The fetish folk of West Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

The intellectual development of the civilized man as compared with the savage—his knowledge of the world in which he lives, and of man himself—his science and philosophy, his refining enjoyments of literature and music—all that is embraced in education creates even a greater difference than that of material well-being. As steam and electricity have annihilated space so the printing-press has annihilated time. The knowledge and the wisdom of the past are recorded for our benefit. A pigmy standing on a giant’s shoulders (Macaulay observes) can see further than the giant; and a schoolboy of our times knows more astronomy than Galileo. Each generation stands upon the shoulders of the preceding generation. There is nothing in any way corresponding to this in Africa. There is no increase of knowledge and no expanding intelligence. The intellectual stagnation, the stifling mental torpor of an African community must be experienced in order to be realized.

Another striking difference between America and Africa is the authority of custom in Africa, and its resulting social immobility. Returning to America after only a few years in Africa one is surprised and somewhat bewildered by the changes that have taken place. It takes considerable time to adjust oneself to altered conditions. In Africa there is no trace of any change in customs, or any alteration of methods, from time immemorial. Conduct, even in its details, is governed by custom. Nobody questions its authority; nobody violates it. The appeal to custom is final.

For instance, the rite of circumcision is universally practiced and rigidly regarded, but nobody knows why. There may be a good reason for it—I believe there is—but they have forgotten it. Or, to give an example of its authority even in trivialities, the slavers in the old days trained the men of the Kru tribe to work on ships and thereafter finding them useful allies persuaded them to put a distinguishing mark upon themselves so that none of them might be taken and enslaved by mistake. The mark is a tattooed band running down the middle of the forehead to the tip of the nose. With the suppression of the slave-trade the usefulness of this ugly disfigurement of course became obsolete; but the fashion was meanwhile established and to this day every Kruman is thus tattooed. He has forgotten its origin. If you ask him the reason for this mark he thinks that he gives a perfect explanation when he says: “It be fashion for we country.” To ask him the reason for the custom is equivalent to asking why right is right. The finality of the appeal to custom is like our appeal to the ten commandments. Of course the authority of custom in Africa serves to check personal tyranny and to modify the principle that might is right. It thus prevents society from going backward; but it also prevents it from going forward; a thousand years are as a day. Mobility is a condition of progress.

A more radical difference between the civilized man and the African than any we have yet mentioned is that of work. It is not merely a contrast between actual work and idleness, but a contrast of attitudes that constitutes this difference. “Use, labour of each for all,” says Emerson, “is the health and virtue of all beings. Ich dien, I serve, is a truly royal motto. And it is the mark of nobleness to volunteer the lowest service, the greatest spirit only attaining to humility. Nay, God is God, because He is the servant of all.... All honest men are daily striving to earn their bread by their industry. And who is this who tosses his empty head at this blessing in disguise, and calls labour vile, and insults the workman at his daily toil?”

This is everywhere the sentiment of the truly civilized man. He may be lazy but he still recognizes the dignity of labour. But the African recognizes only the dignity of idleness and deems it the true badge of superiority. Work is not so obnoxious to his laziness as it is to his self-respect. It is the brand of inferiority. It is not exertion that he hates: he exerts himself in war and in hunting. It is when work assumes the form of service that it offends him. Manhood, he believes, consists in self-assertion as contrasted with self-sacrifice. His ideal is not to minister but to be ministered unto. Therefore work is relegated to women, who are weaker and cannot resist the imposition.

It is only necessary to point out one more difference between Africa and civilization; and in this last, it seems to me, we have before us the difference that is really fundamental: it is trustworthiness.

Civilization depends upon this quality in men. To the entire social structure of civilization each individual contributes strength or weakness according to his trustworthiness. In New York it has sometimes been found, upon investigation, that in the steel frame of certain high buildings many of the rivet holes were filled with soap and putty instead of rivets. In the same city not long ago, in the family of a prominent physician, the maid who had the care of the children went calling on a friend and found that in the friend’s home there was scarlet fever. The maid considered only that she had already had scarlet fever and was therefore safe from it. So she made the call, but she carried the fever back to the physician’s home and his children died from it. Such exceptions prove the rule, namely, that trustworthiness is the social cement of civilization.

A Fang village of a hundred persons can hold together constituting a society; but as soon as it grows to a group of about two hundred it goes to pieces and forms new villages. The men of the smaller village are more closely related, are brothers, and affection, a sentiment of brotherhood, insures a certain amount of honesty in their mutual relations. As the relationship widens this sentiment weakens and distrust takes the place of confidence. And the worst of it is that they distrust each other because they really know each other; because they are untrustworthy. Distrust is the dissolution of society.

Some years ago at Batanga the white traders introduced a “trust system,” whereby a quantity of goods were entrusted to a native, that he might go to the interior and trade with the expectation of paying for the goods with ivory or other trade produce upon his return to the coast. This simple arrangement was regarded by the trader as extremely satisfactory. He charged enormous prices in ivory for his goods, and besides—theoretically—he got the ivory, which otherwise was difficult to procure. He did not worry about the payment; for the German governor, being an obliging gentleman, and wishing to stimulate trade, threatened long imprisonment and lavish flogging to any and every native who should betray his trust; who, for instance, would spend the goods in buying a number of wives for the time being, in giving large presents to all his relations, or in making merry with the whole community and wasting his substance in riotous living. The iron hand of the Kaiser would prevent all that, and the trust-system would soon make Batanga a centre of commerce and civilization. Of course all the enterprising young natives hurried to get goods that they did not have to pay for until some other time, realizing only the foolishness of worrying about the future, and that possession is ten-tenths of the law in Africa.

Well, after a great while they all came back accompanied by the Kaiser’s soldiers. When the old matter of the goods was mentioned to them and a longing for ivory was expressed, the response was uniform: “Dem goods? Dem goods you done give me? Why, mastah, all dem goods done loss.”