Cotton is grown extensively in parts of Northern Nigeria, not for export—outside the Hausa provinces—but for home consumption. In Kano province—28,600 square miles in extent with 2,500,000 inhabitants, more than one-fourth of the total population of the Protectorate—its cultivation is accompanied by what can, without exaggeration, be termed a national industry of weaving, manufacturing, embroidering, and dyeing the garments, both under-garments and over-garments, which the Kano people wear. But not the Kano people alone. For many centuries, for nearly 1000 years probably, the Kanawa have been famed throughout the great region comprised between the bend of the Niger and the ocean as the expert cotton manufacturers of Africa; the most interesting region in all the Dark Continent, where divers races have ceaselessly intermingled, attracted thither by its fertile soil and abundant pastures; Libyan and Berber, Egyptian and Semite, and the mysterious Fulani. Three-fourths of the “men of the desert,” too, the fierce-eyed, black-lithamed Tuareg, descendants of the Iberians, who roam over the vast spaces between Tripoli and the Chad, replenish their wardrobes from the Kano looms. Throughout Bornu, Wadai, and Baghirmi, in the northern German Cameroons as far east as Darfur, Kano cloths hold unquestioned sway. The Kanawa are not the only Nigerians who manufacture cotton goods; but they are the only people among whom the industry may be truly called a national one. As carried out in Kano province this industry adds dignity, interest, and wealth to the life of the people, assists their inventive faculties, intensifies their agricultural lore, and sustains several other branches of industrial activity, binding in close alliance of material interest the agriculturist and the artisan. It gives a healthy, attractive employment to many thousand homes—employment carried on in the free air of heaven, beneath the bright sunshine of Africa. It has become a part of the national life, the pride and profit of the people. Men, women, and children participate in it, the men clearing the ground, hoeing and sowing, the women and children doing the picking, the women cleaning the lint of the seeds (on flat stones), teasing, the men weaving, tailoring, and usually, but not always, embroidering. Woven in long, narrow strips, the manufactured article is of remarkable durability and firmness of texture. The predominating dye is the blue of the indigo plant, extensively cultivated for the purpose, dyepits being common all over the province. The embroidery, both in regard to design and execution, is astonishingly handsome, and the colours harmoniously blended. A fine specimen of a finished riga—the outer robe covering the shoulders, with an aperture for the head and neck, and falling in folds to the knee—is a work of art of which any people in any country might be proud. It is a very heavy garment, and it is costly. But it is suitable for the cold nights and chilly mornings, and it lasts for years.
WOMEN COTTON SPINNERS.
MEN WEAVING.
It is impossible to separate the cultivation of cotton from the agricultural pursuits of the people generally. Cotton, like cassava, onions, ochro, pepper, ground nuts, and beans, takes its place as one of the secondary crops. The people are primarily a people of agriculturists, raising vast quantities of cereals year after year for home consumption and export to other districts—guinea-corn and millet, yams, maize, a little wheat. In the Kano Emirate or division—as distinct from what is known as the Kano province—the population is exceedingly dense, and virtually the whole land is under cultivation. I have seen nothing more remarkable in the way of cultivation either in France or Flanders. And it is all done with the galma, a peculiar kind of short-handled hoe, which would break the back of an English labourer to use, but which the Hausa will wield for hours together. The pattern of the galma is of great antiquity. It came from ancient Egypt, with the original inhabitants probably; the plough, which was used in Egypt when intercourse was frequent between the valleys of the Nile and Niger, never seems to have penetrated so far West—a curious and unexplained fact.
Long, deep, broad, parallel ridges cover the surface of the land, dotted here and there with magnificent specimens of the locust-bean tree, the shea, the tamarind, and many other varieties, under whose shade it seems a favourite device to grow a catch crop of pepper. How does the soil retain, year after year, its nutritive properties? That is the secret of the Kanawa, who from generation to generation have studied it in conjunction with the elements, as the Niger pilots have learned to read the face of the waters and can steer a steam launch where no white man could without running his craft upon a sandbank, especially at low water. That they have acquired the necessary precise knowledge as to the time to prepare the land for sowing; when to sow and how to sow; how long to let the land lie fallow; what soils suit certain crops; what varieties of the same crop will succeed in some localities and what varieties in others; how to irrigate the land situate in the vicinity of the waterways and planted with secondary crops in the dry season; how to ensure rotation with guinea-corn, millet, ground nuts, and beans; when to arrange with the Fulani herdsmen to pasture their cattle upon the land—so much at least the outsider interested in agricultural problems can gauge to some extent. For miles and miles around Kano city one passes through a smiling country dotted with farms, riven by fine, broad native roads lined with hedges of euphorbias and other plants.
