Mpongwe people

“ The Mpongwe are the proudest people of West Africa. An African woman is never allowed to marry into an inferior tribe; although the men may do so. And since the Mpongwe have no social equals among the adjacent tribes, it follows that no Mpongwe woman can marry outside of her own tribe, unless with a north-coast man or a white man. The Fang, the great interior tribe, are mere “bush-animals” in the mind of the Mpongwe. A Fang man, though he were perfectly civilized, and even educated in France, would not be allowed the social status of the meanest Mpongwe. The coast women can all speak Fang ”

“ Most white people who acquire the art of public speaking, especially in religious meetings, are obliged to cultivate it; and only a small minority of Christians can offer a prayer in public. But the African speaks with perfect freedom and entire absence of selfconsciousness. He can offer a public prayer long before he becomes Christian, or has any such intention. It took me a long time to put the proper estimate upon fluency. One day I visited a woman, Nenge, who was going further and further astray through rum and other Mpongwe vices. ”

“ White traders all along the coast employ the Mpongwe as middlemen between them and the interior people, who possess the export products. The white man gives the middleman a certain quantity of goods on trust. With these he goes to the interior and establishes a small trading-post in one or 48several towns. It is a life of privation and danger, a lonely, miserable existence, but he endures it with patience for the joyful hope that at the end of a year or two he may return to his beloved town and family in Gaboon, so rich that he can afford to “rip” for six months ”

“ The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small community; but they are the best Christians, and the dearest people, I have known in Africa. They alone, of the Mpongwe, have good-sized families of healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe.
When I moved to Baraka the Mpongwe work, the oldest in the mission, was in charge of a fellow missionary, Mr. ”

“ Another factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe is the demoralization of domestic life incident to methods of trade. The Mpongwe man is a trader by instinct. In shrewdness and diplomacy I doubt whether he has a superior among all the tribes of West Africa. ”

“ The progress of this African community, implied in the choice of such a one as Okeh for leader, has leaped across uncounted centuries.
The man whom the Mpongwe church has recognized as pastor for many years—though he was never ordained—was born a slave. The place of highest authority is attainable to those in every rank; no class is especially privileged; no privileges are hereditary; there is no such thing as caste within this society ”

“ The following sixteen Tales were narrated to me, many years ago, by two members of the Mpongwe tribe (one now dead) at the town of Libreville, Gaboon river, equatorial West Africa. Both of them were well-educated persons, a man and a woman. They chose legends that were current in their own tribe. ”

“ The Mpongwe call themselves The Wise Ones. And other tribes generally admit their claim and take them at their own self-estimate. In former days, when they had real kings, they buried their kings in secret, not more than ten persons knowing the hidden grave, lest some other tribe might steal the body, for the sake of obtaining the brains, which would be a very powerful fetish and would make them wise like the Mpongwe. ”

“ A LIVING REMNANT The diminishing number of the Mpongwe, the hostility of the climate, the insistence by the government that French must be the language of the schools, the great difficulty of procuring a corps of French-speaking missionaries, the curse of rum, the presence of a large community of white men and the natural irresponsibility of the white man in Africa—all these have combined to limit the work of our mission among the Mpongwe and to make it exceedingly difficult. ”

“ W. Reade well remarks, “There are many excellent business men who in private life are weak, vain, extravagant, and who seem to leave their brains behind them. Such are the Mpongwés, a tribe of commercial travellers, men who prey upon ignorance in the bush, and are devoured by flattery in the town.” ”

“ Cutting and maiming are punished by the fine of a slave.
And now briefly to resume the character of the Mpongwe, a nervous and excitable race of negroes. The men are deficient in courage, as the women are in chastity, and neither sex has a tincture of what we call morality. To commercial shrewdness and eagerness they add exceptional greed of gain and rascality; foreign rum and tobacco, dress and ornaments, arms and ammunition have been necessaries to them; they will have them, and, unless they can supply themselves by licit, they naturally fly to illicit means. ”

“ The slave is thrown out into the bush—no one will take the trouble to dig a hole for him.
The industry of the Mpongwe is that of the African generally; every man is a host in himself; he builds and furnishes his house, he makes his weapons and pipes, and he ignores division of labour, except in the smith and the carpenter; in the potter, who works without a wheel, and in the dyer, who knows barks, and who fixes his colours with clay. The men especially pride themselves upon canoe-making; the favourite wood is the buoyant Okumeh or bombax, that monarch of the African forest. ”

“ The different sub-tribes or clans of the Mpongwé are ruled by their headmen, the principal chief of a district being dignified with the title of king. Dignity has, as we all know, its drawbacks as well as its privileges, and among the Mpongwé it has its pains as well as its pleasures. When once a man is fairly made king, he may do much as he likes, and is scarcely ever crossed in anything that he may desire. But the process of coronation was anything but agreeable, and utterly unlike the gorgeous ceremony with which civilized men are so familiar. ”

“ After hurrying us off to the forest alone and unprotected at the earliest possible moment, they established themselves in the village, and lived in such a style as to far outshine any of our chiefs—in fact, taking a delight in insulting and depreciating them and relegating to themselves every vestige of authority which had formerly been vested in the chiefs of our own people. ”

“ Domestic slavery is rarely attended with the usual horrors of alien enslavement. Mpongwe slaves were serfs rather than slaves. Until the advent of the white slaver they were rarely sold or exchanged. Mpongwe slaves were sometimes taken for debt and sometimes stolen from other tribes. ”

“ If men who are reputedly wise and good—if religious teachers and political leaders, those whose opinions are almost implicitly adopted, and whose examples are readily followed by the mass of the people—if such men suppress their voices on this momentous subject, and turn their eyes from its contemplation, and give the right hand of fellowship to the buyers and sellers of human flesh, is there not cause for lamentation and alarm? ”

