West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

BRASS RIVER

Brass River is then the first river we have to deal with on the Niger Coast Protectorate, to the eastward of the Royal Niger Company’s boundary.

The inhabitants of Brass call their country Nimbé and themselves Nimbé nungos, the latter word meaning people. Their principal towns were Obulambri and Basambri, divided only by a narrow creek dry at low water. In each of these towns resided a king, each having jurisdiction over separate districts of the Nimbé territory; thus the King of Obulambri was supposed to look after the district on the left hand of the River Brass, his jurisdiction extending as far as the River St. Barbara. The King of Basambri’s district extended from the right bank of the Brass River, westward as far as the Middleton outfalls; included in this district was the Nun mouth of the River Niger. These two kinglets had a very prosperous time during the closing days of the slave trade, as most of the contraband was carried on through the Brass and the Nun River both by Bonnymen and New Calabar men after they had signed treaties with Her Majesty’s Government to discontinue the slave trade in their dominions. When eventually the trade in slaves was finally put down their prosperity was not at an end, for they went largely into the palm oil trade, and did a most prosperous trade along the banks of the Niger as far as Onitsa.

Though these two kings always objected to the white men opening up the Niger, and did their utmost to retard the first expeditions, they were not slow in demanding comey from the early traders who established factories in the Nun mouth of the Niger; this part of the Niger is also called the Akassa.

These people are a very mixed race, and to describe them as any particular tribe would be an error. I believe the original inhabitants of the mouths of these rivers were the Ijos, and that the towns of Obulambri and Bassambri were founded by some of the more adventurous spirits amongst the men from the neighbourhood of Sabogrega, a town on the Niger; being afterwards joined by some similar adventurers from Bonny River. The three people are closely connected by family ties at this day.

As a rule these people have always had the character of being a well behaved set of men; it is a notable fact in their favour that they were the only people that, once having signed the treaty with Her Majesty’s Government to put down slavery, honestly stuck to the terms of the treaty; unlike their neighbours, they did so, though they were the only people who did not receive any indemnity.

They, however, have occasionally lost their heads and gone to excesses unworthy of a people with such a good reputation as they have generally enjoyed.

Their last escapade was the attack on the factory of the Royal Niger Company at Akassa some few years ago, and for which they were duly punished; their dual mud and thatch capital was blown down, and one small town called Fishtown destroyed.

Impartial observers must have pitied these poor people driven to despair by being cut off from their trading markets by the fiscal arrangements of the Royal Niger Company. The latter I don’t blame very much, they are traders; but the line drawn from Idu to a point midway between the Brass River and the Nun entrance to the Niger River, as being the boundary line for fiscal purposes between the Royal Niger Company and the Niger Coast Protectorate, was drawn by some one at Downing Street who evidently looked upon this part of the world as a cheesemonger would a cheese.

In 1830 it was at Abo on the Niger where Lander the traveller met with the Brassmen, who took him down to Obulambri, but no ship being in Brass River, they took him and his people over to Akassa, at the Nun mouth of the Niger, to an English ship lying there. History says he was anything but well received by the captain of this vessel, and that the Brassmen did not treat him as well as they might; however, they did not eat him, as they no doubt would have done could they have looked into the future. Whatever their treatment of Lander was, it could not have been very bad, as they received some reward for what assistance they had given him some time after.

It was amongst these people that I was enabled to study more closely the inner working of the domestic slavery of this part of Western Africa, and where it was carried on with less hardship to the slaves themselves than any place else in the Delta, until the Niger Company’s boundary line threw most of the labouring population on the rates, at least they would have gone on the rates if there had been any to go on, but unfortunately the municipal arrangements of these African kingdomlets had not arrived at such a pitch of civilisation; the consequence was many died from starvation, others hired themselves out as labourers, but the demand for their services was limited, as they compared badly with the fine, athletic Krumen, who monopolise all the labour in these parts. Then came the punitive expedition for the attack on Akassa that wiped off a few more of the population, so that to-day the Brassmen may be described as a vanishing people.

