CHAPTER LVI.
DAHOME—Continued.
THE DUPLICATE KING — THE “CUSTOMS” OF DAHOME — APPEARANCE OF KING GELELE — ETIQUETTE AT COURT — THE KING DRINKS — THE CALABASHES OF STATE — THE KING’S PROGRESS — THE ROYAL PROCESSION — THE FIRST DAY OF THE CUSTOMS — THE VICTIM-SHED AND ITS INMATES — THE ROYAL PAVILION — PRELIMINARY CEREMONIALS — THE SECOND DAY OF THE CUSTOMS — THE “ABLE-TO-DO-ANYTHING” CLOTH — THE THIRD DAY — SCRAMBLING FOR COWRIES, AND PROCESSION OF HUNCHBACKS — FETISHES — CONVERSATION WITH THE VICTIMS — THE FOURTH DAY AND ITS EVIL NIGHT — ESTIMATED NUMBER OF THE VICTIMS, AND MODE OF THEIR EXECUTION — OBJECT AND MEANING OF THE CUSTOMS — LETTER TO THE DEAD, AND THE POSTSCRIPT — EXECUTION AT AGBOME — THE BLOOD DRINKER.
Before proceeding to the dread “customs” of Dahome, we must give a brief notice of a remarkable point in the Dahoman statecraft. Like Japan, Dahome has two kings, but, instead of being temporal and spiritual as in Japan, they are City king and Bush king, each having his throne, his state, his court, his army, his officers, and his customs. When Captain Burton visited Dahome, the City king was Gelele, son of Gezo, and the Bush king was Addo-kpore.
The Bush king is set over all the farmers, and regulates tillage and commerce; while the City king rules the cities, makes war, and manages the slave trade. Consequently, the latter is so much brought into contact with the traders that the former is scarcely ever seen except by those who visit the country for the express purpose. He has a palace at a place about six miles from the capital, but the building was only made of poles and matting when Captain Burton visited it, and is not likely to be made of stronger materials, as it was not to be built of “swish” until Abeokuta was taken.
We will now proceed to describe, as briefly as is consistent with truth, the customs of both kings, our authorities being restricted to two, Mr. Duncan and Captain Burton, the latter having made many important corrections in the statements of the former and of other travellers. The present tense will therefore be used throughout the description.
Gelele is a fine-looking man, with a right royal aspect. He is more than six feet in height, thin, broad-shouldered, active, and powerful. His hair is nearly all shaven except two cockade-like tufts, which are used as attachments for beads and other trinkets of brass and silver. Contrary to the usual form, he has a firm and well-pronounced chin, and a tolerably good forehead, and, in spite of his cruel and bloodthirsty nature, has a very agreeable smile. He wears his nails very long, and is said, though the statement is very doubtful, that he keeps under his talon-like nails a powerful poison, which he slily infuses in the drink of any of his Caboceers who happen to offend him. His face is much pitted with the small-pox, and he wears the mark of his race, namely, three perpendicular scars on the forehead just above the nose. This is the last remnant of a very painful mode of tatooing, whereby the cheeks were literally carved, and the flaps of flesh turned up and forced to heal in that position.
He is not nearly so black as his father, his skin approaching the copper color, and it is likely that his mother was either a slave girl from the northern Makhi, or a mulatto girl from Whydah.
On ordinary occasions he dresses very simply, his body cloth being of white stuff edged with green, and his short drawers of purple silk. He wears but few ornaments, the five or six iron bracelets which encircle his arms being used more as defensive armor than as jewelry.
Still, though dressed in a far simpler style than any of his Caboceers, he is very punctilious with regard to etiquette, and preserves the smallest traditions with a minute rigidity worthy of the court of Louis XIV. Although he may be sitting on a mere earthen bench, and smoking a clumsy and very plain pipe, all his court wait upon him with a reverence that seems to regard him as a demi-god rather than a man. Should the heat, from which he is sheltered as much as possible by the royal umbrella, produce a few drops on his brow, they are delicately wiped off by one of his wives with a fine cloth; if the tobacco prove rather too potent, a brass or even a gold spittoon is placed before the royal lips. If he sneezes, the whole assembled company burst into a shout of benedictions. The chief ceremony takes place when he drinks. As soon as he raises a cup to his lips, two of his wives spread a white cloth in front of him, while others hold a number of gaudy umbrellas so as to shield him from view. Every one who has a gun fires it, those who have bells beat them, rattles are shaken, and all the courtiers bend to the ground, clapping their hands. As to the commoners, they turn their backs if sitting, if standing they dance like bears, paddling with their hands as if they were paws, bawling “Poo-oo-oo” at the top of their voices.
