NEW CALABAR
The intervening rivers between the Brass and New Calabar Rivers are the St. Nicholas, the St. Barbara, the St. Bartholomew, and the Sombrero; the influence of the king of New Calabar may be said to commence at the St. Bartholomew River, extending inland to about five or ten miles beyond the town of Bugama. The lower parts of the St. Bartholomew and the numerous creeks, running between that river and New Calabar are mostly inhabited by fishermen and their families, their towns and villages being without exception the most squalid and dirty of any to be found in the Delta. Beyond fishing, the males seem to do little else than sleep; occasionally the men assist their wives and children in making palm-leaf mats, used generally all over the Delta in place of thatch—not a very profitable employment, as the demand varies considerably according to the seasons. After a very rough and boisterous rainy season, the price may be two shillings and sixpence, or its equivalent, for four hundred of these mats, each mat being a little over two feet in length, but falling in bad times to two shillings and sixpence for five to six hundred. A roof made with these mats threefold thick will last for three years.
These people call themselves Calabar men simply because they live within the influence of the Calabarese. In the upper part of these small rivers, about a day’s journey by canoe from the mouth of St. Bartholomew, is the chief town of a small tribe of people called the Billa tribe, connected by marriage with the Bonny men, several of the kings of Bonny having married Billa women. These people are producers in a small way of palm-oil, and though they are located so close to the New Calabar people, prefer to sell their produce to the Bonny men, who send their canoes over to the Billa country to fetch the oil, the latter people not having canoes large enough for carrying the large puncheons which the Bonny men send over to collect their produce in.
The New Calabar men are now split up into three towns called Bugama, where the king lives; Abonema, of which Bob Manuel is the principal chief; and Backana, where the Barboy House reside. Besides they have numerous small towns scattered about in the network of creeks connecting the Calabar River with the Sombrero River. Previous to 1880 these people all dwelt together in one large town on the right bank of the Calabar River, nearly opposite to where the creek, now called the Cawthorne Channel,[85] branches off from the main river.
For some few years previous the chief of the Barboy House, Will Braid, had incurred the displeasure of the Amachree house, which was the king’s house. For certain private reasons the king, with whom sided most of the other chiefs, had decided to break down the Barboy house, which had been a very powerful house in days anterior to the present king’s father, and tradition says that the Barboys had some right to be the reigning house. Will Braid, the head of the house at this time, had by his industry and honourable conduct raised the position of the house to very near its former influence. This was one of the private reasons that caused the king to look on him with disfavour.
When one of these West African kinglets decides that one of their chiefs is getting too rich, and by that means too powerful, he calls his more immediate supporters together, and they discuss the means that are to be used to compass the doomed one’s fall. If he be a man of mettle, with many sub-chiefs and aspiring trade boys, the system resorted to is to trump up charges against him of breaches of agreement as to prices paid by him or his people in the Ibo markets for produce, and fine him heavily. If he pays without murmur, they leave him alone for a time; but very soon another case is brought against him either on the same lines or for some breach of native etiquette, such as sending his people into some market to trade where, perchance, he has been sending his people for years; but the king and his friendly chiefs dish up some old custom, long allowed to drop in abeyance, by which his house was debarred from trading in that particular market. The plea of long usance would avail him little; another fine would be imposed. This injustice would generally have the effect desired, the doomed one would refuse to pay, then down the king would come on him for disregarding the orders of himself and chiefs; fine would follow fine, until the man lost his head and did some rash act, which assisted his enemies to more certainly compass his ruin. Or he does what I have seen a persecuted chief do in these rivers on more than one occasion: that is, he gathers all his wives and children about him, together with his most trusted followers and slaves, also any of his family who are willing to follow him into the next world, lays a double tier of kegs of [gunpowder on the floor of] the principal room in his dwelling-house and knocks in the heads of the top tier of kegs. Placing all his people on this funeral pile, he seats himself in the middle with a fire-stick grasped in his hand, then sends a message to the king and chiefs to come and fetch the fines they have imposed on him. The king and chiefs generally shrewdly guessed what this message meant, and took good care not to get too near, stopping at a convenient distance to parley with him by means of messengers. The victim finding there was no chance of blowing up his enemies along with himself and people, would plunge the fire-stick into the nearest keg, and the next moment the air would be filled with the shattered remains of himself and his not unwilling companions.
