Angola and the River Congo, vol. 1

by Joachim John Monteiro

I cannot help thinking that so long as (in a rich country like England) we read of poor creatures perishing from starvation on doorsteps and in garrets, more care should be taken of our starving poor at home and less charity showered upon the negro, who has growing close to his hut all he wants to sustain life in almost absolute laziness.

The character of the negro is principally distinguished not so much by the presence of positively bad, as by the absence of good qualities, and of feelings and emotions that we can hardly understand or realize to be wanting in human nature. It is hardly correct to describe the negro intellect as debased and sunken, but rather as belonging to an arrested stage. There is nothing inconsistent in this; it is, on the contrary, perfectly consistent with what we have seen to be their physical nature. It would be very singular indeed if a peculiar adaptation for resisting so perfectly the malignant influences of the climate of tropical Africa, the result of an inferior physical organization, was unaccompanied by a corresponding inferiority of mental constitution. It is only on the theory of “Natural Selection, or the survival of the fittest” to resist the baneful influence of the climate through successive and thousands of generations—the “fittest” being those of greatest physical insensibility—that the present fever-resisting, miasma-proof negro has been produced, and his character can only be explained in the corresponding and accompanying retardation or arrest of development of his intellect.

The negro knows not love, affection, or jealousy. Male animals and birds are tender and loving to their females; cats show their affection by delicious purring noises and by licking; horses by neighing and pawing; cocks by calling their hens to any food they may find; parroquets, pigeons, and other birds, by scratching one another’s polls and billing and cooing; monkeys by nestling together and hunting for inconvenient parasites on each other’s bodies; but in all the long years I have been in Africa I have never seen a negro manifest the least tenderness for or to a negress. I have never seen a negro, even when inebriated, kiss a girl or ever attempt to take the least liberty, or show by any look or action the desire to do so. I have never seen a negro put his arm round a woman’s waist, or give or receive any caress whatever that would indicate the slightest loving regard or affection on either side. They have no words or expressions in their language indicative of affection or love. Their passion is purely of an animal description, unaccompanied by the least sympathetic affections of love or endearment. It is not astonishing, therefore, that jealousy should hardly exist; the greatest breach of conduct on the part of a married woman is but little thought of. The husband, by their laws, can at most return his wife to her father, who has to refund the present he received on her marriage; but this extreme penalty is seldom resorted to, fining the paramour being considered a sufficient satisfaction. The fine is generally a pig, and rum or other drink, with which a feast is celebrated by all parties. The woman is not punished in any way, nor does any disgrace attach to her conduct. Adultery on the part of the husband is not considered an offence at all, and is not even resented by the wives.

It might be imagined that this lax state of things would lead to much immorality: but such is not the case, as from their utter want of love and appreciation of female beauty or charms, they are quite satisfied and content with any woman possessing even the greatest amount of the hideous ugliness with which nature has so bountifully provided them. Even for their offspring they have but little love beyond that which is implanted in all animals for their young. Mothers are very rarely indeed seen playing with or fondling their babies: as for kissing them, or children their mothers, such a thing is not even thought of. At the same time I have never seen a woman grossly neglect or abandon her child, though they think nothing of laying them down to sleep anywhere in the sun, where they soon become covered with flies; but as this does not appear to hurt or inconvenience them in the least, it can hardly be termed neglect.

The negro is not cruelly inclined; that is to say, he will not inflict pain for any pleasure it may cause him, or for revenge, but at the same time he has not the slightest idea of mercy, pity, or compassion for suffering. A fellow-creature, or animal, writhing in pain or torture, is to him a sight highly provocative of merriment and enjoyment. I have seen a number of blacks at Loanda, men, women, and children, stand round, roaring with laughter at seeing a poor mongrel dog that had been run over by a cart, twist and roll about in agony on the ground, where it was yelping piteously, till a white man put it out of its misery. An animal that does not belong to them, might die a thousand times of hunger and thirst before they would think of stirring a foot to give it either food or drink, and I have already described how even their own animals are left to fare and shift as best they can on their own resources, and their surprise that my wife should feed some little chickens that did not belong to her, at a town on the road to Bembe.

In the houses it is necessary to see for oneself that all the animals are regularly fed and watered every day, or they would quickly die of neglect. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to find the negro so completely devoid of vindictive feelings as he is. He may be thrashed to within an inch of his life, and not only recover in a marvellously short space of time, but bear no malice whatever, either at the time or afterwards. In Angola, the attempt to take a white man’s life by his slaves, for ill treatment or cruelty to them, is extremely rare. If any amount of bad treatment is not resented, no benefit or good, however great, done to a negro, is appreciated or recognised by him: such a thing as gratitude is quite unknown to him; he will express the greatest delight at receiving a present or any benefit, but it is not from thankfulness; he only exhibits the pleasure he feels at having obtained it without an effort on his part. He cannot be called ungrateful exactly, because that would imply a certain amount of appreciation for favours conferred, which he does not feel. In the same way his constant want of truth, and his invariable dishonesty are the result, not so much of a vicious disposition, as of the impossibility to understand that there is anything wrong in being either a liar or a thief: that they are not vicious thieves is shown by the few concerted robberies practised by them, and the comparative safety of property in general; their thieving, as a rule, is more of a petty and pilfering description, in which, as might be expected, they are very cunning indeed.

