IVA 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 itChristianity. 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 theululuof 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 offorty-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:
“Well, Mr. Milligan, why you nebber get wife? You no have money for buy her? or she done lef’ you and run ’way wid odder man?”
In reply to these frequent queries, I gave so many answers that I have almost forgotten which was the right one.
Iguwi was the only African I have ever known who was not a marrying man. I have known other single men among them, but they were either busy laying plans to run away with some other man’s wife, or were working day and night and stealing, according to opportunity, to obtain sufficient dowry.
Iguwi was extremely bashful; and in this also he was an exception to his race. On one occasion, an elder of the church and his wife, intimate friends of Iguwi, invited him to a chicken breakfast. They lived beside him and he passed their house several times a day. Nevertheless, he replied in a letter that he hoped they would excuse him on account of his bashfulness; but that he would be very grateful if they would send him his portion of the chicken. Iguwi was born in slavery, and as he became educated and somewhat cultivated he was very sensitive in regard to his birth. This indeed may account largely for his bashfulness.
But quite as prominent as Iguwi’s bashfulness and quaint eccentricities was his transparent sincerity and goodness. His religion had not the African tendency toexhaust itself in mental transports. The poor always had a friend in him. I have had to remonstrate with him for giving away all that he had. On one occasion, he came to me and asked the monthly payment of his salary in advance. I expressed surprise at his need of it, seeing that only a few days before I had paid him for the past month. But I found afterwards that he had expended the whole mouth’s payment in helping a poor widow to repair her house. She was not in any way related to him; and she had relations who were able to help her; but she had a sharp tongue and had turned them away from her, and when poverty and distress came there was none to help her. The most degraded of the heathen believed in Iguwi and would never have doubted his honesty or truth. In this sense, indeed, he was a “living epistle” of Christ which all could read and which none misunderstood. For so gentle a spirit he had a set of categories that were especially drastic. On one occasion, when I asked him how many persons had attended his village prayer-meeting, he replied: “Fifteen Christians and six sinners.” The attendance on the preceding Sunday was “ninety Christians and twenty-five sinners.”
Iguwi was a remarkably good preacher. He had been taught in the mission school at Baraka in the old days when English was still permitted, but at best he received there only the equivalent of a primary-school education. After he decided to study for the ministry he received further training in a theological class. It was a mystery to me how a man so bashful and diffident had ever chosen the ministry for a profession. But when Iguwi stood on the platform his diffidence disappeared entirely and his speech was perfectly free and courageous. The people all enjoyed his preaching and were helped by it. He was so absent-minded, however, in regard to his dress, that a committee should have been appointed to lookhim over before he went into the pulpit, in order to see that nothing essential had been omitted, and that his clothes were fastened on him securely. A perpetual problem to the native mind is how to get clothes to stay on without buttons—a problem of which polite African society anxiously awaits the solution. Even with buttons, the imported garments of civilization are still uncertain, when worn by those who are not to the manner born. Sometimes, as if by a sudden act of disenchantment, the buttons simultaneously unfasten, strings untie and clothes fall off. Iguwi’s trousers were supported by a red sash, which often got loose and began to unwind slowly as he preached. When the loose end of the sash touched the floor, it was a question as to what the climax of the sermon would be. I finally advised him either to preach shorter sermons or wear a longer sash.
Iguwi’s sermons were thoughtful and spiritual. It was strange how so unpractical a man could preach such practical sermons. They must have come to him by intuition rather than by any exercise of judgment. It was also indicative of a remarkable intellect that a man without any library, who had read only a few books that he had borrowed from missionaries, could preach sermons that were always well constructed and thoughtful. I happen to recall an outline which he submitted to me one day on the text, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” His three main points were: First, The Spirit leads to the cross of Christ; second, He leads to moral conflict (Iguwi probably said to “war”); third, He leads to victory.
When I was leaving Africa, I gladdened Iguwi’s heart with a set of Matthew Henry’s commentaries—which more than doubled his library. The quaintness, the homely simplicity and spirituality of Matthew Henry were not unlike Iguwi himself.
I have said that outside the pulpit Iguwi, with all his goodness, was utterly unpractical. Often, indeed, he seemed to lack common sense. I once gave him a book to read in which the writer, by way of illustrating the evanescence of human glory, referred to the gorgeous palace of ice which was built by Catherine of Russia, and so soon dissolved beneath the sun. Iguwi had heard of ice and knew very well what it was, but being unfamiliar with its resources of illustration he was deeply impressed. While he was still reading this book, one night in prayer-meeting he offered a prayer in which I, who did not understand the Mpongwe language, was suddenly startled by the English words,ice,palace,Catherine,Russia.
Even if the congregation had known English the illustration would still have been unintelligible to them. For aught they knewRussiamight be the name of an African tribe, or a river in America, and they were as ignorant of the other words; and since those four words comprised the whole illustration, the force and beauty of it must have been somewhat lost upon them. It occurred to me at the time that a library, instead of being a help to Iguwi, would probably have spoiled his preaching.
Iguwi was so unpractical it seemed best not to ordain him. If the worst heathen of Gaboon had asked admission to the membership of the church Iguwi would have received him with aGod-bless-you. But he continued to visit the sick and to give away his living to the poor. His goodness shone along all the lowly paths of service.
A service in the Gaboon Church is much like a service in one of our best coloured churches in America. There is perfect order and good attention, and we need not labour too much to be simple, for they listen intelligently. Occasionally, however, one is reminded that it is really Africa and not America. I have seen a man, in the first pair of shoes that he ever possessed, come tochurch unusually late, tramp as heavily as reverence would allow in coming up the aisle, and then sit in the end of the seat, assuming an unnatural and uncomfortable position in order to keep his feet in the aisle. What is the use of spending money for shoes and wearing them with so much discomfort if people are not to know that you have them? Shoes for the African trade are purposely made with loud-squeaking soles; the African will not buy shoes that do not “talk.” Sometimes, in localities further from the coast, the head of the family will enter the church alone, wearing the shoes, and upon reaching his seat will throw them out of the window to his wife, who also will wear them into the church, and perhaps others of the family after her.
Among the Mpongwe it was deeply impressed upon me that the sincerity of piety is not to be judged by its fluency. Most white people who acquire the art of public speaking, especially in religious meetings, are obliged to cultivate it; and only a small minority of Christians can offer a prayer in public. But the African speaks with perfect freedom and entire absence of selfconsciousness. He can offer a public prayer long before he becomes Christian, or has any such intention. It took me a long time to put the proper estimate upon fluency. One day I visited a woman, Nenge, who was going further and further astray through rum and other Mpongwe vices. I was so greatly impressed by her eloquent expression of ideals and aspirations that I inferred a great change in her life. I prayed with her and asked her if she would pray for herself. Without the slightest hesitation she began a prayer of considerable length that almost brought tears to my eyes. She prayed for herself and me. But I found out afterwards that she had not the least intention of parting with either of her great sins, and she was surprised that I had so misunderstoodher. She had not meant to deceive me. The truth is that any native could offer such a prayer. After several such experiences I became wary. It is a great gift, however, when it is truly consecrated. An Mpongwe prayer-meeting never lags.
The Gaboon Church in its early history was ministered to for many years by Toko Truman, probably the most eloquent native preacher who was ever trained in the West Africa Mission. He was entirely blind for seven years before he died. The first time I visited Gaboon Toko was still living. I was on my way home to America and was detained several days at Gaboon, waiting for a French steamer. I had heard much of Toko, and I visited him every day. Among ever so many incidents of interest which he related I recall his reply to a certain white trader, a very profane man, who took pleasure in mocking at Toko’s faith and self-denial. One day the trader remarked that if there was any such place as heaven, he himself was as sure of an entrance there as anybody.
