FOOTNOTES:[77]Preface by Sir George Goldie to Vandeleur’sCampaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger, 1898.[78]The time which a man ought to be expected to remain in West Africa is difficult to determine—representatives of trading firms are expected to remain out two years, and the mortality among them is certainly no higher than among the officials with their twelve months’ service. It is contended by the commercial party that it takes a man several months after returning from furlough to get into working order again, that under the twelve months’ system no sooner has he done this than he is off on furlough again, in short that the system is foolish and wasteful in the extreme. On the other hand the advocates of the short service plan contend that a man is not fit for work at all after twelve months in West Africa, and that if he is not definitely ill, he has at any rate lost all energy. Personally, I fancy it depends on the individual, and that with a definite policy the short service plan will be quite safe.
[77]Preface by Sir George Goldie to Vandeleur’sCampaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger, 1898.
[77]Preface by Sir George Goldie to Vandeleur’sCampaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger, 1898.
[78]The time which a man ought to be expected to remain in West Africa is difficult to determine—representatives of trading firms are expected to remain out two years, and the mortality among them is certainly no higher than among the officials with their twelve months’ service. It is contended by the commercial party that it takes a man several months after returning from furlough to get into working order again, that under the twelve months’ system no sooner has he done this than he is off on furlough again, in short that the system is foolish and wasteful in the extreme. On the other hand the advocates of the short service plan contend that a man is not fit for work at all after twelve months in West Africa, and that if he is not definitely ill, he has at any rate lost all energy. Personally, I fancy it depends on the individual, and that with a definite policy the short service plan will be quite safe.
[78]The time which a man ought to be expected to remain in West Africa is difficult to determine—representatives of trading firms are expected to remain out two years, and the mortality among them is certainly no higher than among the officials with their twelve months’ service. It is contended by the commercial party that it takes a man several months after returning from furlough to get into working order again, that under the twelve months’ system no sooner has he done this than he is off on furlough again, in short that the system is foolish and wasteful in the extreme. On the other hand the advocates of the short service plan contend that a man is not fit for work at all after twelve months in West Africa, and that if he is not definitely ill, he has at any rate lost all energy. Personally, I fancy it depends on the individual, and that with a definite policy the short service plan will be quite safe.
Wherein some attempt is made to set down the divers kinds of property that exist among the people of the true Negro race in Western Africa, and the law whereby it is governed.
In speaking on the subject of African property and the laws which guard it in its native state, I must, in the space at my disposal here, confine myself to speaking of these things as they are in one division of the many different races of human beings that inhabit that vast continent of Africa; and, in order to present the affair more clearly, I must take them as they exist in their most highly developed state, namely, among the people of the true Negro stock, for it is among these people that pure African culture has reached so far its fullest state of development.
The distribution zone of this true Negro stock cannot yet be fixed with any approach to accuracy, but we know that the seaboard of the regions inhabited by the true Negro is that vast stretch of the African West Coast from a point south of the Gambia River to a point just north of Cameroon River, in the region of the Rio del Rey. We can safely say, within this region you will find the true Negro, but we cannot safely say how far inland, or how far down south of the Rio del Rey we shall find him. That this stock extends through up tothe Nile regions; that it stretches far away south of the Nile in the interior of the Upper Congo regions, appearing in the Azenghi; that it stretches south on the coast line below the Rio del Rey, appearing as the so-called noble tribes of the Bight of Panavia, the Ajumba, Mpongwe, Igalwa, and also as Osheba, Befangh, will be demonstrated I believe when we have a sufficient supply of ethnological observers in Africa. But it must be remembered that you can only get the true Negro unadulterated in the coast regions of Western Africa between the Rivers Gambia and Cameroon.
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In the fringe regions of the West Soudan you have an adulterated form of him—adulterated in idea with Mohammedanism, and the Berber races; to the east and to the south with that other great African race division, the Bantu. I venture to think that Bantu adulteration mainly takes the form of language. We have in our own continent many instances of races of greater strength and conquering power adopting the language of the weaker peoples whom they have conquered, when the language has been one more adapted to the needs of life and more widely diffused than their own, and therefore more suited to commercial intercourse.
The Negro languages are poor, and, moreover, they differ among themselves so gravely that one tribe cannot understand another tribe that lives even next door to it. I know 147 such languages in the region of the Niger Delta alone. Now this sort of thing means interpreters, and is hindersome to commercial intercourse, and therefore you always find the true Negro, when he is in a district where he has opportunities of trading with other peoples, adopting their language, and making for use in public life a corrupt English, Portuguese, or Arabic lingo. Similarly, it seemsto me, he has in the regions he has conquered in Southern and Central Africa, adopted Bantu, and much the same thing has happened, and is still happening, there, as happened in Southern and Central Europe. Just as the powerful barbarian stocks adopted Latin in a way that must keep Priscian’s head still in bandages and to this day seriously mar his happiness in the Elysian fields, so have the true Negroes adopted the flexible Bantu languages. But it would be as unscientific to regard a Spaniard or a Frenchman as a full-blooded ancient Roman, as to regard many of the Negro tribes now speaking Bantu language as Bantu men.
The Negro has, moreover, not only adopted Bantu languages in some regions, such as the Mpongwe, for example, but he has also adopted to a certain extent Bantu culture. I am sure those of you who have lived among the true Negroes and true Bantu, will agree with me that these cultures differ materially. Africa, so far as I know it, namely, from Sierra Leone to Benguela, smells generally rather strong, but particularly so in those districts inhabited by the true Negro. This pre-eminence the true Negroes attain to by leaving the sanitary matters of villages and towns in the hands of Providence. The Bantu culture looks after the cleaning and tidying of the village streets to a remarkable degree, though by no means more clean in the houses, which, in both cultures, are quite as clean and tidy as you will find in England. Again, in the Bantu culture you will find the slaves living in villages apart: inside the true Negro they live with their owners; and there are other points which mark the domestic cultures of these people as being different from each other, which I need not detain you with now. All these points in Bantu domestic culture the trueNegro will adopt, as well as language; but there seem to be two points he does not readily adopt, or rather two points in his own culture to which he clings. One is the religious: in Bantu you find a great female god, who, for practical purposes, is more important than the great male god, in so far as she rules mundane affairs. In the true Negro the great gods are male. There are great female gods, but none of them occupy a position equal to that occupied by Nzambi, as you find the Bantu great female god called among the people who are undoubtedly true Bantu, the Fjort. The other, is the form of the State, and one important part of that form is the institution in the Negro tribes of a regular military organisation, with a regular War Lord, not one and the same with the Peace Lord.
