John H. Weeks

“ There she sat, wounded, bleeding, and faint with hunger and loss of blood, through the long day, with the crocodile lying in wait at the foot of the tree. Occasionally she cried out, but there was no one near enough to hear her shouts. She at last heard the paddles of the canoe and the calls of the men, and, responding to them, she guided them to the tree where she was sitting. As the men neared the tree they heard the splashing of the water as the brute made off in the darkness. ”

“ If a man accuses another of giving him a disease, or of causing the death of his wife by witchcraft, how can the accused disprove such a charge? Not by talking, no matter how much he may swear that he is innocent. If he calls the head-men together, he knows the verdict will be given in favour of the one who pays the most; if he runs away he will soon be captured by some other town and probably sold to furnish a cannibal feast; if he runs to a friendly town he will lose caste, he will be treated with contempt as a coward, and his life rendered miserable. ”

“ The skilled and the unskilled, the poor and the rich, the slave and the free, are all mixed in indistinguishable confusion. It is the best dancer, be he poor and a slave, who is the cynosure of all eyes and the object of all their praises. And as the dance proceeds the dancers sing in unison some recitative song, while the onlookers keep time to song and dance by clapping their hands and swaying their bodies to and fro. ”

“ By one charm the native bewitches the enemy; by another he excels the enemy in craftiness and cunning; by another he overawes and fascinates them so that they forget their hatred; and by another he becomes invisible to them. Each man patronizes his own particular charm, some having more faith in one than in another. There is also a charm, specially procured from a spirit and costing a goodly fee, that always enables its owner to capture one or more prisoners in a fight, and then helps him to disappear with his captives if too closely pursued by the enemy. ”

“ Men would paint and arm themselves as for a fight, and would imitate the daring acts of the departed as a warrior; and if he had been remarkable for fighting on the river, they would arrange a sham canoe fight in his honour. Fifteen or twenty canoes, filled with men armed with spears, shields, and guns, would go through all the manœuvres of a mimic river fight, firing their guns, pretending to throw their spears, or deflect them with their shields, circling round each other amid shouts of their prowess, or laughter at those who, losing their balance, fell into the river. ”

“ The beliefs of a tribe considerably affect their point of view, and this is seen in nothing more emphatically than in their beliefs about child-bearing. On the Lower Congo a non-child-bearing woman is the butt of the town’s ridicule, she is sneered at, pointed at by all the other women, and is the object of their scorn. She feels degraded in the eyes of all, and however much she may blame her husband, or may try to prove that she is bewitched, yet her shame is bitterly felt and resented. She has failed ignominiously in her one paramount duty to her family. ”

“ He will regard you as a god, and yet try to fight you; he will superstitiously believe that you have wonderful occult powers that can stop the rain, cause pestilence and plagues, and yet he will not attempt to conciliate you, but will savagely shout at you to clear out of his town and take your witchcraft elsewhere. When fighting with a gun he is timid, nervous, and apparently very cowardly, because he does not understand the mysteries of gunpowder; but give him a shield and a spear and his bravery is evidenced by his boldness in a fight, and his utter indifference to wounds and death. ”

“ After their unsuccessful attempts to make us exhibit our force, other questions were agitated: “Why are the white men so calm and quiet? Have they some wonderful magic or powerful ‘medicine’ that will kill us all directly we begin to fight them? What have they behind them that they are not afraid when we tell them the people are coming to attack them? Have they little guns (revolvers) concealed about their clothes?” ”

“ Then he has to keep a strong hand on the family slaves, for he and his family will be held responsible for whatever offences they commit against other families; and if they fight and quarrel amongst themselves, his only wise course is to sell them and buy others who may not be so contentious.
I never came across a more democratic form of government on the Congo than that of the Boloki tribe. There is no prestige of birth to help, as among the Lower Congo chiefs, for his subjects are of the same blood as himself—except his slaves, and they are his property and not his subjects. ”

