VIITHE BUSH PEOPLE
The natives of Efulen, the Bulu tribe, are a branch of the great Fang tribe. They are brown—not black, in colour, and are several shades lighter than most of the coast tribes. They need not be commiserated for their colour. It is quite to their liking; and they think they are far better-looking than white people.
The Bulu go almost entirely naked. The men wear a strip of cloth a few inches wide, suspended from a string around the hips, one end of the cloth being fastened in front and the other behind. They wore only bark-cloth when we first went among them, made from the bark of a tree, the pulp being hammered out of it and the coarse fiber remaining. The women wore less than the men, their entire dress consisting of a few leaves suspended from a similar string around the hips and a square-cut bobtail of coloured grass. Children wear nothing but the string around the waist, which is put on immediately after birth and has a fetish significance. An occasional rub with oil and then with red powder, made of camwood, completes the toilet of the adults. Before our first year had passed some of the men in the villages near by were wearing imported cloth, and in larger pieces. By this time both men and women are wearing it. Superficial changes follow rapidly in the wake of the white man. But further back in the interior the conditions are still unchanged.
If they have but little use for clothing, they are excessively fond of ornamentation, and the women are slaves of fashion. Most of their ornaments are imported trinkets from the white man’s country, which have travelled far in advance of the white man himself. Both men and women have a peculiar and striking way of dressing the hair. Crossing it back and forth over strips of bamboo, they build it into three or four ridges, several inches high, running from the front to the back of the head. Each ridge is mounted with a close row of common white shirt-buttons. When shirt-buttons cannot be procured, a certain small shell is used. Sometimes the ridges are circular, one within another like a story cake, iced with shirt-buttons. In addition to this the women often sew on above each ear a card containing as many as six dozen buttons. Sometimes they also build a kind of splash-board behind the head, from ear to ear, to hold more buttons. The hair thus arranged remains undisturbed for several months. It forms a convenient place for wiping their hands or the bread-knife (which is also every other kind of knife) or anything else that may be particularly dirty. After dressing the hair grease is smeared over it, from time to time, which in the sun melts into the hair, giving it a rich gloss; and some of the grease passing through issues in a very black stream down the back. This enables it to support an amazing abundance of small animal life. They are very generous in helping one another to remove these, and in passing through a village one may often see some one reclining with his or her head in the lap of a friend who is performing this kindly office. It is especially appropriate that a host should thus accommodate a guest. It is done in the street, of course, where everything else is done. For if they should retire to the house any length of time something might happen and they not be there to see;or, some bit of particularly spicy scandal might be detailed and they not hear it, and life even at the best is dull enough.
But we have not completed the decorating of these women; for they would be ashamed to be seen in this paucity of ornamentation. Across the middle of the forehead they wear several strings of beads, or sometimes a strip of monkey-skin, an inch wide, edged with shirt-buttons, and fastened behind the head. They also have bangles three inches to a foot long, all around the head, consisting of loose hair strung with beads of all colours. But there is still room for more, and they wear around the neck countless strings of a small blue-black bead, piled up sometimes several inches high on the shoulders. Occasionally they pierce the septum of the nose and insert a string of beads or a brass ring; and the ears are treated in the same manner. A black tattooed marking between the eyes, and two broad artistically designed lines of the same upon the cheeks running from the direction of the ear towards the mouth, complete the head-ornamentation of a fashionable Bulu woman.
Upon one arm, or both, she wears an enormous cuff, made of heavy brass wire, an eighth of an inch in diameter, coiled into a solid gauntlet, large at the elbow, tapering down to the wrist and spreading again towards the hand. It is made on the arm and is not supposed to be removed. Sometimes it is worn on the upper arm, in which case it chafes the arm, and after a while causes an ulcer. These are also frequently worn on the lower leg. But for this latter purpose they prefer a large brass ring, several of which they wear on each leg, and which they keep brightly polished. A woman if she can afford it, wears as many of these brass rings as she can walk with.