Great care is lavished upon the cotton and cassava plantations—the two chief secondary crops. When the cotton fields are in the neighbourhood of a road, and very often when they are not, they are surrounded by tall fencing, eight to ten feet in height, usually composed of reeds and grass or guinea-corn stalks, to protect them from the depredations of cattle, sheep, and goats, all of which abound. In April and May, with the advent of the early rains, the land is cleared and hoed into furrows and ridges. Along the ridges drills are made at a distance of two and a half to three feet apart, the seed dropped in, and the ridge hoed up. In some districts, however, this custom is varied by the ridges being made after the sowing. The water lies in the hollows between the ridges, prevents the seeds from being washed away by the torrential downpour, and allows air to circulate freely, thus keeping the plants in a healthy state. A month later, when the plants have grown to a foot or more, the ground is again hoed. That is the first sowing. With variations according to localities there are successive sowings up to July and even August. The success of these late sowings depends very much upon the extent to which the land has been previously manured. Conditions are slightly different with the variety of cotton grown, but as a rule the plants are in a fit condition for picking about five months after sowing. December, January, March, and April appear to be the months when cotton is most abundant in the markets. In November and December of last year I observed that while in some of the fields the pods were bursting well and picking beginning, in others they were still in full flower; in others, again, they had not reached the flowering stage. Speaking generally, the plantations were in excellent condition, and the absence of weeds would have done credit to an up-to-date British farmer. But the difference in vigour of plant growth was very marked—affected, doubtless, by locality and manuring or the lack of it. One of the finest plantations I saw was at Gimmi, to the north of Zaria province, and the intelligent sariki (chief) of that village informed me that his people not infrequently treated the plant as a perennial up to the third year, when it was plucked up. I subsequently ascertained that in the Hadeija division of the Kano province, where the soil has a good underlying moisture, the perennial treatment is carried on sometimes for no less than seven years. After the third year the annual crop decreases. When so treated the plant is invariably manured.
I found it exceedingly difficult to obtain reliable figures as to the average yield of cotton per acre in any one district, or the average acreage under cultivation; and the Residents share the view that only continuous residence in the country by a Hausa-speaking (that is essential) European expert in constant and close touch with the farmers will permit of anything approaching exact information being acquired on the point. In the Katagum division of Kano province an acre is said to produce an average of 266 lbs. The average annual acreage under cotton in Katsina is said to be 16,000 acres. In Zaria province the soil, which is a sandy clay, the subsoil being reached at six inches, is generally rather poor, and the farmer is not so great an expert as his Kano colleague. In some places it is so poor that one hundred plants are said to be required to produce a single riga. In the true cotton-farming districts of the northern part of the province—such as Soba, Gimba, and Dillaya—the soil is, however, very much better, obtaining more moisture than the higher ground of Kano province and producing even finer cotton. Broadly, the problem which faces the native farmer in Zaria province is how to increase the fertility of his land. Artificial chemical manuring is out of the question; the rains would wash it all out of the soil. Green manuring is well understood but might be improved. The introduction of one or two shallow ploughs might work wonders by showing the farmers how the subsoil could be broken up, but the experiment would have to be carefully demonstrated. The native is only affected by actual demonstration, and, so far, demonstrations inspired by Europeans designed to show the Hausa farmer how to improve his agricultural systems have done little more than provoke a smile. The white man has failed where the black man has succeeded, because the white man thought he knew local conditions and did not. A Government experimental farm was started at Maiganna rather late last year, the sowings being made in July, if I remember rightly, seventeen miles from Zaria city. This is an excellent initiative which it is to be hoped will be maintained. It is really Government work. The British Cotton-growing Association should be spared all expense of this kind. Two varieties indigenous to the southern provinces (Bassa and Ilorin) and “Nyassaland upland” were planted. I was told last November by the official in charge that the indigenous varieties were doing fairly well, but that the “Nyassaland” was suffering from red-leaf. The British Cotton-growing Association was then about to put up a large and costly ginnery at Zaria. The operation is proceeding, and a substantial quantity of cotton has already been bought. I will refer to that later on. Meantime I cannot help thinking that it might have been better to have waited a little and set up the ginnery at Kano. However, this is merely a personal opinion.
The chief varieties of indigenous cotton grown in the Kano province are three in number. The first is known under the four following names—gundi, bagwandara, lutua, or mailaushi; the second as chukwi or labai. These two are the best kinds, their quality being about the same. The third is called yerkarifi or yergeri. It is of an inferior quality with a shorter staple, usually but not always grown where the soil is not naturally rich enough to support the other kinds. It is the yerkarifi variety, I gathered, which is more often used as a perennial. It fetches a lower price on the local markets and takes a month longer to mature. Cotton plants are fairly free from insect pests, but the following are identified: the cotton boll worm (tsutsa), what is described, doubtfully, as an ant which attacks the root (zago), and two species of blight (makau and madi). The native remedy, apart from constant hoeing, is to light a fire to windward, upon which the dried leaves of a certain plant, and also dried fish, are thrown. The question of indigenous versus exotic varieties here crops up again. One hears talk of flooding the country with exotic seed and doing away altogether with the indigenous varieties. I refer to Zaria, where some five hundred bags of exotic seed—or at least non-local seed—were distributed this spring after a palaver with the Emir and his principal headmen. No doubt it may be all right. From the non-expert point of view it seems dangerous. As already stated, African insect life fastens with relentless savagery upon exotic plant life, just as it revels in nice fresh blood out from Europe. One season’s failure with an exotic or non-local variety, sown by instructions of the Emir’s headmen in lieu of the indigenous kind, might create a prejudice in the native’s mind that it would take years to remove. Concentration upon improving the fertility of the soil, and therefore the quality and quantity of the local varieties (combined, of course, with seed selection) would be a slower process. It is just possible that it might be a wiser one.