At last the day—always a Sunday—is settled, and more bottles of rum are sent by the bridegroom’s messengers, who bring the bride in triumph to her future home, followed by all her family and friends. Then comes a general feast, at which it is a point of honor to consume as much as possible, and it is not until after midnight that the bride is definitely handed over to her husband. The feast being over, the bridegroom retires into his house and seats himself. Several fetish women lead in the bride by her wrists, and present her in solemn form, telling them both to behave well to each other, but recommending him to flog her well if she displeases him. Another two or three hours of drinking then follows, and about 3 or 4 A. M. the fetish women retire, and the actual marriage is supposed to be completed.
Next morning the husband sends more rum and some heads of cowries to the girl’s parents as a token that he is satisfied, and after a week the bride returns to her father’s house, where she remains for a day or two, cooking, however, her husband’s food and sending it to him. On the day when she returns home another feast is held, and then she subsides into the semi-servile state which is the normal condition of a wife throughout the greater part of savage Africa.
We now come to the religion of Dahome, which, as may be imagined from the previous narrative, is of a very low character, and has been curtly summarized by Captain Burton in the following sentence:—“Africans, as a rule, worship everything except the Creator.” As the contact of the Dahomans with the white men and with the Moslems has probably engrafted foreign ideas in the native mind, it is not very easy to find out the exact nature of their religion, but the following account is a short abstract of the result of Captain Burton’s investigation.
He states that the reason why the natives do not worship the Creator is that, although they acknowledge the fact of a supreme Deity, they think that He is too great and high to trouble Himself about the affairs of mankind, and in consequence they do not trouble themselves by paying a worship which they think would be fruitless. Their devotion, such as it is, expends itself therefore upon a host of minor deities, all connected with some material object.
First we have the principal deities, who are ranked in distinct classes. The most important is the Snake god, who has a thousand snake wives, and is represented by the Danhgbwe, which has already been mentioned. Next in order come the Tree gods, of which the silk-cotton (Bombax) is the most powerful, and has the same number of wives as the Danhgbwe. It has, however, a rival in the Ordeal, or poison tree.
The last of these groups is the sea. This deity is represented at Whydah by a very great priest, who ranks as a king, and has five hundred wives in virtue of his representative office. At stated times he visits the shore to pay his respects, and to throw into the waves his offerings of beads, cowries, cloth, and other valuables. Now and then the king sends a human sacrifice from the capital. He creates the victim a Caboceer, gives him the state uniform and umbrella of his short-lived rank, puts him in a gorgeous hammock, and sends him in great pomp and state to Whydah. As soon as he arrives there, the priest takes him out of his hammock and transfers him to a canoe, takes him out to sea, and flings him into the water, where he is instantly devoured by the expectant sharks.
Lately a fourth group of superior deities has been added, under the name of the Thunder gods. In connection with the worship of this deity is found the only approach to cannibalism which is known to exist in Dahome. When a man has been killed by lightning, burial is not lawful, and the body is therefore laid on a platform and cut up by the women, who hold the pieces of flesh in their mouths, and pretend to eat them, calling out to the passengers, “We sell you meat, fine meat; come and buy!”
After these groups of superior deities come a host of inferior gods, too numerous to mention. One, however, is too curious to be omitted. It is a man’s own head, which is considered a very powerful fetish in Dahome. An [engraving] on the 595th page illustrates this strange worship, which is as follows:—
“The head worshipper, after providing a fowl, kola nuts, rum, and water, bathes, dresses in pure white baft, and seats himself on a clean mat. An old woman, with her medius finger dipped in water, touches successively his forehead, poll, nape, and mid-breast, sometimes all his joints. She then breaks a kola into its natural divisions, throws them down like dice, chooses a lucky piece, which she causes a bystander to chew, and with his saliva retouches the parts before alluded to.
“The fowl is then killed by pulling its body, the neck being held between the big and first toe; the same attouchements are performed with its head, and finally with the boiled and shredded flesh before it is eaten. Meanwhile rum and water are drunk by those present.”