“ In a fit of overweening vanity he will sacrifice everything he possesses, and destroy all his future prospects to satisfy the pride of the moment. His family may be insignificant, his town paltry, himself small and dirty, but touch his pride and he will act as though he were un grand seigneur. He himself must be the judge of what hurts his pride, not you. He has his own code of honour and etiquette, difficult at times for you to understand, hence you wonder at some of the exhibitions of his pride. ”

“ A family suffering from much sickness has called in one medicine man after another without experiencing relief, and they may have had even the “mat witch-doctor” and felt no better after having paid him his large fee, so now they try again with this one who works in the open.
He arrives dressed in monkey skins, bush-cat skins, etc., and well decorated with charms. Men beat drums, sing chants and choruses; the medicine man dances about, working himself into a frenzy. He peers here, there, everywhere, looking for the spirit that is troubling the family. ”

“ And standing round the funeral dances will be the whole village, applauding the agile or chaffing the awkward. Is there a marriage? Then relatives and boon companions of the old bachelor days are invited, and after the feast a dance is arranged, and although some of the legs will be unsteady, through too much sugar-cane wine, yet all present, both dancers and spectators, will be in a jovial mood. ”

“ They would fondle their women, yet treat them contemptuously as inferiors; they would fight to assert their rights of ownership in them, yet regard them as so greatly beneath them as to send them to eat their food by themselves out of sight; and they would slave to collect sufficient goods to pay the marriage money for their free wives, or to procure the price of their slave wives, yet the former they would thrash unmercifully, and the latter, for a whim or in a fit of temper, they would murder and fling the corpse into the river, or invite their neighbours to feast with them on the body. ”

“ Some nine months afterwards a Monsembe slave fell from a palm tree and was picked up dead. All that day and the next the other slaves of the town danced and sang at the funeral festivities of the dead man, and during the noise of their crying and chanting dirges some Bonjoko people entered the town, rushed into the stockade, and, killing one of the brothers there, they cut open the head of another, and chased a third one into the bush, where they speared him to death. ”

“ Now Mokwete would return to a fireless hearth, an empty village, and no one to cook for him and wait on him. And I have heard the folk snap their fingers, and say: “Mokwete was well punished,” and there was no one to pity him. “When a man buys a fish or a piece of meat he should share it with the wife who cooks it for him; and when he kills an animal he should share it with all his wives.” ”

“ When a man kills his opponent in a fight he cuts off his head and removes his lips, which latter he thoroughly dries in the sun, and then sticks them over with brass chair nails and wears them as an ornament with as much pride as a decoration is worn by the civilized soldier—it is the man’s medal for bravery. The skull of the slain man is put at the base of a palm, or other tree just outside the victor’s house, and when the victor dies the spirit of the conquered and slain man is called upon to do service to the spirit of the conqueror in longa, or the spirit-world. ”

“ Here and there a man treats his wife with kindness and consideration, and he sometimes displays an affection for her that is pleasing to the onlooker and an encouragement to those who are working for the uplifting of the race, for it shows of what the men are capable; but to the majority of the men the wife is a passing fancy, a brief passion which is quickly extinguished, and all that remains to warm their hearts, and keep them faithful to each other, are the cold, charred embers of a bare toleration for one another. ”

“ I have seen the medium work himself into a frenzy, shout, tremble all over, his muscles quiver, his body undulates, perspiration breaks out on his forehead, and foam gathers about his mouth, and his eyes roll; and when thoroughly under the spell of the spirit he gives utterance to oracles that are implicitly believed by the people. ”

“ I myself have often been surprised and amused when a motion, a glance, or some little peculiarity among these folk has called vividly to mind some person I knew at home. There was one man I never met without having a certain uncle of mine recalled to mind, and another person—a girl—always by an indescribable something reminded me of a girl I knew in England. ”

