West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

Further, domestic slavery gives a chief power of life and death over his slave; and how often have I known cases where promising young slaves have done something to vex their chief their heads have paid the penalty, though these young men had already amassed some wealth, having also several wives and children.

People who condone domestic slavery, and I have heard many kindly-hearted people do so, forget that however mild the slavery of the domestic slave is on the coast, even under the mildest native it is still slavery; further, these slaves are not made out of wood, they are flesh and blood, they in their own country have had fathers and mothers. During my lengthened stay on the coast of Africa I never questioned a slave about his or her own country that I did not find they much preferred their own country far away in the interior to their new home. Some have told me that they had been travelling upwards of two months and had been handed from one slave dealer to another, in some cases changing their owner three or four times before reaching the coast. On questioning them how they became slaves, I have only been told by one that her father sold her because he was in debt; several times I have been told that their elder brothers have sold them, but these cases would not represent one per cent. of the slaves I have questioned; the almost general reply I have received has been that they had been stolen when they had gone to fetch water from the river or the spring, as the case might be, or while they have been straying a little in the bush paths between their village and another. Sometimes they would describe how the slave-catchers had enticed them into the bush by showing them some gaudy piece of cloth or offered them a few beads or negro bells, others had been captured in some raid by one town or village on another.

Therefore domestic slavery in its effect on the interior tribes is doing very near the same amount of harm now that it did in days gone by. It keeps up a constant fear of strangers, and causes terrible feuds between the villages in the interior.

What is the use of all the missionaries’ teaching to the young girl slaves so long as they are only chattels, and are forced to do the bidding of their masters or mistresses, however degrading or filthy that bidding may be?

The Ju-Juism of Brass is a sturdy plant, that takes a great deal of uprooting. A few years ago a casual observer would have been inclined to say the missionaries are making giant strides amongst these people. I remember, as evidence of how keenly these people seemed to take to Christianity up to a certain point, a little anecdote that the late Bishop Crowther once told me about the Brass men. I think it must have been a very few years before his death. I saw the worthy bishop staggering along my wharf with an old rice bag full of some heavy articles. On arriving on my verandah he threw the bag down, and after passing the usual compliments, he said, “You can’t guess what I have got in that bag.” I replied I was only good at guessing the contents of a bag when the bag was opened; but judging from the weight and the peculiar lumpy look of the outside of the bag, I should be inclined to guess yams. “Had he brought me a present of yams?” I continued. “No,” he replied; “the contents of that bag are my new church seats in the town of Nimbé; the church was only finished during the week, and I decided to hold a service in it on Sunday last; and, do you believe me, those logs of wood are a sample of all we had for seats for most part of the congregation! I have therefore brought them down to show you white gentlemen our poverty, and to beg some planks to make forms for the church.” I promised to assist him, and he left, carefully walking off with his bag of fire-wood, for that was all it was, cut in lengths of about fifteen inches, and about four inches in diameter. Here ends my anecdote, so far as the bishop was concerned, for he never came back to claim the fulfilment of my promise; but later on one of my clerks reported to me that there had been a great run on inch planks during the week, and that the purchasers were mostly women, and the poorest natives in the place. This fact, coupled with the fact that the bishop never came back for the planks he had begged of me, caused me to make some inquiries, and I found that the church had been plentifully supplied with benches by the poorer portion of the congregation.

Yet how many of these earnest people could one guarantee to have completely cast out all their belief in Ju-Juism? If I were put upon my oath to answer truthfully according to my own individual belief, I am afraid my answer would be not one.

What an awful injustice the missionary preaches in the estimation of the average native woman, when he advises the native of West Africa to put away all his wives but one. Supposing, for instance, it is the case of a big chief with a moderate number of wives, say only twenty or thirty, he may have had children by all of them, or he may have had children by a half dozen of them,—what is to become of those wives he discards? are they to be condemned to single blessedness for the remainder of their days? Native custom or etiquette would not allow these women to marry the other men in the chief’s house; they can’t marry into other houses, because they would find the same condition of things there as in their own husband’s house, always supposing Christianity was becoming general. These difficulties in the way of the missionary are the Ju-Ju priests’ levers, which they know well how to use against Christianity, and which accounts for the frequent slide back to Ju-Juism, and in some cases cannibalism of otherwise apparently semi-civilized Africans.

The Pagan portion of the inhabitants of the Brass district have still their old belief in the Ju-Ju priests and animal worship.

The python is the Brass natives’ titular guardian angel. So great was the veneration of this Ju-Ju snake in former times, that the native kings would sign no treaties with her Britannic Majesty’s Government that did not include a clause subjecting any European to a heavy fine for killing or molesting in any way this hideous reptile. When one appeared in any European’s compound, the latter was bound to send for the nearest Ju-Ju priest to come and remove it, for which service the priest expected a dash, id est, a present; if he did not get it, the chances were the priest would take good care to see that that European found more pythons visited him than his neighbours; and as a rule these snakes were not found until they had made a good meal of one of the white man’s goats or turkeys, it came cheaper in the long run to make the usual present.