Christian Missions in West Africa
IT is little more than half a generation since four millions of Africans wero held in apparently hopeless bondage in the United States—a condition which determined their status as one of social subordination and inferiority in all Christian lands. The emancipation in the British, French, Danish and Dutch colonies was able, it seems, to effect little towards improving the standing of the Negro. He was bound to a servile position until the supremacy of the cotton empire of the West was overthrown The proclamation of freedom in the United-States gave to the Negro at once a position which he had never before occupied; and, though he is in America numerically weak, and, in a measure, personally insignificant, still the barriers in the way of his progress are rapidly disappearing.
But it is not easy to efface impressions which have been busily taught and cheerfully imbibed during centuries. The Christian world, trained for the last three hundred years to look upon the Negro as made for the service of superior races, finds it difficult to shake off the notion of his absolute and permanent inferiority. Distrust, coldness or indifference, are the feelings with which, generally speaking, any efforts on his part to advance are regarded by the enlightened races. The influence of the representations disparaging to his mental and moral character, which, during the days of his bondage, were persistently put forward without contradiction, is still strong in many minds. The full effect of the new status of the Negro race will not be sufficiently felt during the present generation to enable even his best friends to get rid entirely of the pity or contempt for him which they have inherited, and which is, to a great extent, to be accounted for by the fact that the civilised world has hitherto come in contact, for the most part, only with the more degraded tribes of the African continent.
One of the most important of the results of the labours and sufferings of Livingstone is the light which he has been able to throw upon the subject of the African races at home, and which has awakened doubts even in the minds of the most apathetic as to the fairness of the representations disparaging to the Negro’s character which have been for so long a time in unimpeded circulation. The whole Christian world has been aroused by that humble missionary to the importance of “healing the open sore of the world,” and penetrating “the dark continent” with the light of Christianity and civilisation. Catholics and Protestants—Christians of every name and nationality—are vying with each other in endeavours to promote the work of African regeneration.
One sanguine or sensational letter from Mr. Stanley calling attention to a favourable opening for missionary operations in East Africa fell upon the British public like seed into prepared soil, and, in a short time, a bountiful harvest was reaped, in the shape of thousands of pounds, in response to the more urgent than “Macedonian cry.” This prompt liberality shows that there are Christian men and women in England who are deeply in earnest in the work of disseminating the truths of the Gospel in Africa.
It is evident that, at the present moment, there is no mission field in which the Christian public are so anxiously interested for the safety, welfare and success of the missionaries as the African; and there is none, moreover, whose successful working by European missionaries must, in the long run, depend so absolutely upon special and constant study of the mental and moral habits of the people and climatic peculiarities of the country. And yet in the constant necessity which presses upon missionary committees at home, and upon missionaries themselves, to find what may hold the public ear, in the impatient demand for immediate visible results in the unceasing strain after fresh subjects for exciting paragraphs, no leisure or repose is left for quiet thought, for grappling with new facts, or for giving due weight to views out of their accustomed groove of thought.
We do not set before ourselves, in the present paper, the ambitious task of propounding or discussing any new theory of African Missions. To describe accurately or intelligibly how missions in Africa ought to be conducted so as to come nearer than they have yet done to a realisation of the expectations of their supporters in Europe and America—so as in some measure to Christianise the African tribes—would probably be as difficult and impossible a task as any thinking man could well undertake. We are, for our own part, inclined to cut the Gordian knot by expressing the belief that it will not be given to the present generation of foreign workers in this field to solve the problem—or rather, problems—presented by the enormous work of African Christianisation. This is a privilege, we venture to believe, reserved for the “missionaries of the future.”[1]
Still, it may not be altogether unprofitable to consider some of the results thus far attained, and the hindrances in the way of more satisfactory achievements.
It is now nearly four hundred years since the first attempt was made to introduce Christianity into the Western portion of Africa. The summary of Christian Missions on this coast may be given in a few words.
