Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

Even the Felups, whose territory now stretches from the Gambia to the Cacheo, but formerly reached the Geba and the Bissagos Islands, do not form a single group. Originally the name of an obscure coast-tribe, the term Felup or Fulup has been extended by the Portuguese traders to all the surrounding peoples--Ayamats, Jolas, Jigushes, Vacas, Joats, Karons, Banyuns, Banjars, Fuluns, Bayots and some others who amid much local diversity, presented a sufficiently general outward resemblance to be regarded as a single people by the first European settlers. The Felups proper display the physical and mental characters of the typical Negro even in an exaggerated form--black colour, flat nose, wide nostrils, very thick and everted lips, red on the inner surface, stout muscular frame, correlated with coarse animal passions, crass ignorance, no arts, industry, or even tribal organisation, so that every little family group is independent and mostly in a state of constant feud with its neighbours. All go naked, armed with bow and arrow, and live in log huts which, though strongly built, are indescribably filthy[148].

Mother-right frequently prevails, rank and property being transmitted in the female line. There is some notion of a superhuman being vaguely identified with the sky, the rain, wind or thunderstorm. But all live in extreme terror of the medicine-man, who is openly courted, but inwardly detested, so that whenever it can be safely done the tables are turned, the witch-doctor is seized and tortured to death.

Timni, Kru, Sierra-Leonese, Liberians. Somewhat similar conditions prevail all along the seaboard from Sierra Leone to, and beyond, Cape Palmas, disturbed or modified by the Liberian intruders from the North American plantations, and by the slaves rescued in the thirties and forties by the British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, where their descendants now live in settled communities under European influences. These "coloured" citizens of Sierra Leone and Liberia, who are so often the butt of cheap ridicule, and are themselves perhaps too apt to scorn the kindred "niggers" of the bush, have to be carefully distinguished from these true aborigines who have never been wrenched from their natural environment.

In Sierra Leone the chief aboriginal groups on the coastlands are the Timni of the Rokelle river, flanked north and south by two branches of the Bulams, and still further south the Gallinas, Veys and Golas; in the interior the Lokkos, Limbas, Konos, and Kussas, with Kurankos, Mendis, Hubus, and other Mandingans and Fulahs everywhere in the Hinterland.

Of all these the most powerful during the British occupation have always been the Timni (Timani, Temne), who sold to the English the peninsula on which now stands Freetown, but afterwards crying off the bargain, repeatedly tried to drive the white and coloured intruders into the sea. They are a robust people of softened Negro type, and more industrious farmers than most of the other natives. Like the Wolofs they believe in the virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have hitherto lent a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions. Nevertheless the Protestant missionaries have carefully studied the Timni language, which possesses an oral literature rich in legends, proverbs, and folklore[149].

The Timni district is a chief centre of the so-called porro fraternity[150], a sort of secret society or freemasonry widely diffused throughout the coastlands, and possessing its own symbols, skin markings, passwords, and language. It presents curious points of analogy with the brotherhoods of the Micronesian islanders, but appears to be even more potent for good and evil, a veritable religious and political state within the state. "When their mandates are issued all wars and civil strife must cease, a general truce is established, and bloodshed stopped, offending communities being punished by bands of armed men in masks. Strangers cannot enter the country unless escorted by a member of the guild, who is recognised by passwords, symbolic gestures, and the like. Their secret rites are celebrated at night in the depths of the forest, all intruders being put to death or sold as slaves[151]."

In studying the social conditions prevalent amongst the Sierra Leonese proper, it should be remembered that they are sprung, not only from representatives of almost every tribe along the seaboard, and even in the far interior, but also to a large extent from the freedmen and runaways of Nova Scotia and London, besides many maroons of Jamaica, who were settled here under the auspices of the Sierra Leone Company towards the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Others also have in recent years been attracted to the settlements from the Timni and other tribes of the neighbouring districts. The Sierra Leonese are consequently not themselves a tribe, nor yet a people, but rather a people in course of formation under the influence of a new environment and of a higher culture. An immediate consequence of such a sudden aggregation of discordant elements was the loss of all the native tongues, and the substitution of English as the common medium of intercourse. But English is the language of a people standing on the very highest plane of culture, and could not therefore be properly assimilated by the disjecta membra of tribes at the lowest rung of the social ladder. The resultant form of speech may be called ludicrous, so ludicrous that the Sierra Leonese version of the New Testament had to be withdrawn from circulation as verging almost on the blasphemous[152].