The various grades of the people in Brass were the kings, next came the chiefs and their sons who had by their own industry, and assisted in their first endeavours by their parents, worked themselves into a position of wealth, then came the Winna-boes, a grade mostly supplied by the favourite slave of a chief, who had been his constant attendant for years, commencing his career by carrying his master’s pocket-handkerchief and snuff-box, pockets not having yet been introduced into the native costume; after some years of this duty he would be promoted to going down to the European traders to superintend the delivery of a canoe of oil, seeing to its being tried, gauged, &c. This first duty, if properly performed, would lead to his being often sent on the same errand. This duty required a certain amount of savez, as the natives call intelligence, for he had to so look after his master’s interests that the pull-away boys that were with him in the canoe did not secrete any few gallons of oil that there might be left over after filling up all the casks he had been sent to deliver; nor must he allow the white trader to under-gauge his master’s casks by carelessness or otherwise. If he was able to do the latter part of his errand in such a diplomatic manner that he did not raise the bile of the trader, that day marked the commencement of his upward career, if he was possessed of the bump of saving. All having gone off to the satisfaction of both parties, the trader would make this boy some small present according to the number of puncheons of oil he had brought down, seldom less than a piece of cloth worth about 2s. 6d., and, in the case of canoes containing ten to fifteen puncheons, the trader would often dash him two pieces of cloth and a bunch or two of beads. This present he would, on his return to his master’s house, hand over to his mother (id est, the woman who had taken care of him from the time when he was first bought by his Brass master). She would carefully hoard this and all subsequent bits of miscellaneous property until he had in his foster-mother’s hands sufficient goods to buy an angbar of oil—a measure containing thirty gallons. Then he would approach his master (always called “father” by his slaves) and beg permission to send his few goods to the Niger markets the next time his master had a canoe starting—which permission was always accorded. He had next to arrange terms with the head man or trader of his master’s canoe as to what commission he had to get for trading off the goods in the far market. In this discussion, which may occupy many days before it is finally arranged, the foster-mother figures largely; and it depends a great deal upon her standing in the household of the chief as to the amount of commission the trade boy will demand for his services. If the foster-mother should happen to be a favourite wife of the chief, well, then things are settled very easily, the trade boy most likely saying he was quite willing to leff-em to be settled any way she liked; if, on the contrary, it was one of the poorer women of the chiefs house, Mr. Trade-boy would demand at least the quarter of the trade to commence with, and end up by accepting about an eighth. As the winnabo could easily double his property twice a year—and he was always adding to his store in his foster-mother’s hands from presents received each time he went down to the white trader with his father’s oil—it did not take many years for him to become a man of means, and own canoes and slaves himself. Many times have I known cases where the winnabo has repeatedly paid up the debts of his master to the white man.

According to the law of the country, the master has the right to sell the very man who is paying his debts off for him; but I must say I never heard a case of such rank ingratitude, though cases have occurred where the master has got into such low water and such desperate difficulties that his creditors under country law have seized everything he was possessed of, including any wealthy winnaboes he might have.

Some writers have said this class could purchase their freedom; with this I don’t agree. The only chance a winnabo had of getting his freedom was, supposing his master died and left no sons behind him old enough or capable enough to take the place of their father, then the winnabo might be elected to take the place of his defunct master: he would then become ipso facto a chief, and be reckoned a free man. If he was a man of strong character, he would hold until his death all the property of the house; but if one of the sons of his late master should grow up an intelligent man, and amass sufficient riches to gather round him some of the other chief men in the town, then the question was liable to be re-opened, and the winnabo might have to part out some of the property and the people he had received upon his appointment to the headship of the house, together with a certain sum in goods or oil, which the elders of the town would decide should represent the increment on the portion handed over. I have never known of a case where the whole of the property and people have been taken away from a winnabo in Brass; but I have known it occur in other rivers, but only for absolute misuse, misrule, and misconduct of the party.

Egbo-boes are the niggers or absolute lower rank of slaves, who are employed as pull-away boys in the oil canoes and gigs of the chiefs, and do all the menial work or hard labour of the towns that is not done by the lower ranks of the women slaves.

The lot of these egbo-boes is a very hard one at times, especially when their masters have no use for them in their oil canoes. At the best of times their masters don’t provide them with more food then is about sufficient for one good square meal a day; but, when trade is dull and they have no use for them in any way, their lot is deplorable indeed. This class has suffered terribly during the last ten years owing to the complete stoppage of the Brassmen’s trade in the Niger markets.