The Roman Catholics come first. In 1481 the King of Portugal sent ten ships with 500 soldiers, 100 labourers, and a proper complement of priests as missionaries, to Elmina. The Romish missions thus founded, lingered on for a period of 241 years, till, at last, in 1723, that of the Capuchins at Sierra Leone was given up, and they disappeared altogether from West Africa. They had made no impression, except upon their immediate dependants; and what little impression they made on them was soon totally obliterated.
Protestant missionary attempts were begun by the Moravians in 1736, and continued till 1770. Five of such attempts cost eleven lives, and were not followed by visible results.
But it is not easy to efface impressions which have been busily taught and cheerfully imbibed during centuries. The Christian world, trained for the last three hundred years to look upon the Negro as made for the service of superior races, finds it difficult to shake off the notion of his absolute and permanent inferiority. Distrust, coldness or indifference, are the feelings with which, generally speaking, any efforts on his part to advance are regarded by the enlightened races. The influence of the representations disparaging to his mental and moral character, which, during the days of his bondage, were persistently put forward without contradiction, is still strong in many minds. The full effect of the new status of the Negro race will not be sufficiently felt during the present generation to enable even his best friends to get rid entirely of the pity or contempt for him which they have inherited, and which is, to a great extent, to be accounted for by the fact that the civilised world has hitherto come in contact, for the most part, only with the more degraded tribes of the African continent.
One of the most important of the results of the labours and sufferings of Livingstone is the light which he has been able to throw upon the subject of the African races at home, and which has awakened doubts even in the minds of the most apathetic as to the fairness of the representations disparaging to the Negro’s character which have been for so long a time in unimpeded circulation. The whole Christian world has been aroused by that humble missionary to the importance of “healing the open sore of the world,” and penetrating “the dark continent” with the light of Christianity and civilisation. Catholics and Protestants—Christians of every name and nationality—are vying with each other in endeavours to promote the work of African regeneration.
One sanguine or sensational letter from Mr. Stanley calling attention to a favourable opening for missionary operations in East Africa fell upon the British public like seed into prepared soil, and, in a short time, a bountiful harvest was reaped, in the shape of thousands of pounds, in response to the more urgent than “Macedonian cry.” This prompt liberality shows that there are Christian men and women in England who are deeply in earnest in the work of disseminating the truths of the Gospel in Africa.
It is evident that, at the present moment, there is no mission field in which the Christian public are so anxiously interested for the safety, welfare and success of the missionaries as the African; and there is none, moreover, whose successful working by European missionaries must, in the long run, depend so absolutely upon special and constant study of the mental and moral habits of the people and climatic peculiarities of the country. And yet in the constant necessity which presses upon missionary committees at home, and upon missionaries themselves, to find what may hold the public ear, in the impatient demand for immediate visible results in the unceasing strain after fresh subjects for exciting paragraphs, no leisure or repose is left for quiet thought, for grappling with new facts, or for giving due weight to views out of their accustomed groove of thought.
We do not set before ourselves, in the present paper, the ambitious task of propounding or discussing any new theory of African Missions. To describe accurately or intelligibly how missions in Africa ought to be conducted so as to come nearer than they have yet done to a realisation of the expectations of their supporters in Europe and America—so as in some measure to Christianise the African tribes—would probably be as difficult and impossible a task as any thinking man could well undertake. We are, for our own part, inclined to cut the Gordian knot by expressing the belief that it will not be given to the present generation of foreign workers in this field to solve the problem—or rather, problems—presented by the enormous work of African Christianisation. This is a privilege, we venture to believe, reserved for the “missionaries of the future.”[1]
Still, it may not be altogether unprofitable to consider some of the results thus far attained, and the hindrances in the way of more satisfactory achievements.
It is now nearly four hundred years since the first attempt was made to introduce Christianity into the Western portion of Africa. The summary of Christian Missions on this coast may be given in a few words.