It has also to be considered that all the old tribal relations were broken up, while an attempt was made to merge these waifs and strays in a single community based on social conditions to which each and all were utter strangers. It is not therefore surprising that the experiment has not proved a complete success, and that the social relations in Sierra Leone leave something to be desired. Although the freedmen and the rescued captives received free gifts of land, their dislike for the labours of the field induced many to abandon their holdings, and take to huckstering and other more pleasant pursuits. Hence their descendants almost monopolise the petty traffic and even the "professions" in Freetown and the other colonial settlements. Although accused of laziness and dishonesty, they have displayed a considerable degree of industrial as well as commercial enterprise, and the Sierra Leone craftsmen--smiths, mechanics, carpenters, builders--enjoy a good reputation in all the coast towns. All are Christians of various denominations, and even show a marked predilection for the "ministry." Yet below the surface the old paganism still slumbers, and vodoo practices, as in the West Indies and some of the Southern States, are still heard of.

Morality also is admittedly at a low ebb, and it is curious to note that this has in part been attributed to the freedom enjoyed under the British administration. "They have passed from the sphere of native law to that of British law, which is brought to this young community like an article of ready-made clothing. Is it a wonder that the clothes do not fit? Is it a wonder that kings and chiefs around Sierra Leone, instead of wishing their people to come and see how well we do things, dread for them to come to this colony on account of the danger to their morals? In passing into this colony, they pass into a liberty which to them is license[153]."

An experiment of a somewhat different order, but with much the same negative results, has been tried by the well-meaning founders of the Republic of Liberia. Here also the bulk of the "civilised aristocrats" are descended of emancipated plantation slaves, a first consignment of whom was brought over by a philanthropic American society in 1820-22. The idea was to start them well in life under the fostering care of their white guardians, and then leave them to work out their own redemption in their own way. All control was accordingly withdrawn in 1848, and since then the settlement has constituted an absolutely independent Negro state in the enjoyment of complete self-government. Progress of a certain material kind was undoubtedly made. The original "free citizens" increased from 8000 in 1850 to perhaps 20,000 in 1898[154], and the central administration, modelled on that of the United States, maintained some degree of order among the surrounding aborigines, estimated at some two million within the limits of the Republic.

But these aborigines have not benefited perceptibly by contact with their "civilised" neighbours, who themselves stand at much the same level intellectually and morally as their repatriated forefathers. Instead of attending to the proper administration of the Republic, the "Weegee," as they are called, have constituted themselves into two factions, the "coloured" or half-breeds, and the full-blood Negroes who, like the "Blancos" and "Neros" of some South American States, spend most of their time in a perpetual struggle for office. All are of course intensely patriotic, but their patriotism takes a wrong direction, being chiefly manifested in their insolence towards the English and other European traders on the coast, and in their supreme contempt for the "stinking bush-niggers," as they call the surrounding aborigines. In 1909 internal and external difficulties led to the appointment of a Commission by President Roosevelt with the result that the American Government took charge of the finances, military organisation, agriculture and boundary questions, besides arranging for a loan of L400,000. The able administration of President Barclay, a pure blooded Negro, though not of Liberian ancestry, is perhaps the happiest augury for the future of the Republic[155].

The Krus (Kroomen, Krooboys[156]), whose numerous hamlets are scattered along the coast from below Monrovia nearly to Cape Palmas, are assuredly one of the most interesting people in the whole of Africa. Originally from the interior, they have developed in their new homes a most un-African love of the sea, hence are regularly engaged as crews by the European skippers plying along those insalubrious coastlands.

In this service, in which they are known by such nicknames as "Bottle-of-Beer," "Mashed-Potatoes," "Bubble-and-Squeak," "Pipe-of-Tobacco," and the like, their word may always be depended upon. But it is to be feared that this loyalty, which with them is a strict matter of business, has earned for them a reputation for other virtues to which they have little claim. Despite the many years that they have been in the closest contact with the missionaries and traders, they are still at heart the same brutal savages as ever. After each voyage they return to the native village to spend all their gains and pilferings in drunken orgies, and relapse generally into sheer barbarism till the next steamer rounds the neighbouring headland. "It is not a comfortable reflection," writes Bishop Ingham, whose testimony will not be suspected of bias, "as we look at this mob on our decks, that, if the ship chance to strike on a sunken rock and become unmanageable, they would rise to a man, and seize all they could lay hands on, cut the very rings off our fingers if they could get them in no other way, and generally loot the ship. Little has been done to Christianise these interesting, hard-working, cheerful, but ignorant and greedy people, who have so long hung on the skirts of civilisation[157]."

It is only fair to the Kru to say that this unflattering picture of them stands alone. "There is but one man of all of us who have visited West Africa who has not paid a tribute to the Kruboy's sterling qualities," says Miss Kingsley. Her opinion coincides with that of the old coasters based on life-long experience, and she waxes indignant at the ingratitude with which Kruboy loyalty is rewarded. "They have devoted themselves to us English, and they have suffered, laboured, fought, been massacred and so on with us generation after generation.... Kruboys are, indeed, the backbone of white effort in West Africa[158]."

But the very worst "sweepings of the Sudanese plateau" seem to have gathered along the Upper Guinea Coast, occupied by the already mentioned Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba