Even with the termination of the Customs the scenes of blood do not end. Next comes the “water-sprinkling,” i. e. the graves of the kings must be sprinkled with “water,” the Dahoman euphemism for blood. Of late years the number of human victims sacrificed at each grave has been reduced to two, the requisite amount of “water” being supplied by various animals.
Before each tomb the king kneels on all fours, accompanied by his chiefs and captains, while a female priest, who must be of royal descent, makes a long oration to the spirit of the deceased ruler, asking him to aid his descendant and to give success and prosperity to his kingdom. Libations of rum and pure water are then poured upon each grave, followed by the sacrificial “water,” which flows from the throats of the men, oxen, goats, pigeons, and other victims. Kola nuts and other kinds of food are also brought as offerings.
The flesh of the animals is then cooked, together with the vegetables, and a feast is held, the stool of the deceased ruler being placed on the table as an emblem of his presence. All the Dahoman kings are buried within the walls of the palace, a house being erected over each grave. During the water sprinkling, or “Sin-quain,” custom, the king goes to each house separately, and sleeps in it for five or six nights, so as to put himself in communion with the spirits of his predecessors.
The reader will remember that the kings who formerly ruled Dahome are still supposed to hold royal rank in the spirit world, and the prevalence of the custom shows that this belief in the dead is strong enough to exercise a powerful influence over the living.
We have now very briefly glanced at the Dahoman in peace, in war, in religion, in death, and in burial. He is not a pleasant subject, and, though the space which has been given to him is much too small to afford more than outline of his history, it would have been more restricted but for the fact that the Dahoman is an excellent type of the true negro of Western Africa, and that a somewhat detailed description of him will enable us to dismiss many other negro tribes with but a passing notice.
Moreover, as the kingdom of Dahome is fast failing, and all the strange manners and customs which have been mentioned will soon be only matters of history, it was necessary to allot rather more space to them than would otherwise have been the case. The general character of the Dahoman has been so tersely summed up by Captain Burton, that our history of Dahome cannot have a better termination than the words of so competent an authority.
“The modern Dahomans are a mongrel breed and a bad. They are Cretan liars, crétins at learning, cowardly, and therefore cruel and bloodthirsty; gamblers, and consequently cheaters; brutal, noisy, boisterous, unvenerative, and disobedient; ‘dipsas-bitten’ things, who deem it duty to the gods to be drunk; a flatulent, self-conceited herd of barbarians, who endeavor to humiliate all those with whom they deal; in fact, a slave-race,—vermin with a soul apiece.
“They pride themselves in not being, like the Popos, addicted to the ‘dark and dirty crime of poison,’ the fact being that they have been enabled hitherto to carry everything with a high and violent hand. They are dark in skin, the browns being of xanthous temperament, middle-sized, slight, and very lightly made. My Krumen looked like Englishmen among them. In all wrestling bouts my Krumen threw the hammock bearers on their heads, and on one occasion, during a kind of party fight, six of them, with fists and sticks, held their own against twenty Dahomans.
“They are agile, good walkers, and hard dancers, but carry little weight. Their dress is a godo, or T bandage, a nun-pwe (undercloth) or a Tfon chokoto (pair of short drawers), and an owu-chyon, or body-cloth, twelve feet long by four to six broad, worn like the Roman toga, from which it may possibly be derived.
“The women are of the Hastini, or elephant order, dark, plain, masculine, and comparatively speaking of large, strong, and square build. They are the reapers as well as the sowers of the field, and can claim the merit of laboriousness, if of no other quality.