Among Congo cannibals

Building our house—Armed natives—Their ruse to discover our strength—The reason of their proffered help—A tribal war—Cannibal feast—Taunt us with being cowards and women—We defend some visitors—Blood-brotherhood—Inquisitive Congo boys—Medicine and “books”—Mental powers of Congo lads—Native view of women.

We were about a fortnight erecting the framework of our house and finishing the walls; and then it took us over two months to collect and dry local materials for the roof; but in the meantime we made doors and windows, and cut a large number of nine-inch blocks for paving the floor. I thought that these blocks would raise us above the damp earth, and would also help to keep away some of the insect and reptile pests that invade a house built on the ground. We did not square the blocks, but simply laid them evenly bedded in puddled clay; and with some native mats spread over them they formed a fairly comfortable floor. The blocks lasted for more than three years, by which time they began to rot at the bottom and sink; but they served their purpose, and then became useful as firewood.

The house that we ran up so quickly was 40 feet long by 18 feet wide. This gave us each a bed-sitting-room 15 feet by 18 feet, a store-room 10 feet by 12 feet, and a six-foot passage communicating between the two principal rooms, and into this passage the front doors opened. In the front of the house we built a large open porch 14 feet by 14 feet, which served the purpose of dining, drawing and reception-room. Thus we had a large airy house, rain, wind, and sun-tight, which undoubtedly greatly conduced to health and comfort during the building of more permanent dwellings in anticipation of the coming of our wives.

At that time the natives never moved many yards from their houses without three or four spears in their hands, ugly knives in their sheaths, and shields on their arms. Armed in this manner they would frequently congregate on the bank, and, shading their eyes with their hands, they would look earnestly down the river; and then coming to us they would say, “White men, the people in the lower towns are coming up to fight you; get out your guns ready and we will help you.”

Looking down the river we could see in the distance many canoes darting about, but as we had given the natives of those towns no reason for attacking us, and as we were the guests of another town we knew they would not assail us without collusion with our neighbours; and as our neighbours had every opportunity of easily killing two unarmed men if they desired so to do without calling in outsiders to share the loot, we thought that the staring down-river, their statements regarding the evil designs of the lower towns, and their offers of help were simply attempts to fleece us of barter goods in payment for their proffered aid; so we used to get out our binoculars, look down-river, and making some laughing remark, go on with our work.

This laughter and brave show were more often forced than not, for we were at times puzzled by the apparent earnestness of our neighbours, and their repeated assurances that they would help us if we would only bring out our guns and properly prepare to support them when the attack was made. As a matter of fact, we had only one gun between us, and that was in pieces at the bottom of one of my trunks. We had no cartridges, and although we had cartridge cases, shots, balls, caps, and outfit for making cartridges, yet we had not a grain of gunpowder; but all this we kept to ourselves and refused to make preparations until we were certain the enemy really intended to attack us.

It was not until some years later that I heard the reason for these frequent demonstrations on our beach; there was a large party, composed of the principal head-men in the town, who wanted to kill and rob us of our goods, but they were not sure of our resources. “What have they in those cases and trunks? Are they full of guns and cartridges?” These were the questions discussed around their fires, hence they hit on the ruse of pretending the other towns were coming to fight us that we might make a show of such weapons of defence as were in our possession. They were nonplussed by our apparent indifference and calmness, and were as much puzzled by our quiet attitude as we were by their warlike demonstrations.

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?” Doubtless our very calmness not only mystified them, but saved us from an attack that would have been disastrous to us, and would have frustrated our plans on behalf of the people. Some nine years before our arrival at Monsembe I had been told by an old German missionary with whom I was travelling, that a display of force often incited the natives to try issues with the sojourner in their midst; and while the above incident is a confirmation of the soundness of his advice, we have a better example of it in Dr. Livingstone, who travelled among the wildest tribes and won their confidence and friendship because he moved freely amongst them unarmed, and unaccompanied by any exhibition of physical force.

