The Land of Fetish

by A. B. Ellis

The second day of the custom is called “Ekbah tong ekbeh,” or “Carrying goods to market,” and is really a display of all the more portable wealth of the king. The performance opens with the exhibition of the relics of the late king in a shed in the market-place; and all present pay devout obeisance to them, believing that the spirit of the departed despot is present, and that he would terribly resent any want of respect. After this various dances symbolical of battle, such as the charge, mélée, and the slaughter of prisoners, are performed by the Amazons, the king himself sometimes taking part in them. The march-past of the king’s worldly goods then takes place, and continues till dark. The most extraordinary and incongruous exhibitions take place. A procession of slaves bearing state-swords, gold and silver ornaments, and articles of great intrinsic value, may be preceded or followed by a band bearing vessels of crockery of the commonest and most homely description. Articles of earthenware that are not usually exhibited in public are here paraded in large numbers, mixed up in the strangest confusion with silks, satins, umbrellas, Manchester prints, clocks, bottles, pipes, tea-pots, cups, saucers, knives, forks, European clothes, and all the miscellaneous rubbish which has been collecting for years in the curiosity shop known as the Royal Treasury. Articles of apparel of the seventeenth century are not uncommonly seen at this custom, and there are many objects of vertu which would delight the heart of a Wardour Street connoisseur, and which were, probably, originally presents to the king from the slave-traders of a century and a-half ago.

The third day of the custom is known as “Ek-gai nu Ahtoh,” or “The throwing of cowries from Ahtoh”; Ahtoh being an immense raised platform which is built in the market-place specially for this ceremony. The platform is hung with banners and flags and covered with cloth of every conceivable hue, while over it spread the large canopies of the state umbrellas, made of strips of brilliant-hued silks and satins. To one side of this “Ahtoh” is an inclosure in which are the victims for sacrifice, bound hand and foot, and fastened into small canoes, or long baskets of stout wicker-work.

The king, accompanied by his wives and principal chiefs, occupies the summit of Ahtoh, and from time to time throws into the crowd handfuls of cowries and pieces of cloth, to be scrambled for. It is usually supposed that the Dahoman public is admitted to this scramble, but it is not so, and the whole ceremony is a fraud and a mere affectation of generosity. Soldiers alone are allowed to scramble, and the goods and cowries are their pay; for the Dahoman soldier, whether male or female, receives no regular stipend. They are fed and clothed at the king’s expense, and a moderate sum, the amount of which depends upon the success that has attended the royal arms during the past year, is set aside to be thrown from “Ahtoh.” The officers of the army generally contrive in this scramble to obtain all the cloth, leaving the rank and file to fight and struggle for the cowries; and in the wild confusion that ensues men are not unfrequently maimed or trodden to death.

After the goods that have been set aside for this purpose have all been thrown into the panting and perspiring crowd, the victims for sacrifice are brought up on to Ahtoh, carried on men’s heads, and taken to the edge of the platform to be shown to the mob. They are greeted with wild yells and cries, the executioners thronging to the foot of the platform and brandishing their knives, while the crowd arm themselves with clubs and branches, calling on the king to feed them for they are hungry. After a short speech from the monarch the first victim is brought to the edge of the platform, and placed upright in his basket: the king then pushes the upper portion of the bound mass, the man falls over into the crowd in a second, and before the unfortunate wretch has time to recover from the shock of the fall the head is severed from the body; and the latter, after having been beaten into a shapeless mass by the shrieking and frenzied mob, is dragged by the heels to a pit at a little distance, and there left to be devoured by crows and buzzards.

The number of men sacrificed in public is about fourteen, of whom the first three or four only are thrown down by the king; but, in addition to the public sacrifices, a certain number of victims are allotted to the Amazons, and are put to death by them within the precincts of the palace, where no man may be present to inquire too inquisitively into their peculiar rites.

In Dahomey we have none of those wholesale massacres in which hundreds of human beings are sacrificed, such as occur from time to time in Ashanti. In the latter country dozens of slaves are immolated at the death of even a very minor chief, but in Dahomey only one slave is allowed to be executed at the demise of the person next in authority to the king himself, and the number annually put to death in the whole kingdom is said not to exceed eighty.

The following is an instance of how horrors of this kind are exaggerated. A few years ago England was convulsed with horror at reading in the daily papers of hetacombs of slaves having been bled to death in a broad and shallow pit at Abomey, so that the king might enjoy the novelty of paddling about in a canoe in a sea of blood. What really occurred was that at the grand custom, which always takes place at the death of a king, the blood of the victims, about thirty in number, was collected into shallow pools about three feet square, and miniature canoes from six to nine inches long were set afloat in them.

The practice of human sacrifices is, however, gradually dying out in Dahomey; and, year by year, the number of persons sacrificed becomes smaller and smaller. The walls of the king’s palace, and those surrounding the residences of some of the principal chiefs, are generally crowned with human skulls, placed side by side throughout the entire length. Not many years ago it was considered a sign of poverty or of great neglect if any of these ghastly ornaments, which had become destroyed from exposure to wind, sun, and rain, were not at once replaced by fresh skulls. Now, however, they are suffered to decay, and no one thinks it necessary to sacrifice a slave in order to keep the coping of the wall of his yard in good condition.

No doubt the diminution in the number of sacrifices is in a great measure due to the fact that there are no longer any small independent tribes on the borders of Dahomey on whom war could be made, and from whom a constant supply of victims could be obtained. This source was exhausted in the early part of the present century; and the only people against whom “slave hunts” can be organized are the Egbas, and these have usually terminated so unfortunately for the Dahomans that they seem lately to have lost all taste for the amusement. The persons now commonly sacrificed at the “Customs” are criminals, and their crimes would be punished capitally in even far more civilised kingdoms than that of Dahomey, though scarcely with the same surroundings and barbarity.

Abbeokuta, the capital of the Egbas, a town with a population of over fifty thousand, is the usual point of attack of the Dahomans. It is situated on the left bank of the Ogu river, and is inclosed with thick mud walls some twenty-five feet high, loop-holed for musketry, strengthened with flanking bastions, and further protected by a broad and deep ditch.