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This, I am aware, is not the customary or fashionable view of race distribution in Africa, but allow me to recall to your remembrance one of the most fascinating books ever written,The Adventures of Andrew Battel, of Leigh in Essex, who for eighteen years lived among the districts of the Lower Congo.
I do this in order to show that I am not theorising in this matter. Andrew Battel left London on a ship sweetly namedThe May Morning, and having a consort named theDolphin—they were pinnaces of fifty tons each—on the 20th of April, 1589. With very little delay they fell into divers disasters, and Andrew became a prisoner in the hands of the Portuguese at Loanda. He had a very bad time of it, the Portuguese then regarding all Englishmen as pirates and nothing more, except heretics and vermin. Andrew, with the enterprise and common sense of our race, escaped several times from captivity, and, with the stupidity of our race fell into it again, but his great escapewas when he fell in with the Ghagas. Well, these Ghagas, Andrew Battel and the Portuguese historians say, were a fearful people, who came from behind Sierra Leone, and when the Kingdom of Congo was discovered by Diego Caõ in 1484, the Ghagas were attacking it so severely that, but for the timely arrival of the Portuguese and the help they gave Congo, there would in a very short time have been no Kingdom of Congo left to discover; and to this day Dr. Blyden, who went there on a Government mission, says that up by Fallaba, in the Sierra Leone hinterland, you will now and then see a Ghaga—a man feared, a man of whom the country people do not know where his home is, nor what he eats or how he lives, but from whom they shrink as from a superior terrible form of human being—a remnant, or remainder over, of those people whose very name struck terror throughout Central Equatorial Africa in the 15th century, when, for some reason we do not know, they made a warlike migration down among the peaceful feeble Bantu.
If you will carefully study the account given of the organisation of the Ghagas and also of the organisation of the Kingdom of Congo, I think you will see that in the Ghagas you have a true Negro State form, while in the Congo Kingdom you have something different; something that is nowadays called Bantu. What became of the Ghagas when foiled by the Portuguese in destroying the Kingdom of Congo is not exactly known, but there is a definite ground for thinking that, modified by intermarriage and a different environment, they split up, and are now represented by the warlike South African tribes and East African tribes, such as the Matabele, and the Massai, and so on. The modification of this portion of the true Negro stem in thesouth and the east is akin to the modification the stem has undergone nearer to its true home on the West Coast of Africa, where to the north of Sierra Leone and behind the coast regions of the Ivory, Gold, and Slave Coasts it has, by admixture with the Berber tribes of the Western Soudan, produced the Black Moors, namely the Mandingo, the Hausa, and Oullaf. These Black Moors of the Western Soudan have attained to a high pitch of barbaric culture; it appears to be a further development of the true Negro culture, but it is so suffused with the Mohammedan idea and law that it is not in this state that we can best study the native culture of the pure Negro. Neither can we study it well in those south and east regions where it has adopted Bantu language and culture to a certain extent.
I will not, however, attempt to enter here upon the question of the continental distribution of the Negro and Bantu stocks; I will merely beg observers of African tribes to note carefully whether their tribe is given to street-cleaning, to keeping slaves in separate villages, or to venerating a great female god. If it is, it has got a Bantu culture; if, in addition, it has a regular military organisation, or a keen commercial spirit, or a certain ability to rule over the tribes round it, I beg they will suspect Negro blood and do their best to give us that tribe’s migration history; and then we may in future times be able to settle the question of race distribution on better lines than our present state of knowledge allows of. Having said that the law and institutions of the true Negro stock cannot best be studied in those regions where they are adulterated by alien cultures, it remains to say where they can best be studied. I think that undoubtedly this region is that of the Oil Rivers.
The thing you must always bear in mind when observing institutions and so on from Sierra Leone down to Lagos, is that the fertile belt between the salt sea of the Bight of Benin and the sand sea of Sahara is but a narrow band of forest and fertile country, while, when you get below Lagos—Lagos itself is a tongue of the Western Soudan coming down to the sea—you are in the true heart of Africa, the Equatorial Forest Belt; and that it is in this belt that you will get your materials at their purest. Therefore take the regions inhabited by the true Negro. In the regions from Sierra Leone to the Gold Coast, you have, it is true, not much white influence or adulteration, mainly because of the rock-reefed shore being dangerous to navigators. There is in this region undoubtedly a great and yearly increasing so-called Arab, but really Mohammedanised Berber, influence working on the true Negro. The natives themselves have their State-form in a state of wreckage from the destruction of the old Empire of Meli, which fell, from reasons we do not know, some time in the 16th century. We have, however, miserably little information on this particular region of Sierra Leone, the Pepper and Ivory Coasts, owing to its never having been worked at by a competent ethnologist; but the accounts we have of it show that the secret societies have here got the upper hand to an abnormal extent for the Negro state. Then we come to the Gold Coast region which has been so excellently worked at by the late Sir A. B. Ellis. Here you have a heavy amount of adulteration in idea, and, moreover, the long-continued white influence—1435-1898—has decidedly tended to a disorganisation of the Negro State-form, and to an undue development of the individual chief; nevertheless the law-form now existent on the Gold Coast is, when tested against aknowledge of the pure Negro law-form as found in the Oil Rivers, almost unaltered, and I think if you will carefully study that valuable book, Sarbar’sFanti Customary Law, you will also see that the State-form is identical in essence with that of the Oil Rivers—the House system.
The House is a collection of individuals; I should hesitate to call it a developed family. I cannot say it is a collection of human beings, because the very dogs and canoes and so on that belong to it are part of it in the eye of the law, and capable therefore alike of embroiling it and advancing its interests. These Houses are bound together into groups by the Long ju-ju proper to the so-called secret society, common to the groups of houses. The House itself is presided over by what is called, in white parlance, a king, and beneath him there are four classes of human beings in regular rank, that is to say, influence in council: firstly, the free relations of the king, if he be a free man himself, which is frequently not the case; if he be a slave, the free people of the family he is trustee for; secondly, the free small people who have placed themselves under the protection of the House, rendering it in return for the assistance and protection it affords them service on demand; the third and fourth classes are true slave classes, the higher one in rank being that called the Winnaboes or Trade boys, the lower the pull-away boys and the plantation hands.[79]The best point in it, as a system, is that it gives to the poorest boy who paddles an oil canoe a chance of becoming a king.
Property itself in West Africa, and as I have reason to believe from reports in other parts of tropical Africa that Iam acquainted with, is firmly governed and is divisible into three kinds. Firstly, ancestral property connected with the office of headmanship, the Stool, as this office is called in the true Negro state, the Cap, as it is called down in Bas Congo; secondly, family property, in which every member of the family has a certain share, and on which he, she, or it has a claim; thirdly, private property, that which is acquired or made by a man or woman by their personal exertions, over and above that which is earned by them in co-operation with other members of their family which becomes family property, and that which is gained by gifts or made in trade by the exercise of a superior trading ability.
Every one of these forms of property is equally sacred in the eye of the African law. The property of the Stool must be worked for the Stool; working it well, increasing it, adds to the importance of the Stool, and makes the king who does so popular; but he is trustee, not owner, of the Stool property, and his family don’t come in for that property on his death, for every profit made by the working of Stool property is like this itself the property of the Stool, and during the king’s life he cannot legally alienate it for his own personal advantage, but can only administer it for the benefit of the Stool.
The king’s power over the property of the family and the private property of the people under his rule, consists in the right of Ban, but not arrière Ban. Family property is much the same as regards the laws concerning it as Stool property. The head of the family is the trustee of it. If he is a spendthrift, or unlucky in its management, he is removed from his position. Any profit he may make with the assistance of a member of his own family becomes family property; but of course any profit he may make with theassistance of his free wives or wife, a person who does not belong to his family, or with the assistance of an outsider, may become his own. Private property acquired in the ways I have mentioned is equally sacred in the eyes of the law. I do not suppose you could find a single human being, slave or free, who had not some private property of his or her very own. Amongst that very interesting and valuable tribe, the Kru, where the family organisation is at its strictest, you can see the anxiety of the individual Kruman to secure for himself a little portion of his hard-earned wages and save it from the hands of his family elders. The Kruman’s wages are paid to him, or changed by him, into cloths and sundry merchandise, and he is not paid off until the end of his term of work. So he has to hurry up in order to appropriate to himself as much as he can on the boat that takes him back to his beloved “We” country, and industriously make for himself garments out of as much of his cotton goods as he can; for even a man’s family, even in Kru country, will not take away his shirt and trousers, but I am afraid there is precious little else that the Kruman can save from their rapacity. What he can save in addition to these, he informs me, he gives to his mother, or failing his mother, to a favourite sister, who looks after it and keeps it for him, she being, woman-like, more fit to quarrel if need be with the family elders than he is himself. But all private property once secured is sacred, very sacred, in the African State-form. I do not know from my own investigations, nor have I been able to find evidence in the investigations of other observers, of any king, priesthood, or man, who would openly dare interfere with the private property of the veriest slave in his district, diocese, or household. I know this seems a risky thing tosay, and I do not like to say it because I feel that if I were a betting man I could make a good thing over betting on it, for experience has taught me that every time an African’s property is taken by a fellow African under native law, and in times of peace, it is taken after it is confiscated by its original owner, either in bankruptcy or crime. You will hear dozens of accounts of how everything an African possessed was seized on, etc., but if you look into them you will find in every case that the individual so cleaned out owed it all, and frequently far more, before he or she fell into the hands of the Official Receiver, the local chief.
One of the most common causes of an individual’s entire estate being seized upon is a conviction for witchcraft. Every form of property in Africa is liable to be called on to meet its owner’s debts, and the witch’s is too heavy a debt for any individual’s private estate to meet and leave a surplus. For not only does the witch owe to the family of the person, of whose murder he or she is convicted, the price of that life, but it is felt by the Community that the witch has not been found out in the first offence, and so every miscellaneous affliction that has recently happened is put down to the convicted witch’s account. Mind you, I do not sayallthese claims aresatisfiedout of the estate of the witch deceased, (witches are always deceased by the authorities with the utmost despatch after conviction) because the said property has during the course of the trial got into the hands of Officialdom and has a natural tendency to stop there. But one thing is certain, there is no residuary estate for the witch’s own relations. Not that for the matter of that they would dare claim it in any case, lest they should be involved with the witch and accused as accomplices.
Still, legally, the witch’s relations have the consolation ofknowing that, if things go smoothly and they evade being accused of a share in the crime, they cannot be called on to meet the debts incurred by the witch. From a family point of view better a dead witch than a live speculative trader.
The reason of this delicate little point of law I confess gave me more trouble to discover than it ought to have done, for the explanation was quite simple, namely, the witch’s body had been taken over by the creditors.
Now, according to African law, if you take a man’s life, or, for the matter of that, his body, dead or alive, in settlement of a debt, your claim is satisfied. You have got legal tender for it. I remember coming across an amusing demonstration of this law in the colony of Cameroon. There was, and still is, a windy-headed native trader there who for years has hung by the hair of loans over the abyss of bankruptcy. All the local native traders knew that man, but there arrived a new trader across from Calabar district who did not. Like the needle to the pole, our friend turned to him for a loan in goods and got it, with the usual result namely, excuses, delays, promises—in fact anything but payment; enraged at this, and determined to show the Cameroon traders at large how to carry on business on modern lines, the young Calabar trader called in the Government and the debtor was gently but firmly confined to the Government grounds. Of course he was not put in the chain-gang, not being a serious criminal, but provided with a palm-mat broom he proceeded to do as little as possible with it, and lead a contented, cheerful existence.
It rather worried the Calabar man to see this, and also that his drastic measure caused no wild rush to him of remonstrating relations of the imprisoned debtor; indeed they didnot even turn up to supply the said debtor with food, let alone attempt to buy him off by discharging his debt. In place of them, however, one by one the Cameroon traders came to call on the Calabar merchant, all in an exceedingly amiable state of mind and very civil. They said it gave them pleasure to observe his brisk method of dealing with that man, and it was a great relief to their minds to see a reliable man of wealth like himself taking charge of that debtor’s affairs, for now they saw the chance of seeing the money they had years ago advanced, and of which they had not, so far, seen a fraction back, neither capital nor interest. The Calabar man grew pale and anxious as the accounts of the debts he had made himself responsible for came in, and he knew that if the debtor died on his hands, that is to say in the imprisonment he had consigned him to, he would be obliged to pay back all those debts of the Cameroon man, for the German Government have an intelligent knowledge of native law and carry it out in Cameroon. Still the Calabar man did not like climbing down and letting the man go, so he supplied him with food and worried about his state of health severely. This that villainous Cameroon fellow found out, and was therefore forthwith smitten with an obscure abdominal complaint, a fairly safe thing to have as my esteemed friend Dr. Plehn was absent from that station, and therefore not able to descend on the malingerer with nauseous drugs. It is needless to say that at this juncture the Calabar man gave in, and let the prisoner out, freeing himself thereby from responsibility beyond his own loss, but returning a poorer and a wiser man to his own markets, and more assured than ever of the villainy of the whole Dualla tribe.