One evening in November (1890), soon after we entered our new house, the whole town was thrown into a state of confusion by the report that some of the up-river towns were coming to attack Monsembe on the morrow. Women hurried by with their children, their fowls, and their most treasured belongings, and, putting them in canoes, they paddled away in the darkness to hide them and themselves on the numerous islands opposite and below Monsembe; men gathered their spears, knives, and shields, and stood in groups near the various roads that connected their town with the upper towns; the bigger lads sharpened sticks and hardened the points in the fire so as to embarrass and annoy the enemy with them even if they could not kill; and all through the long night they sounded drums and gongs not only to keep up their own spirits, but to warn the foe that they were on the alert.

As the sun next morning began to creep above the eastern line of trees that bounded our horizon there was great activity in the town. 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.

Soon we heard the shouts of the combatants, and the occasional bang of a gun (there were only three or four flint-locks in the whole town); and in came a man with a deep spear wound. He gave an account of the battle, and the women screamed in anger, or shouted in derision as his narrative either told of a friend wounded or an enemy killed. We dressed his wound, and his wives led him away. For nearly two hours we were busy dressing wounds to a chorus of screaming and shouting women; and then we heard that the attackers had given way, and were in full retreat. By this time the natives of the lower towns had arrived to support their neighbours, and they too joined in the pursuit of the beaten foes, whom they followed to their towns, where the fight was renewed until the Monsembe people took possession of them.

For a time the only sounds heard in the town were the low wails of the women mourning for the slain, or weeping over those who were badly wounded; and the songs and shouts of the women whose husbands and relatives had escaped death and wounds. Before sunset the victorious party returned with their loot of goods and prisoners. Goats, sheep, and fowls were led or carried by our house; men laden with bunches of plantains and bananas, or carrying heavy baskets of peanuts, cassava, and native bread; others were weighted down with fish-nets, animal nets, doors, paddles, saucepans, and jars; for anything that would fetch a few brass rods was stolen and formed a part of the procession of miscellaneous oddments that streamed by our house. After raiding the enemies’ towns they set fire to the houses, and some told us with glee of old and sick folk who had hidden themselves in the dark corners of their huts who were burnt to death, preferring, apparently, the tender mercies of the fire to the cruel death that awaited them if they fell into the savage hands of their ferocious victors.

While we were sitting at our tea the last party of returning warriors filed past our house, carrying the limbs of those who had been slain in the fight. Some had human legs over their shoulders, others had threaded arms through slits in the stomachs of their dismembered foes, had tied the ends of the arms together, thus forming loops, and through these ghastly loops they had thrust their own living arms and were carrying them thus with the gory trunks dangling to and fro. The horrible sight was too much for us, and retching badly we had to abandon our meal, and it was some days before we could again eat with any relish. The sight worked on our nerves, and in the night we would start from our sleep, having seen in our dreams exaggerated processions passing before us burdened with sanguinary loads of slain and dismembered bodies.

That night Monsembe and the neighbouring towns were given up to cannibal feasts, and the next morning they brought some of the cooked meat to the station, and thinking they were doing us a favour, they offered to share it with us—the meat looked like black boiled pork. We refused their offering with disgust, and told them what we thought of their horrible custom. Long before we settled amongst them we had heard rumours of their cannibalism, but we regarded the tales as more or less mythical; we could no longer now disbelieve the stories we had heard. And later still there came to our ears a very circumstantial report that the folk of the lower part of our district were procuring for their cannibal orgies the natives of a tributary of the Congo. They gave ivory and received human beings in exchange, who quickly found their way to the saucepan; and a white trader was the intermediary. However, as soon as the white folk of the district had gathered such evidence as was irrefutable they brought such pressure to bear on that white trader and his company (the company was not implicated) that the horrible traffic was stopped. That an educated white man could sink so low as to become a wholesale dealer in human flesh to a tribe of African savages is a psychological mystery that I must leave others to solve.

