Africa and the American Flag

by Andrew H. Foote

“There was much to disgust the white man in the number of human skulls and jaw-bones displayed; but can the reader imagine twelve unfortunate human beings lashed hands and feet, and tied in small canoes and baskets, dressed in clean white dresses, with a high red cap, carried on the heads of fellow-men? These, and an alligator and a cat, were the gift of the monarch to the people—prisoners of war.”... “When carried round the court, they bore the gaze of their enemies without shrinking. At the foot of the throne they halted, while the Mayo presented each with a head (bunch) of cowries, extolling the munificence of the monarch, who had sent it to them to purchase a last meal, for to-morrow they must die.”

Again: “But of the fourteen now brought on the platform, we the unworthy instruments of the Divine will, succeeded in saving the lives of three. Lashed as we have described before, these sturdy men met the gaze of their persecutors, with a firmness perfectly astonishing. Not a sigh was breathed. In all my life I never saw such coolness before, so near death.... The victims were held high above the heads of their bearers, and the naked ruffians thus acknowledged the munificence of their prince.... Having called their names, the nearest one was divested of his clothes; the foot of the basket placed on the parapet, when the king gave its upper part an impetus, and the victim fell at once into the pit beneath. A fall upwards of twelve feet may have stunned him, and before sense could return, his head was cut off, and the body thrown to the mob; who, now armed with clubs and branches, brutally mutilated it and dragged it to a distant pit.” Forbes and his companion had retired to their seats away from the sight. Two sons of Da Souza, the notorious slayer, remained to look on.

F.E. Forbes, delt.

Lith. of Sarony & Co. N. Y.

THE PLATFORM OF THE AH-TOH.

The circumstance most likely to have effect in restraining these barbarities, is the value which slaves will now bear as the means of cultivating the ground, and raising exportable produce, to which alone the monarch and people must look, in the diminished state of the slave-trade, to furnish means for their expenses. Victims and slaves will also be more difficult to be procured by warfare, inasmuch as civilized people have more general access to the country, and will introduce a better policy, and more powerful defensive means among the people. Christianity also is adventuring there, and carrying its peaceful influence and nobler motives with it.

Lagos plundered recaptured slaves returning to their homes. The authorities deserved no favor. A better man—perhaps a more legitimate claimant for the royal dignity—was found, and after a severe fight, in which the British cruisers warmly participated, he was seated on the throne. A severe blow was given to the slave-trade. Affairs seemed to be going on smoothly until early in the autumn of 1853, when a revolution broke out, amidst which the king died, and the country, as far as is known, remains in confusion.

The present is an interesting period in the history of the world. Changes are rapid and irrevocable. Circumstances illustrative of the condition of our race as it has been, are disappearing rapidly. The future must trust to our philosophic observation, and faithful testimony, for its knowledge of savage life. The helplessness, and artlessness, and miserable shifts of barbarism are becoming things of the past. There is perhaps no region of the earth which is now altogether beyond the reach of civilized arts. Shells, and flints, and bows, and clubs, and bone-headed spears are everywhere giving way to more useful or more formidable implements. Improvements in dress and tools and furniture will soon be universal. The history of man as he has been, requires therefore to be written now, while the evidence illustrative of it has not altogether vanished.

The changes of the last three centuries have, to only a slight degree, influenced the African races. An inaccessible interior, and a coast bristling with slave-factories, and bloody with slaving cruelties, probably account for this. The slight progress made shows the obduracy of the degradation to be removed, and the difficulty of the first steps needed for its removal. Wherever the slave-trade or its effects penetrated, there of course peace vanished, and prosperity became impossible. This evil affected not only the coast, but spread warfare to rob the country of its inhabitants, far into the interior regions. There were tribes, however, uninfluenced by it, and some of these have gained extensive, although but temporary authority. Yet nowhere has there been any real civilization. It is singular that these people should have rested in this unalloyed barbarism for thousands of years, and that there should have been no native-born advancement, as in Mexico, or Peru, or China; and no flowing in upon its darkness of any glimmering of light from the brilliant progress and high illumination of the outside world. It has been considered worthy of note, that a few years ago one of the Veys had contrived a cumbrous alphabet to express the sounds of his language; but it is surely, to an incomparable degree, more a matter of surprise, that centuries passed away in communication with Europeans, without such an attempt having been made by any individual, of so many millions, during so many generations of men.

The older state of negro society, therefore, still continues. With the exception of civilized vices, civilized arms, and some amount of civilized luxuries, life on the African coast, or at no great distance from it, remains now much the same as the first discoverers found it.