“ Men, women, and children can own, for the time being, the land that they have cleared for farming purposes; and can own slaves whom they have bought or inherited. I have known a case in which a slave owned a slave, and that slave—the property of another slave—owned a slave also. When we bought a piece of land in 1890, the price given was divided among the head-men in the town according to their importance, and they gave a part of their shares to their followers—members of their family, but not to their slaves. ”

“ They would stand about our table while we were at meals, and pass critical remarks on our manner of eating, slyly imitating the action of our jaws as we masticated our food, or mimic our gestures as we conversed with one another. We seemed to live, move, and pass our existence in the full glare of public gaze like fish in a glass tank. ”

“ The appointed chief judge will sum up the case and give the verdict, say, in favour of the defendant, and instantly the man sitting near him will rub, with more vigour than gentleness, the wood-ashes or camwood powder over the face of the winner as a sign to all that he is acquitted of the charge brought against him. He will leave the mess on his face for days as a proof, to all and sundry, of his acquittal. The loser of the case refunds the winner all his expenses, pays the judge and jury of chiefs, and is a poorer if not sadder and wiser man. ”

“ Men ran by with their faces daubed with a thick coating of oil and soot, or painted with red, blue or white streaks, their heads adorned with feather caps, and their waists bound tightly with closely woven cotton belts; others had cuirasses of hippopotamus hide protecting their backs, and all were in a greatly excited state, waving their spears, shields, and knives, and boasting of what they would do to the enemy. The women who had no children, and consequently had not left the town, gathered near our mission house, feeling perhaps more secure there than anywhere else. ”

“ There are no absolutely independent men and women apart from head-men and chiefs. All the rest are attached to head-men as relatives, slaves, pawns, or by a voluntary surrender of themselves to a chief. If the family of a free man dies off, or becomes very weak—too weak to defend itself against the aggressiveness of the other families in the town, such a free man attaches himself (and any relatives dependent on him) to the head-man of any one of the stronger families he may select. He then practically becomes a member of that family. ”

“ When a man is under the sway of the disembodied spirit he takes his spear and, tying some dried plantain leaves to it, he holds it before him with his left hand; and as he trembles with the excitement of the spirits in him the spear shakes and rustles the leaves until the spirits go out of him into the spear, and it then becomes a fetish spear and his luck is bound up in it. ”

“ When the time arrives for the marriage the parents take some plantain, cassava, fish, with various other kinds of food, and a calabash or jar of sugar-cane wine, and together with their daughter they go to the house of the bridegroom and hand over the girl by putting her hand in the man’s hand in the presence of witnesses. These latter, after drinking the wine and sharing in the feast, will dance in honour of the occasion, and the ceremony is completed. The food and wine, given by the parents, are a proof that the girl is not sold as a slave, but is given in marriage as a free woman. ”

“ Some seem to think that polygamy spells large families and a fair state of morality; but on the Congo, and I speak of what I know, polygamy means a very low birth-rate and an absolute lack of morality and common decency. Polygamy is giving place to monogamy, and that means a higher morality, a purer and more self-respecting womanhood, and the introduction of a truer affection between the husband and the wife which will result in a better and more healthy home-life for the children, and will lead to the coming of a brighter day on dark, oppressed Africa. ”

“ At first the experience is novel, and he is most willing and hard-working; but pay-day is a long way off, his enthusiasm cools as the novelty passes away, and then the master will have to look vigilantly and constantly after his hired workman. Give him piece-work and pay him by results and you will see prodigies of labour, for every payment made on those lines is an incentive to further effort. The native as keenly enjoys money and what money brings in extra food, comforts, and prestige as the white man, and is as willing to work for them. ”

“ For the murder of a free man the blood of a free man, or men, has to be shed. There is no distinction between premeditated and accidental homicide. Life has been taken, and it is regarded and dealt with as murder. Drunkenness and madness are no excuse for committing crimes.
Adultery is a personal injury, for the offender has used something that does not belong to him without the consent of the owner. The fine for adultery is from 100 to 300 brass rods—from three to nine months’ ordinary wages—according to the position of the husband and the offending party. ”