The Roman Catholics come first. In 1481 the King of Portugal sent ten ships with 500 soldiers, 100 labourers, and a proper complement of priests as missionaries, to Elmina. The Romish missions thus founded, lingered on for a period of 241 years, till, at last, in 1723, that of the Capuchins at Sierra Leone was given up, and they disappeared altogether from West Africa. They had made no impression, except upon their immediate dependants; and what little impression they made on them was soon totally obliterated.
Protestant missionary attempts were begun by the Moravians in 1736, and continued till 1770. Five of such attempts cost eleven lives, and were not followed by visible results.
Footnotes:
1 The relations of the present generation of Europeans with the African races have not been such as to allow them to be unbiassed workers in the African field. While, like David, they may receive commendation for having conceived the idea of building the great Christian temple in Africa, it may be only given to them to open the way, collect the materials, &c.; other hands may have to rear the superstructure.
1 The relations of the present generation of Europeans with the African races have not been such as to allow them to be unbiassed workers in the African field. While, like David, they may receive commendation for having conceived the idea of building the great Christian temple in Africa, it may be only given to them to open the way, collect the materials, &c.; other hands may have to rear the superstructure.
The Wesleyans come next. In the Minutes of the Conference of 1792, we find Africa for the first time included in the list of Wesleyan missionary stations, Sierra Leone being the part occupied, and in the Minutes for 1796, the names of A. Murdoch and W. Patten are set down as missionaries to the Foulah country, in Africa, to which service they were solemnly set apart by the Conference.
The Church Missionary Society sent out its first missionaries in 1804.
They established and attempted to maintain ten stations among the aborigines, but they could make no progress owing to the hostility of the natives, who appear to have preferred the slave-traders. The missionaries were forced to take refuge in Sierra Leone, the only place where at that time they could labour with safety and hope.
The Basle Missionary Society—one of the most successful on the coast— had their attention directed to Western Africa as early as 1826; but it was not until 1828 that their first company of missionaries reached Christianborg, near Akra, the place which the Moravians had attempted to occupy more than thirty years previously.
The United Presbyterian Synod of Scotland began a mission on the Old Calabar River, in the Gulf of Benin, in April, 1846.
Five denominations of American Christians—Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans—are represented on the coast—in Liberia, at Lagos, the Island of Corisco, and Gaboon, The first American Mission was established on the coast in 1822.
Now, what has been the outcome of these missionary operations? These results thus far achieved are, in many respects, highly interesting and important. At the European settlements established at various points along the coast from Senegal to Loanda, and at the purely native stations, occupied by the Niger (native) missionaries, the Scotch missionaries and the American missionaries, some thousands of natives, having been brought under the immediate influence of Christian teaching, have professed Christianity, and, at the European settlements, have adopted European dress and habits.
Numerous churches have been organised, and are under a native ministry, and thousands of children are gathered into schools under Christian teachers.
The West African Reporter, a weekly newspaper owned and published at Sierra Leone exclusively by natives, and itself an interesting evidence of the progress of civilisation on the coast, gives, in its issue for January 4, 1876, the following:--
The Niger Mission and the native pastorate—which latter has received the encomiums of friends and foes—are standing monuments of the [Church Missionary] Society’s labours, and proofs of the permanence of results thus far achieved. Bishop Crowther, the first Negro Bishop, the Rev. James Johnson of Lagos, Dr. Africanus Horton, the distinguished physician and author, and numerous others, less widely known but not less useful, sat under the instructions which have been imparted in the Church Missionary College at Fourah Bay, in Sierra Leone.
But other useful men besides preachers have been raised up under the instruction of the missionaries; many able and useful Government officials, skilful mechanics—especially at the Basle Mission—and merchants, who by their intelligence, industry and enterprise have risen to an equality in wealth and influence with the European merchants on the coast.
