water in which Indian corn has been boiled for hours--this mixture is allowed to dry in the sun or over fires, then put away for future use as an addition to the family stew.

With all the cannibalistic tastes that these people have been credited with, I have only heard of them once ever going in for eating white men, and this occurred previous to the arrival in the Old Calabar river of the Efik race, if we are to trust to what tradition tells us. It appears that in 1668-9 four English sailors were captured by the then inhabitants of the Old Calabar River; three of them were immediately killed and eaten, the fourth being kept for a future occasion. Whether it was that being sailors, and thus being strongly impregnated with salt horse, tobacco and rum, their flesh did not suit the palate of these natives I know not, but it is on record that the fourth man was not eaten, but kindly treated, and some years after, when another English ship visited the river, he was allowed to return to England in her.

Since that date, as far as I know, no white men have ever been molested by the Old Calabar people.

There has been occasionally a little friction between traders and natives, but nothing very serious, though it is said some queer transactions were carried on by the white men during the slave-dealing days.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] "Shake-hand" was a present given by a trader each voyage on his arrival on the coast to the king and the chiefs who traded with him; the Europeans themselves gradually increased this to such an extent that some of the kings began to look upon it as a right, which led to endless palavers; if it is not completely abolished by now, it ought to be.

[81] "Dashing"--native word for making presents. This word is a corruption of a Portuguese word.

[82] Brohemie, founded by the late chief Alluma between fifty and sixty years ago. Chinome, a powerful chief, fought with Allumah in 1864-5 for supremacy; the former was conquered, and died some few years after.

Chief Dudu, not mentioned in the text, founded in 1890 Dudu town, and is to-day a most loyal and respected chief. Chief Peggy died in 1889. Chief Ogrie died in 1892, Chief Bregbi also died some years ago.

[83] This preparation is made from the pericarp of the Raphia Vinifera pounded up into a pulplike ma.s.s, which they mix in the water in their canoes and then bale out into the water in the creek.

[84] One good thing the missionaries have done since they have been in Bra.s.s, and that is, that, of persuading the natives, or at least the greater part of them, to give up the worship of this snake; and this part must have included the most influential portion of Bra.s.s society, for since about the year 1884 the Ju-Ju snake is killed wherever seen without any disastrous consequences to the killer.

[85] As an evidence of how secret the natives of these parts have always tried to keep, and have to a great extent kept, the knowledge of the various various creeks from the white men since the abolition of the slave trade, I may point to this creek, which is clearly marked and the soundings given in the old charts, _circa_ 1698, but was quite unknown to the present generation of traders, until Capt. Cawthorne, of the African Steamship Company rediscovered it about 1882-4. I well remember this creek being carefully described to me by Bonny men in 1862 as the haunt of lawless outcasts from Bonny and the surrounding countries, cannibals and pirates. About this time I was stationed in New Calabar, and in roaming about the creeks looking for something to shoot, I came across this beautiful wide creek and followed it until I sighted Breaker Island; but being only in a small shooting canoe I was forced to turn back the way I had come. The next morning I was favoured by the visit of King Amachree, the father of the present king, who said he had heard from his people that I had been down this creek, and he had come to warn me of the danger I ran in visiting that creek, giving me the same description that the Bonny men had done some months earlier. I laughed and told him I had heard the same yarn from the Bonny men. Later in the same year I mentioned my visit to an old freeman in Bonny, named Bess Pepple. He being a little inebriated at the time, let his tongue wag freely, and informed me that it was a creek often used by the slavers during the time the preventive squadron was on the coast, to take in their cargo. In one instance that he remembered he said there were five slavers up that creek when two of Her Majesty's gunboats were in Bonny, about the year 1837. About this time (1862) a mate of a ship who was in charge of a small schooner running between New Calabar and Bonny was forced by stress of weather to anchor inside the seaward mouth of this creek, and was attacked during the night by some natives, carried on sh.o.r.e, tied to a tree and flogged, the cargo of the schooner plundered, and the Kroomen also flogged. Complaint being made to the kings of New Calabar and Bonny, they both replied with the same tale: "We no done tell you we no fit be responsible for dem men who live for dem creek; he be dam pirate." This was true they had, but the mate swore he recognised some Bonny men amongst his a.s.sailants.

[86] Efik race--the inhabitants of Old Calabar, said to have come from the Ibibio country, a district lying between Kwo country and the Cross River.

[87] Jamming, a trade term, meaning making an agreement to buy or sell anything at an agreed price.

[88] This king is now dead, he was the last of the kings of New Calabar, the country being now ruled over by a native council under the direction of the Niger Coast Protectorate officials.

[89] This is an error into which the late Consul Hewett no doubt led Mr.

Johnston, as Ja Ja had been since 1861-2 a chief in Bonny and recognised as one of the regents of that place; originally a slave, I will admit, but not a runaway one.

[90] This failing is called diplomacy in civilised nations.

[91] Monopolies have led Europeans on the West Coast of Africa to be equally as unscrupulous and bitter enemies of any one, white or black, who have attempted to dispute their trade monopolies.

[92] Established in Old Calabar in 1846.

[93] It is called blowing Egbo because notice is given of the Egbo law being set in motion against any one by one of the myrmidons of Egbo blowing the Egbo horn before the party's house.

APPENDIX II

PART I

A VOYAGE TO THE AFRICAN OIL RIVERS TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. BY JOHN HARFORD

It was in the month of December, 1872, when I with seventeen others left our good old port of Bristol bound for one of the West African oil rivers on a trading voyage. It was a splendid morning for the time of year: bright, fine, and clear, when we were towed through our old lock gates, with the hearty cheers, good-byes, and G.o.d-speed-yous from our friends ringing in the air; and although there were some of us made sad by the parting kiss, which to many was the last on this earth, there was one whose heart felt so glad that he has often described the day as being one of the happiest in his life, and that one was your humble servant, the writer. Our first start was soon delayed, as we had to anchor in King Road and wait a fair wind. And now a word to any hearers who may be about to start on a new venture. Always wait for a fair wind--when that comes make the best use you can of it. Our fair wind came after some two weeks, and lasted long enough for us to get clear of the English land; but before we were clear of the Irish, we encountered head winds again. Being too far out to return, we had to beat our ship about under close reefed topsails for another week. This was a rough time for all on board. At last the wind changed, and we this time succeeded in clearing the Bay of Biscay and then had a fairly fine run until we reached St. Antonia, one of the Cape de Verde Islands. This we sighted early one morning, and in the brilliant tropical sunshine it appeared to me almost a heavenly sight. We soon pa.s.sed on, the little island disappeared, and once more our bark seemed to be alone on the mighty ocean. After a week or so we sighted the mainland of that great and wonderful continent Africa--wonderful, I say, because it has been left as if it were unknown for centuries, while countries not nearly its equal in any way have had millions spent upon them. Our first land fall was a port of Liberia. Liberia, I must tell you, is part of the western continent with a seaboard of some miles. It was taken over by the American Republic and made a free country for all those slaves that were liberated in the time of the great emanc.i.p.ation brought about by that good man William E. Channing. Here, on their own land, these people, who years before had been kidnapped from their homes, were once more free.