In any case legally the relatives of a debtor seized orpawned can redeem, if they choose, the person or the body by paying off the debt with the interest, 33½ per cent. per annum, to the common rate. Great sacrifices and exertions are made by his family to redeem almost every debtor, and the family property is strained to its utmost on his or her behalf; but in the case of a witch it is different, no set of relatives wish to redeem a convicted witch, who, reduced by the authorities to a body, and that mostly in bits and badly damaged, is not a thing desirable. No! they say Society has got him and we are morally certain he must have been illegitimate, for such a thing as a witch never happened in our family before, and if we show the least interest in the remains we shall get accused ourselves. Of course if a man or woman’s life is taken on any other kind of accusation save witchcraft, the affair is on a different footing. The family then forms a higher estimate of the deceased’s value than they showed signs of to him or her when living, and they try to screw that value to the uttermost farthing out of the person who has killed their kinsman. Society at large only regards you for doing this as a fool man to think so highly of the departed, whose true value it knows to be far below that set on him. In the case of a living man taken for debt, he is a slave to his creditor, a pawn slave, but not on the same footing as a boughten slave; he has not the advantages of a true slave in the matter of succeeding to the wealth or position of the house, but against that he can be a free man the moment his debts are paid. This may be a theoretical possibility only, just as it would be theoretical for me to expect my family to bail me out if the bail were a question of a million sterling, but in legal principle the redemption is practicable.
In the case of taking a dead body another factor isintroduced. By taking charge of and interring a body, you become the executor to the deceased man’s estate. I have known three sets of relatives arrive with three coffins for one body, and a consequential row, for a good deal can be made by an executor; but if you make yourself liable for the body’s liabilities care is needed, and there is no reckless buying of bodies with whose private affairs you are not conversant, in West Africa. It is far too wild a speculation for such quiet commercial men as my African friends are. Hence it comes that a Negro merchant on a trading tour away from his home, overtaken by death in a town where he is not known, is not buried, but dried and carefully put outside the town, or on the road to the market, the road he came by, so that any one of his friends or relations, who may perchance come some time that way, can recognise the remains. If they do they can take the remains home and bury them if they like, or bury them there, free and welcome, but the local County Council will do nothing of the kind. A nice thing a set of respectable elders, or as their Fanti, name goes Paynim, would let themselves in for by burying the body of a gentleman who happened to have four murders, ten adultery cases, a crushing mass of debt, and no earthly assets save a few dilapidated women, bad ones at that, and a whole pack of children with the Kraw Kraw, or the Guinea worm, or both together and including the Yaws.
This brings us to another way besides witchcraft whereby a gentleman in West Africa can throw away a fine fortune by paying his debts, namely, the so-called adultery. Adultery out there, I hastily beg to remark, may be only brushing against a woman in a crowded market place or bush path, or raising a hand in defence against a virago. It’s the wrongword, but the customary one to use for touching women, and it is exceedingly expensive and a constant source of danger to the most respectable of men, the demands made on its account being exorbitant: sometimes so exorbitant that I have known of several men who, in order to save their family from ruin—for if their own private property were insufficient to meet it the family property would be liable for the balance—have given themselves up as pawn-slaves to their accusers.
There is but one check on this evil of frivolous and false accusation, and that is that when there have been many cases of it in a district, the cult of the Law God of that region gets a high moral fit on and comes down on that district and eats the adultery. I need not say that this is to the private benefit of no layman in the district, for notoriously it is an expensive thing to have the Law God down, and a thing every district tries to avoid. There is undoubtedly great evil in this law, which presses harder on private and family property than anything else, harder even than accusations of witchcraft; but it safeguards the women, enabling them to go to and fro about the forest paths, and in the villages and market places at home, and far from home, without fear of molestation or insult, bar that which they get up amongst themselves.
The methods employed in enforcing the payment of a debt are appeal to the village headman or village elders; or, after giving warning, the seizure of property belonging to the debtor if possible, or if not, that of any other person belonging to his village will do. This procedure usually leads to palaver, and the elders decide whether the amount seized is equal to the debt or whether it is excessive; if excessive the excess has to be returned, and there is also the appeal to the Law Society. In the regions of the BeninBight we have also, as in India, the custom of collecting debts by Dharna. In West Africa the creditor who sits at the debtor’s door is bound to bring with him food for one day, this is equivalent to giving notice; after the first day the debtor has to supply him with food, for were he to die he would be answerable for his life and the worth thereof in addition to the original debt. If I mention that there is no community of goods between a man and his wife (women owning and holding property under identical conditions to men in the eye of the law), I think I shall have detained you more than long enough on the subject of the laws of property in West Africa. You will see that the thing that underlies them is the conception that every person is the member of some family, and all the other members of the family are responsible for him and to him and he to them; and every family is a member of some house, and all the other members of the house are responsible for and to the families of which it is composed.
The natural tendency of this is for property to become joint property, family property, or to be absorbed into family property. A man by his superior ability acquires, it may be, a considerable amount of private property, but at his death it passes into the hands of the family. There are Wills, but they are not the rule, and they more often refer to an appointment of a successor in position than to a disposal of effects. The common practice of gifts there supplies the place of Wills with us; a rich man gives his friend or his favourite wife, child, or slave, things during his life, while he can see that they get it, and does not leave the matter till after his death. The good point about the African system is that it leaves no person uncared for; there are no unemployed starving poor, every individual isresponsible for and to his fellow men and women who belong to the same community, and the naturally strong instinct of hospitality, joined with the knowledge that the stranger within the gates belongs to a whole set of people who will make palaver if anything happens to him, looks well after the safety of wanderers in Negro land. The bad point is, of course that the system is cumbersome, and, moreover, it tends, with the operation of the general African law ofmutterrecht, the tracing of descent through females, to prevent the building up of great families. For example, you have a great man, wise, learned, just, and so on; he is esteemed in his generation, but at his death his property does not go to the sons born to him by one of his wives, who is a great woman of a princely line, but to the eldest son of his sister by the same mother as his own. This sister’s mother and his own mother was a slave wife of his father’s; this, you see, keeps good blood in a continual state of dilution with slave blood. The son he has by his aristocratic wife may come in for the property of her brother, but her brother belongs to a different family, so he does not take up his father’s greatness and carry it on with the help his father’s wealth could give him in the father’s family. I do not say the system is unjust or anything like that, mind; I merely say that it does not tend to the production of a series of great men in one family.
Nevertheless, when once you have mastered the simple fundamental rules that underlie the native African idea of property they must strike you as just, elaborately just; and there is another element of simplicity in the thing, and that is that all forms of property are subject to the same law, land, women, china basons, canoes, slaves, it matters not what, there is the law.