Having digressed somewhat to explain how chiefs are undone, I must continue my account of the New Calabar people and the cause of their deserting their original town. This was brought about by Will Braid, on whom the squeezing operation had been some time at work. He turned at bay and defied the king and chiefs; this led to a civil war, in which he was getting the worst of the game, so one dark night he quietly slipped away with most of his retainers and took refuge in Bonny. This led to complications, for Bonny espoused the cause of W. Braid and declared war against New Calabar; thus in place of suppressing Will Braid they came near to being suppressed themselves, the Bonny men very pluckily establishing themselves opposite New Calabar town, where they threw up a sand battery, in which they placed several rifled cannon, and did considerable damage to the New Calabar town, from whence a feeble return fire was kept up for several days, during which time the Calabar men occupied themselves in placing their valuables and people in security, and eventually, unknown to the Bonny men, clearing out all their war canoes and fighting men through creeks at the back of their town to the almost inaccessible positions of Bugama and Abonema. The Bonny men continued the bombardment, but finding there was no reply from the town, despatched, during the night, some scouts to find out what was the position of things in the New Calabar town; on their return they reported the town deserted. The Bonny men lost no time in following the New Calabar men to their new position, but found Bugama inaccessible, so turned their attention to Abonema, which they very pluckily assaulted, but were repulsed with considerable loss, losing one of their best war canoes, in which was a fine rifled cannon; at the same time the Bonny chief, Waribo, who had most energetically led the assault, barely escaped with his life, as he was in the war canoe that had been sunk by the New Calabar men. This victory was very pluckily gained by Chief Bob Manuel and his people, who were greatly assisted in the defence of their position by having been supplied at an opportune moment with a mitrailleuse by one of the European traders in the New Calabar river. This defeat somewhat cooled the courage of the Bonny men; the war however continued to be carried on in a desultory manner for several months, until both sides were tired of the game, and at last all the questions in dispute between the king and chiefs of New Calabar and Will Braid, and the matters in dispute between the New Calabar men and the Bonny men were by mutual agreement left to the arbitration of the king and chiefs of Okrika, and King Ja Ja and the chiefs of Opobo. The arbitrators met on board one of Her Majesty’s vessels in Bonny River in 1881, King Ja Ja being represented by Chief Cookey Gam and several other chiefs, the king and chiefs of Okrika being in full force. The result of the arbitration did not give complete satisfaction to any party, owing to the advice of Ja Ja on the affair not having been listened to in its entirety. However, W. Braid returned to New Calabar territory and founded a town of his own, assisted by his very faithful Chief Yellow of Young Town. Thus ended the last war between the old rivals Bonny and New Calabar. It is on record that these two countries had been scarcely ever at peace for any length of time since New Calabar was first founded some two hundred and fifty years ago, when, tradition says, one of the Ephraim Duke family left Old Calabar and settled at the spot from whence they retired in 1880.
Old traders I met with in the early sixties informed me that during one of these wars, between the years 1820 and 1830, the king Pepple, then reigning in Bonny succeeded in capturing the king of Calabar of that time (the grandfather of the last king Amachree), and to celebrate his victory and royal capture, made a great feast to which he invited all the European slave traders then in his country. The feast was a right royal one, the king had a special dish prepared for himself which was nothing less than the heart of his royal captive, torn from his scarcely lifeless body.
The New Calabar people, though said to be descended from the Old Calabar race, have not retained any of the characteristics of the latter, neither in their language nor dress, nor have they retained the elaborate form of secret society or native freemasonry peculiar to the Efik[86] race called Egbo.