Still, these results, in their largest measure, are confined almost exclusively to the European settlements along the coast and to their immediate neighbourhood. No mission station of any importance has been established among any of the powerful tribes in the interior, or on the coast at a distance from European settlements. In the evangelistic operations of the Niger Mission, we can hear of no central station of influence among any of the leading tribes. Bishop Crowther’s last Report of the “Mission among the Natives of the Bight of Biafra, at Bonny, Brass and New Calabar Rivers,” [2] after ten years’ labour, is not particularly encouraging.
The work done at Sierra Leone and in Liberia cannot be regarded as done upon the indigenous elements of those localities. The native populations of Sierra Leone and Liberia—the Timnehs, Soosoos, Mendis, Veys, Golahs, Bassas, Kroos, &c.— are still untouched by evangelical influence. The visitor at Sierra Leone and at Monrovia is at once struck by the exotic appearance of everything. The whole black population of those settlements who have made any progress in Christian civilisation have been imported—in the case of Sierra Leone, from other parts of Africa, and, in that of Liberia, from America. If everything extraneous or imported were taken away from these settlements to-morrow, the regions they occupy would wear an aspect similar to that which they presented to Sir John Hawkins three hundred years ago, but it is to be feared that the inhabitants would not present the pleasing moral characteristics attributed to them while they were as yet un-Europeanised, by that great pioneer of English-African slave-traders. Nor is even the civilising work done in the settlements without its drawbacks.
In the African Times for January 1, 1876, the editor, after the labour of half a generation in the cause of West African progress, opens the year with the following lament:--
Lagos has grievously disappointed our hopes and expectations. She is not what she ought to be after years of annexation to the British Crown. It is no cause for wonder, therefore, that she has not exercised that influence on the Heathen within her and in the neighbouring countries which we looked for from her. . . . The professed Christians of Lagos ought to be a mighty phalanx against the surrounding Heathenism; but we do not see that they have made any successful attack upon it.
Governor Berkeley, in his Blue Book Report of the Settlement of Lagos for 1872, estimates the population of the entire settlement at 60, 221, out of which there were only 92 whites; and he adds:--
This settlement contributes nothing towards the promotion of religion or education. The Church Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Society, and the Roman Catholics are all represented in the shape of ministers, churches and schools.[3]
Sir Charles Adderley, after a full and careful investigation of the subject, says:--
Barbarism survives, for all we expend in lives and taxes to establish what must prove, after all, an ineffectual administration of English power in the West African country.[4]
In the West African Reporter (February 1, 1876) we are informed that:--
The Timnehs of Quiah to this day look with wistful eyes to the Peninsula of Sierra Leone, the Bananas Island down to Carmaranca Creek, the Ribbee and Bompeh rivers, and their hearts are burning with revenge against the Powers that wrenched these places from the hands of their ancestors. Their chiefs are dissatisfied with the stipends they receive, as being no equivalent remuneration for the occupation and use of their lands by our Government; and they are only prevented from making any mischievous move by want of power.
The Church Missionary Society sent out its first missionaries in 1804.
They established and attempted to maintain ten stations among the aborigines, but they could make no progress owing to the hostility of the natives, who appear to have preferred the slave-traders. The missionaries were forced to take refuge in Sierra Leone, the only place where at that time they could labour with safety and hope.
The Basle Missionary Society—one of the most successful on the coast— had their attention directed to Western Africa as early as 1826; but it was not until 1828 that their first company of missionaries reached Christianborg, near Akra, the place which the Moravians had attempted to occupy more than thirty years previously.
The United Presbyterian Synod of Scotland began a mission on the Old Calabar River, in the Gulf of Benin, in April, 1846.
Five denominations of American Christians—Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans—are represented on the coast—in Liberia, at Lagos, the Island of Corisco, and Gaboon, The first American Mission was established on the coast in 1822.