After the fighting and feasting were over the Monsembe folk lived in constant fear of reprisals. Night after night groups of men were posted near the roads leading from the enemies’ towns, and frequently the gongs and drums broke on the night’s silence with their rapid beats, awakening the sleepers who, hastily picking up their spears, knives, and shields, hurried by to the scene of the alarm only to find that the sentries “thought they saw or heard something” in the adjacent bush. The women sometimes came screaming in from the farms avowing they had been chased by the enemy. Every rustle of the grass, leaves, or bush was interpreted into a lurking foe; and the nerves of the victors became so jumpy that a voice raised in angry conversation would set the whole town agog with expectation that the enemy had come seeking revenge.

When these alarms took place during the day, the fighters would demonstrate before our house, and ask us to bring out our guns and help them to keep off the foe. “You are living in our town, and you are our white men. We offered to help you against the lower towns if they came to attack you, and now get out your guns and aid us. Why, if you were only to show yourselves the people of the upper towns would run away. Come on, our white men, and help us!”

We pointed out to them that all the people of the district were our friends, and consequently we could not assist one town to fight against another.

Then, finding that arguments and persuasion failed to move us, they took to taunting us. “You are not white men,” they shouted, “you are women! You are cowards!” And with curled lips and gestures of scorn they pointed their spears and knives at us.

Their taunts and gestures of contempt stung us, making the blood surge through our veins and causing us to go hot and cold by turns. With pale faces, compressed lips, and hands gripping tightly whatever came within our grasp, we listened patiently to their sneers. How easy it would have been to have taken our gun and made some display of helping them! To have walked among them, and to have fired a shot into the bush would probably have satisfied them and would have stopped their sneers; but we were there on behalf of the “Prince of Peace.” How could we, then, consistently help them in their fights? We were there professing that all the peoples of the neighbouring towns and surrounding districts were our friends; how could we then take up arms against any of them and expect them to believe our professions of good-will or trust again in our word? We were hoping to make our station a centre of peace, the meeting-place for all factions; how could we, then, with our hopes and prayers, embroil ourselves in their hatreds and wars, or join sides with them even in pretending to shoot down our other parishioners? It was very difficult, but strength was given to meet the emergency, to bear calmly the taunts, the sneers, and the contempt; and from that time we were regarded by all the towns of the district as belonging to no one place, but to all of them, as impartial in our judgments, and just in our dealings with all alike.

About three weeks after the first outbreak of war the natives of the upper towns came to talk over the terms of peace. They landed at our beach as the only neutral spot, and tied their canoes to our posts. The deliberations were long, boisterous, and from the noise that came to our ears we thought two or three times that they were on the point of starting fresh hostilities. At last the palavering was over and the visitors returned to our station, and bidding us good-bye, they entered their canoes; but just as they were pushing off the Monsembe people became excited and threatening in their attitude, and seeing that a fight on our beach was imminent, my colleague and I picked up sticks and drove the Monsembe people back from the river front. We insisted on the neutrality of our station; we had bought and paid for the land, consequently it was ours, and we would have no fighting on it; if they wanted to fight they must go to another part of the beach.

This attitude of ours was a revelation to our Monsembe neighbours. Here were two white men whom they had taunted with being cowards, women, etc., standing with simply sticks in their hands to oppose a crowd armed with spears and knives. Two white men with sticks only throwing themselves between them and their enemies, and demanding that no blood should be shed on their land. What power had these white men behind them? So astonished were they that they halted in their treacherous attack on their visitors, who, taking advantage of the lull, paddled beyond reach of the uplifted spears, and arrived safely home.

After this failure to settle the terms of peace, a go-between (molekaleku) was appointed and approved by both parties. He was an outsider of importance and had the confidence of the clans concerned. He arranged the terms of peace: all loot and slaves should be retained by the conquerors; but all the free folk captured should be set at liberty. This go-between selected a neutral place for the ceremony of blood-brotherhood, and was pledged that the meeting should take place without a renewal of hostilities by either party.