Toko replied: “I have read the words of Jesus, ‘Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,’ that is to say, not even all those who pray shall enter; and the chances would seem to be small for you, who do not pray at all. Heaven is not as cheap as you think.”
Izuri is an elderly woman, a member in the Mpongwe Church, whose charity towards the Fang of the interior presents a striking contrast to the spirit of the coast people generally. I have already said that, in the mind of the coast people, the Fang belong to the orders of lower animals, and that the coast women are ashamed to be heard speaking Fang, though they all speak it; for they trade with them daily. Izuri, when I had charge of the Mpongwe Church, was sewing for a trading-house onewhole day each week, thereby earning twenty cents, which she gave to help support a native missionary among the Fang. The Fang come down the river long distances to sell food and building material in the Gaboon market. They must travel with the tide, and often they remain at the coast all night. It is sometimes hard for them to obtain shelter; and, moreover, they are subjected to every form of temptation by those who would get from them the money or goods they have procured for their produce. Izuri might often be seen going along the beach in the evening, inviting these homeless people to her town where she gave them shelter in a house which she owned but did not occupy. And often in the evening, sitting down in their midst, she would talk to them in their own language, fairly scandalizing her neighbours. I presume Izuri still continues her ministry to the poor Fang.
An Mpongwe man, Ntyango, showed this same spirit towards the Fang and went among them and preached to them. He died about the time I went to Gaboon, and was buried in the mission graveyard. Some years afterwards the workmen were cutting grass in the graveyard. Among them was a Fang man named Biyoga, whom Ntyango had taught to read when he was a small boy. As Biyoga was cutting grass and occasionally spelling out the names on the tombstones he found Ntyango’s name on one of them. Sacred memories stirred the heart of the wild Fang. The next day he came to me and told me that since the days, long ago, when he had known Ntyango he had never met another man like him. All the time since finding his name and while working beside his grave he had been thinking of him, recalling his kindness to the Fang, especially to the children, and his Christian teaching, and now he wished only to be the kind of man that Ntyango was.
AN MPONGWE WEDDING.The bride is a daughter of Lucina, who stands at the left of the bride.
AN MPONGWE WEDDING.The bride is a daughter of Lucina, who stands at the left of the bride.
AN MPONGWE WEDDING.The bride is a daughter of Lucina, who stands at the left of the bride.
I think of Sara whose honesty and goodness had beautified her face. Left a widow with five young children, and very poor, she often felt the burden of care too heavy for her shoulders; but she went bravely on. When her daughter was married and the customary dowry of forty dollars was offered Sara by the young husband, she refused to take it, believing that it was not in accord with Christian principle. The king of the Mpongwe tribe, being jealous for old customs, resented Sara’s action, and having invited her to his town made her a prisoner, thinking to intimidate her; but he failed even to pick a quarrel with her, and after a few days he released her.
I think of Lucina, than whom the Mpongwe Church never had a more faithful member. Lucina’s husband, preferring a dissolute life of drunkenness and polygamy, left her with five young children. Indeed, when he took other wives he had to leave her; for her character embraced the sensibility as well as the faithfulness of Christian wifehood. She brought up her children under great difficulties, working for them like a very slave; and though she was young, educated and extremely attractive, the breath of scandal never tarnished her reputation. When her husband accepted a dowry for their daughter and sent a portion of it to Lucina, she sent it back to him saying that if he had sold their daughter for a price, her conscience would not allow her to share it with him.
And, among others, there was Sonia, a white-haired old man with the heart of a child. Sonia had as many stories asUncle Remus; but his best stories were the incidents and adventures of his own life.
One still night as we lay at anchor, in the middle of the swift-rolling river, with the moonshine lying in silver ringlets across its surface, the boat-boys asked Sonia to tell them a story. As usual his first reply was that he did not know any stories—excepting a few foolish oldstories that they had heard till they were tired of them. But at length—as usual—he thought of one, and then another, and still another.
He first told a typical story about the tortoise and his creditors. The tortoise in African folk-lore is notorious for unscrupulous cunning.
