“The laws and customs of this land are very loose. A man has just done another a foul wrong. He found he was to be called to account, and ran to another town to beg some of the ‘big’ men to go to his town and beg him off. As they say in English: ‘Please, I beg you, do your heart good; I beg you let it pass.’ And they are so persistent with their ‘m-ba-ta’s’ (I beg you), that you are glad to let them go. Thus evil goes unpunished.
“Another custom, that of buying women, is the most dreadful to us. A girl is chosen for a boy when he is still a growing lad. When he is a man and she about 15 to 17 he wants to take her to his house as his woman. He has to pay the whole price settled on: usually two bullocks, two goats, with some cloth, pots, etc. Then if he does not have the means to pay he goes to any man in his family, that is a ‘head man,’ and demands pay for his woman. Just this week one of our big men had to sell his little five-year-old daughter to get money to give his nephew to pay for his wife. Sometimes this is very hard for the parents to do, but their country fash demands it. Some one had to do the same for them. A second or third woman is bought by their own earnings or comes to them by the death of their brothers. When a man dies his women are divided among the nearest relatives, and are their
women thereafter. The first one is head woman, and occupies the big house; each of the others has a small house.
“Every day’s experience shows us how difficult it is to do any real good among this Taboo people. They will shake you by the hand and smile in your face, but behind your back do all they can to overthrow the mission. The green-eyed monster jealousy lives here. A man cannot come out and say, I will do this or that; if he did, he would soon die.
“They will tell you with a good deal of pride, ‘We be devil-men.’” Rose A. Bower.
A NATIVE WAR DANCE.
When Baker arrived in the Obbo country, he found the people in a great state of excitement owing to the presence of a marauding band of Arabs who had announced a raid on the neighboring Madi people. While it was plain that the proposed raid was wholly for booty in slaves and ivory, the Obbo people were easily influenced, and found in it an opportunity to revenge themselves for some old or imaginary grievance.
They are a fine, athletic people, and somewhat fantastic, as things go in Central Africa. As nothing is ever done among them without a grand palaver, the chief called the tribe into consultation, which turned out to be a very formal affair. The warriors all appeared fully armed with spear and shield, and their bodies painted in various patterns with red ochre and white pipe clay. Their heads were ornamented with really tasteful arrangements of cowrie shells and ostrich feathers, the latter often hanging down their backs in graceful folds.
The consultation proceeded for some time with due regard to forms and with an apparent desire to get at a majority sentiment, when of a sudden it ended with an outburst from the warriors, and then filing away into sets or lines, each line indulging in pantomimic charges upon an imaginary enemy, and going through all the manœuvers of a fierce contest. Their activity was simply wonderful, and if they could have brought that show of vigorous athleticism and that terrible determination of countenance to bear upon their Madi enemies they must have carried consternation into
their ranks. The exhilarating and ostentatious ceremony proved to be the national war-dance of the tribe, which takes place as a ratification of the results of a tribal palaver, when the sentiment has been unanimous for war.