TRADING-HOUSE AT GABOON.
The beach strewn with logs of mahogany in preparation for shipment.
The fatal defect, both of trade and government, as independent civilizing agencies, is that they have forcibly altered the outward conditions of the native without changing the inward man. The African is somewhat in the position of the poor Indian in our own country a few generations ago. He was a hunter in a land stripped of game, a warrior deprived of arms and obliged henceforth to seek his rights by legal technicalities—while he was still the very same old Indian, inwardly not a whit better, and by no means equal to the demands and moral obligations which the new conditions imposed upon him. One may clip the claws of the tiger and even pull his teeth, but he is still a tiger; and a French uniform on an African cannibal does not make him a vegetarian.
IV
A LIVING REMNANT
The diminishing number of the Mpongwe, the hostility of the climate, the insistence by the government that French must be the language of the schools, the great difficulty of procuring a corps of French-speaking missionaries, the curse of rum, the presence of a large community of white men and the natural irresponsibility of the white man in Africa—all these have combined to limit the work of our mission among the Mpongwe and to make it exceedingly difficult. And besides, there is, especially, the strong opposition of the French Jesuits who have a large mission in Gaboon and any number of missionaries that the work may demand. Their hostility makes coöperation impossible. Their methods, of course, are Jesuitical. We have the authority of certain historians for the statement that in the early days of missions among the American Indians the Jesuit Fathers taught the Iroquois of Canada that Jesus was a big Indian Chief who scalped women and children. If that was ever true—and I doubt it—their object of course was to gain first the outward adherence of the Indian, submission to their authority, with the intention of afterwards instructing him in the full content of Christianity, as they understood it. The French Jesuits, perhaps with the same good intention, have baptized nearly all the polygamy, drunkenness, immorality and fetishism of Gaboon, and they call it Christianity. But I believe it is more inaccessible to moral and spiritual influence than it was before.
One day shortly after the news of the death of Pope Leo XIII reached Gaboon, and before I had heard of it, I was passing along the beach when I heard in a small village the ululu of women who were wailing for the dead. Their mourning has usually a local occasion, and I had no doubt but that somebody was dead in their own village; so I hurried over. The mourning ceased abruptly at my approach—a triumph of curiosity over grief. When I asked who was dead, the leader answered: “The Pope!” She followed the answer with a prolonged howl in which they all joined, and the tearless mourning proceeded. That is how I learned of the death of Leo XIII.
The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small community; but they are the best Christians, and the dearest people, I have known in Africa. They alone, of the Mpongwe, have good-sized families of healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe.
When I moved to Baraka the Mpongwe work, the oldest in the mission, was in charge of a fellow missionary, Mr. Boppell, and I had not expected to take any part in it. But before the first year had passed, Mr. Boppell’s health compelled him to leave Africa, his wife having died at the beginning of the year. From that time I had charge of the Gaboon Church, besides the work among the Fang. In particular I undertook the training of an Mpongwe candidate for the ministry, who since Mr. Boppell’s departure was occupying the pulpit and preaching very acceptably. This man, Iguwi, I instructed four hours each week; but after most of the year had passed, I felt that I could perhaps spend the time to better advantage.
Iguwi was the best educated and the most eccentric man of the entire Mpongwe tribe. He was a monk by nature. The African is distinctly a marrying man. He is usually very much married. But Iguwi at the age of forty-five was still single and was therefore a mystery to the natives. He and myself were the only two single men in the entire region of Gaboon. My own case seemed strange enough to the natives. They never lost an opportunity of asking me for an explanation. “Mr. Milligan,” says a wistful and sympathetic inquirer, “you nebber get wife?”
“No, I nebber get one.”
After a period of silence: