Domestic slavery still flourishes. The state, of course, has done much to end the actual slave trade for supplying white men and Arabs. It is, however, difficult to deal with the matter of domestic slavery, and in fact is scarcely worth the candle.
Every chief or man of any consequence has slaves. Calamba, my interpreter, at Ndombe, though a young fellow, probably not more than 25, had two. It is rare that the lot of the domestic slave is unhappy. It is usually women or children who are bought, and they are treated in all respects as if members of the family. Little is required of them in the way of work and service, and they must absolutely be provided for by the master, who is also frequently responsible before the public for their misdeeds. Formerly, of course, there was the possibility of being killed upon a festal occasion, the accession of the chief to increased power, or to grace his funeral. Within those districts where the state has a firm hold and strong influence this possibility is done away with, and the most serious disadvantage in being a slave is thus removed. Slaves may become rich men, and not infrequently themselves hold slaves.
Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the Bantu, as of the true negro, is his emotionality—one instant joyous, the next in tears. Vowing vengeance for an injury to-day, he is on the happiest terms with his injurer to-morrow. He laughs, sings, dances. Of all the introductions of the white man, perhaps the accordion is the favorite. Men use it, but women play it constantly. Most of them play one song piece only, and one may hear it from one end of the state to the other at every hour of the day and night. Of course, there are native instruments in plenty, drums of every size and form, from the small hand drum, made by stretching a skin across an earthen pot three or four inches in diameter, up to the great cylindrical, horizontal drum made by hollowing logs a yard in diameter and ten feet long. There are horns, fifes, pipes, and whistles, and a great series of stringed instruments, ranging from the musical bow with but one cord to lutes with ten or twelve. Of course, the instrumental music goes with the dancing.
The native is born to dance. Babies, two or three years old, dance with their elders. Men dance together; women have their special forms; but in the majority of cases the two sexes dance together. There is, however, nothing like our waltzes or round dancing, individuals keeping themselves separate. The dances are most frequent and lively when the moon is growing. On moonlight nights hundreds of people—men, women, and children—gather at dusk, and to the noise of drums dance wildly, often till morning. It is no uncommon thing for people working on plantations to work all day and dance almost all night, and this day after day. While some of the dances are extremely graceful, most of them are obscene and are followed often by frightful orgies.
One thing greatly interested me. Had I been asked before my trip to Africa about the cake-walk—a form of amusement which I love to see—I should have said that it originated in America among the black folk of our southern states. But no, the cake-walk is no American invention. In every part of the Congo one may see it—even in regions where white influence has seldom penetrated. The American cake-walk is an immigrant.
The Bantu child is wonderfully precocious. This precocity displays itself in everything. The children run about with perfect freedom, instead of tottering along, one unsteady step after another, as our children of the same age. They speak astonishingly soon. A babe in arms eats solid food—notwithstanding the fact that it is not weaned until two or three years of age—shockingly early. The little child imitates the every action of its older friends. Children of four or five, in shrewdness, comprehension, and intelligence, are like our ten-year-olds. This precocity suggests the fact of early ripening. As a fact, boys of sixteen and girls of thirteen are frequently ready for marriage. A man of twenty-five is in the prime of life, a man of thirty aged, and on the whole the term of life closes at thirty-five.
II.
January 21, 1907.
LIFE is easy in the tropics. Wants are few. A house to live in can be built in a few hours. Food can be gathered or produced with little labor. Dress is needless. Where life is easy there is little impulse to labor.
The chief incentive to the Bantu to work is to secure the wherewithal to buy a wife. The boy, who, through a careless, happy childhood, has done naught but play, begins to think of settling down. But to have a wife he must have money or its equivalent. So he goes to work. It may require a year or more before he has the pieces of cloth which are necessary for the purchase of his desired loved one. The same stimulus which impelled him to labor for one wife may prod him to efforts for others. But with the establishment of a home, and the purchase of two or three wives to care for him and produce him wealth, his work is done. From fourteen years to twenty-five is his working period. Before that time a child, after that time he is a man of means. What wealth comes later comes through the women and their labor, and through trade.