Africa and the American Flag

by Andrew H. Foote

Their normal form of a house is round, with a conical roof. The pastoral people of the south have it of a beehive form, covered with mats; the material is rods and flags. If the whole negro nations, however, were swept away, there would not remain a monument on the face of their continent to tell that such a race of men had occupied it.

One curious relation to external nature seems to have prevailed throughout all Africa, consisting in a special reverence, among different tribes, for certain selected objects. From one of these objects the tribe frequently derives its national appellation: if it is a living thing, they avoid killing it or using it as food. Serpents, particularly the gigantic pythons or boas, are everywhere reverenced. Some traces of adoration offered to the sun have been met with on the west coast; but, generally speaking, the superstitions of Africa are far less intellectual. These and many of their other practices have a common characteristic in the disappearance of all trace of their origin among the tribes observing them. To all inquiries they have the answer ready, that their fathers did so. There is in this, however, no great assurance of real antiquity, for tradition extends but a short way back.

A reliance on grisgris, or amulets, worn about the person, belongs to Africa, perhaps from very ancient ages. Egypt was probably its source: a kind of literary character has been given to it by the Mohammedans. Throughout inland central Africa, sentences written on scraps of paper or parchment have a marketable value. An impostor or devotee may gain authority and profit in this way. As we pass southward we find this superstition sinking lower and lower in debasement: men there really cover or load themselves with all kinds of trumpery, and have a real and hearty confidence in bones, buttons, scraps, or almost any conceivable thing, as a security against any conceivable evil. The Kroomen, even, with their purser’s names, of Jack Crowbar, Head Man, and Flying-Jib, Bottle of Beer, Pea Soup, Poor Fellow, Prince Will, and others, taken on board the “Perry,” in Monrovia, were found now and then with their sharks’, tigers’ and panthers’ teeth, and small shells, on their ankles and wrists; although most of these people, from contact with the Liberians, have seen the folly of this practice, and dispensed with their charms.

The Africans also have stationary fetishes, consisting in sacred places and sacred things. They have practices to inspire terror, or gain reverence in respect to which it is somewhat difficult to decide whether the actors in them are impostors or sincere. Idols in the forms of men, rude and frightful enough, are among these fetishes, but it cannot be said that idolatry of this kind prevails extensively in the country.

In two respects they look towards the invisible: they dread a superhuman power, and they fear and worship it as being a measureless source of evil. It is scarcely correct to call this Devil-worship, for this is a title of contrast, presuming that there has been a choice of the evil in preference to the good. The fact in their case seems to be, that good in will, or good in action, are ideas foreign to their minds. Selfishness cannot be more intense, nor more exclusive of all kindness and generosity or charitable affection, than it is generally found among these barbarians. The inconceivableness of such motives to action has often been found a strong obstacle to the influence of the Christian missionary. They can worship nothing good, because they have no expectation of good from any thing powerful. They have mysterious words or mutterings, equivalent to what we term incantations, which is the meaning of the Portuguese word from which originated the term fetish.

The other reference of their intellect to invisible things consists in acknowledging the continued existence of the dead, and paying reverence to the spirits of their forefathers. This leads to great cruelty. Men of rank at their death are presumed to require attendance, and be gratified with companionship. This event, therefore, produces the murder of wives and slaves, to afford them suitable escort and service in the other world. From the strange mixture of the material and spiritual common to men in that barbarian condition, the bodies or the blood of the slain appear to be the essentials of these requirements. Thus, also, the utmost horror is felt at decapitation, or at the severing of limbs from the body after death. It is revenge, as much as desire to perpetuate the remembrance of victory, which makes them eager for the skulls and jaw-bones of their enemies, so that in a royal metropolis, walls, and floors, and thrones, and walking-sticks, are everywhere lowering with the hollow eyes of the dead. These sad, bare and whitened emblems of mortality and revenge present a curious and startling spectacle, cresting and festooning the red clay walls of Kumassi, the Ashantee capital.

Such belief leads to strange vagaries in practice. They sympathize with the departed, as subject still to common wants and ruled by common affections. A negro man of Tahou would show his regard for the desires of the dead by sitting patiently to hold a spread umbrella over the head of a corpse. The dead man’s mouth, too, was stuffed with rice and fowl, and in cold weather a fire was kept burning in the hut for the benefit of their deceased friend. They consulted his love of ornament, also, for the top of his head and his brow were stained red, his nose and cheeks yellow, and the lower jaw white; and fantastic figures of different colors were daubed over his black body.

Dingaan, the Zulu chief, was exceedingly fond of ornament. He used to boast that the Zulus were the only people who understood dress. Sometimes he came forward painted with all kinds of stripes and crosses, in a very bizarre style. The people took all this gravely, saying that “he was king and could do what he pleased,” and they were content with his taste. It is this unreflecting character which astounds us in savages. They never made it a question whether the garniture of the king or of the corpse had any thing unsuitable.

All along the coasts, from the equator to the north of the Gulf of Guinea, they did not eat without throwing a portion on the ground for those who had died. Sometimes they dug a small hole for these purposes, or they had one in the hut, and into it they poured what they thought would be acceptable. They conceived that they had sensible evidence of the inclinations of the dead. In lifting up or carrying a corpse on their shoulders, men may not attend to the exact direction of their own muscular movements or those of their associates. There are necessarily shocks, jolts and struggles, from the movements of their associates. People will, in some cases, pull different ways when hustled together. All these unconscious movements, not unlike the “table turnings” of the present era, were taken as expressive of the will of the dead man, as to how and whither he was to be carried.

Their belief, as we have seen, influenced their life: it was earnest and heartfelt. When the king of Wydah, in 1694, heard that Smith, the chief of the English factory, was dangerously ill with fever, he sent his fetishman to aid in the recovery. The priest went to the sick man, and solemnly announced that he came to save him. He then marched to the white man’s burial-ground with a provision of brandy, oil, and rice, and made a loud oration to those that slept there. “O you dead white people, you wish to have Smith among you; but our king likes him, and it is not his will to let him go to be among you.” Passing on to the grave of Wyburn, the founder of the factory, he addressed him, “You, captain of all the whites who are here! Smith’s sickness is a piece of your work. You want his company, for he is a good man; but our king does not want to lose him, and you can’t have him yet.” Then digging a hole over the grave, he poured into it the articles which he had brought, and told him that if he needed these things, he gave them with good-will, but he must not expect to get Smith. The factor died, notwithstanding. The ideas here are not very dissimilar to those of the old Greeks.