“ Every hysterical woman who thought that she saw a leopard was ready to swear that it was Ndinga. If the leopards had been active in the community at that time all their doings would have been charged against him.
34The Mpongwe women are regarded as the best-looking and most graceful women on the entire coast. Wherever there are communities of white men, even hundreds of miles north and south of Gaboon, there are Mpongwe women; for it is with them more than the women of any other tribe that white men form temporary alliances. ”

“ Not being able to strike back in this unequal warfare and preferring an enemy whom he could kick (for this individual wore shoes and scarcely anything else) he lost spirit and finally pulled down the entire town and built in another place. Women and children never possess the skulls of ancestors. The power of the ancestor is more often used against women than others. Among the Mpongwe and some other tribes a woman may worship her ancestors ”

“ But who is to determine which side has Truth and Right, and, therefore, the true and the just claim to paramountcy and sovereignty in South Africa?
Surely the answer is that people who have shown that they can rule Humanity because first they have themselves obeyed princely ideals of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. Nothing short of this can satisfy the universal conscience of mankind. ”

“ They generally live at peace within the family and the village. The men, at least, rarely fight. Whenever I heard that an Mpongwe fight was in progress, I rushed to the scene; but I must confess to mixed motives. For a fight among Mpongwe men is decidedly picturesque and entertaining, since they fight by butting each other in the stomach with their heads. The women are much more quarrelsome, and these very belles, whose beauty I have praised, have frequent quarrels and occasional fights, the latter usually involving a number of women ”

“ WOMEN’S SECRET SOCIETY OF GABOON.
41The lowest reach of Mpongwe degradation is represented by the woman’s secret society, to which a majority of the Mpongwe women belong—practically all, except the Christians, who regard it with abhorrence. I know of nothing in any interior tribe more degrading and immoral. In former times of cruelty and oppression the society probably served for the protection of women against their husbands; but in these times it is the husbands who need protection, and the society, having outlived its usefulness, has degenerated. ”

“ An Mpongwe, after having his hair cut, gathers up every hair most carefully and burns it lest an enemy should secure it and use it to his injury. When sickness continues for a length of time they usually conclude that some offended relation has caused an evil spirit to abide in the town. ”

“ The Mpongwés are a clever race, having a wonderful aptitude for languages and swindling. Some of the men can speak several native dialects, and are well versed in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, using their accomplishments for the purpose of cheating both of the parties for whom they interpret. They are very clever at an argument, especially of that kind which is popularly known as “special pleading,” and will prove that black is white, not to say blue or red, with astonishing coolness and ingenuity. ”

“ Hitherto no symptoms can be detected of any great social change, except that the Mpongwes are being gradually displaced by the more industrious and more intelligent Fans. But apart from trade, with all its attendant evils, the civilising efforts of the whites have borne so little fruit that a serious beginning has apparently still to be made. ”

“ Several Mpongwe men have told me that their slaves were children of the interior whom they had rescued when their parents had thrown them away, either into the bush to perish by the beasts, or into the river. They must have been driven to this by some cruel superstition; for the African loves his children, and the mother of his children is his favourite wife. Perhaps the children were twins. In many tribes there is such a fear of twins that they are often put to death and their mother with them. In some of these tribes they are believed to be the result of adultery with a spirit. ”

“ Commerce and intercourse with whites has made the Mpongwe, once the rudest, now one of the most civilized of African tribes; and, upon the whole, there is an improvement. The exact Barbot (iv. 9) tells us "the Gaboon blacks are barbarous, wild, bloody, and treacherous, very thievish and crafty, especially towards strangers. The women, on the contrary, are as civil and courteous to them, and will use all possible means to enjoy their company; but both sexes are the most wretchedly poor and miserable of any in Guinea, and yet so very haughty, that they are perfectly ridiculous ... ”

“ At noon we began packing up, in order to start for Gidi Mavonga’s village. The natives of the Congo are divided into two classes only, the mfumo, or freeman, and the muleque, or slave. The mfumo marries amongst his own slaves, or, properly speaking, retainers, and the children born by him are in their turn mfumos, or freemen. The word slave is here quite improperly used, for the slave in reality is a freer man than the king himself. Everything the king possesses, except his wives, is literally at the disposal of the slave. ”

“ Still rising in the scale of culture we come to Africa, where both the chieftainship and the kingship are fully developed; and here the evidence for the evolution of the chief out of the magician, and especially out of the rain-maker, is comparatively plentiful. Thus among the Wambugwe, a Bantu people of East Africa, the original form of government was a family republic, but the enormous power of the sorcerers, transmitted by inheritance, soon raised them to the rank of petty lords or chiefs. ”

“ The Mpongwes proper are a mere fragment of a formerly powerful nation, and are being gradually absorbed by the immigrants from the interior. Those who call themselves " Children of the Soil," and who were distinguished by their physical beauty, are slowly disappearing, carried off by small -pox, consumption, scrofulous affections, and the pernicious habit of smoking liamba, a kind of hemp like the hashish of Eastern peoples. Those grouped round the Catholic and Protestant missions call themselves Christians, and even the fetish- worshippers sell their sacred groves for ardent spirits. ”

“ Upon the Gaboon River is a well-known negro tribe called Mpongwé.
Perhaps on account of their continual admixture with traders, they approach nearer to civilization than those tribes which have been described, and are peculiarly refined in their manners, appearance, and language. They are very fond of dress, and the women in particular are remarkable for their attention to the toilet. They wear but little clothing, their dark, velvet-like skin requiring scarcely any covering, and being admirably suited for setting off the ornaments with which they plentifully bedeck themselves. ”