Their religion is the same animistic form of Ju-Juism and belief in the oracle they call Long Ju-Ju situated in the vicinity of Bende in the hinterland of Opobo, common to all the inhabitants of the Delta; besides the latter, they are believers in the power of a Ju-Ju in some mystic grove in the Oru country. The peculiar test at this latter place is said to have been established by some ancient dame having uttered some fearful curse or wish at the spot where the ordeal is administered. The descriptions of this are rather vague, as no one who has undergone it has ever been known to return, that is, if he has really seen the oracle work, for if it works it is a sign of his guilt and drowns him; if he is innocent it does not work, so on his return he is not in a position to describe it. But the proprietors of this interesting Ju-Ju have for very many years found that a nigger fetches a better price alive than when turned into butcher’s meat; they have therefore been in the habit of selling the guilty victim into slavery in as far distant a country as possible; but occasionally one of these men have drifted down to the coast again, but dare not return to his own country as no one would believe he was anything else but a spirit. One of these “spirits” I had the pleasure to interview on one occasion, and he told me that the only ones who were actually drowned were the old or unsaleable men; when two men went to this Ju-Ju or ordeal well, to decide some vital question between them, the party taking best would want to see his dead or drowned opponent; for this purpose the Ju-Ju priests always kept a few of the old and decrepit votaries on hand to be drowned as required, but the opponent was never allowed to stand by and see the oracle work, but was taken up to the well and allowed to see a dead body lying at the bottom, and after he had glanced in and satisfied himself there was a drowned person there, he would be hurried away by the Ju-Ju priests and their assistants. That these priests had the supernatural power to make the water rise up in the well, this “spirit” thoroughly believed, and when I offered the suggestion of an underground water supply brought from some higher elevation, he scouted the idea and gave me his private opinion thus: “White man he no be fit savey all dem debly ting Ju-Ju priest fit to do; he fit to change man him face so him own mudder no fit savey him; he fit make dem tree he live for water side, bob him head down and drink water all same man; he fit make himself alsame bird and fly away; you fit to look him lib for one place and you keep you eye for him, he gone, you no fit see him when he go.”
Which little speech turned into ordinary English meant to say that white people could not understand the devilish tricks the Ju-Ju priests were able to do, they could so disguise a person that his own mother would not recognise him, this without the assistance of any make-up but simply from their devilish science; that they could cause a tree on the banks of a river to bend its stem and imbibe water through its topmost branches; that they could change themselves into birds and fly away; and lastly, that they could make themselves invisible before your eyes and so suddenly that you could not tell when they had done so.
I asked him why the Ju-Ju man had not altered him, so that when he sold him it would be impossible for any one who had known him in his own country ever to recognise him if they saw him in another. His reply was: “Ju-Ju man savey them man what believe in Ju-Ju no will believe me dem time I go tell dem I be dem Osūkū of Young Town come back from Long Ju-Ju. He savey all man go run away from me in my own country.” “Well,” I said, “how about the people amongst whom you now are? they believe in very nearly the same Ju-Jus that your own people do, what do they say about you?” “Oh! they say I be silly fellow and no savey I done die one time, and been born again in some other country.” I then asked him how they accounted for his knowing about the people who were still alive in his own country and to be able to talk about matters which had taken place there within the previous five or six years. Then I got the word the inquirer in this part of the world generally gets when he wishes to dive into the inner circles of native occultism, viz., “Anemia,” which means “I don’t know.”
The chiefs in New Calabar in the days of the last king’s father were an extremely fine body of men, both physically and commercially; the latter quality they owed to the strong hand the king kept over them, and the excellent law he inaugurated when he became the king with regard to trade, viz., that no New Calabar chief or other native was allowed to take any goods on credit from the Europeans. His power was absolute, and considering that he inherited his father’s place at a time when the country was in the throes of war with Bonny—his father being the king captured by the king of Bonny mentioned previously—the success of his rule was wonderful, for he pulled his country together and carried on the war with such ability that Bonny ultimately was glad to come to terms; a peace was agreed upon which lasted many years, until the old king of Bonny died, and his son wishing to emulate his father re-opened hostilities, but with such ill-success and loss to his country that it eventually led to his being deposed and exiled from his country for some years.
The New Calabar people are and have been always great believers in Ju-Juism, the head Ju-Ju priest being styled the Ju-Ju king and ranking higher than the king in any matters relating to purely native affairs.