Once upon a time there was a great famine in the land and food was very dear. So the tortoise called upon his friends, the worm, the cock, the bushcat, the leopard and the hunter, and borrowed from each a box of brass rods, promising to pay them at the end of the season on different days. On the day appointed the worm appeared and asked for the payment of the loan. Then the tortoise asked him to wait until he should go and fetch the money. So the tortoise went off to get the money, and the next day he came back with the cock, who also came according to appointment for the payment of his loan. Then the worm and the cock met, and the cock ate the worm.
Then the cock asked for his money and the tortoise asked him to wait until he should go and fetch it. And he went off again, and came back next day with the bushcat, who had come for the payment of his loan. Then the cock and the bushcat met and the bushcat killed the cock and ate him.
Then the bushcat asked for his money and the tortoise asked him to wait until he should go and fetch it. And he went off again, and came back the next day with the leopard, and the leopard killed the bushcat and ate it.
Then the leopard asked for his money, and the tortoise asked him to wait until he should go and fetch it. And he went off again, and came back with the hunter. And the hunter and the leopard killed each other.
Then the tortoise laughed at them all for being fools. And the moral is that it is not wise to lend to a man lest he may wish you evil and seek to kill you. But Soniareminds the boys that the story contains only the wisdom of the heathen, and that Jesus teaches us to help those who need our help even if we should lose by it.
After various comments on the moral of the story, to the effect that “loan oft loses both itself and friend,” Sonia tells a story of two friends and a wag.
There were two friends who had been friends from childhood, and who were more than brothers to each other; and these two friends had never been known to quarrel. Now there was a wag in a neighbouring town, who one day, when he heard the people talking about these two friends who had never quarrelled, declared that he would make them quarrel. That day he put on a coat of which one side was blue and the other side red and then walked down the road that ran between the two men’s houses. In the evening the friends met as usual and one of them said: “Did you see the wag pass to-day with a red coat on?”
“Yes,” said the other, “I saw him pass; but it wasn’t a red coat. It was blue.”
“I am sure it was red,” said the first.
“But it wasn’t. It was blue,” said the other.
And so they disputed until one of them called the other a fool; and then they fought.
“Take that,” said one.
“And that,” said the other.
So they fought until their wives came running to them and parted them. But they went to their houses with heavy hearts. For they had been friends for a lifetime and now their friendship was broken. And all the people felt sorrow. But the wag, when he came along, laughed and told them how he had worn a coat which was red on one side and blue on the other. And the friends and their wives ever afterwards hated the wag.
Sonia’s stories were most interesting when he recountedreal incidents in his own life. When a young man, he told us, he had lived as a trader at this Fang town opposite which we were anchored. The noise of drumming, dancing and singing had ceased and the town was wrapped in untroubled sleep. There is no stillness in the world like that of an African town in the night.
Sonia told us about a battle he had witnessed, which was fought upon the river, at this very place where we lay; a battle between this town and a town which then stood on the opposite bank, but of which nothing now remained. This town was already old at the time of the war but the other was new, the people having come recently from the far interior, being driven forth by the hostility of more powerful clans behind. There was no quarrel between the towns; but the people of the old town thought that it would be good policy to give their new neighbours a whipping upon their arrival in order to insure a wholesome respect.
First, I believe, they stole a woman. Then followed a guerrilla warfare, in which each side killed as they had opportunity, waylaying individuals, or rushing from ambush upon a party of venturesome stragglers from the enemy’s town. In this way a number were killed on each side; and the war, which was first undertaken more as a vain exploit or adventure than from any serious motive, was soon prosecuted with feelings of deadly hate and a purpose of revenge. Every night, from each town, the wail of mourning for the dead was wafted across the river; and curses were mingled with the mourning.