It is strange that they have no love of flowers, and still more strange when one considers their instinctivelove of music. Passing through a village and seeing a woman performing her semi-annual duty of combing her hair, I have suggested the decorative possibilities of flowers rather than shirt-buttons. I have even gathered them for her and have put them in her hair, and I am sure they were becoming. But to her they were ridiculous; nor was she moved when I told her that white women in my country infinitely preferred flowers to shirt-buttons.
The men are tattooed on their faces and their breasts; but the markings are light and scarcely disfigure the face. Every man carries at his left side a long, two-edged, sword-like knife. It is a splendid article, which they themselves manufacture. It is carried in a sheath of python-skin, suspended from a shoulder-strap of leopard-skin, though sometimes monkey-skin or goat-skin is substituted. The flint-lock gun had reached there long before our time; and every man had a gun which he carried all the time.
The men are usually tall, athletic and remarkably well-formed, though not as full in the chest as a perfect physique would require. Most of the younger men are good-looking. Many of the younger women have decidedly pretty faces, but they are not as intelligent-looking as the men. Most of the children are beautiful, with sweet, good-natured faces and lovely eyes. Indeed, all of those whom one would call good-looking have beautiful, large and expressive eyes, that can look brimful either of laughter or affection; and the boys, to the age of fourteen or fifteen, have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.
The Bulu people were unmistakably friendly and fluently sociable. It did not seem to matter much that during those first days we did not understand a word they said. The women were more sociable than the men,but the men were more dignified and self-respecting. Most sociable of all was the head-wife of the principal chief. In the usual traveller’s book he would be called a king and she a queen, but these titles are misleading without explanation. This “queen” often used to come to Efulen selling potatoes, half a bucketful at a time, for which she bought more beads. She was getting along in years, but still maintained an air of superannuated gaiety. Upon her back were several ugly scars where his lordship, her husband, had struck her with a cutlass—an unpleasant habit quite characteristic of African husbands. One day, wishing to strengthen the bond of friendship, she presented us with a coil of snake for our dinner, which we declined with profuse thanks. On another occasion, after our house was built, she came with five junior wives of the same chief, and asked that they be shown through our house. I escorted them through the house, as one might escort a party through the White-house in Washington. Shrieks of wonder accompanied their inspection of every article. Finally this head-wife, in lively gratitude, insisted upon dancing in the dining-room for our entertainment. The feet are the least active members in this singular dance. Most of the time she stands in one place; nor does she pirouette like the dervish of Egypt. The dance has not the gladsome hop of the Bohemian dances, nor the swift glide of the tarantella; and of course it is altogether unlike any of our conventional dances. It is an amazing and rapid succession of extravagant gestures, grotesque poses and outrageous contortions. The shoulders and stomach and all the muscles of her seeming boneless body are set in violent motion. If dancing is “the poetry of motion,” this is downright doggerel. She accompanies it with a vocal imitation of their several wooden instruments, as incongruous as the dance itself. She seems to be imitatinghalf a dozen instruments at once, while deaf to either applause or remonstrance on our part she dances on heedless of perspiration and decorum. Finally this lady came to me one day and, offering to leave her husband, made me a proposal of marriage, to the delight of Dr. Good and Mr. Kerr. Shortly after this she went crazy.
We came in contact with a belief regarding the white man’s origin which is widely prevalent, namely, that their dead ancestors have gone over the sea and have become white men. We, therefore, are their ancestors. Dr. Good and I once entered a town where the white man had never been seen. While the people were still standing back, afraid of us, a woman looking intently in my face uttered a cry of recognition, mistaking me for her dead grandfather, or grand-uncle, or something of that sort.
“Are you not so-and-so, of my family?” she asked.
Not being eager to claim relationship, I hastily assured her that I was not.
“Are you a spirit, or are you flesh?” she asked.
