West African studies

by Mary Henrietta Kingsley

For some few years previous the chief of the Barboy House, Will Braid, had incurred the displeasure of the Amachree house, which was the king’s house. For certain private reasons the king, with whom sided most of the other chiefs, had decided to break down the Barboy house, which had been a very powerful house in days anterior to the present king’s father, and tradition says that the Barboys had some right to be the reigning house. Will Braid, the head of the house at this time, had by his industry and honourable conduct raised the position of the house to very near its former influence. This was one of the private reasons that caused the king to look on him with disfavour.

When one of these West African kinglets decides that one of their chiefs is getting too rich, and by that means too powerful, he calls his more immediate supporters together, and they discuss the means that are to be used to compass the doomed one’s fall. If he be a man of mettle, with many sub-chiefs and aspiring trade boys, the system resorted to is to trump up charges against him of breaches of agreement as to prices paid by him or his people in the Ibo markets for produce, and fine him heavily. If he pays without murmur, they leave him alone for a time; but very soon another case is brought against him either on the same lines or for some breach of native etiquette, such as sending his people into some market to trade where, perchance, he has been sending his people for years; but the king and his friendly chiefs dish up some old custom, long allowed to drop in abeyance, by which his house was debarred from trading in that particular market. The plea of long usance would avail him little; another fine would be imposed. This injustice would generally have the effect desired, the doomed one would refuse to pay, then down the king would come on him for disregarding the orders of himself and chiefs; fine would follow fine, until the man lost his head and did some rash act, which assisted his enemies to more certainly compass his ruin. Or he does what I have seen a persecuted chief do in these rivers on more than one occasion: that is, he gathers all his wives and children about him, together with his most trusted followers and slaves, also any of his family who are willing to follow him into the next world, lays a double tier of kegs of [gunpowder on the floor of] the principal room in his dwelling-house and knocks in the heads of the top tier of kegs. Placing all his people on this funeral pile, he seats himself in the middle with a fire-stick grasped in his hand, then sends a message to the king and chiefs to come and fetch the fines they have imposed on him. The king and chiefs generally shrewdly guessed what this message meant, and took good care not to get too near, stopping at a convenient distance to parley with him by means of messengers. The victim finding there was no chance of blowing up his enemies along with himself and people, would plunge the fire-stick into the nearest keg, and the next moment the air would be filled with the shattered remains of himself and his not unwilling companions.

Having digressed somewhat to explain how chiefs are undone, I must continue my account of the New Calabar people and the cause of their deserting their original town. This was brought about by Will Braid, on whom the squeezing operation had been some time at work. He turned at bay and defied the king and chiefs; this led to a civil war, in which he was getting the worst of the game, so one dark night he quietly slipped away with most of his retainers and took refuge in Bonny. This led to complications, for Bonny espoused the cause of W. Braid and declared war against New Calabar; thus in place of suppressing Will Braid they came near to being suppressed themselves, the Bonny men very pluckily establishing themselves opposite New Calabar town, where they threw up a sand battery, in which they placed several rifled cannon, and did considerable damage to the New Calabar town, from whence a feeble return fire was kept up for several days, during which time the Calabar men occupied themselves in placing their valuables and people in security, and eventually, unknown to the Bonny men, clearing out all their war canoes and fighting men through creeks at the back of their town to the almost inaccessible positions of Bugama and Abonema. The Bonny men continued the bombardment, but finding there was no reply from the town, despatched, during the night, some scouts to find out what was the position of things in the New Calabar town; on their return they reported the town deserted. The Bonny men lost no time in following the New Calabar men to their new position, but found Bugama inaccessible, so turned their attention to Abonema, which they very pluckily assaulted, but were repulsed with considerable loss, losing one of their best war canoes, in which was a fine rifled cannon; at the same time the Bonny chief, Waribo, who had most energetically led the assault, barely escaped with his life, as he was in the war canoe that had been sunk by the New Calabar men. This victory was very pluckily gained by Chief Bob Manuel and his people, who were greatly assisted in the defence of their position by having been supplied at an opportune moment with a mitrailleuse by one of the European traders in the New Calabar river. This defeat somewhat cooled the courage of the Bonny men; the war however continued to be carried on in a desultory manner for several months, until both sides were tired of the game, and at last all the questions in dispute between the king and chiefs of New Calabar and Will Braid, and the matters in dispute between the New Calabar men and the Bonny men were by mutual agreement left to the arbitration of the king and chiefs of Okrika, and King Ja Ja and the chiefs of Opobo. The arbitrators met on board one of Her Majesty’s vessels in Bonny River in 1881, King Ja Ja being represented by Chief Cookey Gam and several other chiefs, the king and chiefs of Okrika being in full force. The result of the arbitration did not give complete satisfaction to any party, owing to the advice of Ja Ja on the affair not having been listened to in its entirety. However, W. Braid returned to New Calabar territory and founded a town of his own, assisted by his very faithful Chief Yellow of Young Town. Thus ended the last war between the old rivals Bonny and New Calabar. It is on record that these two countries had been scarcely ever at peace for any length of time since New Calabar was first founded some two hundred and fifty years ago, when, tradition says, one of the Ephraim Duke family left Old Calabar and settled at the spot from whence they retired in 1880.