All the preliminaries having been settled the parties met at the place and time appointed; and then a stick called ndeko was procured and carefully scraped, and these scrapings were mixed with salt. The contracting parties—the head-man of each side—clasped each other’s right hand with the ndeko between the palms; some incisions were then made on the arms and the mixture of ndeko scrapings and salt was rubbed on the cuts; each then put his mouth to the incisions on the other’s arm and sucked for a few moments, after which one of the contracting parties took the ndeko stick and struck the wrists and knees of the other, saying: “If ever I break this covenant may I be cursed by having my nose rot off.”^[10] Then the other took the ndeko stick, and, performing the same ceremony, he called down the same curse on himself should he ever break the contract. These rites were accompanied by the drinking of much sugar-cane wine, and the whole ceremony was called tena ndeko = to cut the ndeko stick.

After making blood-brotherhood between the head-men, there was enacted another performance called bakia lolelembe: a medicine man took a palm frond, split it and put one half of the frond across the path leading from Monsembe to the upper towns—the towns of the contracting parties. This was not only a sign that all that palaver was finished, but it was a fetish having power, it was supposed, to punish anyone who broke the treaty. It was firmly believed that the side that renewed that quarrel would get the worst of it by wounds and death. Perhaps this is the history of many a tribal fight in Africa—alarm, attack, defeat, pursuit, cannibal feasts, and the making of peace by blood-brotherhood.

Congo boys are the most inquisitive animals that I have yet met in Africa. Crocodiles, when boats were new to the Congo, would follow them for hours in their attempts to investigate the strange object; goats and sheep were always ready to poke their noses at new things that came within their purview, but their curiosity was quickly satisfied. Congo boys (and in a minor degree the girls also) were never wearied of watching us at work, following us about to see what we would do next, and asking about our tools, etc., and why we did this or that in such a way, and did not accomplish the same result by some other mode of procedure. 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.

One never-ending source of delight to them was to scan our countenances as we read. They noticed every alteration of facial expression as the “books talked to us.” If we burst out laughing at some witticism in our reading they would laugh heartily in sympathy with us, and would poke one another, saying: “The book is talking some funny thing to them.” When their shyness had passed away they would ask: “What does the book say to make you laugh?” Occasionally the bit of wit came within the scope of their comprehension, and of our knowledge of the language, and they would enjoy it as much as we did, showing they had a ready wit and enjoyed a hearty laugh; and we felt encouraged, for there is some hope for a people that can laugh joyously and boisterously.

At times they would creep behind us, and looking earnestly at the open page, they would cock their ears to listen intently for any sound, and seeing nothing but a blurred page, and hearing no sounds, they would insinuatingly ask: “White man, how does the book talk to you? and can you make it talk to us?” We would then explain the system of letters and syllables, etc.; but would, at the same time, express a doubt as to their ability to learn to read.

“Cannot you give us some ‘medicine’ to make us understand the ‘book’ talk?” they would pleadingly ask of us.

“No,” we replied; “there is no ‘medicine’ that can give you such wisdom. You must learn letter by letter, and of course you have no brains for such work. What is the use of wasting time in teaching you?”

If we had exhibited any special eagerness to teach them, they would have held back; but chaffing them and pretending that they had not enough brains to learn had the desired effect of putting them on their mettle, and they begged us to start school right away. We showed no hurry to fall in with their wishes, and this only piqued them and made them more desirous of having a school. At last we acceded to their repeated requests, and told them that on the day that followed the next “rest-day” (i.e. on Monday next), we would begin school and hold it every morning for five days a week.

The eventful morning dawned, and with it about twenty lads arrived to enter upon the mysteries of the white man’s “book.” At that time I was busy building a suitable house in anticipation of my wife’s arrival, so my colleague, Mr. Stapleton, took charge of the new school. His room was the school-house. We had written out the alphabet in large letters, and had prepared some slips from which they might copy. We opened a box containing some slates and pencils. The school-house and apparatus were in keeping with the scholars, but the latter brought with them a large amount of enthusiasm and determination, so what was lacking in school furniture, and in the attire of our pupils, was made up in the willingness and earnestness of the scholars.