I told her I was no spirit, but flesh and bones and as solid as herself; and I invited her to come and put her hand on me.
“Will my hand not go through?” she asked; and I assured her that it would not.
Then coming towards me gradually, taking a short step, then a fearful breath, then another step, she at last put her hand upon my arm and then not knowing what would happen to her she turned and ran down the street. But soon recovering herself she cried out: “He is solid just like us. My hand didn’t go through.” Then they all came, men, women and children, to investigate for themselves. Some pinched me, some pushed, and some pulled my hair, to the infinite amusement of Dr. Good. I made no protest against the more delicate experiments of thewomen and children; but the sense of touch on the part of the men was so obtuse that I turned on one of them and by the vigorous use of my fists undertook to convince him that my quality was more substantial than spirit, while the town shrieked with laughter. The rest were willing to take that man’s word that I was solid. “You’re flesh and bones,” they cried in a chorus.
“Yes,” said I, “I am flesh and bones and fists.”
When we first went among them our safety was in their fetishism and this we had counted upon. However kindly they may have felt, yet to them our poor bundles of goods were fabulous wealth; and it was our opinion then and afterwards that greed would have completely mastered them and they would have killed us for our goods if they had dared. Dr. Good, as I have said, had lived for years among the Fang, whose language is so much like the Bulu that he could understand the Bulu from the first, although he did not always let them know this. In the first Bulu town where we stayed over night Dr. Good heard them discussing us. The younger men were greatly excited and might have proved dangerous but for the counsel of the older men, who are always held in high respect. These elders argued that since we three strangers, with a few unarmed followers, had left our own tribe and had come boldly among them we must surely have very powerful fetishes—powerful enough to overcome theirs and inflict death on our enemies. Our very goods which they coveted was evidence of this; for it is only by fetishes that people acquire riches. Further evidence was afforded by the fact that we had meat in tins which our boys told them had been there for two years and it was not rotten. They had seen it, and it smelled delicious. But the convincing proof was Mr. Kerr’s gun, the most beautiful thing that ever had been seen, and which, according to the report of the boys, wasnever known to miss aim (which indeed was a fact when Mr. Kerr held it) and everybody knows that this depends entirely upon a man’s fetishes. These sage counsels prevailed. And before this belief in our fetishes and the fear of them was dissipated we had gained their friendship, and were safe on that basis.
A month after our arrival at Efulen, Dr. Good, having occasion to go to the coast, on the way bought something from a native to whom he gave a note addressed to me in which he requested me to give the bearer a red cap—a thing of yarn worth about five cents, much appreciated by the native, but more becoming to a monkey than a man. Dr. Good explained to him, as his eyes dilated with astonishment, that he would only need to go to Efulen and hand the note to me without saying a word, whereupon I would fetch out a red cap and give it to him. It was almost too great a strain upon his credulity, but he agreed. His entire town accompanied him to see this unheard-of miracle. It was a walk of half a day and they passed through several towns on the way, in which they told what was going to happen at Efulen. The population of each town, jerking the dinner off the fire, snatching up the baby and leaving the dead to bury their dead, joined in the procession. A great crowd presented themselves before the house. They had agreed not to invalidate the evidence of the miracle by letting me know what Dr. Good had said. The note was the fetish that must effect the result. They stood with their hands over their mouths for fear the secret would fly out. Despite their extraordinary efforts to keep silence for a minute they were only moderately successful. The leader handed me the note: I looked at it and without a word went into the house and immediately returned with the cap. They vented their astonishment in a great shout. Then each of them, yelling as loud as possible, began to repeat theentire incident from the beginning. They must have been telling the story to their dead ancestors in Europe and America, if one might judge by their evident distance, and by the fact that no one seemed to expect anybody else to listen to him. This incident increased our prestige.