Old traders I met with in the early sixties informed me that during one of these wars, between the years 1820 and 1830, the king Pepple, then reigning in Bonny succeeded in capturing the king of Calabar of that time (the grandfather of the last king Amachree), and to celebrate his victory and royal capture, made a great feast to which he invited all the European slave traders then in his country. The feast was a right royal one, the king had a special dish prepared for himself which was nothing less than the heart of his royal captive, torn from his scarcely lifeless body.

The New Calabar people, though said to be descended from the Old Calabar race, have not retained any of the characteristics of the latter, neither in their language nor dress, nor have they retained the elaborate form of secret society or native freemasonry peculiar to the Efik[86] race called Egbo.

Their religion is the same animistic form of Ju-Juism and belief in the oracle they call Long Ju-Ju situated in the vicinity of Bende in the hinterland of Opobo, common to all the inhabitants of the Delta; besides the latter, they are believers in the power of a Ju-Ju in some mystic grove in the Oru country. The peculiar test at this latter place is said to have been established by some ancient dame having uttered some fearful curse or wish at the spot where the ordeal is administered. The descriptions of this are rather vague, as no one who has undergone it has ever been known to return, that is, if he has really seen the oracle work, for if it works it is a sign of his guilt and drowns him; if he is innocent it does not work, so on his return he is not in a position to describe it. But the proprietors of this interesting Ju-Ju have for very many years found that a nigger fetches a better price alive than when turned into butcher’s meat; they have therefore been in the habit of selling the guilty victim into slavery in as far distant a country as possible; but occasionally one of these men have drifted down to the coast again, but dare not return to his own country as no one would believe he was anything else but a spirit. One of these “spirits” I had the pleasure to interview on one occasion, and he told me that the only ones who were actually drowned were the old or unsaleable men; when two men went to this Ju-Ju or ordeal well, to decide some vital question between them, the party taking best would want to see his dead or drowned opponent; for this purpose the Ju-Ju priests always kept a few of the old and decrepit votaries on hand to be drowned as required, but the opponent was never allowed to stand by and see the oracle work, but was taken up to the well and allowed to see a dead body lying at the bottom, and after he had glanced in and satisfied himself there was a drowned person there, he would be hurried away by the Ju-Ju priests and their assistants. That these priests had the supernatural power to make the water rise up in the well, this “spirit” thoroughly believed, and when I offered the suggestion of an underground water supply brought from some higher elevation, he scouted the idea and gave me his private opinion thus: “White man he no be fit savey all dem debly ting Ju-Ju priest fit to do; he fit to change man him face so him own mudder no fit savey him; he fit make dem tree he live for water side, bob him head down and drink water all same man; he fit make himself alsame bird and fly away; you fit to look him lib for one place and you keep you eye for him, he gone, you no fit see him when he go.”

Which little speech turned into ordinary English meant to say that white people could not understand the devilish tricks the Ju-Ju priests were able to do, they could so disguise a person that his own mother would not recognise him, this without the assistance of any make-up but simply from their devilish science; that they could cause a tree on the banks of a river to bend its stem and imbibe water through its topmost branches; that they could change themselves into birds and fly away; and lastly, that they could make themselves invisible before your eyes and so suddenly that you could not tell when they had done so.

I asked him why the Ju-Ju man had not altered him, so that when he sold him it would be impossible for any one who had known him in his own country ever to recognise him if they saw him in another. His reply was: “Ju-Ju man savey them man what believe in Ju-Ju no will believe me dem time I go tell dem I be dem Osūkū of Young Town come back from Long Ju-Ju. He savey all man go run away from me in my own country.” “Well,” I said, “how about the people amongst whom you now are? they believe in very nearly the same Ju-Jus that your own people do, what do they say about you?” “Oh! they say I be silly fellow and no savey I done die one time, and been born again in some other country.” I then asked him how they accounted for his knowing about the people who were still alive in his own country and to be able to talk about matters which had taken place there within the previous five or six years. Then I got the word the inquirer in this part of the world generally gets when he wishes to dive into the inner circles of native occultism, viz., “Anemia,” which means “I don’t know.”

The chiefs in New Calabar in the days of the last king’s father were an extremely fine body of men, both physically and commercially; the latter quality they owed to the strong hand the king kept over them, and the excellent law he inaugurated when he became the king with regard to trade, viz., that no New Calabar chief or other native was allowed to take any goods on credit from the Europeans. His power was absolute, and considering that he inherited his father’s place at a time when the country was in the throes of war with Bonny—his father being the king captured by the king of Bonny mentioned previously—the success of his rule was wonderful, for he pulled his country together and carried on the war with such ability that Bonny ultimately was glad to come to terms; a peace was agreed upon which lasted many years, until the old king of Bonny died, and his son wishing to emulate his father re-opened hostilities, but with such ill-success and loss to his country that it eventually led to his being deposed and exiled from his country for some years.