Men Sentenced to the Death Penalty for Murder
and Cannibalism, Basoko
XII.
January 31, 1907.
PEOPLE in this country seem to expect that every traveler in the Congo must meet with crowds of people who have had one or both hands cut off. We have all seen pictures of these unfortunates, and have heard most harrowing tales in regard to them. Casement, the English consul, whose report to the British government has caused so much agitation, and who described many cases of mutilation, himself saw[[A]] but a single case; and that case, though put forward by the missionaries as an example of state atrocities, was finally withdrawn by them, as the subject had not been mutilated by human assailants, but by a wild boar. Casement traveled many miles and spent much time in securing the material for his indictment, and yet saw[[B]] but this one case. We saw a single case of mutilation. It was a boy at Ikoko, probably some twelve years old. He had been found, a child of three or four years, by the side of his dead mother, after a punitive expedition had visited the town. His mother’s body had been mutilated and the child’s hand cut off. We might have seen a second case of this sort at this place if we had searched for her. There is a second there.
No one, I think, would desire to excuse the barbarity of cutting off the hands of either dead or living, but we must remember that the soldiers in these expeditions are natives, and in the excitement and bloodthirst roused by a military attack they relapse to ancient customs. There has, indeed, been considerable question recently whether the cutting off of hands is really a native custom. Sir Francis de Winton, himself an Englishman, and Stanley’s successor in the administration of the Congo State, says that it was. And Glave says: “In every village in this section (Lukolela) will be found slaves of both sexes with one ear cut off. This is a popular form of punishment in an African village. It is not at all unusual to hear such threats as ‘I will cut your ear off,’ ‘I will sell you,’ or ‘I will kill you,’ and often they are said in earnest.” Where such customs were constant in native life it is not strange that they have lasted on into the present.
Of course, in this connection we must not forget that mutilation of dead bodies is not by any means confined to the Congo Free State, nor to its natives. Only a few months ago, in Southern Africa, the British force cut off the head of a hostile chief. When the matter was investigated, the excuse given was that it was done for purposes of identification, and that the body was afterwards brought in and buried with it.
The most of the difficulty with the natives of the Congo Free State, of course, comes in connection with the demand to gather rubber. The native hates the forest; he dislikes to gather rubber; it takes him from his home, and comfort, and wife. We have never accompanied a party of natives gathering rubber, but we have seen them started and have also seen them bringing in their product. The best rubber of the Congo is produced by vines which frequently grow to several inches in diameter. The same vine may be tapped many times. The milky juice, which exudes abundantly, promptly coagulates into rubber; as it hardens it is rolled into balls between the palm and some portion of the body, such as the chest or leg.