June had arrived before Commandant Henry and Lieutenant Sannaes could join their forces, and then the regular pursuit of the mutineers began; but another month elapsed before they could be brought to battle. The result was a great victory for the Congo State forces. Over four hundred Batetelas were killed, and they lost, besides, five hundred rifles and ten thousand cartridges. And then ensued what had happened in like circumstances before—the surviving mutineers broke up into small bands and dispersed in various directions. Though victorious, Commandant Henry was exhausted, and fell back upon his base. Baron Dhanis, who had been guarding the Lualaba to prevent the mutineers’ crossing it, now found it safe to pursue their scattered bands.
At last the Batetela revolt was broken. Thereafter some minor skirmishes occurred here and there; but they were as the feeble flickerings of an expiring flame—a flame that had seared the growing Congo State only to enable it to show to the world an admirable example of discipline and resisting power in circumstances of extraordinary difficulty.
Bird’s-eye View of the Station at Basoko, 1893.
CHAPTER XXI
DISPLACEMENT OF THE POPULATION
The instinct of the nomad largely prevails in all savage races, but in none does it prevail to a greater extent than among the black tribes of Central Africa. It is one of their marked characteristics, and a fruitful source of trouble.
Victims of Superstition.
Central African tribes are greatly influenced by their superstitions. Like the North American Indians, they have their medicine men who conjure up all sorts of occult prognostications of imminent and mysterious phenomena. With them the fetish doctor is little less than a god. If this wise man asserts that a village has suffered ill-luck because the new moon dips to the left or right, his deluded followers collect their effects, devastate the village, and move into some region which he may indicate is free from that curse. If rain has not fallen in sufficient quantity, and the crops surrounding the village have withered, or if the rain has been too abundant, the fetish doctor may forthwith present an explanation based upon some new superstition. Indeed, there are thousands of tribal beliefs in the Congo Free State which are for ever disturbing the settlement of the population. Implacable enemies of the Congo Free State, not wholly ignorant of these tribal beliefs and customs, pretend to regard the migratory nature of the Central African savage as evidence of his fear of the State’s government, arising from a feeling of insecurity. Such persons point to the native’s incorrigible habit of moving his abode as an unmistakable sign of his desire to escape from the barbarities practised upon him by officers and soldiers of the Congo Government. In this way it is sought to deceive those who are unacquainted with the habits of the black man—the man who, a few years ago, ate his brother with a relish which civilised white men can hardly conceive.
The State, however, fully cognisant of the natural habits of its black subjects, has often considered the question of how to deal effectually with these displacements of the population. There are times when neither superstition nor tribal custom causes a large exodus from a well-established village. Sometimes the fertility and luxuriant grass of another region attracts the more enterprising black, who has learned to cultivate his own land. Allured by glowing accounts of such a nature he gathers about him his friends and family, and makes off to what he considers to be a new Eldorado. In a short time, the diablerie of the fetish doctor has again unsettled him.
Then, again, there have been occasions when the natives have migrated to avoid payment of the taxes imposed upon them by their own chief on behalf of the State, taxes which are infinitesimal in value as compared with the benefits of civilisation which the State confers. To deal generally with the displacement of the population of the Congo Free State has been a matter of much concern to the Government. A case of sleeping-sickness or smallpox has occurred, and away goes the whole village pell-mell into another region. The movements of the native tribes are often inscrutable, and afford the State no clue as to how they may be prevented. Like some species of wild animals which instinctively avoid certain districts of the forest at particular seasons, or on account of some unusual phenomena, the black man will sometimes quit his residence for no apparent reason at all. Nine times out of ten, however, he migrates on account of things entirely unconnected with any administrative act of the State. Entire villages have been removed because a death has occurred there the cause of which was inexplicable to the black man. Occasionally the fetish doctor, inspired by some unexplained caprice, will decree that the tribe shall move—he knows not where. Ignorance and superstition invariably follow a leader whose pretence is some occult power. The tribe moves; and another tribe, moving from a similar or other impulse, may occupy the very village which the first tribe had abandoned a few weeks before.