At length one canoe attacked another in the river, where they had been fishing. Immediately other canoes came to their help, and still others, ever so many of them, pushing off rapidly from each side until all the men of the two towns, young and old, were in the middle of the river where they fought to a finish. When fighting incanoes, whatever other weapons they may have, they carry a small battle-ax, which is used especially to prevent the capsizing of the canoe by those who are already in the water. Sonia told how that, again and again, at a blow they severed a man’s hand, or completely disabled him. They swim so well that they could still make a strong fight after being capsized. The battle was long, and the river ran red with their blood. Those who were killed were carried by the current out to the sea to feed the sharks.
The people of the new town lost. Those of them who were left pulled down their town and moved to another place. In a few years nothing remained of it but one or two skeletons with the grass growing through their ribs. But for years afterwards the superstitious native passing along the river in the dead of night heard again the noise of battle—fierce cries and dying groans. And whenever this sound is heard, they say, again the river runs red like blood.
One incident of the war, prior to the final battle, I recall, as Sonia told it that night.
The people of the old town captured a man of the other side, and his son, a little boy. They bound the father, and before his eyes deliberately killed his son—and ate his flesh. The main motive of cannibalism, under such circumstances, would be neither wanton cruelty nor a vicious appetite, butfetishism. By eating one of their number they render the enemy powerless to do them any farther injury. Some time afterwards they slew the father. But already they had broken his heart, and with hands uplifted he welcomed the death-blow.
The emotion with which old Sonia told this whole story indicated how his own heart had been wrung. He said not a word about any effort of his to dissuade the people from their cruelty; but I knew him well, and Iwas confident that the part he had taken was not unheroic. That is a story that was never told.
Sonia in his latter years, between long intervals of sickness, was a missionary to the Fang. They all regarded him with love and reverence. The oldest savage among them, and the wildest, were as children when they addressed him.
In the little graveyard, on the mission hill at Baraka, are the graves of those who have thought that life itself was not too great a price to pay for the saving of such men and women from degradation. Henry Drummond said that while in Africa he had been in an atmosphere of death all the time, and that he realized, as never before, the awful fact of death and its desolation as something calling for an answer. One of my first experiences in Gaboon reminded me that I was again in the land of death, when I assisted in the burial service of the beautiful young wife and bride of a fellow missionary, less than three months after their arrival in Africa. So far away from home we enter deeply into each other’s sorrows. I was standing by in the last hour, when with pale face the stricken but silent husband stepped to the open door and nervously plucked a flower growing there, a large crimson hibiscus, the beauty of the tropics, which he laid on the pillow beside his unconscious wife, and the two broken flowers drooped and died together, while the shadows darkened around us and the night came on. In the unconscious act there was something more affecting than in any words of grief. It seemed to relate this death to all death everywhere, in a world where forms of life appear only to vanish into darkness and day hurries to the night.
Soon after our patient sufferer had ceased to breathe, in the midst of the stillness that followed the prolonged struggle with the fever, a storm that had been gathering with the darkness broke forth with great violence thatshook the house. I had only arrived in Africa. I went out into the storm unspeakably oppressed with doubt, to which it was a kind of relief. Was it a noble sacrifice? or an appalling waste? In the intervals of the storm, and mingling with it, there came the sound of a dirge, the hopeless death-wail, from a village close by, where the poor natives were mourning for one of their number who had died that day, a young man at whose bed I had stood a few hours earlier, the only son of a heart-broken mother. Those who have always known the words of One who brought life and immortality to light cannot realize the heathen view of death, and the abysmal darkness of the invisible world. There is no sound so well known in Africa, and none that so haunts the memory in after years, as the mourning dirge, in which with united voices they chant their sorrow for the dead—their despair and desolation; the sound that is borne upon every night-wind and becomes to the imagination the very voice of Africa. The groaning of the palm-trees in the darkness of that night, as they bent beneath the tempest, and in the distance the sound of the troubled sea, were the fitting accompaniment and interlude. But in our house, beside our dead, there was light—and doubt was vanquished. There, hope was whispering to a stricken heart sweet promises of life; and faith was saying: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”