OLD CALABAR.
I now come to the last river in the Niger Coast Protectorate, both banks of which belong to England, the next river being the Rio del Rey, of which England now only claims the right bank, Germany claiming the left and all the territory south to the river Campo, a territory almost as large as, if not equal to, the whole of the Niger Coast Protectorate, which ought to have been English, for was it not English by right of commercial conquest, if by no other, and for years had been looked upon by the commanders of foreign naval vessels as under English influence?
Owing to some one blundering, this nice slice of African territory was allowed to slip into the hands of the Germans, hence my account of the Oil Rivers ought to be called an account of the Oil Rivers reduced by Germany.
In speaking of the inhabitants of this river, I must also include the people who inhabit the lower part of the Cross River. This explanation would not have been necessary some few years ago, but I notice the more recent hydrographers make the Cross River the main river and the Old Calabar only a tributary of that river, which is, without doubt, the most correct.
The principal towns are Duke Town (where are to be found nowadays the headquarters of the Niger Coast Protectorate, the Presbyterian Mission, and the principal trading factories of the Europeans), Henshaw Town, Creek and Town; besides these, the various kings and chiefs have numberless small towns and villages in the environs. In the lower part of the Cross river are many fishing villages, the inhabitants of which are looked upon as Old Calabar people, and owing to the latter being the dominant race they have to-day lost, or very nearly so, any trace of their forefathers, who I believe to have been Kwos with a strong strain of Andoni blood.
These villages did, in days anterior to the advent of the European traders, an immense business with the interior in dried shrimps, the latter being used by the natives, not only as a flavouring to their stews and ragouts, but as a substitute for the all necessary salt.
The original inhabitants of the district now occupied by the Old Calabar people were the Akpas, whom the Calabarese drove out, and to a great extent afterwards absorbed. This immigration of the Calabarese is said to have taken place very little over one hundred and fifty years ago. Originally coming from the upper Ibibio district of the Cross River, they belong to the Efik race, and speak that language, though nowadays, owing to numerous intermarriages with Cameroon natives and the great number of slaves bought from the Cameroons district, they are of very mixed blood. Most of the kings and chiefs of Old Calabar owe their rank and position to direct descent, some of them being of ancient lineage, a fact of which they are very proud. In this respect they differ in a great measure from their neighbours in Bonny and Opobo, where, oftener than otherwise, the succession falls to the most influential man in the House, slave or free-born.
The principal town of these people boasted, some few years ago, of many very nice villa residences, belonging to the chiefs, built of wood, and roofed with corrugated iron, mostly erected by a Scotch carpenter, who had established himself in Old Calabar, and who was in great request amongst the chiefs as an architect and builder. Unfortunately, these houses being erected haphazard amongst the surrounding native-built houses did not lend that air of improvement to the town they might otherwise have done if the chiefs had studied more uniformity in the building of the town, and arranged for wide streets in place of alley ways, many of which are not wide enough to let two Calabar ladies of the higher rank pass one another without the risk of their finery being daubed with streaks of yellow mud from the adjacent walls.
The native houses of the better classes are certainly an improvement upon any others in the Protectorate, showing as they do some artistic taste in their embellishments. They are generally built in the form of a square or several squares, more or less exact, according to the extent of ground the builder has to deal with and the number of apartments the owner has need for. In some cases, I have seen a native commence his building operations by marking out two or three squares or oblongs, about twenty feet by fifteen, round which he would build his various apartments or rooms. In the centre of the inner squares, which are always left open to the sky, you almost invariably find a tree growing, either left there purposely when clearing the ground, or planted by the owner; occasionally you will find a fine crop of charms and Ju-Jus hanging from the branches of these trees.
The inner walls, especially of the courtyards, are in most cases tastefully decorated with paintings, somewhat resembling the arabesque designs one sees amongst the Moors. No doubt this art and that of designing fantastic figures on brass dishes, which they buy from the Europeans and afterwards embellish with the aid of a big-headed nail and a hammer, comes to them from the Mohammedans of the Niger, of whom they used to see a good deal in former days.
With regard to the dress of these people, I have not anything so interesting to relate about them as I had of the New Calabar gentlemen. Except on high days and holidays, there is little to distinguish the upper classes here from the same classes in any of the other rivers of the Protectorate, except that it might be in the peculiar way they knot the loin cloth on, leaving it to trail a little on the ground on one side, and their great liking for scarlet and other bright coloured stove-pipe hats. On their high festivals the kings appear in crowns and silk garments; the chiefs, who do not stick to the native gala garments of many-hued silks, generally appear in European clothes, not always of irreproachable fit, their queen, as every chief calls his head wife, appearing in a gorgeous silk costume that may have been worn several seasons before at Ascot or Goodwood by a London belle. Sometimes you may be treated to the sight of a dusky queen gaily displaying her ample charms in a low-cut secondhand dinner or ball dress that may have created a sensation when first worn at some swagger function in London or Paris. As the native ladies do not wear stays, and one of the greatest attributes of female beauty in Calabar is plumpness, and plenty of it, you may imagine that the local modiste has her wits greatly exercised in devising means to fill up the gaping space between the hooks and eyes. I once heard a captain of one of the mail steamers describe this job as “letting in a graving piece down the back.”
One of the customs peculiar to the Old Calabar people, practised generally amongst all classes, but most strictly observed by the wealthier people, is for a girl about to become a bride to go into retirement for several weeks just previous to her marriage, during which time she undergoes a fattening treatment, similar to that practised in Tunis. The fatter the bride the more she is admired. It is said that during this seclusion the future bride is initiated into the mysteries of some female secret society. Many of the chiefs are very stout, and given to embonpoint, a fact of which they are very proud.
The lower-class 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 passed 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 passed about twenty years in Old Calabar, a greater part of the last ten years all alone at Okÿon, 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 Okÿon 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 principal 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 classes, 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 class 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 passing through their country. No place so well illustrated this system as the trade on the lower Niger as it used to be conducted by the Brass, 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 Brass 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 Brass, Bonny and New Calabar native brokers, therefore all the non-producers are averse to the white man passing 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 assist the natives to learn how to earn their living other than by being clerks or petty traders.