All bodies, however, are not devoured, those of the kings and great chiefs being buried together with their best apparel and most valuable ornaments.
The matrimonial customs of the Fans deserve a brief notice. The reader may remember that, as a general rule, the native African race is not a prolific one—at all events in its own land, though, when imported to other countries as slaves, the Africans have large families. Children are greatly desired by the native tribes because they add to the dignity of the parent, and the lack of children is one of the reasons why polygamy is so universally practised; and, as a rule, a man has more wives than children. Yet the Fans offered a remarkable exception to this rule, probably on account of the fact that they do not marry until their wives have fairly arrived at woman’s estate. They certainly betroth their female children at a very early age, often as soon as they are born, but the actual marriage does not take place until the child has become a woman, and in the meantime the betrothed girl remains with her parents, and is not allowed that unrestricted license which prevails among so many of the African tribes.
This early betrothal is a necessity, as the price demanded for a wife is a very heavy one, and a man has to work for a long time before he can gather sufficient property for the purchase. Now that the Fans have forced themselves into the trading parts of the country, “trader’s goods” are the only articles that the father will accept in return for his daughter; and, as those goods are only to be bought with ivory, the Fan bridegroom has to kill a great number of elephants before he can claim his wife.
Bargaining for a wife is often a very amusing scene (see [illustration] on next page), especially if the father has been sufficiently sure of his daughter’s beauty to refrain from betrothing her as a child, and to put her up, as it were, to auction when she is nearly old enough to be married. The dusky suitor dresses himself in his best apparel, and waits on the father, in order to open the negotiation.
His business is, of course, to depreciate the beauty of the girl, to represent that, although she may be very pretty as a child of eleven or twelve, she will have fallen off in her good looks when she is a mature woman of fourteen or fifteen. The father, on the contrary, extols the value of his daughter, speaks slightingly of the suitor as a man quite beneath his notice, and forthwith sets a price on her that the richest warrior could not hope to pay. Copper and brass pans, technically called “neptunes,” are the chief articles of barter among the Fans, who, however, do not use them for cooking, preferring for this purpose their own clay pots, but merely for a convenient mode of carrying a certain weight of precious metal. Anklets and armlets of copper are also much valued, and so are white beads, while of late years the abominable “trade-guns” have become indispensable. At last, after multitudinous arguments on both sides, the affair is settled, and the price of the girl agreed upon. Part is generally paid at the time by way of earnest, and the bridegroom promises to pay the remainder when he comes for his wife.
As soon as the day of the wedding is fixed, the bridegroom and his friends begin to make preparations for the grand feast with which they are expected to entertain a vast number of guests. Some of them go off and busy themselves in hunting elephants, smoking and drying the flesh, and preserving the tusks for sale. Others prepare large quantities of manioc bread and plantains, while others find a congenial occupation in brewing great quantities of palm wine. Hunters are also engaged for the purpose of keeping up the supply of meat.
When the day is fixed, all the inhabitants of the village assemble, and the bride is handed over to her husband, who has already paid her price. Both are, of course, dressed in their very best. The bride wears, as is the custom among unmarried females, nothing but red paint and as many ornaments as she can manage to procure. Her hair is decorated with great quantities of white beads, and her wrists and ankles are hidden under a profusion of brass and copper rings. The bridegroom oils his body until his skin shines like a mirror, blackens and polishes his well-filed teeth, adorns his head with a tuft of brightly colored feathers, and ties round his waist the handsomest skin which he possesses.
(1.) ATTACK ON A MPONGWÉ VILLAGE.
(See [page 536].)