Miss Kingsley disliked any and every change that threatened to improve the native and thus to mar the picturesque wildness of his savage state. She is perfectly consistent with her anti-mission views when she tells us the kind of native that she admires, as follows: “A great, strong Kruman, for example, with his front teeth filed, nothing much on but oil, half a dozen wives, and half a hundred jujus [fetishes], is a sort of person whom I hold higher than any other form of native.”[[11]] Well, it is proverbial that tastes differ; but the missionary thinks that, as compared with this, the Christian ideal is higher and nobler. Miss Kingsley informs us (through the words of another whom she quotes with approval) of the treatment received, at the hands of these same Krumen, by shipwrecked and half-drowned passengers cast helpless upon the shore: “If you get ashore you don’t save the things you stand up in—the natives strip you.” “Of course they are cannibals; they are all cannibals when they get a chance.”[[12]] And this is the sort of person whom Miss Kingsley holds “higher than any other form of native”!
[11]. West African Studies, p. 385.
[12]. Ibid., p. 42.
A CONTRAST.
Anyoroguli, a Christian woman of Gaboon.
WOMEN OF THE INTERIOR RETURNING FROM THE GARDENS WITH CASSAVA AND FIREWOOD.
That the native Christians should inspire aversion is exactly what we should expect; and yet we are scarcely prepared for the inveterate animosity, the almost fierce hostility, that she everywhere reveals when she comes in contact with a native Christian. Miss Kingsley’s attacks upon the African Christians are the most unworthy of all the things she has said. To give a single instance, I would refer to her story told in Travels in West Africa (p. 557) of a night which she spent in the house of a Bible teacher of the Basle Mission. Two mission teachers, together with a great many others, came into the room. The teachers, she says, “lounge around and spit in all directions.” Next morning again, she says, “the mission teachers get in with my tea, and sit and smoke and spit, while I have my breakfast. Give me the cannibal Fang!”
Are we to conclude that cannibalism in Miss Kingsley’s opinion is a less grievous offense against society than smoking and spitting? For that matter, cannibals spit too. And I should think they would! And, then, were the other natives who were present, the untutored savages, not smoking and spitting? It may be regarded as certain that they were smoking if they had tobacco; and whether or not they were smoking I am sure they were spitting; for that nasty habit is racial and continental. Even white men in Africa contract the habit; and, what’s more, they scratch: they spit and scratch—the effect perhaps of the climate. I have known a few native Christians who neither smoke nor spit; but I have not known a savage, either man or woman, who did not do both. Why, then, single out these two poor boys from the rest of the company? And why visit upon their heads all the odium of a racial habit? If, at the instance of the preaching of the Gospel, they have left off cannibalism, and killing, and adultery, and stealing, and lying, I think they will scarcely be damned for spitting; and I am sure they will leave that off too before they enter heaven.
I well know the manners of native boys who have been in the mission long enough to become teachers. They have an instinct for good manners. It would be far easier to criticize their morals than their manners. At this same place Miss Kingsley sent an attendant to ask the teacher for wood to make a fire. The attendant returned and said that the teacher would not give him wood unless it was paid for. Knowing the cordial hospitality and eager attention that would be given to a white woman by any and every mission teacher that I have met in Africa, I am compelled, from the extraordinary behaviour of this teacher, to doubt whether Miss Kingsley was a gracious guest. But we need not remain in doubt; for Miss Kingsley, while she was the guest of this teacher, in a mission house, had with her a demijohn of rum, which she dispensed to the natives in pay and barter, as was her custom everywhere; and it is more than possible that the teacher’s message that his wood was for sale was a moral protest, not only against the violation of hospitality, but also against the violation of those moral and religious principles to which his life and honour were committed, and upon which depended, as he sincerely believed, the salvation of his people.