His memory is well trained, and his powers of observation keen and minute; his ability to adapt himself to his surroundings is wonderful, and his imitative faculties are remarkable; but he lacks power of mental concentration and logical thought. His physical powers are highly developed—he will carry a heavy load, from 70 lbs. to 80 lbs., up and down hill and across broken country, or paddle a heavy canoe hour after hour, without exhibiting much fatigue; but he cannot, or will not, follow a line of thought, metaphorically speaking, for twenty yards. His reasoning and reflective faculties are stunted, undeveloped, for they have been exercised upon nothing more profound than the very alphabet of existence. He knows that two and two make four—that certain results follow certain causes, but that a series of causes will produce a series of results complicated and wide-spreading in their effect he cannot grasp. He has no power of deduction, and little or no faculty for producing a well-developed plot or involved plan.
With those who have a right to a share of meat or cloth, etc., he will be most scrupulous in dividing the article into equal portions, forgetting no one; but to those who have no right to a share he will be niggardly, mean, selfish, and grasping. His apparent generosity is innate selfishness, for he only gives that he may receive more in return, and be the giver black or white he will complain bitterly if the return present is not so large as his greed imagined it should be. Perhaps this trait in his character may be accounted for by his desire to have a grand funeral—the talk of the village or the countryside. For this he will save and scheme, lie and steal, rob his neighbours, his wives, and his children to hoard up cloth, etc., for his own burial, that he may have a good start in the spirit-land.
He has a wonderful power of imitation, but he lacks invention and initiative; but this lack is undoubtedly due to suppression of the inventive faculty. For generations it has been the custom to charge with witchcraft anyone who has commenced a new industry or discovered a new article of barter. The making of anything out of the ordinary has brought on the maker a charge of witchcraft that again and again has resulted in death by the ordeal. To know more than others, to be more skilful than others, more energetic, more acute in business, more smart in dress, has often caused a charge of witchcraft and death. Therefore the native to save his life and live in peace has smothered his inventive faculty, and all spirit of enterprise has been driven out of him.
In the foregoing sketch I have generalized, and have not allowed for the exceptions that are always to be found to every rule. Anyone who has lived among the natives, and has known them intimately, will supply examples of those who were kind, generous, grateful, of others who were affectionate, devoted, unselfish, and again of others who were patient, brave, faithful, and persevering; but these exceptions show that they are capable of being possessed by the noblest virtues and swayed by the highest and purest motives. Generations of superstition and moral degradation have not entirely obliterated from among them examples of kindness of heart and generosity of feeling, and these examples assure us that with proper care and cultivation such virtues and graces may become more widespread.
Those of us who teach the native in the workshop and the school find through stirring up his moral and mental depths many undesirable qualities coming to the top, and these we repress; but, on the other hand, pleasant traits also exhibit themselves, and these we try to cultivate. The beneficial results may not be obvious to the unseeing eye in the first generation, and perhaps not in the second, but they will manifest themselves in due course. The civilization of England is the outcome of a thousand years’ teaching and training, and you cannot expect us to attain the same results in a generation or two. It is, at least, unfair of those who boast of their “superiority” to criticize us for not accomplishing in a generation with “inferior” material what it has taken a score of generations to accomplish in their own case.
CHAPTER XIII
NATIVE LAWS, CRIMES, AND ORDEALS
The family judge—The chief judge—Stolen property—Punishment for murder—Adultery—The Court—Native advocates—No oaths administered—Giving the ordeal—Various ordeals—An impartial judge needed—White man as judge—A selection of cases.
It has already been stated in a previous chapter that the mata or head-man of the family dealt with all matters relating to his own family, and against his verdict there was no appeal; and also that the heads of the several families forming a town would meet together and arrange the affairs of their various families; but it sometimes happened that these “heads” disagreed, and there was a need to call in some outsider to settle the case.
In every district there is a chief who is appointed by the towns of the district to act as chief judge in all important matters—at palavers between family and family, and town and town. At the time of his appointment the “heads” of all the families living in the district who desired to come under his jurisdiction cut down his plantain and banana trees. This action gave him a casus belli against all the towns that acknowledged him as a judge. By cutting down his plantains he became the offended party, and as such had the right of aggressive action against the offenders. Now, it was the custom that the people of the offending town must not go to fight the offended town, but must wait for the offended ones to attack them—the offenders. No subsequent quarrel could be taken up until the first was settled. Hence the chief appointed as judge might enrage a town by his decision, and might call on the other towns to help him in enforcing his verdict, yet the said town could not attack the chief judge’s town because of the old-standing and unsettled palaver of cutting down his plantains and bananas. This ensured to the chief judge immunity from quarrels with the people who did not like his decisions, and his immunity from all such quarrels was a guarantee that there would be a certain amount of justice and impartiality in the verdicts given. He was paid to act as judge by those who sought his services, and the fees remunerated him for his temporary loss from his destroyed plantains and bananas.