This class had few chances of rising in the social scale, but it was from this class that sprang some of the best trade boys who took their masters’ goods away up to Abo and occasionally as far as Onitsa, on the Niger.

Cases have occurred of boys from this class rising to as good a position as the more favoured winnaboes; but for this they have had to thank some white trader, who has taken a fancy to here and there one of them, and getting his master to lend him to him as a cabin boy—a position generally sought after by the sons of chiefs, so as to learn “white man’s mouth,” otherwise English.

The succession laws are similar to those of the other Coast tribes one meets with in the Delta, but to understand them it requires some little explanation. A tribe is composed of a king and a number of chiefs. Each chief has a number of petty chiefs under him. Perhaps a better definition for the latter would be, a number of men who own a few slaves and a few canoes of their own, and do an independent trade with the white men, but who pay to their chiefs a tribute of from 20 to 25 per cent, on their trade with the white man. In many cases the white man stops this tribute from the petty chiefs and holds it on behalf of the chief. This collection of petty chiefs with their chief forms what in Coast parlance is denominated a House.

The House may own a portion of the principal town, say Obulambri, and also a portion in any of the small towns in the neighbouring creeks, and it may own here and there isolated pieces of ground where some petty chief has squatted and made a clearance either as a farm or to place a few of his family there as fishermen; in the same way the chief of the house may have squatted on various plots of ground in any part of the district admitted by the neighbouring tribes to belong to his tribe. All these parcels and portions of land belong in common to the House—that is, supposing a petty chief having a farm in any part of the district was to die leaving no male heirs and no one fit to take his place, the chief as head of the house would take possession, but would most likely leave the slaves of the dead man undisturbed in charge of the farm they had been working on, only expecting them to deliver him a portion of the produce equivalent to what they had been in the habit of delivering to their late master, who was a petty chief of the house.

The head of the house would have the right of disposal of all the dead man’s wives, generally speaking the younger ones would be taken by the chief, the others he would dispose of amongst his petty chiefs; if, as generally happens, there were a few aged ones amongst them for whom there was no demand he would take them into his own establishment and see they were provided for.

As a matter of fact, all the people belonging to a defunct petty chief become the property of the head of the house under any circumstances; but if the defunct had left any man capable of succeeding him, the head chief would allow this man to succeed without interfering with him in any way, provided he never had had the misfortune to raise the chief’s bile; in the latter case, if the chief was a very powerful chief, whose actions no one dare question, the chances are that he would either be suppressed or have to go to Long Ju-Ju to prosecute his claim, the expenses of which journey would most likely eat up the whole of the inheritance, or at least cripple him for life as far as his commercial transactions were concerned. It is of course to the interest of the head of a house to surround himself with as many petty chiefs as he possibly can, as their success in trade, and in amassing riches whether in slaves or goods, always benefits him; even in those rivers where no heavy “topside” is paid to the head of the house by the white traders, the small men or petty chiefs are called upon from time to time to help to uphold the dignity of the head chief, either by voluntary offerings or forced payments. Public opinion has a good deal to say on the subject of succession; and though a chief may be so powerful during his lifetime that he may ride roughshod over custom or public opinion, after his death his successor may find so many cases of malversation brought against the late chief by people who would not have dared to open their mouths during the late chief’s lifetime, that by the time they are all settled he finds that a chief’s life is not a happy one at all times. Claims of various kinds may be brought up during the lifetime of a chief, and three or four of his successors may have the same claim brought against them, each party may think he has settled the matter for ever; but unless he has taken worst, the descendants of the original claimants will keep attacking each successor until they strike one who is not strong enough to hold his own against them, and they succeed in getting their claim settled. This settlement does not interfere with the losing side turning round and becoming the claimants in their turn. Some of these family disputes are very curious; take for instance a case of a claim for five female slaves that may have been wrongfully taken possession of by some former chief of a house, this case perhaps is kept warm, waiting the right moment to put it forward, for thirty years, the claim then becomes not only for the original five women, but for their children’s children and so on.