If a message is sent from him, it is done in a most circuitous manner. He first delivers the message to the Dakro, a woman attached to the court. She takes it to the Meu, and the Meu passes it on to the Mingan, and the Mingan delivers it to the intended recipient. When the message is sent to the king, the order is reversed, and, as each officer has to speak to a superior, a salutation is used neatly graduated according to rank. When the message at last reaches the Dakro, she goes down on all-fours, and whispers the message into the royal ears. So tenacious of trifles is the native memory, that the message will travel through this circuitous route without the loss or transposition of a word.
When any one, no matter what may be his rank, presents himself before the king, he goes through a ceremony called “Itte d’ai,” or lying on the ground. He prostrates himself flat on his face, and with his hands shovels the dust all over his person. He also kisses the ground, and takes care when he rises to have as much dust as possible on his huge lips. Face, hands, limbs, and clothes are equally covered with dust, the amount of reverence being measured by the amount of dust. No one approaches the king erect: he must crawl on all-fours, shuffle on his knees, or wriggle along like a snake.
Wherever Gelele holds his court, there are placed before him three large calabashes, each containing the skull of a powerful chief whom he had slain. The exhibition of these skulls is considered as a mark of honor to their late owners, and not, as has been supposed, a sign of mockery or disgrace. One is bleached and polished like ivory, and is mounted on a small ship made of brass. The reason for this curious arrangement is, that when Gezo died, the chief sent a mocking message to Gelele, saying that the sea had dried up, and men had seen the end of Dahome. Gelele retaliated by invading his territory, killing him, and mounting his skull on a ship, as a token that there was plenty of water left to float the vessel.
The second skull is mounted with brass so as to form a drinking cup. This was done because the owner had behaved treacherously to Gelele instead of assisting him. In token, therefore, that he ought to have “given water to a friend in affliction”—the metaphorical mode of expressing sympathy—Gelele and his courtiers now drink water out of his skull. The third was the skull of a chief who had partaken of this treachery, and his skull was accordingly mounted with brass fittings which represented the common country trap, in order to show that he had set a trap, and fallen into it himself. All these skulls were without the lower jaw, that being the most coveted ornament for umbrellas and sword-handles. Sad to say, with the usual negro disregard of inflicting pain, the captor tears the jaw away while the victim is still alive, cutting through both cheeks with one hand and tearing away the jaw with the other.
The same minute and grotesque etiquette accompanies the king as he proceeds to Agbome, the real capital, to celebrate the So-Sin Custom, and it is impossible to read the accounts of the whole proceeding without being struck with the ingenuity by which the negro has pressed into the service of barbarism everything European that he can lay his hands upon, while he has invariably managed thereby to make the rites ludicrous instead of imposing.
First came a long line of chiefs, distinguished by their flags and umbrellas, and, after marching once round the large space or square, they crossed over and formed a line of umbrellas opposite the gateway. Then came the royal procession itself, headed by skirmishers and led by a man carrying one of the skull-topped banners. After these came some five hundred musketeers, and behind them marched two men carrying large leathern shields painted white, and decorated with a pattern in black. These are highly valued, as remnants of the old times when shields were used in warfare, and were accompanied by a guard of tall negroes, wearing brass helmets and black horse-tails.
(1.) AMAZON REVIEW.
(See page 571.)
(2.) THE KING’S DANCE.
(See page 577.)
Next came the Kafo, or emblem of royalty, namely, an iron fetish-stick enclosed in a white linen case, topped with a white plume; and after the Kafo came the king, riding under the shade of four white umbrellas, and further sheltered from the sun by three parasols, yellow, purple, and bluish red. These were waved over him so as to act as fans.
After the king was borne the great fetish axe, followed by the “band,” a noisy assemblage of performers on drums, rattles, trumpets, cymbals, and similar instruments. Two specimens of ivory trumpets, with various strange devices elaborately carved, are represented in an engraving on the 558th page. The right-hand trumpet has a crucified figure on it. Lastly came a crowd of slaves laden with chairs, baskets of cowries, bottles, and similar articles, the rear being brought up by a pair of white and blue umbrellas and a tattered flag.
Six times the king was carried round the space, during two of the circuits being drawn in a nondescript wheeled vehicle, and on the third circuit being carried, carriage and all, on the shoulders of his attendants. The fourth and fifth circuits were made in a Bath chair, and the sixth in the same vehicle carried as before. The king then withdrew to the opposite side of the space, and the Amazons made their appearance, dashing into the space in three companies, followed by the Fanti companies already described. These young women showed their agility in dancing, and were followed by a calabash adorned with skulls and a number of flags, escorted by twelve Razor women.