The shark is their principal animal deity, to which they were in the habit of sacrificing a light-coloured child every seven years. This used to be openly and ostentatiously performed by a procession of a half-dozen large canoes being formed up at the town of New Calabar, each canoe being manned by forty to fifty paddlers; in the midships of each canoe a deck some ten feet long would be placed on which the Ju-Ju priests and a number of the younger chiefs and the grown-up sons of the chief men would huddle together and keep up a continuous howling and dancing, accompanied with the waving of their hands and handkerchiefs, until they arrived down near the mouth of the river. When the water began to be so rough that the singers and dancers could not keep their feet, it was a sign the offering must be cast into the sea; the Ju-Ju men and their assistants all supplicating their friend the shark to intercede with the Spirit of the Water to keep open the entrance to their river and cause plenty of ships to come to their river to trade.
Their Ju-Ju house in their original town was a much larger and more pretentious edifice than that of Bonny, garnished with human and goats’ skulls in a somewhat similar manner, unlike the Bonny Ju-Ju house in the fact that it was roofed over, the eaves of which were brought down almost to the ground, thus excluding the light and prying eyes at the same time; at either side of the main entrance, extending some few feet from the eaves, was a miscellaneous collection of iron three-legged pots, various plates, bowls and dishes of Staffordshire make, all of which had some flower pattern on them, hence were Ju-Ju and not available for use or trade—the old-fashioned lustre jug, being also Ju-Ju, was only to be seen in the Ju-Ju house, though a great favourite in Bonny and Brass as a trade article—at this time all printed goods or cloth with a flower or leaf pattern on them were Ju-Ju. Any goods of these kinds falling into the hands of a true believer had to be presented to the Ju-Ju house. As traders took good care not to import any such goods, people often wondered where all these things came from. Had they arrived shortly after a vessel bound to some other port had had the misfortune to be wrecked off New Calabar, they would have solved the problem at once, for anything picked up from a wreck which is Ju-Ju has to be carried off at once to the Ju-Ju house. I remember on one occasion visiting this Ju-Ju house just after a large ship called the Clan Gregor bound into Bonny had been wrecked off New Calabar, and found the Ju-Ju house decked both inside and out with yards of coloured cottons from roof to floor; but the Ju-Ju priests did not get all their rights, for some tricky natives on salving a bale of goods would carefully slit the bale just sufficiently to see what were the goods inside, and should they be Ju-Ju would not open them, but take them to their particular friend amongst the European traders, and get him to send them away to some other river for sale on joint account.
Every eighth day is called Calabar Sunday, the day following being formerly the market day or principal receiving day for the white traders of the native produce, which consisted principally, and still does, of palm oil. The native Sunday was passed in olden days by the chief in receiving visits from the white men and jamming[87] with them for any produce he had the intention of selling the following day, or clearing up any little Ju-Ju matters that he had been putting off for the want of a slack day, not because it was his Sunday, but because that was a day on which by custom he could not visit the ships. I remember it was on paying a visit to old King Amachree, the father of the late king of the same name, I saw for the first time a native sacrifice. I was then little more than a boy as a matter of fact, I was under seventeen years of age, but filling a man’s place in New Calabar who had been invalided home. The old king had taken me under his special protection and gave me much good advice and counsel, which was of great use to me in my novel position. My employers ought to have been very thankful to him, for though I was the youngest trader in the river by some twelve years, I held my own with them and got a larger share of the produce of the river than my predecessor had done, all owing to the old brick of a king, who would come and see how I was doing on the big trade days, and if he thought I was not doing as well as my neighbours he would send off a message to a small creek close to the shipping, where the natives used to wait with their oil until it was jammed for, id est, agreed for, and order three or four canoes of oil to be sent off to me, though I had not seen its owner to agree with him as to what he was to get for it. I held this appointment for a little over six months, when, my senior having returned, I had to go back to my duties in Bonny under the chief agent of the firm, a Captain Peter Thompson, one of the kindest-hearted skippers that ever entered Bonny river. In those days we all had some nickname that we were known by amongst the natives, and another amongst the white men. Amongst the former he was called Calla Thompson, because he was short, in contradistinction to another Thompson who was tall, called Opo Thompson; but his name amongst the white men was Panter Thompson, owing to his inability to pronounce the “th” in panther during a discussion as to whether we had tigers or only panthers on the West Coast of Africa. Poor Panter, after a most successful voyage of a little over two years, was preparing to return home, and had only a few more weeks to remain in Bonny, when in stepping into his boat his foot slipped and he fell into the river at a point known to be infested with sharks. A brother skipper jumped into the boat, and actually clutched him by his cap at the same moment poor Panter said “I am gone, Ned!” no doubt feeling himself being drawn down by some hungry shark.
