Magician With
horns, wooden mask, spear, and sword; dress
of leaves of palm and plantain.
PREFACE
On
the 2d of July, 1861, I sailed from New York City on a little brig,
the “Ocean Eagle,” with destination to the island of Corisco,
near the equator, on the West Coast of Africa. My first introduction
to the natives of Africa was a month later, when the vessel stopped
at Monrovia, the capital of the Liberian Republic, to land a portion
of its trade goods, and at other ports of Liberia, Sinoe, and Cape
Palmas; thence to Corisco on September 12.Corisco
is a microcosm, only five miles long by three miles wide; its surface
diversified with every variety of landscape, proportioned to its
size, of hill, prairie, stream, and lake. It is located in the eye of
the elephant-head shaped Bay of Corisco, and from twelve to twenty
miles distant from the mainland. Into the bay flow two large
rivers,—the Muni (the Rio D’Angra of commerce) and the Munda
(this latter representing the elephant’s proboscis).The
island, with adjacent mainland, was inhabited by the Benga tribe. It
was the headquarters of the American Presbyterian Mission. On the
voyage I had studied the Benga dialect with my fellow-passenger, the
senior member of the Mission, Rev. James L. Mackey; and was able, on
my landing, to converse so well with the natives that they at once
enthusiastically accepted me as an interested friend. This has ever
since been my status among all other tribes.I
lived four years on the island, as preacher, teacher, and itinerant
to the adjacent mainland, south to the Gabun River and its Mpongwe
tribe, east up the Muni and Munda rivers, and north to the Benito
River.In
my study of the natives’ language my attention was drawn closely to
their customs; and in my inquiry into their religion I at once saw
how it was bound up in these customs. I met with other white
men—traders, government officials, and even some missionaries—whose
interest in Africa, however deep, was circumscribed by their special
work for, respectively, wealth, power, and Gospel proclamation. They
could see in those customs only “folly,” and in the religion only
“superstition.”I
read many books on other parts of Africa, in which the same customs
and religion prevailed. I did not think it reasonable to dismiss
curtly as absurd the cherished sentiments of so large a portion of
the human race. I asked myself: Is there no logical ground for the
existence of these sentiments, no philosophy behind all these
beliefs? I began to search; and thenceforward for thirty years,
wherever I travelled, wherever I was guest to native chief, wherever
I lived, I was always leading the conversation, in hut or camp, back
to a study of the native thought.I
soon found that I gained nothing if I put my questions suddenly or
without mask. The natives generally were aware that white men
despised them and their beliefs, and they were slow to admit me to
their thought if I made a direct advance. But, by chatting as a
friend, telling them the strange and great things of my own country,
and first eliciting their trust in me and interest in my stories,
they forgot their reticence, and responded by telling me of their
country. I listened, not critically, but apparently as a believer;
and then they vied with each other in telling me all they knew and
thought.That
has been the history of a thousand social chats,—in canoes by day,
in camp and hut by night, and at all hours in my own house, whose
public room was open at any hour of day or evening for any visitor,
petitioner, or lounger, my attention to whose wants or wishes was
rewarded by some confidence about their habits or doings.In
1865 I was transferred to Benito, where I remained until the close of
1871. Those years were full of travels afoot or by boat, south the
hundred miles to Gabun, north toward the Batanga region, and east up
the Benito for a hundred miles as a pioneer, to the Balengi and
Boheba tribes,—a distance at that time unprecedented, considering
the almost fierce opposition of the coast people to any white man’s
going to the local sources of their trade.After
more than ten uninterrupted years in Africa, I took a furlough of
more than two years in the United States, and returned to my work in
1874.I
responded to a strong demand on the part of the supporters of Foreign
Missions in Africa, that mission operations should no longer be
confined to the coast. Unsuccessful efforts had been made to enter by
the Gabun, by the Muni, and by the Benito.On
the 10th of September, 1874, I entered the Ogowe River, at Nazareth
Bay, one of its several embouchures into the Atlantic, near Cape
Lopez, a degree south of the equator. But little was known of the
Ogowe. Du Chaillu, in his “Equatorial Africa” (1861), barely
mentions it, though he was hunting gorillas and journeying in
“Ashango Land,” on the sources of the Ngunye, a large southern
affluent of the Ogowe.A
French gunboat a few years before had ascended it for one hundred and
thirty miles to Lembarene, the head of the Ogowe Delta, and had
attached it to France. Two English traders and one German had built
trading-houses at that one-hundred-and-thirty-mile limit, and
traversed the river with small steam launches in their rubber trade.