By this time the king had transferred himself to a hammock of yellow silk, suspended from a black pole ornamented with silver sharks—this fish being a royal emblem—and tipped with brass at each end. Twelve women carried the hammock, and others shaded and fanned him as before. These preliminaries being completed, all retired to rest until the following day, which was to be the first of the So-Sin or Horse-tie Customs.
The first object that strikes the eye of the observer is a large shed about one hundred feet long, forty wide, and sixty high, having at one end a double-storied turret, and the whole being covered with a red cloth. At the time of which we are treating there sat in the shed twenty of the victims to be sacrificed. They were all seated on stools, and bound tightly to the posts by numerous cords. No unnecessary pain was inflicted: they were fed four times in the day, were loosened at night for sleeping, and were furnished with attendants who kept off the flies. They were dressed in a sort of San Benito costume, namely, a white calico shirt, bound with red ribbon, and having a crimson patch on the left breast. On the head was a tall pointed white cap, with blue ribbon wound spirally round it. In spite of their impending fate, the victims did not seem to be unhappy, and looked upon the scene with manifest curiosity.
Next came the rite from which the ceremony takes its name. The chief of the horse came up with a number of followers, and took away all horses from their owners, and tied them to the shed, whence they could only be released by the payment of cowries.
Another shed was built especially for the king, and contained about the same number of victims. Presently Gelele came, and proceeded to his own shed, where he took his seat, close to the spot on which was pitched a little tent containing the relics of the old king, and supposed to be temporarily inhabited by his ghost. After some unimportant ceremonies, Gelele made an address, stating that his ancestors had only built rough and rude So-Sin sheds, but that Gezo had improved upon them when “making customs” for his predecessor. But he, Gelele, meant to follow his father’s example, and to do for his father what he hoped his son would do for him. This discourse was accompanied by himself on the drum, and after it was over, he displayed his activity in dancing, assisted by his favorite wives and a professional jester. (See engraving on the previous page.) Leaning on a staff decorated with a human skull, he then turned toward the little tent, and adored in impressive silence his father’s ghost.
The next business was to distribute decorations and confer rank, the most prominent example being a man who was raised from a simple captain to be a Caboceer, the newly-created noble floundering on the ground, and covering himself and all his new clothes with dust as a mark of gratitude. More dancing and drumming then went on until the night closed in, and the first day was ended.
The second day exhibited nothing very worthy of notice except the rite which gives it the name of Cloth-changing Day. The king has a piece of patchwork, about six hundred yards long by ten wide, which is called the “Nun-ce-pace-to,” i. e. the Able-to-do-anything cloth. This is to be worn by the king as a robe as soon as he has taken Abeokuta, and, to all appearances, he will have to wait a very long time before he wears it. It is unrolled, and held up before the king, who walked along its whole length on both sides, amid the acclamations of his people, and then passed to his shed, where he was to go through the cloth-changing. This rite consisted in changing his dress several times before the people, and dancing in each new dress, finishing with a fetish war-dress, i. e. a short under robe, and a dark blue cloth studded with charms and amulets, stained with blood, and edged with cowries.
The third day of the Customs exhibited but little of interest, being merely the usual processions and speeches, repeated over and over again to a wearisome length. The most notable feature is the cowrie-scrambling. The king throws strings of cowries among the people, who fight for them on perfectly equal terms, the lowest peasant and the highest noble thinking themselves equally bound to join in the scramble. Weapons are not used, but it is considered quite legitimate to gouge out eyes or bite out pieces of limbs, and there is scarcely a scramble that does not end in maiming for life, while on some occasions one or two luckless individuals are left dead on the ground. No notice is taken of them, as they are, by a pleasant fiction of law, supposed to have died an honorable death in defence of their king.
Lastly there came a procession of hunchbacks, who, as Captain Burton tells us, are common in Western Africa, and are assembled in troops of both sexes at the palace. The chief of them wielded a formidable whip, and, having arms of great length and muscular power, easily cut a way for his followers through the dense crowd. Seven potent fetishes were carried on the heads of the principal hunchbacks. They were very strong fetishes indeed, being in the habit of walking about after nightfall.
They are described as follows:—“The first was a blue dwarf, in a gray paque, with hat on head. The second, a blue woman with protuberant breast. The third, a red dwarf with white eyes, clad cap-à-pie in red and brown. The fourth was a small black mother and child in a blue loin-cloth, with a basket or calabash on the former’s head. The fifth, ditto, but lesser. The sixth was a pigmy baboon-like thing, with a red face under a black skull-cap, a war-club in the right hand and a gun in the left; and the seventh much resembled the latter, but was lamp-black, with a white apron behind. They were carved much as the face cut on the top of a stick by the country bumpkins in England.”
The king next paid a visit to the victims, and entered into conversation with some of them, and presented twenty “heads” of cowries to them. At Captain Burton’s request that he would show mercy, he had nearly half of them untied, placed on their hands and knees in front of him, and then dismissed them.
The fourth day of the Customs is traditionally called the Horse-losing Day, from a ceremony which has now been abolished, although the name is retained. More dances, more processions, and more boastings that Abeokuta should be destroyed, and that the grave of Gelele’s father should be well furnished with Egba skulls. The same little fetishes already mentioned were again produced, and were followed by a curious pas-de-seul performed by a “So.” The So is an imitation demon, “a bull-faced mask of natural size, painted black, with glaring eyes and peep-holes. The horns were hung with red and white rag-strips, and beneath was a dress of bamboo fibre covering the feet, and fringed at the ends. It danced with head on one side, and swayed itself about to the great amusement of the people.”
The whole of the proceedings were terminated by a long procession of slaves, bearing in their hands baskets of cowries. “It was the usual African inconsequence—100,000 to carry 20l.”
The evening of the fourth day is the dreaded Evil Night, on which the king walks in solemn procession to the market-place, where the chief executioner with his own hand puts to death those victims who have been reserved. The precise nature of the proceedings is not known, as none are allowed to leave their houses except the king and his retinue; and any one who is foolish enough to break this law is carried off at once to swell the list of victims. It is said that the king speaks to the men, charging them with messages to his dead father, telling him that his memory is revered, and that a number of new attendants have been sent to him, and with his own hand striking the first blow, the others being slain by the regular executioner.
The bodies of the executed were now set upon a pole, or hung up by their heels, and exhibited to the populace, much as used to be done in England, when a thief was first executed, and then hung in chains.
The number of these victims has been much exaggerated. In the annual Customs, the number appears to be between sixty and eighty. Some thirty of these victims are men, and suffer by the hand of the chief executioner or his assistants; but it is well known that many women are also put to death within the palace walls, the bloodthirsty Amazons being the executioners. The mode of execution is rather remarkable. After the king has spoken to the victims, and dictated his messages, the executioners fall upon them and beat them to death with their official maces. These instruments are merely wooden clubs, armed on one side of the head with iron knobs. Some, however, say that the victims are beheaded; and it is very likely that both modes are employed.
As to the stories that have been so frequently told of the many thousand human victims that are annually slain, and of the canoe which is paddled by the king in a trench filled with human blood, they are nothing more than exaggerations invented by traders for the purpose of frightening Englishmen out of the country. Even in the Grand Customs which follow the decease of a king the number of victims is barely five hundred.
We may naturally ask ourselves what is the meaning of the Customs, or So-Sin. This ceremony is the accepted mode of doing honor to the late king, by sending to him a number of attendants befitting his rank. Immediately after his burial, at the Grand Customs, some five hundred attendants, both male and female, are despatched to the dead king, and ever afterward his train is swelled by those who are slain at the regular annual Customs.
Besides the Customs there is scarcely a day when executions of a similar character do not take place. Whatever the king does must be reported to his father by a man, who is first charged with the message and then killed. No matter how trivial the occasion may be—if a white man visits him, if he has a new drum made, or even if he moves from one house to another—a messenger is sent to tell his father. And if after the execution the king should find that he has forgotten something, away goes another messenger, like the postscript of a letter.
All this terrible destruction of human life, which is estimated by Burton as averaging five hundred per annum in ordinary years, and a thousand in the Grand Customs year, is bad enough, but not so bad as it has been painted. The victims are not simple subjects of the king selected for the sacrifice of bloodthirsty caprice, as has been generally supposed. They are either criminals or prisoners of war, and, instead of being executed on the spot, are reserved for the customs, and are treated as well as is consistent with their safe custody.
Indeed, considering the object for which they are reserved, it would be bad policy for the Dahoman king to behave cruelly toward his victims. They are intended as messengers to his father, about whom they are ever afterward supposed to wait, and it would be extremely impolitic in the present king to send to his father a messenger who was ill-disposed toward himself, and who might, therefore, garble his message, or deliver an evil report to the dead sovereign.