In a certain trading-house a similar incident once occurred. A native presented a note to the trader who gave him a knife. Then all the young enterprising natives appropriated paper wherever they could find it, and cutting it into similar pieces presented it to the trader supposing that he would automatically produce a knife and give it to them; but when they witnessed his dumb ignorance they concluded that there were serious limitations to the white man’s magic.
I have said that they regarded our meagre stock of goods as fabulous wealth. They regarded us as we might regard a multi-millionaire. And, strange enough, we gradually fell into their way of thinking, and regarded their attitude as consonant with the facts. And why not? For, to be rich is to have a little more than your neighbours, and to be poor is to have less. There is no sense of privation in being compelled to do without those things which nobody else has; but however much we may have, we feel the pinch of poverty when there are additional comforts and enjoyments immediately around us which we cannot procure. Our privations were many and great, but they were for the most part inevitable. After the first few months we had the best procurable in our situation, and far more than those around us. So, every man in such a place will learn that wealth, after all, is a sentiment more than a condition, a feeling rather than a fact. But the return to civilization is like a sudden reversal of fortune, and in dire contrast a man experiences a very painful and oppressive sense of poverty when confronted with wealth so far beyond his own.
We gave out various goods in pay to workmen engaged upon our premises. We bought food for the workmen and some for ourselves. The staple article of exchange was salt: one might almost call it the currency. There is so little of it that there is a chronic hunger for it. Children like it better than sugar. A teaspoonful of salt is the price of an egg. We also gave in exchange beads, shirt-buttons, brass rods, red-caps, knives, gun-flints, and later in the year we began to sell a little cloth. We bought bananas, plantains, cassava (that which Stanley calls “manioc,” which is their principal food) and building-material. All exchange is by barter, and it is a very tedious and trying process, a long palaver being regarded as almost essential to propriety even in the purchase of the smallest article. In trading among themselves the man who can talk longest and loudest usually gets the best of the bargain. The maintaining of a fixed price is new to the African and is hateful to him, even if the price be good, for it tends to deprive him of the palaver, which is the joy of his life. He makes the best of the fixed price however and even discovers that it still has some dramatic and histrionic possibilities. He lays down his bamboo, or his thatch, before me, telling me in a neighbourly manner how far he has had to go for it and how exceedingly scarce it is becoming, how unusually good this particular material is and what lavish offers he received for it along the way, and how friendship for the white man prevailed over baser considerations. For, what were he and his people before the white man came? But now, as for himself, he has left behind all his vices, and that very morning has decided to be a Christian.
I interrupt this fine flow of sentiment by asking him what he wants in exchange for his thatch. He thinks he will take a little salt. I measure out with a spoon theexact amount—which he knew before he left his town. The dramatic moment is when I put away the spoon. He glances from the salt to myself several times with a fine simulation of disappointment and contempt, calculated to reduce me to pulp. He is no child in his art, but such an adept that my moral fortitude almost surrenders before that look. I seek to relieve the strain by saying with affected carelessness: “That’s all. Take your salt and get out.”
The reply to this delicate suggestion is a prolonged yell of many mingled emotions: and then he grabs,—not the salt, but his thatch and starts down the hill cursing the white man. I have not so much affronted his judgment as I have wounded his feelings, and perhaps have put a stumbling-block in the way of his salvation. He thinks better of it, however, and comes back, takes the salt and goes away blessing me.
It was hard to procure eggs. The natives do not eat eggs but always set them. At first they asked the price of a chicken for an egg, because, they said, the egg would become a chicken, with proper treatment. The time element is always eliminated in every consideration. But most of the eggs that they brought us would never have become chickens under any circumstances; and this they knew, for they had given them a thorough trial. When I pronounce an egg to be bad a man always wants it back; for he or his friend will try to sell it to me again, watching an opportunity when I am very busy and have not time to examine it closely. I have probably refused the same egg half a dozen times in one morning, and then perhaps have bought it, and the successful vender has amused the people of his town by relating the transaction at my expense.
