CHAPTER XXIX
TOWARDS THE PAGAN COUNTRY
Hausa and Pagan—Distinction of dress—Deeper divisions—The price of peace in former days—Public highway—Revenge and brotherhood—Scope of an Assistant Resident.
The inhabitants of Northern Nigeria may be broadly classed as Hausa and Pagan. Each comprises many tribes. The Hausa is generally regarded as a Mohamedan, though no more so than that everybody in England who does not attend chapel, synagogue or meeting-house is to be counted as Church of England.
The distinction between Hausa and Pagan is easily seen in dress. Any Hausa worth the name sports a flowing robe and wide linen trousers. A well-to-do man’s garments of that kind will make those of a British Jack-tar appear puny and of spider proportions. Costume affected by the Pagan sexes will be referred to presently.
A less visible but far deeper division between the two is that formerly the Hausa people raided Pagan tribes wherever it could be done, dragging prisoners to slavery, killing the villagers unfit for it, burning the houses, destroying the crops and food stored for the lean months, and leaving any persons who had escaped the raiding bands to death by exposure and starvation. The price of peace to a Pagan tribe was tribute, which usually took the form of an annual quota of slaves. They were mostly obtained by raiding other Pagan tribes, and, as an area that was secure from raiding found a vent for its energies and warlike skill by inter-fighting, the whole countryside for hundreds of square miles was in a continual ferment of bloodshed.
The advent of the British made a radical alteration. When a Protectorate was proclaimed it was announced that whilst the Pagan would be preserved from being raided he was to allow free passage through to the Hausa, for a few years ago no Hausa dare enter these regions where the Pagans were strong enough to resist attack. Caravans which came near enough to the danger zone were assailed or harassed by the wild men from the hills.
With the inception of the new conditions, a public path, corresponding to a highway in England, was marked out, wherever possible away from the Pagan villages, and it was proclaimed that any peaceable stranger passing along who was murdered would be avenged by the British. Although that is enforced to some extent in the neighbourhood of large centres of administration, it cannot be the uniform rule over a vast territory where means of locomotion are almost entirely confined to bush and mountain tracks. Held in check by the supreme authority, the fierce hatred and enmity of Hausa and Pagan remain. You cannot eradicate in less than a decade the memory of wrongs for generations, nor at once replace with a spirit of sweet and loving brotherhood the intense desire for revenge. The feeling manifests itself around outlying posts in minor ways. Murder is, however, seldom resorted to.
Seven days’ marching has brought us to the middle of the Bauchi Plateau, 4,000 feet above sea-level, although the spot could have been reached in four days by a more direct line from Rahama.
I speak of “The Pagans of the Plateau,” but the term should be understood to comprise a number off it. There are two reasons for the extension. First, some tribes are spread from the Plateau to the lower land, and, secondly, it is better that certain of the customs and practices should not be precisely located, for, notwithstanding they are known to the higher British authorities, no Resident or other official would wish them placed to his discredit by people unaware how limited were his resources. It is not realised at home that large tracts of the country are no more than nominally occupied, and it would be unreasonable to expect that close supervision and control of social habits are to be effected by an Assistant Resident responsible for a district extending to anything between 5,000 square miles and 10,000 square miles, where he is expected to maintain peace between sections mutually yearning to fight; where he exercises magisterial functions and enforces sentence; where he has to collect taxes from quarters none too willing to pay; and where, to carry out these duties with force and pressure additional to his own personality, he has a garrison of 10 native policemen. If he failed to do all these things he would be sharply called to account by the Governor of Northern Nigeria; and if in his zeal to do any of them he caused a rising that needed troops to repress, then he would be asked why he could not, like others, accomplish his task without requiring the use of the military.