The adults were almost as greatly excited as the boys. They watched every movement of the teacher, and tried to imitate the sounds of the various letters. As I passed to and fro at my work I could see the door and windows crowded by the throng of onlookers, and could hear their laughable attempts at learning. Two hours at this kind of teaching thoroughly exhausted my colleague, for there were not only twenty sprightly boys to look after, but a crowd of men and women who demanded no little attention. In a week or two the newness of the school wore away, fewer adults gathered around the doors and windows, and some of the lads, finding that there really was no “medicine” to drink imparting to them book knowledge, no royal road to learning, but that it entailed continuous effort, gave up coming, and by the end of a fortnight only about half the original class was left—but they were worth teaching, and they persevered until they became good scholars and afterwards teachers of others.

During nearly thirty years’ teaching of Congo youths, both on the Lower and Upper River, I have noticed that up to the age of fourteen or fifteen the boys and girls—especially the boys—are very receptive, and are easily taught; but after that age comparatively few make real advance in learning. By the age of fourteen they have arrived at puberty, and after that they have to make a continuous effort to retain any book knowledge they may have received. This may be due in some measure to their thoughts being centred on other matters, as trade journeys, fishing, and hunting on their own account, and later to building their houses, looking about for a wife, and procuring the necessary articles for paying the marriage money, and meeting the expenses of the feasts, etc.

The following is probably a great factor in causing their mental growth to stop practically at the above age: For generations boys on arriving at the age of fourteen or fifteen had learned all their fathers had to teach them respecting fishing, hunting, wood-craft, building, paddling, etc. If they showed a special aptitude for fishing, hunting, etc., they followed their “bent” in that particular, and became proficient simply by practice, and their successes were generally put to the credit of their charms. They never initiated new ways of building (until after the arrival of the white man), or new ways of hunting or fishing, etc., but only carried on those modes they had gained from their fathers, and which were mastered by the time they were fifteen years old. Thus their intelligence has attained, for generations, its fullest development by the above age, and now we have to help them over that crucial stage. In some cases it is very difficult, but in other cases we can do so; and in such there is no limit to the intellectual progress they may make. In many instances they have mastered a good working knowledge of French, Portuguese, or English, both spoken and written, and as larger opportunities are given, a large number of youths will make such mental progress as will encourage their friends and teachers.

The native in his raw state gained such an acquaintance with the languages of neighbouring tribes as to be able to communicate freely with them; and in many of their folk-lore stories there are sentences taken from other languages and scattered through the tales like French phrases in a fashionable novel. We have found, as a rule, that lads who came to us at fourteen or fifteen made very slow progress in our schools, and seldom reached the higher classes. They lost heart at their difficulties, and left school—there were exceptions, but such as only go to prove the rule. I think it would not be difficult to prove that English lads at the age of fourteen or fifteen need constant spurring by teacher, father, or guardian, or a much larger proportion of them would lose the knowledge they had acquired in their schools.

When I had almost finished building the three-room bungalow in which I hoped to spend many years with my devoted wife, I began to build a kitchen, and the natives, seeing a smaller house being built in proximity to the larger one, said: “That is where the white man is going to put his wife, while he will, of course, live in the large house.”

“No,” we answered; “that is the cook-house. My wife will live here in this house when she arrives.”

“You would not be so foolish, white man,” they inquired, “as to put a woman in this fine house? You will send her to live in that small one, will you not?” And there was a certain amount of anxiety in their tones rather indicative of their fear that I was going to upset the proper order of domestic life by allowing a woman to live on equality with myself.

They would scarcely believe me until they saw the stove fixed in the cook-house, and my wife installed with me on equal terms in what they called my “fine house,” which was only a three-roomed cottage with a verandah on two sides.

The Boloki’s regard for women was a strange contradiction. I have seen them walking—man and wife—with their arms around each other’s waist, as though they were a couple of English lovers crossing a common in the twilight. I never saw natives exhibit so much fondling and affection for each other as was shown among those erstwhile cannibals. Ninety per cent of their quarrels were about women, for every man who had one or more wives bitterly resented any interference with his sole proprietorship in them. 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.