Among Congo cannibals

by John H. Weeks

The mata then governs all matters relating to his own family, and from his decisions there is no appeal. Undoubtedly he calls together the elder folk of his family to counsel him on important affairs; and these head-men of the village meet under the wild fig tree, or in the palaver house, and decide village matters as between family and family, and also their policy towards other villages in the district. There is an unwritten code of laws dealing with most offences, and by these the heads of the families judge each other and the members of their own families.

The status of a person in the family and town council depends on whether he is entirely free-born, or slave-born, or partly so. A child of slaves is a slave, and as such his advice is never sought; a child of a slave father by a free woman, or of a slave woman by a free father, is a semi-slave (mbotela), but the position of the latter in the family life is much higher than that of the slave, yet of course he does not rank so high as the child born of free parents. Birth alone constitutes membership of the family and tribe. A slave who redeems himself (a very rare occurrence, for all that a slave earns belongs to his master) will be tolerated in his attempts to pass himself off as a member of the tribe; he may affect the tribal mark, and also plait his beard, etc., and his wealth may win respect, but being of no family he will have no influence in the palavers of the village.

In dealing with an alien it is not considered wrong to rob, beat, abuse, or even murder him, unless he has come on a visit, for trade or other purposes, to someone in the town. He will then be under the protection of his host, and receiving the hospitality of his host he will also receive the hospitality of the town and neighbourhood. The host will have a casus belli against anyone who molests his guest; and a village, on the other hand, will hold a host responsible for the offensive actions of his guest. Men and women travelling alone, or in twos and threes in places where they are not known, run the risk of being captured. Such defenceless travellers hide by day and travel by night to their destinations.

Green, in his Shorter History of England, says that “in ancient times the painted British savage on approaching a village sounded a horn to warn the villagers of his coming, otherwise he would have been treated as an enemy who tried to surprise them by stealth.” Among the Boloki it is the custom that when a canoe containing six or more men approaches a town they have to beat a drum and sing to notify the folk of their coming, otherwise they are treated as enemies and lay themselves open to an attack. For a canoe of strangers from other towns and districts to approach a town unannounced by drum and song is regarded as an act of war. If their coming is peaceful, why are they afraid to drum and sing? I have seen the crew of such a canoe badly handled for omitting these courtesies, and but for our presence some of the travellers would have been speared.

The mata in the performance of his duties as head-man has to guard, in the interests of his family, all those palm trees and nsafu (canuarensis) trees that have been planted by his forebears. The proprietary rights in these trees are by inheritance, or by planting them, and the rights in them are handed on from father to son in the proper line of heirship. They are sources of wealth to a family, and the members of a family support their chief man when those rights are infringed.

The head-man in the government of his family holds a very difficult position when sitting in judgment on a relative, for such is the character of the family life that if he fines the delinquent he will be punishing himself indirectly—the family stands or falls together. Robbery, adultery, wounding, and murder when committed within the limits of one’s own family will receive the strong disapprobation of the other members, but there is no punishment that the mata can inflict unless the offender is a boy, and then a sound thrashing will be administered; for will they not be punishing themselves if they insist on the infliction of a fine and to whom can the fine be paid? The fine imposed would have to be paid by the family to itself. The mata, therefore, in ruling his family exercises his greatest tact in maintaining the various units of which it is composed in the friendliest relation to each other and to himself. Then he has to keep a strong hand on the family slaves, for he and his family will be held responsible for whatever offences they commit against other families; and if they fight and quarrel amongst themselves, his only wise course is to sell them and buy others who may not be so contentious.

I never came across a more democratic form of government on the Congo than that of the Boloki tribe. There is no prestige of birth to help, as among the Lower Congo chiefs, for his subjects are of the same blood as himself—except his slaves, and they are his property and not his subjects. He has no position of priesthood (as the family “medicine man”) to inspire with awe those who owe fealty to him as head-man; and there is no position he can gain in any secret society that will inspire with fear of him the other members of his family. His position is no sinecure, and while his trouble is great his perquisites are few.

Perhaps this will be the best place to attempt an estimate of the Boloki folk who thus live in families each under the rule of a head-man, and in village communities governed by elders or head-men. Their memories are exceedingly good respecting the debts owing to them, but with regard to the debts they owe they have, or pretend to have, very bad memories—it is for the creditor to keep in mind the debts owing to him, and to bring the proofs at the proper time.

There are occasionally cases of insanity among them, some caused by uterine trouble, and others are the results of sleeping-sickness. If insanity is of long duration and the patients are destructive or troublesome, they are quietly put out of the way. I only met with one man who ran amok. He had had a very serious illness, and either the illness or the decoctions given to him to effect his cure made him temporarily mad. He cut down all the plantain trees in his path, and destroyed everything he came near; the people cleared out of his way, but being a man of importance he got off without any payment of damages.

When I went first to live among the people of Monsembe I had with me a roughly bound volume of the Illustrated London News. It was very interesting to watch the development of their artistic faculties. At first they looked at a picture and asked what the marks were; they held the picture anyhow, and looked at it from any point that might be convenient to them without any regard to the picture being right side up, or upside down, or any other way. By and by they began to pick out the features, one by one, and say, “Why, it is a man!” They would pick out the doors, windows, walls, etc., and remark, “Why, it is a house!” After a time they would drop this spelling out, as it were, of the picture and say, “A man, a woman, a house,” etc., at once. Later on, they would take in the whole of a picture at a glance. I suppose it is in this way we learn pictures in our childhood—spell them out. It was interesting to watch the same process in young men, women, and adults.