Now, what has been the outcome of these missionary operations? These results thus far achieved are, in many respects, highly interesting and important. At the European settlements established at various points along the coast from Senegal to Loanda, and at the purely native stations, occupied by the Niger (native) missionaries, the Scotch missionaries and the American missionaries, some thousands of natives, having been brought under the immediate influence of Christian teaching, have professed Christianity, and, at the European settlements, have adopted European dress and habits.
Numerous churches have been organised, and are under a native ministry, and thousands of children are gathered into schools under Christian teachers.
The West African Reporter, a weekly newspaper owned and published at Sierra Leone exclusively by natives, and itself an interesting evidence of the progress of civilisation on the coast, gives, in its issue for January 4, 1876, the following:--
The Niger Mission and the native pastorate—which latter has received the encomiums of friends and foes—are standing monuments of the [Church Missionary] Society’s labours, and proofs of the permanence of results thus far achieved. Bishop Crowther, the first Negro Bishop, the Rev. James Johnson of Lagos, Dr. Africanus Horton, the distinguished physician and author, and numerous others, less widely known but not less useful, sat under the instructions which have been imparted in the Church Missionary College at Fourah Bay, in Sierra Leone.
But other useful men besides preachers have been raised up under the instruction of the missionaries; many able and useful Government officials, skilful mechanics—especially at the Basle Mission—and merchants, who by their intelligence, industry and enterprise have risen to an equality in wealth and influence with the European merchants on the coast.
Still, these results, in their largest measure, are confined almost exclusively to the European settlements along the coast and to their immediate neighbourhood. No mission station of any importance has been established among any of the powerful tribes in the interior, or on the coast at a distance from European settlements. In the evangelistic operations of the Niger Mission, we can hear of no central station of influence among any of the leading tribes. Bishop Crowther’s last Report of the “Mission among the Natives of the Bight of Biafra, at Bonny, Brass and New Calabar Rivers,” [2] after ten years’ labour, is not particularly encouraging.
The work done at Sierra Leone and in Liberia cannot be regarded as done upon the indigenous elements of those localities. The native populations of Sierra Leone and Liberia—the Timnehs, Soosoos, Mendis, Veys, Golahs, Bassas, Kroos, &c.— are still untouched by evangelical influence. The visitor at Sierra Leone and at Monrovia is at once struck by the exotic appearance of everything. The whole black population of those settlements who have made any progress in Christian civilisation have been imported—in the case of Sierra Leone, from other parts of Africa, and, in that of Liberia, from America. If everything extraneous or imported were taken away from these settlements to-morrow, the regions they occupy would wear an aspect similar to that which they presented to Sir John Hawkins three hundred years ago, but it is to be feared that the inhabitants would not present the pleasing moral characteristics attributed to them while they were as yet un-Europeanised, by that great pioneer of English-African slave-traders. Nor is even the civilising work done in the settlements without its drawbacks.
In the African Times for January 1, 1876, the editor, after the labour of half a generation in the cause of West African progress, opens the year with the following lament:--
Lagos has grievously disappointed our hopes and expectations. She is not what she ought to be after years of annexation to the British Crown. It is no cause for wonder, therefore, that she has not exercised that influence on the Heathen within her and in the neighbouring countries which we looked for from her. . . . The professed Christians of Lagos ought to be a mighty phalanx against the surrounding Heathenism; but we do not see that they have made any successful attack upon it.
Governor Berkeley, in his Blue Book Report of the Settlement of Lagos for 1872, estimates the population of the entire settlement at 60, 221, out of which there were only 92 whites; and he adds:--
This settlement contributes nothing towards the promotion of religion or education. The Church Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Society, and the Roman Catholics are all represented in the shape of ministers, churches and schools.[3]
Sir Charles Adderley, after a full and careful investigation of the subject, says:--
Barbarism survives, for all we expend in lives and taxes to establish what must prove, after all, an ineffectual administration of English power in the West African country.[4]
In the West African Reporter (February 1, 1876) we are informed that:--
The Timnehs of Quiah to this day look with wistful eyes to the Peninsula of Sierra Leone, the Bananas Island down to Carmaranca Creek, the Ribbee and Bompeh rivers, and their hearts are burning with revenge against the Powers that wrenched these places from the hands of their ancestors. Their chiefs are dissatisfied with the stipends they receive, as being no equivalent remuneration for the occupation and use of their lands by our Government; and they are only prevented from making any mischievous move by want of power.
Footnotes:
2 Church Missionary Intelligencer, August, 1875.
3 Papers relating to Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions; part i, 1874, p, 138.
4 Colonial Policy and History, p. 218.
2 Church Missionary Intelligencer, August, 1875.
3 Papers relating to Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions; part i, 1874, p, 138.
4 Colonial Policy and History, p. 218.
The Hon. James S. Payne, the new President of Liberia, in his Inaugural Address, delivered January 3, 1876, refers to the actual state of things in Liberia, which does not exist at Sierra Leone only “from want of power” on the part of the aborigines. He says:--
The war now raging (between the Americo-Liberians and the aborigines of Cape Palmas) has been the subject of consideration for more than three years, of which frequent intimations were given without being accredited. It has for one of its objects the re-possession of the territory at the cost of exterminating the entire civilised population. It is a war against civilisation and Christianity. Upwards of forty years of untiring Christian Mission effort among them as preferred objects of the missions of the Presbyterian and Protestant Episcopal Missions, has made them rather to hate than to admire Christian civilisation.
Now let us see what is the view too often taken of African Mission protégés by intelligent Pagan natives. We have heard several expressions in regard to “Christianised” natives made in our hearing by native chiefs in whose country we have travelled; but we prefer to quote the criticism of the King of Dahomey, as given to the world by Commodore Wilmot in a dispatch to Admiral Walker, under date of January 21, 1863. The Commodore was remonstrating with the King against making war upon the people of Abbeokuta, among whom were many professed Christians:--
He promised faithfully for my sake (says the Commodore, to spare all the Christians and send them to Whydah, and that his general should have strict orders to this effect. I asked him about the Christians at Ishagga. Ho said, “Who knew they were Christians? The black man says he is a white man, calls himself a Christian, and dresses himself in clothes: it is an insult to the white man. I respect the white man, but these people are impostors, and no better than my own people.” I reasoned with him no longer on this subject (adds the Commodore), because I thought his observations so thoroughly just and honest.[5]
Now here is a Christian European of intelligence and influence endorsing the disparaging estimate of Christian Africans as given by a Pagan African of intelligence and influence.[6]
Sir Charles Adderley calls attention to “the strange graft of skill upon barbarous fanaticism which natives acquire who have been played with by dilettante philanthropists in distant unconcerned authority.”[7]
The foreign virtues these natives acquire never rise above the parasitical. Their culture is superficial, and its effects artificial, presenting very often an appearance of insincerity and absurdity both to the foreign observer and the Pagan of intelligence. Pagans of discernment know that the black man among them who “calls himself a Christian and dresses himself in clothes” adheres to European habits and customs with a reserved power of disengagement, much as a limpet clings to a rock. These customs seldom strike root in his mind, and grow up as an independent plant. Africans who have been educated even in England, on returning to their own country and among their own people, have again adopted the native dress and habits. And it would show a very slender knowledge of human nature to expect anything else.
