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

groups[159]. They constitute three branches of one linguistic, and probably also of one ethnical family, of which, owing to their historic and ethnical importance, the reader may be glad to have here subjoined a somewhat complete tabulated scheme.

The Ga of the Volta delta are here bracketed with the Tshi because A. B. Ellis, our great authority on the Guinea peoples[160], considers the two languages to be distantly connected. He also thinks there is a foundation of fact in the native traditions, which bring the dominant tribes--Ashanti, Fanti, Dahomi, Yoruba, Bini--from the interior to the coast districts at no very remote period. Thus it is recorded of the Ashanti and Fanti, now hereditary foes, that ages ago they formed one people who were reduced to the utmost distress during a long war with some inland power, perhaps the conquering Muhammadans of the Ghana or Mali empire. They were saved, however, some by eating of the shan, others of the fan plant, and of these words, with the verb di, "to eat," were made the tribal names Shan-di, Fan-di, now Ashanti, Fanti. The seppiriba plant, said to have been eaten by the Fanti, is still called fan when cooked.

TRIBES OF TSHI TRIBES OF EWE TRIBES OF YORUBA AND GA SPEECH SPEECH SPEECH

Gold Coast Slave Coast West Slave Coast East and Niger Delta

Ashanti Dahomi Yoruba[161] Safwhi Eweawo Ibadan Denkera Agotine Ketu Bekwai Anfueh Egba Nkoranza Krepe Jebu Adansi Avenor Remo Assin Awuna Ode Wassaw Agbosomi Ilorin Ahanta Aflao Ijesa Fanti Ataklu Ondo Agona Krikor Mahin Akwapim Geng Benin (Bini) Akim Attakpami Kakanda Akwamu Aja Wari Kwao Ewemi Ibo[161] Ga Appa Efik[161]

Other traditions refer to a time when all were of one speech, and lived in a far country beyond Salagha, open, flat, with little bush, and plenty of cattle and sheep, a tolerably accurate description of the inland Sudanese plateaux. But then came a red people, said to be the Fulahs, Muhammadans, who oppressed the blacks and drove them to take refuge in the forests. Here they thrived and multiplied, and after many vicissitudes they came down, down, until at last they reached the coast, with the waves rolling in, the white foam hissing and frothing on the beach, and thought it was all boiling water until some one touched it and found it was not hot, and so to this day they call the sea Eh-huru den o nni shew, "Boiling water not hot," but far inland the sea is still "Boiling water[162]."

To A. B. Ellis we are indebted especially for the true explanation of the much used and abused term fetish, as applied to the native beliefs. It was of course already known to be not an African but a Portuguese word[163], meaning a charm, amulet, or even witchcraft. But Ellis shows how it came to be wrongly applied to all forms of animal and nature worship, and how the confusion was increased by De Brosses' theory of a primordial fetishism, and by his statement that it was impossible to conceive a lower form of religion than fetishism, which might therefore be assumed to be the beginning of all religion[164].

On the contrary it represents rather an advanced stage, as Ellis discovered after four or five years of careful observation on the spot. A fetish, he tells us, is something tangible and inanimate, which is believed to possess power in itself, and is worshipped for itself alone. Nor can such an object be picked up anywhere at random, as is commonly asserted, and he adds that the belief "is arrived at only after considerable progress has been made in religious ideas, when the older form of religion becomes secondary and owes its existence to the confusion of the tangible with the intangible, of the material with the immaterial; to the belief in the indwelling god being gradually lost sight of until the power originally believed to belong to the god, is finally attributed to the tangible and inanimate object itself."

But now comes a statement that may seem paradoxical to most students of the evolution of religious ideas. We are assured that fetishism thus understood is not specially or at all characteristic of the religion of the Gold Coast natives, who are in fact "remarkably free from it" and believe in invisible intangible deities. Some of them may dwell in a tangible inanimate object, popularly called a "fetish"; but the idea of the indwelling god is never lost sight of, nor is the object ever worshipped for its own sake. True fetishism, the worship of such material objects and images, prevails, on the contrary, far more "amongst the Negroes of the West Indies, who have been christianised for more than half-a-century, than amongst those of West Africa. Hence the belief in Obeah, still prevalent in the West Indies, which formerly was a belief in indwelling spirits which inhabited certain objects, has now become a worship paid to tangible and inanimate objects, which of themselves are believed to possess the power to injure. In Europe itself we find evidence amongst the Roman Catholic populations of the South, that fetishism is a corruption of a former culte, rather than a primordial faith. The lower classes there have confused the intangible with the tangible, and believe that the images of the saints can both see, hear and feel. Thus we find the Italian peasants and fishermen beat and ill-treat their images when their requests have not been complied with.... These appear to be instances of true fetishism[165]."