You will ofter hear of the vast stretches of country in Africa unowned, and open to all who choose to cultivate them or possess them. Well, those stretches of unowned land are not in West Africa. I do not pretend to know other parts of the continent. In West Africa there is not one acre of land that does not belong to some one, who is trustee of it, for a set of people who are themselves only life tenants, the real owner being the tribe in its past, present, and future state, away into eternity at both ends. But as West African land is a thing I should not feel, even if I had the money, anxious to acquire as freehold, and as you can get under native law a safe possession of mining and cultivation rights from the representatives living of the tribe they belong to, I do not think that any interference is urgently needed with a system fundamentally just.
After having said so much on African native property, it may be as well to say what African property consists of. It is not necessary for me to go into the affair very fully, but you will remember, I am sure, the old statement of “women and slaves constitute the wealth of an African.” The African himself would tell you nine times in ten that women and slaves caused him the lack of it. Still they are undoubtedly a factor in the true Negro’s wealth, but to consider them property it is necessary to consider them as property in different classes. Here and now I need only divide them into two classes—wives properly so-called, and male and female slaves. The duty of the slave is to increase directly the wealth of his or her owner—that of the wife to increase it also, but in a different manner, namely, by bringing her influence to bear for his advantage among her own family and among the people of the district she lives in. A big chief will have three or moreof these wives, each of them living in her own house, or in the culture state of Calabar, in her own yard in his house, having her own farm away in the country, where she goes at planting and harvest times. She possesses her own slaves and miscellaneous property, which includes her children, and the main part of this property is really the property of her family, just as most people’s property is in West Africa. The husband will reside with each of these wives in turn, yet he has a home of his own, with his slave wives, and his children properly so called, similarly having his own farm and miscellaneous property, which similarly belongs mainly to his family, and this house is usually presided over by his mother, or failing her a favourite sister.
The immediate rule of a husband over his wife may be likened to that of a constitutional monarch, that of a man or woman over a slave to that of an absolute monarch, though true absolutism is in the Negro State-form not to be found in any individual man. The nearest approach to it is, very properly, in the hands of the cult of the Law God, the tribal secret society, but even from that society the individual can appeal, if he dare, to Long Ju Ju.
The other forms of wealth possessed by an African, his true wealth, are market rights, utensils, canoes, arms, furniture, land, and trade goods. It is in his capacity to command these things in large quantities that his wealth lies, it is his wives and slaves who enable and assist him to do this thing. So take the whole together and you will see how you can have a very rich African, rich in the only way it is worth while being rich in, power, yet a man who possibly could not pay you down £20, but a real millionaire for all that.
FOOTNOTES:[79]See “Lecture on African Religion and Law,” published by leave of the Hibbert Trustees in theNational Review. September, 1897.
[79]See “Lecture on African Religion and Law,” published by leave of the Hibbert Trustees in theNational Review. September, 1897.
[79]See “Lecture on African Religion and Law,” published by leave of the Hibbert Trustees in theNational Review. September, 1897.
ToListJa Ja, King of Opobo[To face page 443.Ja Ja, King of Opobo.
[To face page 443.
Ja Ja, King of Opobo.
It is with some diffidence I attempt this task, because many more able men have written about this country, with whom occasionally I shall most likely be found not quite in accord; but if a long residence in and connection with a country entitles one to be heard, then I am fully qualified, for I first went to Western Africa in 1862, and my last voyage was in 1896.
Previous to 1891, the date at which this Coast (Benin to Old Calabar) was formed into a British Protectorate under the name of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, now the Niger Coast Protectorate, each of the rivers frequented by Europeans for the purpose of trade was ruled over more or less intelligently by one, and in some cases by two, sable potentates, who were responsible to Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul for the safety and well-being of the white traders; also for the fostering of trade in the hinterlands of their district, for which good offices they were paid by the white traders a duty called “comey,” which amounted to about 2s. 6d. per ton on the palm oil exported. When the palmkernel trade commenced it was generally arranged that two tons of palm kernels should be counted to equal one ton of palm oil so far as regards fiscal arrangements. The day this duty was paid was looked upon by the king, or kings if there were two of them, as a festival; in earlier years a certain amount of ceremony was also observed.
The king would arrive on board the trader’s hulk or sailing ship (some firms doing their trade without the assistance of a hulk) to an accompaniment of war horns, drums, and other savage music. With the king would generally come one or two of his chiefs and his Ju-Ju man, but before mounting the gangway ladder a bottle of spirit or palm wine would be produced from some hidden receptacle, one of the small boys, who always follow the kings or chiefs to carry their handkerchiefs and snuff-boxes, would then draw the cork and hand a wine-glass and the bottle to the Ju-Ju man, who would pour himself out a glass, saying a few words to the Ju-Ju of the river, at the same time spilling a little of the liquor into the water; he would then drink up what remained in the glass, hand glass and bottle to the king, who would then proceed as the Ju-Ju man had done, being followed on the same lines by the chiefs who were with him.
Their devotions having thus been duly attended to, the king, Ju-Ju man and his attendant chiefs would mount the ladder to the deck of the vessel. The European trader would, as a rule, be there to receive him and escort him on to the poop, where the king would be asked to sit down to a sumptuous repast of pickled pork, salt beef, tinned salmon, pickles and cabin biscuits. There would be also roast fowls and goat for the trader and his assistants, and forvegetables yams and potatoes, the latter a great treat for the white men, but not thought much of by the natives.
The king with his friends making terrific onslaughts on the pork, beef and tinned salmon, after having eaten all they could would ask for more, and pile up a plate of beef, pork and salmon, if there was any left, to pass out to their attendants on the main deck, at the same time begging some biscuits for their pull-away boys in the canoe, a request always acceded to.
Drinkables, you will observe, so far have had no part in the feed; it is because these untutored natives follow Nature’s laws much closer than Europeans, and never drink until they have finished eating. The king, having done justice to the victuals, now politely intimates to the European trader that “he be time for wash mouth.” Being asked what his sable majesty would like to do it in, he generally elects “port win,” as the natives call port wine. His chiefs, not being such connoisseurs as his majesty, are, as a rule, satisfied with a bottle or two of beer or gin, carefully sticking to the empty bottles.
In the meantime, had you looked over the side of the ship, you would have wondered what his majesty’s forty or fifty canoe boys were doing, so carefully divesting themselves of every rag of cloth and hiding it by folding it up as small as possible and sitting on it. This was so as to point out to the trader, when he came to the gangway to see the king away, that “he no be proper for king’s boys no have cloth.”
The king, having duly washed his mouth, is now ready to proceed with the business of his visit. The payment of the comey is very soon arranged, it being a settled sum and the different goods having their recognised value inpawns, bars, coppers or crues according to the currency of the particular river.
But the “shake hand”[80]is now to be got through, and the “dashing”[81]to the king; his friends who are with him want their part, and it would surprise a stranger the number of wants that seem to keep cropping up in a West African king’s mind as he wobbles about your ship, until, finding he has begged every mortal thing that he can, he suddenly makes up his mind that further importunity will be useless; he decides to order his people into his canoe, which in most cases they obey with surprising alacrity, brought about, I have no doubt, by the thought that now comes their turn.
Arrived at the gangway, his majesty, in the most natural way imaginable, notices for the first time (?) that his boys are all naked, and turning with an appealing look to the trader, he points out the bareness of the royal pull-away boys, and intimates that no white trader who respects himself could think of allowing such a state of things to continue a moment longer. This meant at least a further dash of four dozen fishermen’s striped caps and about twelve pieces of Manchester cloth.
One would suppose that this was the last straw, but before his majesty gets into his canoe several more little wants crop up, amongst others a tot of rum each for his canoe boys, and perchance a few fathoms of rope to make a new painter for his canoe, until sometimes thewhite trader almost loses his temper. I have heard of one (?) who did on one occasion, and being an Irishman, he thus apostrophised one of these sable kings, “Be jabers, king, I am thinking if I dashed you my ship you would be after wanting me to dash you the boats belonging to her, and after that to supply you with paint to paint them with for the next ten years.” There was a glare in that Irishman’s eye, and that king noticed it, and decided the time had come for him to scoot, and history says he scooted. In the early days of the palm oil trade, the custom inaugurated by the slave traders of receiving the king on his visit to the ship was by a salute of six or seven guns, and another of equal number on his departure, the latter being an intimation to all whom it might concern that his majesty had duly received his comey, and that trade was open with the said ship. This was continued for some years, but as the security of the seas became greater in those parts the trading ships gave up the custom of carrying guns, and the intimation that the king “done broke trade” with the last arrival was effected by his majesty sending off a canoe of oil to the ship, and the sending round of a verbal message by one of the king’s men.
Since the year 1891 the kings of the Oil Rivers have been relieved of the duty of collecting comey, as a regular government of these rivers has been inaugurated by H.B.M. Government, comey being replaced by import duties.
Though there is a great similarity in the native form of government in these parts, it would be impossible to convey a true description of the manners and customs of the various places if I did not treat of each river and its people separately; I shall therefore commence by describing the people of Benin.
The Benin kingdom, so far as this account of it will go, was said to extend from the boundaries of the Mahin country (a district between the British Colony of Lagos and the Benin River) and the river Ramos; thus on the coast line embracing the rivers Benin, Escravos, and Forcados, also the hinterland, taking in Warri up to the Yoruba States.
For the purpose of the work I have set myself, I shall treat of that part of the kingdom that may be embraced by a line drawn from the mouth of the river Ramos up to the town of Warri, thence to Benin City, and brought down to the coast a little to the north of the Benin River. This tract of country is inhabited by four tribes, viz., the Jakri tribe, the dominant people on the coast line; the Sobo tribe, a very timid but most industrious people, great producers of palm oil, as well as being great agriculturists; an unfortunate people placed as they were between the extortions of the Jakris and the slave raiding of the Benin City king for his various sacrificial purposes; the third tribe are the Ijos, inhabiting the lower parts of the Escravos, Forcados, and Ramos rivers; this latter tribe are great canoe builders and agriculturists in a small way, producea little palm oil, and by some people are accused of being cannibals; this latter accusation I don’t think they deserve, in the full acceptation of the word, for thirty-three years ago I passed more than a week in one of their towns, when I was quite at their mercy, being accompanied by no armed men and carrying only a small revolver myself, which never came out of my pocket. Since when I have visited some of their towns on the Bassa Creek outside the boundary I have drawn for the purpose of this narrative, and never was I treated with the least disrespect.
The fourth tribe is the Benin people proper, whose territory is supposed to extend as far back as the boundaries of the Yoruba nation, starting from the right bank of the Benin River. In this territory is the once far-famed city of Benin, where lived the king, to whom the Jakri, the Sobo, and the Ijo tribes paid tribute.
These people have at all times since their first intercourse with Europeans, now some four hundred years, been renowned for their barbaric customs.
The earlier travellers who visited Benin City do not mention human sacrifices among these customs, but I have no doubt they took place; as these travellers were generally traders and wanted to return to Benin for trade purposes, they most likely thought the less said on the subject the best. I find, however, that in the last century more than one traveller mentions the sacrifice of human beings by the king of Benin, but do not lead one to imagine that it was carried to the frightful extent it has been carried on in later years.
I think myself that the custom of sacrificing human beings has been steadily increasing of late years, as the city of Benin became more and more a kind of holy city amongst the pagan tribes.
Their religion, like that of all the neighbouring pagans, admits of a Supreme Being, maker of all things, but as he is supposed to be always doing good, there is no necessity to sacrifice to him.
They, however, implicitly believe in a malignant spirit, to whom they sacrifice men and animals to satiate its thirst for blood and prevent it from doing them any harm.
Some of the pagan customs are of a sanitary character. Take, for instance, the yam custom. This custom is more or less observed all along the West Coast of Africa, and where it is unattended by any sacrificing of human or animal life, except the latter be to make a feast, it should be encouraged as a kind of harvest festival. When I say this was a sanitary law, I must explain that the new yams are a most dangerous article of food if eaten before the yam custom has been made, which takes place a certain time after the yams are found to be fit for taking out of the ground.
The new yams are often offered for sale to the Europeans at the earliest moment that they can be dug up, some weeks in many cases before the custom is made; the consequence is that many Europeans contract severe attacks of dysentery and fever about this time.
The well-to-do native never touches them before the proper time, but the poorer classes find it difficult to keep from eating them, as they are not only very sweet, but generally very cheap when they first come on the market.
The king of Benin was assisted in the government of his country and his tributaries by four principal officers; three of these were civil officers; these officers and the Ju-Ju men were the real governors of the country, the king being little more than a puppet in their hands.
It was these three officers who decided who should be appointed governor of the lower river, generally called New Benin.
Their choice as a rule fell upon the most influential chief of the district, their last choice being Nana, the son of the late chief Alumah, the most powerful and richest chief that had ever been known amongst the Jakri men. I shall have more to say about Nana when I am dealing with the Jakri tribe.
Amongst the principal annual customs held by the king of Old Benin, were the customs to his predecessors, generally called “making father” by the English-speaking native of the coast.
The coral custom was another great festival; besides these there were many occasional minor customs held to propitiate the spirit of the sun, the moon, the sky, and the earth. At most of these, if not all, human sacrifices were made.
Kings of Benin did not inherit by right of birth; the reigning king feeling that his time to leave this earth was approaching, would select his successor from amongst his sons, and calling his chief civil officer would confide to him the name of the one he had selected to follow him.