Besides these three, I was the only other white resident. They were
living in the Galwa tribe, cognate in language with the Mpongwe. I
settled at a one-hundred-and-fifty-mile limit, in the Akele tribe
(cognate with the Benga), building my house at a place called
Belambila.Two
years later I abandoned that spot, came down to Lembarene, and built
on Kângwe Hill. There I learned the Mpongwe dialect. I remained
there until 1880, successful with school and church, and travelling
by boat and canoe thousands of miles in the many branches of the
Ogowe, through its Delta, and in the lake country of Lakes Onange and
Azyingo. In 1880 I took a second furlough to the United States,
remaining eighteen months, and returning at the close of 1881.My
prosperous and comfortable station at Kângwe was occupied by a new
man, and I resumed my old
rôle of pioneer. I
travelled up the Ogowe, one hundred and fifty miles beyond Lembarene,
ascending and descending the wild waters of its cataracts, and
settled at Talaguga, a noted rock near which was subsequently
established the French military post, Njoli, at the two-hundred-mile
limit of the course of the river. There I was alone with Mrs. Nassau,
my nearest white neighbors the two French officers five miles up
river at the post, and my successors at Kângwe, seventy miles down
river. The inhabitants were wild cannibal Fang, just recently emerged
from the interior forest. It was a splendid field for original
investigation, and I applied myself to the Fang dialect.I
remained at Talaguga until 1891, when I took a third furlough to the
United States, and stayed through 1892, during which time the Mission
Board transferred my entire Ogowe work, with its two stations and
four churches and successful schools, to the French Paris Evangelical
Society.In
March, 1893, at the request of the Rev. Frank F. Ellinwood, D.D.,
LL.D., I wrote and read, before the American Society of Comparative
Religions, a forty-minute essay on Bantu Theology.At
the wish of that Society I loaned the manuscript to them, for their
use in the Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Exposition; but I
carried the original draft of the essay with me on my return to
Africa in August, 1893, where I was located at Libreville, Gabun, the
Mission’s oldest and most civilized station. There I found special
advantage for my investigations. Though those educated Mpongwes could
tell me little that was new as to purely unadulterated native
thought, they, better than an ignorant tribe, could and did give me
valuable intelligent replies to my inquiries as to the logical
connection between native belief and act, and the essential meaning
of things which I had seen and heard elsewhere. My ignorant friends
at other places had given me a mass of isolated statements. My
Mpongwe friends had studied a little grammar, and were somewhat
trained to analyze. They helped me in the collocation of the
statements and in the deduction of the philosophy behind them. It was
there that I began to put my conclusions in writing.In
1895 Miss Mary H. Kingsley journeyed in West Africa, sent on a
special mission to investigate the subject of freshwater fishes. She
also gratified her own personal interest in native African religious
beliefs by close inquiries all along the coast.During
her stay at Libreville in the Kongo-Français, May-September, 1895,
my interest, common with hers, in the study of native African thought
led me into frequent and intimate conversations with her on that
subject. She eagerly accepted what information, from my longer
residence in Africa, I was able to impart. I loaned her the essay,
with permission to make any use of it she desired in her proposed
book, “Travels in West Africa.” When that graphic story of her
African wanderings appeared in 1897, she made courteous
acknowledgment of the use she had made of it in her chapters on
Fetich.On
page 395 of her “Travels in West Africa,” referring to my
missionary works, and to some contributions I had made to science,
she wrote: “Still I deeply regret he has not done more for science
and geography.... I beg to state I am not grumbling at him ... but
entirely from the justifiable irritation a student of fetich feels at
knowing that there is but one copy of this collection of materials,
and that this copy is in the form of a human being, and will
disappear with him before it is half learned by us, who cannot do the
things he has done.”This
suggestion of Miss Kingsley’s gave me no new thought; it only
sharpened a desire I had hopelessly cherished for some years. In my
many missionary occupations—translation of the Scriptures, and
other duties—I had never found the strength, when the special
missionary daily work was done, to sit down and put into writing the
mass of material I had collected as to the meaning and uses of
fetiches. Nor did I think it right for me to take time that was paid
for by the church in which to compile a book that would be my own
personal pleasure and property.Impressed
with this idea, on my fourth furlough to America in 1899, I confided
my wish to a few personal friends, telling them of my plan, not
indeed ever to give up my life-work in and for Africa, but to resign
from connection with the Board; and, returning to Africa under
independent employ and freed from mission control, but still working
under my Presbytery, have time to gratify my pen.One
of these friends was William Libbey, D. Sc., Professor of Physical
Geography and Director of the E. M. Museum of Geology and Archæology
in Princeton University. Without my knowledge he subsequently
mentioned the subject to his university friend, Rev. A. Woodruff
Halsey, D.D., one of the Secretaries of the Board of Foreign
Missions. Dr. Halsey thought my wish could be gratified without my
resigning from the Board’s service.In
November, 1899, the following action of the Board was forwarded to
me: “November 20th, 1899. In view of the wide and varied
information possessed by the Rev. Robert H. Nassau, D.D., of the West
Africa Mission, regarding the customs and traditions of the tribes on
