“As I walked towards the body I felt something crack under my feet, and looking down saw that I was already in the midst of the field of skulls. I had inadvertently stepped into the skeleton of some poor creature who had been thrown here long enough ago for the birds and ants to pick his bones clean and the rains to bleach them. I think there must have been a thousand such skeletons lying within my sight. The place had been used for many years, and the mortality in the barracoons is sometimes frightful. Here the dead were thrown, and here the vultures found their daily carrion. The grass had just been burned, and the white bones scattered everywhere gave the ground a singular, and when the cause was known, a frightful appearance. Penetrating a little farther into the bush, I found great piles of bones.
The “Master of Life” as represented in Equatorial Africa.
“Here was the place where, when years ago Cape Lopez was one of the great slave markets on the west coast and barracoons were more numerous than now, the poor dead were thrown one upon another till even the mouldering bones remained in high piles as monuments of the nefarious traffic.”
In Angola, in cases of death the body is kept several days, and there is a grand concourse of both sexes, with beating of drums, dances, and debauchery kept up with feasting, etc., according to the means of the relatives. The great ambition of many of the blacks of Angola is to give their friends an expensive funeral. Often when one is asked to sell a pig he replies, “I am keeping it in case of the death of any of my friends.” A pig is usually slaughtered and eaten on the last day of the ceremonies, and its head thrown into the nearest stream or river. A native will sometimes appear intoxicated on these occasions, and if blamed for his intemperance will reply, “Why, don’t you know that my mother is dead,” as if he thought it a sufficient justification. The expenses of funerals are so heavy that often years elapse before they can defray them.
The Bechuanas of Southern Africa generally bury their dead. The ceremony of interment, etc., varies in different localities and is influenced by the rank of the deceased. But the following is a fair specimen of the way in which these obsequies are managed:
On the approaching dissolution of a man, a skin or net is thrown over the body, which is held in a sitting posture with the knees doubled up under the chin, until life is extinct. A grave is then dug—very frequently in the cattle-fold—six feet in depth and about three in width, the interior being rubbed over with a certain large bulb. The body, having the head covered, is then conveyed through a hole made for the purpose in the house and the surrounding fence and deposited in the grave in a sitting position, care being taken to put the face of the corpse against the north. Portions of an ant-hill are placed about the feet, when the net which held the body is gradually withdrawn. As the grave is filled up the earth is handed in with bowls, while two men stand in the hole to tread it down round the body, great care being taken to pick out anything like a root or pebble. When the earth reaches the height of the mouth, a small twig or branch of an acacia is thrown in, and on the top of the head a few roots of grass are placed. The grave being nearly filled, another root of grass is fixed immediately over the head, part of which stands above ground. When this portion of the ceremony is over, the men and women stoop, and with their hands scrape on to the little mound the loose soil lying about. A large bowl of water, with an infusion of bulbs, is now brought, when the men and women wash their hands and the upper part of their legs, shouting “Pùla, pùla” (rain, rain). An old woman, probably a relation, will then bring the weapons of the deceased (bows, arrows, war-axe, and even the bone of an old pack ox), with other things. They finally address the grave, saying, “These are all your articles.” The things are then taken away and bowls of water are poured on the grave, when all retire, the women wailing, “Yo, yo, yo,” with some doleful dirge, sorrowing without hope.
Here is another singular picture of an African burying-ground:
“Near Fetich Point is the Oroungou burying-ground, and this I went to visit the following morning. It lay about a mile from our camp, toward Sangatanga, from which it was distant about half-a-day’s pull in a canoe. It is in a grove of noble trees, many of them of magnificent size and shape. The natives hold this place in great reverence, and refused at first to go with me on my contemplated visit, even desiring that I should not go. I explained to them that I did not go to laugh at their dead, but rather to pay them honour. But it was only by the promise of a large reward that I at last persuaded Niamkala, who was of our party, to accompany me. The negroes visit the place only on funeral errands, and hold it in the greatest awe, conceiving that here the spirits of their ancestors wander about, and that these are not lightly to be disturbed. I am quite sure that treasure to any amount might be left here exposed in perfect safety.
“The grove stands by the seashore. It is entirely cleared of underbush, and as the wind sighs through the dense foliage of the trees and whispers in the darkened and somewhat gloomy grove, it is an awful place, even to an unimpressible white man. Niamkala stood in silence by the strand while I entered the domains of the Oroungou dead. They are not put below the surface; they lie about beneath the trees in huge wooden coffins, some of which by their new look betokened recent arrival, but by far the greater number were crumbling away. Here was a coffin falling to pieces, and disclosing a grinning skeleton within. On the other side were skeletons already without covers, which lay in dust beside them. Everywhere were bleached bones and mouldering remains. It was curious to see the brass anklets and bracelets in which some Oroungou maiden has been buried still surrounding her whitened bones, and to note the remains of goods which had been laid in the same coffin with some wealthy fellow now mouldering to dust at his side. In some places there remained only little heaps of shapeless dust, from which some copper or iron or ivory ornament gleamed out to prove that here too once lay a corpse. Passing on to a yet more sombre gloom, I came at last to the grave of old King Pass-all, the brother of his present majesty. The coffin lay on the ground, and was surrounded on every side with great chests, which contained the property of his deceased majesty. Among these chests, and on the top of them, were piled huge earthenware jugs, glasses, mugs, plates, iron pots and bars, brass and copper rings, and other precious things, which this old Pass-all had determined to carry at last to the grave with him. And also there lay around numerous skeletons of the poor slaves who were, to the number of one hundred, killed when the king died, that his ebony kingship might not pass into the other world without due attendance. It was a grim sight, and one which filled me with a sadder awe than even the disgusting barracoon ground.”