Upon the king’s death this officer would take into his own charge the property of the late king, and receive the homage of all the expectant heirs; after enjoying the position of regent for some few days he would confide his secret to the chief war minister, and the chosen prince would be sent for and made to kneel, while they declared to him the will of his father. The prince thereupon would thank these two officers for their faithful services, and then he was immediately proclaimed king of Benin.
Now commences trouble for the non-successful claimants; the king’s throne must be secure, so they and their sons must be suppressed. As it was not allowed to shed royal blood, they were quietly suffocated by having their noses, mouths and ears stuffed with cloth. To somewhat take the sting out of this cruel proceeding they were given a most pompous funeral.
Whilst on the subject of funerals I think I had better tell you something about the funeral customs of the Benineese.
When a king dies, it is said, his domestics solicit the honour of being buried with him, but this is only accorded to a few of his greatest favourites (I quite believe this to have been true, for I have seen myself slaves of defunct chiefs appealing to be allowed to join their late master); these slaves are let down into the grave alive, after the corpse has been placed therein. Graves of kings and chiefs in Western Africa being nice roomy apartments, generally about 12 feet by 8 by 14, but in Benin, I am told, the graves have a floor about 16 feet by 12, with sides tapering to an aperture that can be closed by a single flag-stone. On the morning following the interment, this flag-stone was removed, and the people down below asked if they had found the King. This question was put to them every successive morning, until no answer being returned it was concluded that the slaves had found their master. Meat was then roasted on the grave-stone and distributed amongst the people with a plentiful supply of drink, after which frightful orgies took place and great licence allowed to the populace—murders taking place and the bodies of the murdered people being brought as offerings to the departed, though at any other time murder was severely punished. Chiefs and women of distinction arealso entitled to pompous funerals, with the usual accompaniment of massacred slaves. If a native of Benin City died in a distant part of the kingdom, the corpse used to be dried over a gentle fire and conveyed to this city for interment. Cases have been known where a body having been buried with all due honours and ceremonies, it has been afterwards taken up and the same ceremonies as before gone through a second time.
The usual funeral ceremonies for a person of distinction last about seven or eight days, and consist, besides the human sacrifices, of lamentations, dancing, singing and considerable drinking.
The near relatives mourn during several months—some with half their heads shaved, others completely shaven.
The law of inheritance for people of distinction differs from that of the kings in the fact that the eldest son inherits by right of primogeniture, and succeeds to all his father’s property, wives and slaves. He generally allows his mother a separate establishment and maintenance and finds employment and maintenance for his father’s other wives in the family residence. He is expected to act liberally with his younger brothers, but there is no law on this question. Before entering into full possession of his father’s property he must petition the king to allow him to do so, accompanying the said petition with a present to the king of a slave, as also one to each of the three great officers of the king. This petition is invariably granted. A widow cannot marry again without the permission of her son, if she have a son; or if he be too young, the man who marries her must supply a female slave to wait upon him instead of his mother.
Theft was punished by fine only, if the stolen propertywas restored, but by flogging if the thief was unable to make restitution.
Murder was of rare occurrence. When detected it was punished with death by decapitation, and the body of the culprit was quartered and exposed to the beasts and birds of prey.
If the murderer be a man of some considerable position he was not executed, but escorted out of the country and never allowed to return.
In case of a murder committed in the heat of passion, the culprit could arrange matters by giving the dead person a suitable funeral, paying a heavy fine to the three chief officers of the king and supplying a slave to suffer in his place. In this case he was bound to kneel and keep his forehead touching the slave during his execution.
In all cases where an accusation was not clearly proved, the accused would have to undergo an ordeal to prove his guilt or innocence. To fully describe the whole of these would fill several hundred pages, and as most of them could be managed by the Ju-Ju men in such a way, that they could prove a man guilty or innocent according to the amount of present they had received from the accused’s friends, I will pass on to other subjects.
Adultery was very severely punished in whatever class it took place; in the lower classes all the property of the guilty man passed at once to the injured husband, the woman being severely flogged and expelled from her husband’s house.
Amongst the middle class this crime could be atoned for by the friends of the guilty woman making a money present to the injured husband; and the lady would be restored to her outraged lord’s favour.
The upper classes revenged themselves by having the two culprits instantly put to death, except when the male culprit belonged to the upper classes; then the punishment was generally reduced to banishment from the kingdom of Benin for life.
Amongst these people one finds some peculiar customs concerning children. Amongst others, a child is supposed to be under great danger from evil spirits until it has passed its seventh day. On this day a small feast is provided by the parents; still it is thought well to propitiate the evil spirits by strewing a portion of the feast round the house where the child is.
Twin children, according to some accounts, were not looked upon with the same horror in Benin as they are in other parts of the Niger Delta; as a fact, they were looked upon with favour, except in one town of the kingdom, the name of which I have never been able to get, nor have I been able to locate the spot; but wherever it is, I am informed both mother and children were sacrificed to a demon, who resided in a wood in the neighbourhood of this town.
This law of killing twin children, like most Ju-Ju laws, could be got over if the father was himself not too deeply steeped in Ju-Juism, and was sufficiently wealthy to bribe the Ju-Ju priests. The law was always mercilessly carried out in the case of the poorer class of natives—the above refers solely to the part of Benin kingdom directly under the king of Old Benin, and does not hold good with regard to the Sobos, Jakris, or Ijos.
According to Clapperton the Benin people are descendants of the Yoruba tribes, the Yoruba tribes being descended from six brothers, all the sons of one mother. Their names were Ikelu, Egba, Ijebu, Ifé, Ibini (Benin), and Yoruba.
According to the late Sultan Bello (the Foulah chief of Sokoto at the time of Captain Clapperton’s visit to that city), the Yoruba tribes are descended from the children of Canaan, who were of the tribe of Nimrod.
In my opinion there is room for much speculation on this statement of the Sultan Bello.
It is a very curious fact that the people of Benin City have been, from the earliest accounts we have of them, great workers in brass. Might not the ancestors of this people have brought the art of working in brass with them from the far distant land of Canaan? Moses, when speaking of the land of Canaan, says, “out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass” (Deut. viii. 9). Here we must understand copper to be meant; because brass is not dug out of the earth, but copper is, and found in abundance in that part of the world.
Yet another curious subject for reflection, from the first information that European travellers give us (circa1485) in their descriptions of the city of Benin, mention has invariably made of towers, from the summits of which monster brass serpents were suspended. Upon the entry of the punitive expedition into Benin City in the month of February, 1897, Benin City still possessed one of these serpents in brass, not hanging from a tower, but laid upon the roof of one of the king’s houses.
