Then the slave continued: “When we are small and helpless, our parents love us, and would not part from us, but as we grow to be big boys and can help ourselves, they often sell us. This is the custom among many tribes.”
“Do they sell their daughters also?” I asked.
“Yes, they do, but not as often as they do their sons, because when they give their daughters in marriage, the suitor has to give them one or more slaves for her. The more daughters they have, the richer they become. A man has to give several slaves in order to marry the daughter of a chief.”
Then another slave got up and said: “I was given away in that way. My old master married one of King Mombo’s daughters, and I was given to the king with three other slaves, as payment, before he could take her away. Oguizi, when people want to sell their children or grown people, they find plenty of excuses. The best of all is that you are a sorcerer, or a witch; people would rather be sold as slaves than be killed as sorcerers. But people cannot hold slaves of their own tribe, their slaves must always belong to some other tribe.”
“What do people buy slaves with?” I asked.
“With guns, brass kettles, copper rods, iron bars, beads, and other things. Far inland, sometimes a man is sold for salt.”
At these words, a slave got up and said: “I was sold for salt and nothing else. My family wanted to get rid of me.”
After this, Regundo himself rose and said: “King Mombo is very good to us all. He has given to each of us a wife, and when a man has no wife, he buys one for him, and if one of our women has no husband, he buys a man for her. He loves me, for I was given to him when a child as part payment by my former master who married his daughter. He had to give four more slaves to him before he took her to his village.
“Our wives attend to the cultivation of the soil, go fishing, and smoke the fish. They prepare food for our master. We men cut down the trees and burn them, for you see there are no open spaces in the forest. Cutting down trees is very hard work. Only our wives cultivate the soil. Plantain trees and manioc are only planted once in the same spot. Often the wives of King Mombo come here. They also cultivate the soil.”
One old slave said: “Very few of us like to go to King Mombo, for fear that if somebody should die while we are there we might be accused of witchcraft, and our master might take it into his head to kill us without trial, or to sell us. But our master always takes the part of the slaves he loves and insists that they shall be tried by the poison ordeal, the ‘mboundou,’ the same as if they were freemen.”