His son now commands one of the finest steamers of the African Steamship Company, and seems to have inherited in a marked degree all the good qualities of his father; so, travellers to West Africa, if you want a comfortable ship and a thorough good fellow to travel with, take your passage in the ship commanded by Captain Willie Thompson, R.N.R.
But this is digressing. I must get back to New Calabar and tell you what I saw at my introduction to Ju-Juism under the auspices of dear old King Amachree. The occasion was the swearing Ju-Ju with some people in the interior, with whom they had only lately opened up commercial relations, and they wanted them to swear they would trade with no other people but them. The deputation, who represented the market people, looked as wild a lot as one could wish to see, and, as far as I could make out, the ceremony I was watching was a kind of preliminary canter to a more impressive, and most likely more diabolical one to be carried out at some future date in the stranger folks’ country. On this occasion the officiating Ju-Ju priest did not seem to address any of his words to the strangers, who looked on with a certain amount of fear depicted in their countenance.
The Ju-Ju priest was clothed (?) in a superb dark-coloured and greasy-looking rag about his loins, barely sufficient to satisfy the easiest going of European Lord Chamberlains; but from the expressive grunts of satisfaction which greeted his appearance in the Ju-Ju house, I was led to suppose his dress was quite correct and proper for the occasion. His head was shaved on the right side, and all down his right side and leg he had been dusted over with some greyish-white native chalk. He said a few words in an undertone to one of his assistants, who went out of sight for a moment or so and quickly returned with a very fine almost milk-white goat, the poor beast seeming to anticipate its fate from its fearfully loud bleating. The Ju-Ju priest seized the poor beast by its muzzle with his left hand, and dexterously tossing its body under his left arm, forced its head back towards his left shoulder until the neck of the beast formed an arc, his assistant handing him at this moment a very sharp white-handled spear-pointed knife, which he drew across the animal’s throat, almost severing its head from its body. Quick as lightning he dropped on one knee and held the bleeding animal over a receptacle, having the appearance of a large soup plate, fashioned in the clay of the ground immediately in front of the altar arrangement. In the centre of this plate was a hole down which the quickly coagulating blood slowly trickled; after the interval of what appeared to me minutes, but was in fact most likely less than a minute, the Ju-Ju man laid the lifeless body of the goat down with its neck over the opening in the plate, leaving it there to drain. At the moment of the sacrifice various gongs and old ship bells were struck by young men stationed near them for that purpose—a wrecked ship’s bell being generally presented to the Ju-Ju house, though not as in the case of Ju-Ju goods by law prescribed. New Calabar people had been fairly well observant of this custom, and the wrecks numerous, judging from the number of ships’ bells in the Ju-Ju house. At every movement of the Ju-Ju priest the king and chief would grunt out a noise very much resembling that auld Scotch word “ahum.”
The Ju-Ju house had amongst its possessions several ill-shapen wooden idols, and scattered about the affair that represented an altar were various small idols looking very much like children’s dolls; also several large elephant’s tusks, and two or three very well carved ones, with the usual procession of coated and naked figures winding round them.
The present king of New Calabar[88] is a son of my old friend King Amachree, and is called King Amachree also, but has shown little of the ability of his late father, being completely led by the nose by his brother George Amachree, who practically rules both king and people.
