The whip which serves for these conjugal corrections has a double thong, made of hippopotamus or sea-cow hide. “You should hear,” says the traveller, “the worthy husband cry out—‘Ah, wretch! do you think I have bought you for nothing?’”[345] The Gaboon tribes, of whom Du Chaillu speaks, are reckoned the least civilised of negroes; but even among the least gross of African races the conjugal régime and the degree of subjection imposed on women are scarcely lessened.
At Tchaki, and at Badagry, etc., when Clapperton spoke of English monogamy to the natives, all his auditors, without distinction of sex, burst into a laugh,[346] so absurd did the thing appear to them. Throughout Africa the number of a man’s wives is only limited by his resources. If, as Schweinfurth tells us, among the Bongos of the upper Nile, a man rarely has more than three wives, it is simply on account of the strict law of supply and demand; for a woman costs no less than ten iron plates, each weighing about two pounds, to which must be added twenty iron spear heads, all precious articles and not easily procured.[347] At Bornou also men in easy circumstances have seldom more than three wives; and the poor have to content themselves, whether they will or not, with monogamy.[348] But among the negroes of Kaarta and the Fantis of the coast of Guinea polygamy is excessive. In Kaarta a private individual often has ten wives and as many concubines; but princes or knights often have threefold or even tenfold that number.[349] In consequence of this, about a third of the inhabitants are of princely or royal blood. As for the Fantis, polygamy is a source of riches, not only through the labour of the women, but also through the sale of the children, of whom a large and profitable trade is made.[350] This trait of morals is not in the least peculiar to them; throughout black Africa the right of the father of a family includes that of selling the children, and he exercises it without scruple.
Naturally the last sentiments we may expect to find in African households are those of delicacy or moral nobility. Humble to servility in presence of the master, the women give the rein to their shameless excesses as soon as they can do it without danger.
In Bornou a wife never approaches her husband without kneeling.[351] When a Poul orders one of his wives to prepare his supper, which implies that the master desires her company for the night, this signal favour is received with transports of joy. The chosen wife hastens to obey, and when the repast is ready she proudly goes to seek the master, thus humiliating her female colleagues, who retreat in confusion to their cabins to await their turn.[352] But all this abject behaviour is merely by compulsion, and the women recoup themselves well for it whenever they have the chance.
The poor women of the Gaboon, who are lacerated by whips for no offence, do not understand chastity, and their intrigues constantly provoke conflicts and palavers between the men of the villages.[353] The obscenity of the Monboottoo women astonished Schweinfurth, well acquainted as he was with negro customs.[354] The Bambarra women easily forget conjugal fidelity for a bead necklace, a fine waist-cloth, etc.; and, as in so many other countries, the husband-proprietors have no scruple in hiring out their wives for a sufficient price.[355]
Nevertheless, unauthorised adultery is cruelly punished throughout Africa; but fear is powerless to ensure to the negro husbands the purely commercial fidelity they exact from their wives, and therefore, in order to correct feminine morals, they have recourse in certain parts to fantastic methods—to the Mumbo Jumbo which Mungo Park describes.[356] Strangely attired and unrecognisable, a singular personage, doubtless a sorcerer, appears in the evening after being called for by frightful howlings in the woods, and first goes to the spot where the inhabitants are accustomed to assemble to talk at their ease. This coming is the signal for songs and dances, which last into the middle of the night. Then the Mumbo Jumbo designates the guilty or indocile woman. The latter is immediately seized, stripped, bound to a stake, and vigorously beaten by the Mumbo himself, amid the acclamations and laughter of the assembly, and especially of the other women.
In all negro Africa the husbands are generally strangers to the jealousy of honour which exists among the intelligent husbands of civilised countries. They do not care for moral fidelity, based on affection and free choice. The Kaffir woman, Schouter tells us, is the ox of her husband. A Kaffir said one day, speaking of his wife, “I have bought her, therefore it is her duty to work.”
“The negro,” relates another traveller (Monteiro), “knows neither love, affection, nor jealousy. During the many years that I have spent in Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for a woman—put his arms around her, give or receive a caress, denoting some degree of affection or love on one side or the other.... They have no word in their language to signify love or affection.”[357]
A French traveller says also of the Malagasies, “Modesty and jealousy are two sentiments very little developed among the Malagasies of both sexes and all ranks. They push licence very far in their manners, but quite unconsciously.”[358]
Throughout black Africa, indeed, marriage does not exist, at least in the sense we attach to the word. It is not a civil institution, much less a sacrament; it is a bargain, delivering the woman to the mercy of the buyer. Here and there, however, we see dawnings of legal marriage—that is to say, a contract sanctioned by civil authority. Among the Bongos of the upper Nile, for example, a man who wishes to procure a certain woman generally applies to the chief or to some dignitary, who enforces his demand.[359]