Note.—These facts offer a solution of a great national problem in regard to an uncivilized race on this continent. Selfish, unscrupulous government traders, whiskey-venders, etc., all say that the “Indian is bad, very bad,” a remorseless savage, and should be summarily exterminated. The Arab merchants and slave-dealers say the Manyuema are bad. The parallel is close and not complimentary to the conduct of the civilized race that has plundered the Red Man, debauched him with fire-water, and provoked retaliation and war by its breach of treaties and its seizure of the lands solemnly pledged to the Indians as their permanent home. See pages 1331, 2.
CHAPTER CLXX.
AFRICA—Concluded.
THE SLAVE-TRADE.
THE UNLIKENESS OF RACES — LIVINGSTONE’S PROTEST AGAINST MAN-SELLING — DISCUSSIONS WITH AFRICAN CHIEFS — THEIR EXCUSES FOR SLAVE-TRADE — HORRORS OF THE TRAFFIC — ARAB RAGE AND ATROCITIES — A STRANGE DISEASE — BROKEN-HEARTEDNESS — AN ENGLISH SAILOR’S OPINION — BARBARITIES OF SLAVE-TRADE NOT OVERSTATED — THE GELLAHBAS — THE PETTY SLAVE-TRADERS — WHOLESALE MERCHANTS — THE FAKIS — COST OF SLAVES — TERRITORIES AND TRIBES THAT SUPPLY THE SLAVE-MARKETS — PROFITS OF THE TRAFFIC — STANLEY’S TESTIMONY — LIVINGSTONE’S GREAT DESIRE — NO HOPE FOR AFRICA WHILE SLAVE TRADE EXISTS — WESTERN COAST EMANCIPATED — WORK TO BE DONE — GRAND FUTURE OF AFRICA — DUTY OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA — THE OPEN SORE OF THE WORLD — LIVINGSTONE’S LAST APPEAL — MEMORABLE WORDS ON HIS TABLET IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
The unlikeness of races that in many respects are similar, and the tenacity with which peculiar ideas and customs are maintained are facts abundantly verified in this work. The strange fantasy that one can have property in his fellow-man, which includes the right to control his thoughts, conduct, life, and sell him to another as a slave, is cherished by some tribes and wholly repudiated by others. The Arabs excluded, the Manganja and Waiyau are the only two families of slavers in that part of Central Africa which finds its outlet at the great slave-market of Zanzibar. No idea of slavery exists among the Kaffirs or Zulus and Bechuanas.
Livingstone, the heroic and world-renowned explorer, availed himself of every opportunity to protest against the selling of their people by the African chiefs. He sought to educate them by kindly counsels and arguments, so that they would be able to see the wrong and ruin they were bringing upon themselves and their subjects by wars with neighboring tribes, and the selling of captives to the mercenary Arabs.
When among the Waiyau he had long discussions with the chief, Mukatè. To counteract the effect of Livingstone’s influence the slave-drivers had represented to the natives that his object in capturing and releasing their slaves was to make them of his own religion; but the terrible evils of the slave trade, the ruined villages, the numerous bones and skulls bleaching in the sun along every path, the fearful sufferings of those who falter and perish on the journey to the coast, the rapine, plunder, and wholesale murder of neighboring tribes in order to secure captives for sale to Arab merchants, all these direful evidences of the terrible curse of the country Mukatè could not deny. He would often end the discussion by dismissing these facts with a laugh. A headman, who was Livingstone’s guide for a mile or two, whispered to him, “Speak to Mukatè to give his forays up.”
The chiefs and people were fertile in excuses for their participation in the slave traffic. One said that the Arabs, who come and tempt them with fine clothes, are the cause of their man-selling. Livingstone replied, “Very soon you will have none to sell. Your country is becoming a jungle, and all the people who do not die on the road will be making gardens for Arabs at Kilwa and elsewhere.” The common argument in defence of the business by African chiefs was, “What could we do without Arab cloth?” “Do what you did before the Arabs came into the country,” was Livingstone’s answer. But the greed for cloth, which the natives are too indolent to spin and weave, overmasters all the latent humanity and reason of the chiefs, and keeps up a chronic condition of war and spoliation, decimating the population of the country and transforming some of its fairest districts into deserts. In order to have the means to buy the coveted cloth, one village makes an incursion upon another, and thus there is almost perpetual pillage, kidnapping, and murder. The village whose chief is victorious at one time is, in its turn, sacked and burned by a stronger party. And so the traveller through the country often passes the ruins of what were once populous and pleasant villages of unoffending people.
From village to village the missionary traveller carried his lessons and appeals, sowing the good seed, with confidence that it would sometime bear fruit in the regeneration of his beloved Africa. “It is but little we can do,” is his sad reflection when among the Waiyau; “but we lodge a protest in the heart against a vile system, and time may ripen it.” His counsels to those unenlightened, tempted, and misguided people were not all lost, however impervious they seemed, generally, to moral considerations and appeals. Visiting Kimsuma, a chief on the Nyassa, he received this gratifying testimony. Kimsuma told him it was by following the advice given in his former visit, and not selling the people as slaves, that his village had grown to three times its former size.
Women faint, starving, dying by the roadside—the dead bodies of those of former gangs who could not march longer—were the frequent and painful sights that Livingstone beheld as he moved on toward Central Africa.
A slave-gang is usually composed of men and women, and children of a tender age. The adults are fastened into the heavy slave-sticks, weighing from thirty to forty pounds. From these there is no escape. The younger are secured by thongs that pass around the neck of each. Multitudes die on the journey to the coast, overpowered by the burden of the slave-stick. The following fact illustrates how thoroughly all sentiments of sympathy and humanity, and every idea of justice are destroyed by this traffic in human life. In reply to Livingstone’s inquiry why people were tied to trees and left to die, as he had seen on his way, there was the usual answer that this was the work of the Arabs, because they are enraged when their slaves can go no farther, and prefer they should die rather than have their freedom if they should, perchance, be succored and recover. The numerous empty slave-sticks scattered along the road led Livingstone to the conviction, though the natives denied the charge, that they make it a practice to follow the slave-caravans, and cut off the sticks from those who falter in the march, in order to steal and sell them over again, and so obtain an additional quantity of cloth. Another fact, revealing the atrocious wickedness of these Arab man-stealers, is also stated by Livingstone. Those who sink under the burden of the slave-stick, or from sickness fall by the way, are not unfrequently murdered. In vexation and rage at the loss of the money value of the slaves, the Arab drivers will shoot or stab them. It was no uncommon sight which met the eye of the philanthropic traveller, that of some dead or dying African, weltering, perhaps, in a pool of blood, or tied to a tree by the neck.