The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

So they all are crying to us with outstretched hands; a people who call the white man, Father, and trust him with pathetic confidence until he betrays their trust and smites them with the rod of tyranny. I think I can hear their piteous cry wafted on the winds that wander over the great forest: “We shall all be killed! We shall all be killed!”

XI
THE FANG

During my second and much longer term in Africa I lived at Baraka, a mission station two miles south of Libreville, in the Congo Français, on the great estuary of the Gaboon River, or, the bay, as I always called it. The coast tribe of the Gaboon is called the Mpongwe. But my work was almost entirely with the interior tribe—the Fang.

The Fang is probably the largest of all the tribes of West Africa. The Bulu of the Cameroon interior are a branch of the Fang, and there are several other branches. They occupy the interior of Cameroon and the Congo Français, extending north and south behind at least twelve coast tribes occupying three hundred miles of coast. M. de Brazza after extended travel among the Fang estimated that there were more than ten millions, and perhaps fifteen millions of them; but I think it unlikely that further knowledge will confirm this calculation. M. de Brazza is usually a most reliable authority; but he probably travelled through the more densely populated parts of the Fang territory.

Since most of my work was done among the Fang, along the Gaboon River, they are the tribe that I know best. I am very partial to them, and therefore, before going further I must say a word in regard to the pronunciation of this word, “Fang,” and beg the reader not to speak of them as if they were a generation of vipers. The name is not pronounced in the least like our word “fang,” and indeed the vowel sound in the latter word is unknown in the African dialects; the sound of the letter “a” is like that in the word “father.”

The whole Fang tribe has been moving towards the coast for many years, and they have already emerged at several points, notably Gaboon. Dr. Leighton Wilson, writing about 1860, speaks of them as having just appeared west of the Sierra del Crystal Mountains, one hundred miles east of the Gaboon Coast. Dr. Wilson, who had a more extended knowledge of the coast than any man of his time, speaks of the Fang as the most remarkable and most forceful people he had met in West Africa. They now have villages among the Mpongwe, and along the entire length of the Gaboon River and the tributaries of the river and estuary. This for years was my mission field, a territory one hundred and twenty miles east and west, and fifty miles north and south. The entire area is a network of waterways, which are also the highways; for there are very few bush-roads, and they are of the worst kind. I know of no more attractive field in West Africa. It combines the far more comfortable home of the coast, and the more hopeful work of the interior. By the use of a launch, or even a sailboat, the towns on the watercourses are easily and quickly accessible.

Thus, also, it allows for expansion and concentration of influence in their proper relation. Instead of the influence of the missionary being concentrated in an immediate community where he becomes practically a pastor, in such a field as that of the Gaboon watercourses he is rather as a bishop among native pastors, and influential in many communities. For the native, however meagre his education, if he be otherwise worthy, is always a better pastor than the foreigner, and needs only counsel. The church also is likely to be more independent in spirit, and resourceful. In a single community where the white missionary is ever present, Christianity shares his prestige, and a few leaders being converted, the movement becomes popular, and many follow without deep convictions or earnest purpose. But in a community with which no white man is identified Christianity cannot acquire an artificial popularity; converts are earnest,—are leaders, not followers, and each group becomes the centre of a strong influence, exerted in service from the beginning, and the nucleus of a native church.

At the same time there may be a proper concentration of influence in boarding-schools and classes for religious training, and especially in a seminary for the training of catechists and ministers. This withal approaches most nearly to the method of our Master, who preached to multitudes in various places widely separated, the while He concentrated His influence in the training of the twelve. He who of all men might have dispensed with methods, was really a master of methods.

Before my time the only work of our mission among the Fang was at Angom Station, on the upper river, seventy miles above Baraka; but the work though faithfully done had been restricted to one town, which was a small factor in the great field that I have described, which larger field had never been opened to missionary work. When our missionary at Angom died, and his successor after a short period withdrew, the station was abandoned; and the little church not yet established in the faith, unable to stand alone, soon collapsed. A few years later, in 1902, when little remained but the name, the Angom church was formally dissolved by the Corisco Presbytery.