Might not these brazen serpents be a remnant of some tradition handed down from the time of Moses? for do we not read in the Scriptures, that the people of Israel had sinned; and God to punish them sent fiery serpents, which bit the people, and many died. Then Moses cried to God, and God told him to make a serpent of brass, and set it on a pole. (Numbers xxi. 9.)
While on the subject of serpents, I may mention that in the neighbourhood of Benin, there is a Ju-Ju ordeal pond or river, said to be infested with dangerous and poisonous snakes and alligators, through which a man accused of any crime passing unscathed proves his innocence.
There are some other customs connected with the position of the king of Benin, as the head of the Ju-Juism of his country, which seem to have some trace of a Biblical origin, but which I will not discuss here, but leave to the ethnologists to unravel, if they can.
That they were a superior people to the surrounding tribes is amply demonstrated by their being workers in brass and iron; displaying considerable art in some of their castings in brass, iron, copper and bronze, their carving in ivory, and their manufacture of cotton cloth—no other people in the Delta showing any such ability.
The Jakri tribe, who inhabit that part of the country lying between the Sobo country and the Ijo country, were the dominant tribe in the lower or New Benin country. Being themselves tributary to the Benin king, they dare not make the Sobo or Ijo men pay a direct tribute to them for the right to live, but they indirectly took a much larger tribute from them than ever they paid the king of Benin.
The Jakris were the brokers, and would not allow either of the above-named tribes to trade direct with the white men.
The principal towns of the Jakri men were:—Brohemie[82](destroyed by the English in 1894): this town was generally called Nana’s town of late years. Nana was Governor of the whole of the country lying between a line drawn from the Gwato Creek to Wari and the sea-coast; his governorship extending a little beyond the Benin River, and running down the coast to the Ramos River. This appointment he held from the king of Benin, and was officially recognised by the British Consul as the head-man of the Jakri tribe, and for any official business in connection with the country over which he was Governor. Jeboo or Chief Peggy’s town, situated on the waterway to Lagos; Jaquah town or Chief Ogrie’s town. The above towns are all on the right bank of the river.
On the left bank of the river are found the following towns:—Bateri, or Chief Numa’s town, lying about half an hour’s pull in a boat from Déli Creek. Chief Numa, was the son of the late Chief Chinomé, a rival in his day to Allumah, the father of Nana, the late Governor; Chinomé was the son of Queen Doto of Wari, who years ago was most anxious to see the white man at her town, and repeatedly advised the white men to use theForcados for their principal trading station; but the old Chief Allumah was against any such exodus, and as he was a very big trader in palm-oil, he of course carried the day, and the white men stuck to their swamp at the mouth of the river Benin.
Close to Numa’s town his brother Fragoni has established a small town. At some little distance from Bateri is Booboo, or the late Chief Bregbi’s town. Galey, the eldest son of the late Chinomé, has a small town in the Déli Creek. This man, though the eldest son of the late Chief Chinomé, is not a chief, though his younger brother Numa is. Here is a knotty point in Jakri law of inheritance, which differs from the Benin City law on the subject.
Wari, the capital of Jakri, though almost if not actually as old a town as Benin City, has never had the bad reputation that the latter city has always had. I attribute this to the fact that the ladies of Warri have always been a power in the land.
Sapele is a place that has come very much into notice since the country has been under the jurisdiction of the Niger Coast Protectorate, and is without doubt one of the best stations on the Benin territory. I am glad to say that the Europeans have at last deserted to a great extent their factories at the mouth of the Benin River, and are now principally located at Sapele and Wari.
The Jakri tribe claim to be of the same race as the people of Benin City and kingdom. This I am inclined to dispute; I think they were a coast tribe like the Ijos. Tradition says that Wari was founded by people from Benin kingdom and for many years was tributary to the king of Benin, but in 1778 Wari was reported to be quite independent. They may have become almost the samerace by intermarriage with the Benin people that went to Wari; but that they were originally the same race I say no.
The religion of the Jakri tribe and the native laws and system of ordeals were, as far as I have been able to ascertain, identical with those of the Benin kingdom; with the exception of the human sacrifices and their law of inheritance which does not admit the right of primogeniture—following in this respect, the laws of the Bonny men and their neighbours. Twin children are usually killed by the Jakris, and the mother driven into the bush to die.
The Jakri tribe are, without doubt, one of the finest in the Niger Coast Protectorate; many of their present chiefs are very honest and intelligent men, also excellent traders. Their women are noted as being the finest and best looking for miles round.
The Jakri women have already made great strides towards their complete emancipation from the low state in which the women of neighbouring tribes still find themselves, many of them being very rich and great traders.
The Sobo tribe have been kept so much in the background by the Jakris that little is known about them. What little is known of them is to their credit.
We now come to the Ijo tribe, or at least, that portion of them that live within the Niger Coast Protectorate; these men are reported by some travellers to be cannibals, and a very turbulent people; this character has been given them by interested parties. Their looks are very much against them as they disfigure their faces by heavy cuts as tribal marks, and some pick up the flesh between theireyes making a kind of ridge, that gives them a savage expression. Though I have put the limit of these people at the river Ramos, they really extend along the coast as far as the western bank of the Akassa river. They have never had a chance and, with the exception of large timber for making canoes, their country does not produce much. Though I have seen considerable numbers of rubber-producing trees in their country, I never was able to induce them to work it. No doubt they asked the advice of their Ju-Ju as to taking my advice, and he followed the usual rule laid down by the priesthood of Ju-Ju-ism, no innovations.
Whilst I was in the Ijo country I carefully studied their Ju-Ju, as I had been told they were great believers in, and practisers of Ju-Ju-ism. I found little in their system differing from that practised in most of the rivers of the Delta.
In all these practices human agency plays a very large part, and this seems to be known even to the lower orders of the people; as an instance, I must here relate an experience I once had amongst the Ijos. I had arranged with a chief living on the Bassa Creek to lend me his fastest canoe and twenty-five of his people, to take me to the Brass river; the bargain was that his canoe should be ready at Cock-Crow Peak the following morning. I was ready at the water-side by the time appointed, but only about six of the smallest boys had put in an appearance; the old chief was there in a most furious rage, sending off messengers in all directions to find the canoe boys. After about two hours’ work and the expenditure of much bad language on the part of the old chief, also some hard knocks administered to the canoe boys by the men whohad been sent after them, as evidenced by the wales I saw on their backs, the canoe was at last manned, and I took my seat in it under a very good mat awning which nearly covered the canoe from end to end, and thanking my stars that now my troubles had come to an end I hoped at least for a time. I was, however, a very big bit too premature, for before the old chief would let the canoe start, he informed me he must make Ju-Ju for the safety of his canoe and the safe return of it and all his boys, to say nothing of my individual safety.