Another phase of religious belief in Upper Guinea is ancestry worship, which has here been developed to a degree unknown elsewhere. As the departed have to be maintained in the same social position beyond the grave that they enjoyed in this world, they must be supplied with slaves, wives, and attendants, each according to his rank. Hence the institution of the so-called "customs," or anniversary feasts of the dead, accompanied by the sacrifice of human victims, regulated at first by the status and afterwards by the whim and caprice of chiefs and kings. In the capitals of the more powerful states, Ashanti, Dahomey, Benin, the scenes witnessed at these sanguinary rites rivalled in horror those held in honour of the Aztec gods. Details may here be dispensed with on a repulsive subject, ample accounts of which are accessible from many sources to the general reader. In any case these atrocities teach no lesson, except that most religions have waded through blood to better things, unless arrested in mid-stream by the intervention of higher powers, as happily in Upper Guinea, where the human shambles of Kumassi, Abomeh, Benin and most other places have now been swept away.

On the capture of Benin by the English in 1897 a rare and unexpected prize fell into the hands of ethnologists. Here was found a large assortment of carved ivories, woodwork, and especially a series of about 300 bronze and brass plates or panels with figures of natives and Europeans, armed and in armour, in full relief, all cast by the cire perdue process[166], some barbaric, others, and especially a head in the round of a young negress, showing high artistic skill. Many of these remarkable objects are in the British Museum, where they have been studied by C. H. Read and O. M. Dalton[167], who are evidently right in assigning the better class to the sixteenth century, and to the aid, if not the hand, of some Portuguese artificers in the service of the King of Benin. They add that "casting of an inferior kind continues down to the present time," and it may here be mentioned that armour has long been and is still worn by the cavalry, and even their horses, in the Muhammadan states of Central Sudan. "The chiefs (Kashellawa) who serve as officers under the Sultan [of Bornu] and act as his bodyguard wear jackets of chain armour and cuirasses of coats of mail[168]." It is clear that metal casting in a large way has long been practised by the semi-civilised peoples of Sudan.

Within the great bend of the Niger the veil, first slightly raised by Barth in the middle of the nineteenth century, has now been drawn aside by L. G. Binger, F. D. Lugard and later explorers. Here the Mossi, Borgu and others have hitherto more or less successfully resisted the Moslem advance, and are consequently for the most part little removed from the savage state. Even the "Faithful" wear the cloak of Islam somewhat loosely, and the level of their culture may be judged from the case of the Imam of Diulasu, who pestered Binger for nostrums and charms against ailments, war, and misfortunes. What he wanted chiefly to know was the names of Abraham's two wives. "Tell me these," he would say, "and my fortune is made, for I dreamt it the other night; you must tell me; I really must have those names or I'm lost[169]."

In some districts the ethnical confusion is considerable, and when Binger arrived at the Court of the Mossi King, Baikary, he was addressed successively in Mossi, Hausa, Songhai, and Fulah, until at last it was discovered that Mandingan was the only native language he understood. Waghadugu, capital of the chief Mossi state, comprises several distinct quarters occupied respectively by Mandingans, Marengas (Songhai), Zang-wer'os (Hausas), Chilmigos (Fulahs), Mussulman and heathen Mossis, the whole population scarcely exceeding 5000. However, perfect harmony prevails, the Mossi themselves being extremely tolerant despite the long religious wars they have had to wage against the fanatical Fulahs and other Muhammadan aggressors[170].

Religious indifference is indeed a marked characteristic of this people, and the case is mentioned of a nominal Mussulman prince who could even read and write, and say his prayers, but whose two sons "knew nothing at all," or, as we should say, were "Agnostics." One of them, however, it is fair to add, is claimed by both sides, the Moslems asserting that he says his prayers in secret, the heathens that he drinks dolo (palm-wine), which of course no true believer is supposed ever to do.

CENTRAL SUDANESE.

In Central Sudan, that is, the region stretching from the Niger to Wadai, a tolerably clean sweep has been made of the aborigines, except along the southern fringe and in parts of the Chad basin. For many centuries Islam has here been firmly established, and in Negroland Islam is synonymous with a greater or less degree of miscegenation. The native tribes who resisted the fiery Arab or Tuareg or Tibu proselytisers were for the most part either extirpated, or else driven to the southern uplands about the Congo-Chad water-parting. All who accepted the Koran became merged with the conquerors in a common negroid population, which supplied the new material for the development of large social communities and powerful political states.

Under these conditions the old tribal organisations were in great measure dissolved, and throughout its historic period of about a millennium Central Sudan is found mainly occupied by peoples gathered together in a small number of political systems, each with its own language and special institutions, but all alike accepting Islam as the State religion. Such are or were the Songhai empire, the Hausa States, and the kingdoms of Bornu with Kanem and Baghirmi, and these jointly cover the whole of Central Sudan as above defined.

Songhais[171]. How completely the tribe[172] has merged in the people[172] may be inferred from the mere statement that, although no longer an independent nation[172], the negroid Songhais form a single ethnical group of about two million souls, all of one speech and one religion, and all distinguished by somewhat uniform physical and mental characters. This territory lies mainly about the borderlands between Sudan and the Sahara, stretching from Timbuktu east to the Asben oasis and along both banks of the Niger from Lake Debo round to the Sokoto confluence, and also at some points reaching as far as the Hombori hills within the great bend of the Niger.

Here they are found in the closest connection with the Ireghenaten ("mixed") Tuaregs, and elsewhere with other Tuaregs, and