As a rule, the victims in question are quite cheerful and contented, and about as unlike our ideas of doomed men as can well be imagined. In the first place, they are constitutionally indifferent to human life, their own lives with those of others being equally undervalued; and, as they know that their lives are forfeit, they accept the position without useless murmurs. Nor is the mode of death so painful as seems at first sight to be the case, for the king, actuated by that feeling of pity which caused the Romans to stupefy with a soporific draught the senses of those who were condemned to the cross, mostly administers to the victims a bottle or so of rum about an hour before the execution, so that they are for the most part insensible when killed.
This humane alleviation of their sufferings is, however, restricted to those who die at the customs, and is not extended to those who perish by the hands of the executioner as messengers to the deceased king. How these executions are conducted may be seen by the following account of a scene at Dahome by Mr. Duncan:—
“The ceremonies of this day were nearly a repetition of those of yesterday, till the time arrived (an hour before sunset) when the four traitors were brought into the square for execution. They marched through the mob assembled round apparently as little concerned as the spectators, who seemed more cheerful than before the prisoners made their appearance, as if they were pleased with the prospect of a change of performance. The prisoners were marched close past me in slow time; consequently I had a good opportunity of minutely observing them, particularly as every person remained on his knees, with the exception of myself and the guard who accompanied the prisoners.
“They were all young men, of the middle size, and appeared to be of one family, or at least of the same tribe of Makees, who are much better-looking than the people of the coast. Each man was gagged with a short piece of wood, with a small strip of white cotton tied round each end of the stick, and passed round the pole. This was to prevent them from speaking. They were arranged in line, kneeling before the king.
“The head gang-gang man then gave four beats on the gong, as one—two, and one—two; the upper part of the gang-gang being smaller than the lower, and thus rendering the sounds different, similar to the public clocks in England when striking the quarters. After the four beats the gang-gang man addressed the culprits upon the enormity of their crime and the justice of their sentence. During this lengthened harangue the gang-gang was struck at short intervals, which gave a sort of awful solemnity to the scene. After this, the men were suddenly marched some distance back from his majesty, who on this occasion refused to witness the execution. The men were then ordered to kneel in line about nine feet apart, their hands being tied in front of the body, and the elbows held behind by two men, the body of the culprit bending forward.
“Poor old Mayho, who is an excellent man, was the proper executioner. He held the knife or bill-hook to me, but I again declined the honor; when the old man, at one blow on the back of the neck, divided the head from the body of the first culprit, with the exception of a small portion of the skin, which was separated by passing the knife underneath. Unfortunately the second man was dreadfully mangled, for the poor fellow at the moment the blow was struck having raised his head, the knife struck in a slanting direction, and only made a large wound; the next blow caught him on the back of the head, when the brain protruded. The poor fellow struggled violently. The third stroke caught him across the shoulders, indicting a dreadful gash. The next caught him on the neck, which was twice repeated. The officer steadying the criminal now lost his hold on account of the blood which rushed from the blood-vessels on all who were near. Poor old Mayho, now quite palsied, took hold of the head, and after twisting it several times round, separated it from the still convulsed and struggling trunk. During the latter part of this disgusting execution the head presented an awful spectacle, the distortion of the features, and the eyeballs completely upturned, giving it a horrid appearance.
“The next man, poor fellow, with his eyes partially shut and head drooping forward near to the ground, remained all this time in suspense; casting a partial glance on the head which was now close to him, and the trunk dragged close past him, the blood still rushing from it like a fountain. Mayho refused to make another attempt, and another man acted in his stead, and with one blow separated the spinal bones, but did not entirely separate the head from the body. This was finished in the same manner as the first. However, the fourth culprit was not so fortunate, his head not being separated till after three strokes. The body afterward rolled over several times, when the blood spurted over my face and clothes.
“The most disgusting part of this abominable and disgusting execution was that of an ill-looking wretch, who, like the numerous vultures, stood with a small calabash in his hand, ready to catch the blood from each individual which he greedily devoured before it had escaped one minute from the veins. The old wretch had the impudence to put some rum in the blood and ask me to drink: at that moment I could with good heart have sent a bullet through his head.
“Before execution the victim is furnished with a clean white cloth to tie round the loins. After decapitation the body is immediately dragged off by the heels to a large pit at a considerable distance from the town, and thrown therein, and is immediately devoured by wolves and vultures, which are here so ravenous that they will almost take your victuals from you.”
Captain Burton says that he never saw this repulsive part of the sacrificial ceremony, and states that there is only one approach to cannibalism in Dahome. This is in connection with the worship of the thunder god, and is described on page 586.