The women bring their garden produce in heavy loads carried on their backs in large baskets. I stand on theporch as I buy and they on the ground, their produce lying on the porch at my feet. They always rise very early, and they usually reach the hill about daylight. We cannot buy more than half of the food they bring; so there is a noisy and animated scramble for first place. They are there before we are up in the morning and they wait in a shed occupied by our men a little way down the hill and in front of our house. There they indulge in chatter and laughter, and one might think they had forgotten their errand. But the moment I open the door and step outside (for it fell to me to do the buying) every woman, with a yell, snatches her basket and pitches it on her back, or perhaps comes dragging it along the ground, thinking in this way to gain a moment over her sisters, and pushing and pulling each other, some of them laughing, more of them cursing, and all of them yelling, the whole fanfare sweeps up to the door. Not having been accustomed to rise so early, my sense of humour is still dormant at that hour; life is always a serious matter to me and a doubtful boon until after breakfast. I yawn, and yawn again, and heave a weary sigh, as I reflect that the clamorous noise which has thus ushered in the day will continue through the long hours until its close.
Soon after our arrival at Efulen Dr. Good and I visited the town of an old chief of some fame, named Abesula. Abesula’s claim to greatness was based upon the possession of thirty-five wives and any man who could endure life with thirty-five African wives must be made of uncommon stuff. He was old and most of them were young and unruly, and each one seemed disposed to do her full duty in reconciling him to death by making his present life intolerable. As we entered the town an old woman who knew Dr. Good and was very glad to see him came forward to salute him, calling him his usual name,Ngoot. She was covered thick with redwood powder, like redoxide, from head to feet, and he was dressed in light-coloured clothes and was quite trim, for we had travelled by a good road. In a salutation of “linked sweetness long drawn out”—“Ay! Ngoo-t, Ngoo-t, Ngoo-t,” she threw her arms around him and embraced him affectionately, leaving him covered with redwood powder. Other women, evidently thinking that this was the proper way to receive a white man, followed her example. Now, one of Dr. Good’s peculiarities was an insuperable aversion to effusions of emotion. But he always considered the effect of his actions upon the mind or the feelings of the natives; so he submitted to this tender ceremony, but he looked as miserable as ever Abesula did with his thirty-five wives all calling him names at once. Then the old woman, not wishing to show partiality, approached me with an amiable, toothless smile and all the redwood that was not on Dr. Good’s clothes; but regardless of consequences I took to my heels and bestowed myself at a safe distance down the street, feeling that I had made sacrifices enough for the black race to be morally excusable for declining this unsavoury embrace.
In the evening we sang several hymns to draw the people together. They all came and Abesula sat in the midst. Then Dr. Good preached to them, and some paid close attention. But after a while Abesula, interrupting, said: “Ngoot, won’t you soon be through preaching? For I wish that you two white men would sing and dance for the people; I don’t care for singing without dancing, and I don’t like preaching at all.” But we did not resort to this sensational method of holding a congregation.
That same evening a score of Abesula’s wives engaged in a general quarrel with each other. An African family has no skeletons in the closet. They all hang outside the front door. The quarrel began with two of them, who, earlier in the evening, sat each within the door of herown house, on opposite sides of the street, reviling each other in language of loathsome indecency, until at last, when their intellectual resources of warfare were exhausted, the other women told them to come out into the street and fight it out. Whereupon the two women came out into the street and throwing off even their scant apparel of leaves, began to fight. To our surprise they did not scratch nor pull each other’s hair, as we had heard that women do when they fight. It was more like wrestling, although blows were delivered according to opportunity. They were fairly matched; but at last one was thrown to the ground, the other falling on top, and then clasping each other and fighting they rolled over and over in the street. When one of them was beaten the other women began to take sides and a large number became involved. Then the indiscreet Abesula interfered and they all joined together against him. To say that this large and unhappy family washed the dirty linen of their domestic infelicity in the street is putting it too mildly. The linen was foul and fit only for the fire. The women sought to shame the old savage out of countenance by the revelation of filthy secrets—but there are no secrets in Africa. Abesula replied with a shocking history of their immoralities which I fear was too true. He raged like an infuriated beast. He asked for a stick. Some one brought him one about ten feet long. As he talked he beat the ground with the stick and when it broke in his hands he called for another. He cursed them and threatened them with the hostility of supernatural powers by which they would die various sudden deaths in surprising forms, and suffer frightful penalties in another world. All this while he was pounding the ground, in which performance it was supposed that his wives were beaten by proxy. It was a very forcible way of expressing his opinion of them, and of showing them what theirconduct deserved, while it was safer for himself and more conducive to good health and a long life, than a personal attack upon them, seeing that it was one against thirty-five.
But finding at length that this bloodless flogging even when accompanied with awful language produced no other result than self-exhaustion and violent perspiration, he resolved to kill himself without actually dying—a simple paradox to the African mind. He brought out of his house a long knife and a lighted torch, and carefully arranging a seat in the middle of the street where all could witness the shedding of his blood, he sharpened the knife, made his last speech, in which he told his wives how he would haunt them after death, then raised the knife above him, threw back his head, and pointed the knife towards his breast. This tragical performance requires that at this interesting moment some one, preferably a wife, should rush towards him in terrible alarm and excitement and wrench the knife from his hand just in time to save his life. This touching evidence of regard is a first measure of reconciliation and is usually followed by a truce of hostilities. But Abesula had made life so bitter for these women that their contempt was unbounded and they desired no armistice. Not one of them moved to save his life. He still held the knife above him, as if to say: “Is no one going to interfere? Is it possible that you would allow a great man like me to take his own life when you could so easily prevent it? At least think of the trouble it will entail, the grave-digging, the burial, a month of mourning, and perhaps charges of witchcraft.” Still no one moved. Abesula suddenly resolved to sharpen his knife again so as to make death quite certain. This being done he again raised it and pointed it towards his heart. A native man said to Dr. Good: “Stop him! white man, stop him! Take the knife from him!” And it may be that the womenhad been expecting a white man to perform this obliging duty. But neither of us moved. At last the knife descended, and with such terrible force that it would have been driven into his heart and clean through his back if it had not been that his arm was trembling with excessive determination, and the descending knife, missing aim, struck the ground, penetrating nearly to the hilt. Poor Abesula, inconsolable at finding himself still alive, and feeling that his dignity, if not his life, was gone forever, rose from the ground and sneaked away. But he cast a baleful look backward, as if to say, “For two beads I’d destroy this world and make another where great men could be appreciated. As for you black creatures, you don’t know a great man when you see him.”
Later that night when all had retired to sleep, Dr. Good and I were still discussing polygamy, that some white people assert is right and necessary for Africa.
Mr. E. D. Morel points to the triumphs of Mohammedanism in Africa as a proof of its better adaptation to the moral and material welfare of the people than Christianity, attributing its success to its allowance of polygamy. But Mr. Morel’s friend, Sir Harry Johnston, than whom perhaps no man living knows more about Central Africa and its people, accounts for the rapid spread of Mohammedanism in a very simple and obvious manner, when he says: “Mohammedanism, as taught to the negro, demands no sacrifice of his bodily lusts.” Mohammedanism does improve the African—there is nothing gained by denying it. But, at best, it only “moves the masses to a cleaner stye,” which, though cleaner, is still a “stye”; while the aim of Christianity is ahousehold, in which the law islove, not lust. It is natural that it should take the negro longer to learn this lesson and that he should be slow in making the sacrifices that it demands.
In the morning Abesula seemed to have forgotten all about the palaver, as if it were a very ordinary occurrence, as I presume it really was. We rewarded him for the house that we had occupied by a gift of a red-cap (cost, five cents), the remains of our tallow candle and six lumps of white sugar.