“Oh,” said he, “small boys are very much like women; but of course we will be real men when we grow up.”
Not that the African is destitute of the instinct of humanity—by no means; but a false ideal calls for the repression of his best instincts.
In the course of a war between two villages, in which I knew nearly all the people, a young man named Minkoa, a bright and rather manly young fellow, was one day out in the forest hunting when he was shot to death by a party who were in hiding near the path. Minkoa’s sister was married to the very man who first shot him, and they had been intimate friends, like brothers in each other’s regard, and had visited much together; but the man did not know that it was Minkoa when he fired the shot in the dark forest. Having wounded him, and seeing him fall to the ground, he sprang forward to complete the work, and instantly recognized his friend Minkoa. The savage heart is never wholly savage. With a cry of grief he fell beside the wounded man and with his own body would have saved him from further injury; but the rest of the party having come up, they dragged him back, flung him aside with a curse, and standing over Minkoa, fairly riddled his body with bullets. Compassion, or even natural affection, under such circumstances, is a weakness and must be suppressed as incompatible with what they regard as manly courage.
All heathendom suffers for want of a perfect human ideal. The first result is a variety of ideal and type in different nations and different religions. Not only does the Confucian type, the Mohammedan type, the Buddhist type, differ from the Christian type, but they also differ essentially from each other. In each, some one virtue, parental authority, for instance, or courage, occupies almost the entire foreground, while other virtues recede in the perspective of character. In Africa virtue is almost identified with courage, and power is worshipped. Woman, therefore, who in all lands represents the gentler virtues—compassion, devotion, patience—is contemptible; and the child also; for where power is worshipped feebleness can have no claim. Woman, thus relegated to a place of inferiority and contempt, sinks to a lower level of degradation than the man. Cruelty is the characteristic of the men; licentiousness, of the women.
But notwithstanding the imperfection of his ideal the African is essentially moral. He knows the difference between right and wrong; he knows that it is wrong to lie and to steal. Sometimes I was disposed to doubt it; when he told me lies for no possible advantage, or when he committed wanton wickedness.
For instance, I ask a man what town he comes from, and he answers that he comes from Jamanen, when he really came from Atakama; and there is no conceivable reason why he should deceive me, except that he lies by preference. In the first days among the Bulu, before there was an established friendship between them and ourselves, when I have asked the road to a certain town the men have directed me the opposite way, and I have inferred the truth from the suppressed exclamations of the tittering women. A man steals a woman, instead of offering a proper dowry; and when I remonstrate, indignant that he should precipitate a war with all its bloodshed and suffering rather than pay a dowry, he amazes me by confessing that he expects to pay the dowry all the same—after the war. Why not pay it in the first place and save the lives of his people? And why does the African tell me a lie when the truth would serve his purpose better? Has he sunken to such a depth that “Fair is foul, and foul is fair?” So it sometimes seemed. But a more intimate knowledge of him always compels one to abandon this theory. It is never the love of bloodshed that leads him to act thus, but an excessive admiration of courage. His attitude of distrust towards his fellow men has bred in him a disposition to secretiveness and deception, so that he lies even when there is no occasion, not from preference but from force of habit.
Let him discover that another has lied to him, or stolen from him, and he will resent it as readily and as naturally as ourselves. On occasion I have heard him preach a fairly good extemporaneous sermon on these subjects. In Old Calabar I was shown the leaf of a certain tree, the lower side of which is like sandpaper, and I was assured that it is frequently used upon the lips of persons convicted of lying—though I did not observe that trees of this kind were being rapidly defoliated by reason of this custom. The African lies in self-defense, and steals in the interest of success; but what he practices himself he condemns in others; for he knows that it is wrong.
Again, the universal practice of the ordeal is evidence of the moral nature of the African; though at first sight it would seem rather to indicate moral imbecility. Sometimes a hen is set on eggs and the accused person is adjudged guilty or innocent according as the greater number of chickens hatched are male or female. This is a mode of trial for less serious offenses. More commonly in the case of witchcraft a mild poison is administered to the accused in a drink. Sometimes it only produces vomiting and does him no harm. But if he is seized with vertigo and staggers, he is adjudged guilty.
Since the establishment of foreign governments it is seldom that a white man is allowed to witness this ordeal; but in earlier days they witnessed it frequently. Du Chaillu tells of such a trial at which he was present, in a town near Gaboon. There lived in the town a woman, Ogondaga, an unusual woman among her people, he says; the one also who had kept his house and cooked his food and had been exceedingly kind to him. A number of deaths occurred in the town, and when the witch-doctor was consulted he announced witchcraft as the cause. The usual panic ensued. The terrified people, exclaiming, “There are those among us who eat people,” ran through the streets with drawn swords, athirst for blood. The witch-doctor named three persons as possible witches; and last among them he named Ogondaga. As they dragged her from her house towards the river she caught sight of her white friend and piteously begged him to save her. The lonely white man, pale and trembling, looked on, but could do nothing. They made her drink the poison. There was a moment’s terrible suspense; then she was seized with vertigo and staggered. But even before she fell they sprang upon her with savage yells, cut her body to pieces, and with curses flung it piece by piece into the river. And yet I am citing the ordeal as evidence of a moral nature!
The roots of certain shrubs, the bark of certain trees, and, above all, the notorious Calabar bean are used as ordeal poisons. Sometimes both the accused and the accuser are compelled to submit to the ordeal. In at least one African tribe, when one person charges another with certain serious offenses they are both (accused and accuser) tied to stakes some distance apart, on the brink of the river in the neighbourhood of crocodiles, and whichever of the two is seized first is adjudged guilty. The other is then set free.