the West Coast, and the importance of putting that knowledge into
some permanent form, the Board requested Dr. Nassau to prepare a
volume or volumes on the subject; and it directed the West Africa
Mission to assign him, on his return from his furlough, to such forms
of missionary work as will give him the necessary leisure and
opportunity.”On
my return to Africa in 1900, I was located at Batanga, one hundred
and seventy miles north of Gabun, and was assigned to the pastorate
of the Batanga Church, the largest of the twelve churches of the
Corisco Presbytery, with itineration to and charge of the sessions of
the Kribi and Ubĕnji churches.During
intervals of time in the discharge of these pastoral duties my
recreation was the writing and sifting of the multitude of notes I
had collected on native superstition during the previous quarter of a
century. The people of Batanga, though largely emancipated from the
fetich practices of superstition, still believed in its witchcraft
aspect. I began there to arrange the manuscript of this work. There,
more than elsewhere, the natives seemed willing to tell me tales of
their folk-lore, involving fetich beliefs. From them, and also from
Mpongwe informants, were gathered largely the contents of Chapters
XVI and XVII.And
now, on this my fifth furlough, the essay on Bantu Theology has grown
to the proportions of this present volume.The
conclusions contained in all these chapters are based on my own
observations and investigations.Obligation
is acknowledged to a number of writers on Africa and others,
quotations from whose books are credited in the body of this work. I
quote them, not as informants of something I did not already know,
but as witnesses to the fact of the universality of the same
superstitious ideas all over Africa.By
the courtesy of the American Geographical Society, Chapters IV, V, X,
and XI have appeared in its Bulletin during the years 1901-1903.I
am especially obligated to Professor Libbey for his sympathetic
encouragement during the writing of my manuscript, and for his
judicious suggestions as to the final form I have given it.ROBERT
HAMILL NASSAU
CHAPTER I
CONSTITUTION
OF NATIVE AFRICAN SOCIETY—SOCIOLOGY
That
stream of the Negro race which is known ethnologically as “Bantu,”
occupies all of the southern portion of the African continent below
the fourth degree of north latitude. It is divided into a multitude
of tribes, each with its own peculiar dialect. All these dialects are
cognate in their grammar. Some of them vary only slightly in their
vocabulary. In others the vocabulary is so distinctly different that
it is not understood by tribes only one hundred miles apart, while
that of others a thousand miles away may be intelligible.
In
their migrations the tribes have been like a river, with its
windings, currents swift or slow; there have been even, in places,
back currents; and elsewhere quiet, almost stagnant pools. But they
all—from the Divala at Kamerun on the West Coast across to the
Kiswahile at Zanzibar on the East, and from Buganda by the Victoria
Nyanza at the north down to Zulu in the south at the Cape—have a
uniformity in language, tribal organization, family customs, judicial
rules and regulations, marriage ceremonies, funeral rites, and
religious beliefs and practice. Dissimilarities have crept in with
mixture among themselves by intermarriage, the example of foreigners,
with some forms of foreign civilization and education, degradation by
foreign vice, elevation by Christianity, and compulsion by foreign
governments.
As
a description of Bantu sociology, I give the following outline which
was offered some years ago, in reply to inquiries sent to members of
the Gabun and Corisco Mission living at Batanga, by the German
Government, in its laudable effort to adapt, as far as consistent
with justice and humanity, its Kamerun territorial government to the
then existing tribal regulations and customs of the tribes living in
the Batanga region. This information was obtained by various persons
from several sources, but especially from prominent native chiefs,
all of them men of intelligence.
In
their general features these statements were largely true also for
all the other tribes in the Equatorial Coast region, and for most of
the interior Bantu tribes now pressing down to the Coast. They were
more distinctly descriptive of Batanga and the entire interior at the
time of their formulation. But in the ten years that have since
passed, a stranger would find that some of them are no longer exact.
Foreign authority has removed or changed or sapped the foundations of
many native customs and regulations, while it has not fully brought
in the civilization of Christianity. The result in some places, in
this period of transition, has been almost anarchy,—making a
despotism, as under Belgian misrule in the so-called Kongo “Free”
State; or commercial ruin, as under French monopoly in their
Kongo-Français; and general confusion, under German hands, due to
the arbitrary acts of local officials and their brutal black
soldiery.
I.
The Country.
The
coast between 5° and 4° N. Lat. is called “Kamerun.” This is
not a native word: it was formerly spelled by ships’ captains in
their trade “Cameroons.” Its origin is uncertain. It is thought
that it came from the name of the Portuguese explorer Diego Cam. The
tribes in that region are the Divala, Isubu, Balimba, and other
lesser ones.
The
coast from 4° to 3° N. Lat. has also a foreign name, “Batanga.”
I do not know its origin.
The
coast from 3° to 2° N. Lat. is called, by both natives and
foreigners, “Benita”; at 1° N., by foreigners, “Corisco,”
and by natives, “Benga.” The name “Corisco” was given by
Spaniards to an island in the Bay of Benga because of the brilliant
coruscations of lightning so persistent in that locality. The Benga
dialect is taken as the type of all the many dialects used from
Corisco north to Benita, Bata, Batanga, and Kamerun.
From
1° N. to 3° S. is known as the “Gabun country,” with the
Mpongwe dialect, typical of its many congeners, the Orungu, Nkâmi
(miscalled “Camma”), Galwa, and others.
