In matters of less consequence they reckon with their fingers, by bending the little finger of the right hand close to the palm, and the other fingers in succession, proceeding to the left hand, concluding the calculation by clapping both the hands together; and if it requires to be extended, the same process is repeated.
Among the Foulahs in particular, commercial transactions are carried on with extreme tardiness; a palaver is held over every thing they have for barter. The season in which they chiefly bring their trade to the coast is during the dry months, and they generally travel in caravans, under the control of a chief or head man. The head man of the party expects to be lodged and accommodated by the factor, and before they enter upon business, he expects the latter to give him service, or a present of kola, Malaguetta pepper, tobacco, palm oil, and rice; if they eat of the kola, and the present is not returned, the head man begins the trade, by making a long speech, in which he magnifies the difficulties and dangers he has had to surmount, &c.; mutual interpreters report this harangue. The trade for rice is settled with little delay, but every tooth of ivory requires a new palaver, and they will dispute for a whole day for a bar with the most determined firmness.
When the palaver and trade is gone through, they again expect a present, and if they are pleased with the factor, they march off singing his praises, which they communicate to all they meet on the road.
The annual return from this commerce in colonial productions, has been from two to three millions sterling; for although large remittances have been made in bills to the African merchants, yet these bills have been provided for in produce by the planters. Politically considered, it will appear, that its regeneration might have been more appropriately the progressive work of time; and humanely viewed, it will also appear, from my subsequent remarks, that by those means alone the African can be freed from his shackles, and his condition efficaciously improved.
But to proceed with the intention of this chapter, I shall next make some remarks on the religion, customs, and character of the natives of the Windward Coast.
The natives on this part of the coast, and indeed throughout Africa, are in general extremely superstitious; they believe in witchcraft, incantations, and charms, and in certain Mahomedan doctrines, adopted from itinerant devotees and priests of that persuasion, who are numerous among them, and make a trade of selling charms. The Baggoes, Nellos, Susees, Timinees, &c. occasionally worship and offer sacrifices to the Devil, and are equally confused in their conception of the Supreme Being, of whose attributes they entertain an assemblage of indistinct ideas, of which it is impossible to give any clear description. They will tell the traveller with great apathy, "they never saw him, and if he live he be too good to hurt them." Their acts of devotion are the consequence of fear alone, and are apparently divested of any feelings of thankfulness or gratitude for the blessing they receive from the good Spirit which they suppose to exist. The Devil, or evil spirit, which they suppose to exist also, claims their attention from the injury they suppose him capable of inflicting, and is worshipped under a variety of forms; at one time in a grove, or under the shade of a large tree, consecrated to his worship, they place, for the gratification of his appetite; a country mess, a goat, or other offering of this nature, which they may conceive to be acceptable to his divinity, who, however, is often cozened out of the offering by some sacreligious and more corporeal substance, to whose nature and wants it is more congenial; at some periods great faith is attached to their fetish, as an antidote against evil; and at others the alligator, the snake, the guava, and a number of other living animals and inanimate substances are the objects of their worship. Like other unenlightened nations, a variety of external beings supply the want of the principles of Christianity; hence the counterfeit adoption and substitution of corporate qualities as objects of external homage and reverence.
Fetish, derived from the word Feitico, denotes witchcraft among the majority of the maritime nations of Africa: this superstition is even extended to some Europeans after a long residence in that country, and is an expression of a compound meaning, forming an arrangement of various figures, which constitute the objects of adoration, whether intellectually conceived, or combined with corporeal substances; even the act of devotion itself; or the various charms, incantations, and buffoonery of the priests and fetish makers, who abound among them. In short, it is an incongruous composition of any thing dedicated to the purpose; one kind of fetish is formed of a piece of parchment containing an expression or sentence from the Koran, which is associated with other substances, sewed up in a piece of leather, and worn upon several parts of their bodies. Another kind is placed over the doors of their huts, composed of distorted images besmeared with palm oil, and stuck with feathers, some parts are tinged with blood, and the whole is bedaubed with other preposterous applications.
Ghresh, or Gresh, is an expression in the Arabic tongue, meaning to expel or drive away, and, as I apprehend, by the repetition of the word, is the expression from which the African gris-gris is derived, consisting of exorcised feathers, cloth, &c., short sentences from the Koran, written on parchment, and enclosed in small ornamented leathern cases, worn about their persons, under the idea that it will keep away evil spirits, and is a species of fetish.
The Mandingos, or book-men, are great fetish makers, many of them being well versed in the Arabic tongue, and writing it in a neat character. From the impression of their superior learning and address, their influence and numbers daily increase, many of them having become rulers and chiefs in places where they sojourned as strangers, The religion they profess in common with the Foolahs, Jolliffs, and other Mahomedan tribes, is peculiarly adapted to the sensual effiminacy of the Africans: the doctrines of Mahomet contained in their book I have procured from a very intelligent chief in the Rio Pongo, and when I compare his account with others of his nation on this part of the coast, the Foolahs, and the Mahomedan tribes in the vicinity of the Island of Goree, I am persuaded the following is the portion of the Islam faith believed by them.
1st. That God is above all, and not born of woman.