To sum up the negro character, it is deficient in the passions, and in their corresponding virtues, and the life of the negro in his primitive condition, apparently so peaceful and innocent, is not that of an unsophisticated state of existence, but is due to what may be described as an organically rudimentary form of mind, and consequently capable of but little development to a higher type; mere peaceable, vegetarian, prolific human rabbits and guinea pigs, in fact; they may be tamed and taught to read and write, sing psalms, and other tricks, but negroes they must remain to the end of the chapter. The negro has no idea of a Creator or of a future existence; neither does he adore the sun nor any other object, idol, or image. His whole belief is in evil spirits, and in charms or “fetishes:” these “fetishes” can be employed for evil as well as to counteract the bad effect of other malign “fetishes” or spirits. Even the natives of Portuguese Angola, who have received the idea of God or Creator from the white men, will not allow that the same Power rules over both races, but that the God of the white man is another, and different from the God of the black man; as one old negro that I was once arguing with expressed it, “Your God taught you to make gunpowder and guns, but ours never did,” and it is perfectly established in their minds that in consequence of our belonging to another and more powerful God, their “fetishes” are unavailing either for good or evil, to the white man; our ridiculing their belief in “fetish” only serves to make them believe the more in it.

In almost every large town there is a “fetish house” under the care of a “fetish man.” This house is generally in the form of a diminutive square hut, with mud walls, painted white, and these covered with figures of men and beasts in red and black colours. The spirit is supposed to reside in this habitation, and is believed to watch over the safety of the town: the hut also contains the stock-in-trade of the “fetish man.” These “fetish men” are consulted in all cases of sickness or death, as also to work charms in favour of, and against every imaginable thing; for luck, health, rain, good crops, fecundity; against all illness, storms, fire, surf, and misfortunes and calamities of every kind. No death is attributed to natural causes, it is always ascribed to the person or animal having been “fetished” by some spirit or living person, and the “fetish man” is consulted to find out, and if the latter, the culprit is fined, sold into slavery or executed, or has to take “casca,” to prove his innocence. The “fetish man” also prepares the charms against sickness, &c., with which every man, woman, and child, as well as their huts and plantations, is provided.

These charms are of many kinds, and are worn round the neck and waist, or suspended from the shoulder. A short bit of wood with a carved head, with a couple of beads, cowries, or brass tacks for eyes, and contained in a little pouch, with the head left sticking out, and hung by a string round the neck, is a very common form. A pouch stuffed full of fowls’ dung, feathers, and “tacula,” is also a favourite “fetish.” A bundle of rags or shreds of cotton cloth of all kinds, black with filth and perspiration, is often seen suspended from the shoulder or hung in their huts. The large flat seed of the “Entada gigantea” is also a common “fetish” to hang from the neck. A couple of iron bells like the “Engongui” described in page 203 but very much smaller, and with a small bit of iron as a clapper inside, are often hung from the neck or waist. Small antelopes’ horns, empty or filled with various kinds of filth, are also suspended round the neck for charms. Children are never seen without a string tied round the waist, with or without some beads strung on it, and the ends hanging down in front. The land shells (Achatina Welwitschii and Zebrina) are filled with fowls’ dung and feathers, “tacula,” &c., and stuck on a stick in the plantations and salt pits, to protect them from thieves; also the gourd-like pods or fruit of the baobab tree, likewise filled with various kinds of filth, and painted on the outside white and red, with “pemba” (a white talcose earth from the decomposition of mica and mica schist) and “tacula.” A great “fetish” in childbirth and infancy is made in the shape of a little pouch about two inches long and the thickness of the middle finger, very prettily woven of fine grass; these are filled with fowls’ dung and “tacula,” and a couple are placed in a small vessel containing water; the father of the child squeezes the pouches in the water, much in the manner that a washerwoman does her blue-bag, till it becomes coloured by the dirt and dye in the pouch; he then sprinkles the mother and newly-born child with the dirty water, and ties one of the pouches round the mother’s neck, and the other round the child’s. If this be not done, the blacks believe that the mother and child would quickly die;—the pouches are not taken off till the child can walk. Another great “fetish” in childbirth is a large bunch of a round hollow seed like a large marble, which is hung round the mother’s neck, and not taken off till the child is weaned, generally in twelve moons, or a year’s time.

Hung in the huts, and outside over the doors are all kinds of “fetishes,” and in the towns and about the huts are various figures, generally roughly carved in wood, and sometimes made of clay, but always coloured red, black, and white. The finest “fetishes” are made by the Mussurongos on the Congo River. [Plate IV.] represents one obtained at Boma. Some of these large “fetishes” have a wide-spread reputation, and the “fetish men” to whom they belong are often sent for from long distances to work some charm or cure with them. I have constantly met them carrying these great ugly figures, and accompanied by two or three attendants beating drums and chanting a dismal song as they go along.