“They tattoo the skin, especially the stomach, with alto-relievo patterns; their dress is a zone of beads, supporting a bandage beneath the do-oo, or scanty loin cloth, which suffices for the poor and young girls. The upper classes add an aga-oo, or overcloth, two fathoms long, passed under the arms, and covering all from the bosom to the ankles. Neither sex wear either shirt, shoes, or stockings.”
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE EGBAS.
THE EGBA TRIBE — A BLACK BISHOP — GENERAL APPEARANCE OF THE EGBAS — THEIR TRIBAL MARK — TATTOO OF THE BREECHEE OR GENTLEMEN — SIGNIFICATION OF ORNAMENTS — MODE OF SALUTATION — EGBA ARCHITECTURE — SUBDIVISION OF LABOR — ABEOKUTA AND ITS FORTIFICATIONS — FEUD BETWEEN THE EGBAS AND DAHOMANS — VARIOUS SKIRMISHES AND BATTLES, AND THEIR RESULTS — THE GRAND ATTACK ON ABEOKUTA — REPULSE OF THE DAHOMAN ARMY — RELIGION OF THE EGBAS — THE SYSTEM OF OGBONI — MISCELLANEOUS SUPERSTITIONS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DEITIES — EGUGUN AND HIS SOCIAL DUTIES — THE ALAKÉ, OR KING OF THE EGBAS — A RECEPTION AT COURT — APPEARANCE OF THE ATTENDANTS.
We are naturally led from Dahome to its powerful and now victorious enemy, the Egba tribe, which has perhaps earned the right to be considered as a nation, and which certainly has as much right to that title as Dahome.
The Egbas have a peculiar claim on our notice. Some years ago an Egba boy named Ajai (i. e. “struggling for life”) embraced Christianity, and, after many years of trial, was ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England. Owing to his constitution he was enabled to work where a white man would have been prostrated by disease; and, owing to his origin, he was enabled to understand the peculiar temperament of his fellow negroes better than any white man could hope to do. His influence gradually extended, and he was held in the highest esteem throughout the whole of Western Africa. His widely felt influence was at last so thoroughly recognized, that he was consecrated to the episcopal office, and now the negro boy Ajai is known as the Right Rev. Samuel Crowther, D. D., Lord Bishop of the Niger.
As far as their persons go, the Egbas are a fine race of men, varying much in color according to the particular locality which they inhabit. The skin, for example, of the Egba-do, or lower Egba, is of a coppery black, and that of the chiefs is, as a rule, fairer than that of the common people. Even the hair of the chiefs is lighter than that of the common folk, and sometimes assumes a decidedly sandy hue.
The men, while in the prime of life, are remarkable for the extreme beauty of their forms and the extreme ugliness of their features; and, as is mostly the case in uncivilized Africa, the woman is in symmetry of form far inferior to the man, and where one well-developed female is seen, twenty can be found of the opposite sex.
Whatever may be the exact color of the Egba’s skin, it exhales that peculiar and indescribable odor which is so characteristic of the negro races; and, although the slight clothing, the open-air life, and the use of a rude palm-oil soap prevent that odor from attaining its full power, it is still perceptible. The lips are of course large and sausage-shaped, the lower part of the face protrudes, and the chin recedes to an almost incredible extent, so as nearly to deprive the countenance of its human character. The hair is short, crisp, and often grows in the little peppercorn tufts that have been already mentioned in connection with the Bosjesman race of Southern Africa. The men dress this scanty crop of hair in a thousand different ways, shaving it into patterns, and thus producing an effect which, to the eye of an European, is irresistibly ludicrous. The women contrive to tease it out to its full length, and to divide it into ridges running over the crown from the forehead to the nape of the neck, preserving a clean parting between each ridge, and so making the head look as if it were covered with the half of a black melon. The skin of the common people is hard and coarse,—so coarse indeed that Captain Burton compares it to shagreen, and says that the hand of a slave looks very like the foot of a fowl.
As to the dress of the Egbas, when uncontaminated by pseudo-civilization, it is as easily described as procured. A poor man has nothing but a piece of cloth round his waist, while a man in rather better circumstances adds a pair of short linen drawers or trousers, called “shogo,” and a wealthy man wears both the loin cloth and the drawers, and adds to them a large cloth wrapped gracefully round the waist, and another draped over the shoulders like a Scotch plaid. The cloths are dyed by the makers, blue being the usual color, and the patterns being mostly stripes of lesser or greater width.
Women have generally a short and scanty petticoat, above which is a large cloth that extends from the waist downward, and a third which is wrapped shawl-wise over the shoulders. The men and women who care much about dress dye their hands and feet with red wood. Formerly, this warlike race used to arm themselves with bows and arrows, which have now been almost wholly superseded by the “trade gun.” Even now every man carries in his hand the universal club or knob-kerrie, which, among the Egbas, has been modified into a simple hooked stick bound with iron wire in order to increase the strength and weight, and studded with heavy nails along the convex side. Weapons of a similar nature are used at Dahome for clubbing criminals to death.