The former is a small, quiet, and rather amiable man, but of a vacillating and unreliable character; his brother and prime minister is, on the contrary, a tall and very fine specimen of the negro race, endowed by nature with a very suave and not unmusical voice, a very able speaker, clear and logical reasoner, but of a very grasping nature—an excellent and successful trader and exceedingly nice man to deal with, as long as he has got things moving the way that suits him and his policy; but when thwarted in his designs, trading or political, he becomes a difficult customer to deal with, and a very unpleasant and objectionable type of negro “big man.” Nevertheless, had he had the fortune to have been born in a civilised Africa, I feel confident his natural abilities, assisted by education, would have made him a man of eminence in whatever country his lot might have been cast.
Most of the New Calabar chiefs bear a very favourable repute amongst the white traders, and compare very favourably intellectually with the neighbouring chiefs of the Niger Delta.
Another chief of no mean capacity is Bob Manuel, of Abonema, exceedingly neat, almost a dandy in appearance, a very shrewd trader, clear and concise in his speech, honourable in all his dealings, of a very reserved temperament; but a charming man to talk with, once started on any topic that interests him or his visitor.
Owing to some peculiarities in their dress, the New Calabar chiefs are very different to the chiefs in other parts of the Delta. They never appear outside of their houses unless robed in long shirts (made of real india madras of bold check patterns, in which no other colour but red, blue and white is ever allowed to be used) reaching down to their heels; under this they wear a singlet and a flowing loin cloth of the same material as their shirts. Of late years, during the rainy season, some of them have added elastic-side boots and white socks, but the most curious part of their get-up is their head-gear, for since about 1866 they have taken to wearing wigs. These are only worn on high days and holidays and at special functions, but the effect sometimes is so utterly ridiculous as to be more than strangers can look at without laughing. Imagine an immensely stout and somewhat podgy negro with elastic-side boots, white stockings, long shirt, several strings of coral hung round his neck and hanging in festoons down as far as where his waistcoat would end, did he wear one, a Charles II. light flaxen wig, the latter topped up by an ordinary stove-pipe black silk hat!
This fashion of wearing wigs, I am afraid, was unconsciously inaugurated by me, having taken with me in 1865 to New Calabar some wigs that I had used in some private theatricals in England. A chief named Tom Fouché saw them, and was enchanted with a nigger’s trick wig, the top of which could be raised by pulling a hidden silk cord, and eventually he became the proud possessor of my stock, and produced a great sensation the first public festival he appeared at. Previous to this I never saw a wig in New Calabar; as a matter of fact, they have no excuse for them, a bald-headed native being an almost unheard-of curiosity, and grey or white heads are very scarce. Alas! like all pioneers, I did not reap the reward I should have done, as I left the New Calabar river before the fashion had caught on, and Messrs. Thomas Harrison and Co., of Liverpool, became the principal purveyors of wigs to the Court of New Calabar.
These people are remarkable for the bold stand they have made against the persecution of their neighbours almost from the day their founder planted his foot on the New Calabar soil, or mud rather, I should say; besides their wars with the Bonny men, they were often attacked by the Brass men, allies of Bonny. With the Okrika men they were almost constantly at war. This latter was a kind of guerilla warfare carried on in the creeks, and consisted in seizing any unprotected small canoe with its crew of two or three men or women and cargo, the latter generally being yams or Indian corn, the custom being on both sides to eat these prisoners.
The Church Missionary Society established a mission here in 1875, but during the war of 1879 and 1880 the missionary had to leave. Their success had not been brilliant up to this date, owing, no doubt, in some measure, to the immense power wielded by the Ju-Ju priests in New Calabar.
It was not until 1887-8 that the missionaries were able to again commence their labours amongst these people, and then not in the principal town. Archdeacon Crowther, however, succeeded about this time in getting a plot of ground in Bob Manuel’s town, Abonema, for the purpose of building a mission station. As to the success of this last effort I can’t speak from personal observation, as I left this river shortly afterwards myself; in fact, it was on my last visit to Abonema that I conveyed in my steamer, the Quorra, the missionary and his wife to their new home from Brass. They were a young couple of very well educated and most intelligent Sierra Leone natives.