Now, why is it that the evangelisation of the tribes of West Africa, after so many years of effort and so vast a sacrifice of life and money, is so backward? The first and most generally admitted cause is the unhealthiness of the climate; and this cause, we may premise, affects injuriously all progress and growth in West Africa to a far greater extent than is generally supposed. No one will undertake to dispute at this day that the moral and intellectual character of a people is very largely dependent upon their physical environments. No great man, physically or mentally, has ever been developed in the inhospitable regions of Greenland or Tierra del Fuego. In some countries a high degree of even material progress is impossible. In Brazil, for instance, Mr. Buckle tells us, “the progress of agriculture is stopped by impassable forests, and the harvests are devoured by innumerable insects. The mountains are too high to scale—the rivers too wide to bridge.” A portion of the indomitable Anglo-Saxon race from the southern States of North America have had an opportunity recently of testing these statements. They attempted to found a colony in Brazil, but the obstacles presented by Nature proved insuperable. They have returned to the United States.[8]
Now it is well known that a belt of malarious lands, which are hotbeds of fever, extends along the whole of the West Coast of Africa, running from forty to fifty miles back from the sea-coast. In this region of country neither cattle nor horses will thrive. Horses will not live at all. Sheep, goats and hogs drag out an indifferent existence. At Sierra Leone, Monrovia and other settlements on the coast, fortunes have been expended by lovers of horses in trying to keep them alive, but in spite of all that care and money can do, they pine away and die. The experiment of keeping them constantly housed, like human beings, and imposing upon them the regulation, “early to bed, and early to rise,” has, we believe, not yet been tried.[9]
The healthfulness of a country or district, at any given time, may generally be determined by the condition of the animals. In pestilential disorders, four- footed animals are said to be first attacked, from their living more in the open air than man, and being, therefore, more exposed to the action of the atmosphere.
The war now raging (between the Americo-Liberians and the aborigines of Cape Palmas) has been the subject of consideration for more than three years, of which frequent intimations were given without being accredited. It has for one of its objects the re-possession of the territory at the cost of exterminating the entire civilised population. It is a war against civilisation and Christianity. Upwards of forty years of untiring Christian Mission effort among them as preferred objects of the missions of the Presbyterian and Protestant Episcopal Missions, has made them rather to hate than to admire Christian civilisation.
Now let us see what is the view too often taken of African Mission protégés by intelligent Pagan natives. We have heard several expressions in regard to “Christianised” natives made in our hearing by native chiefs in whose country we have travelled; but we prefer to quote the criticism of the King of Dahomey, as given to the world by Commodore Wilmot in a dispatch to Admiral Walker, under date of January 21, 1863. The Commodore was remonstrating with the King against making war upon the people of Abbeokuta, among whom were many professed Christians:--
He promised faithfully for my sake (says the Commodore, to spare all the Christians and send them to Whydah, and that his general should have strict orders to this effect. I asked him about the Christians at Ishagga. Ho said, “Who knew they were Christians? The black man says he is a white man, calls himself a Christian, and dresses himself in clothes: it is an insult to the white man. I respect the white man, but these people are impostors, and no better than my own people.” I reasoned with him no longer on this subject (adds the Commodore), because I thought his observations so thoroughly just and honest.[5]
Now here is a Christian European of intelligence and influence endorsing the disparaging estimate of Christian Africans as given by a Pagan African of intelligence and influence.[6]
Sir Charles Adderley calls attention to “the strange graft of skill upon barbarous fanaticism which natives acquire who have been played with by dilettante philanthropists in distant unconcerned authority.”[7]
The foreign virtues these natives acquire never rise above the parasitical. Their culture is superficial, and its effects artificial, presenting very often an appearance of insincerity and absurdity both to the foreign observer and the Pagan of intelligence. Pagans of discernment know that the black man among them who “calls himself a Christian and dresses himself in clothes” adheres to European habits and customs with a reserved power of disengagement, much as a limpet clings to a rock. These customs seldom strike root in his mind, and grow up as an independent plant. Africans who have been educated even in England, on returning to their own country and among their own people, have again adopted the native dress and habits. And it would show a very slender knowledge of human nature to expect anything else.
Now, why is it that the evangelisation of the tribes of West Africa, after so many years of effort and so vast a sacrifice of life and money, is so backward? The first and most generally admitted cause is the unhealthiness of the climate; and this cause, we may premise, affects injuriously all progress and growth in West Africa to a far greater extent than is generally supposed. No one will undertake to dispute at this day that the moral and intellectual character of a people is very largely dependent upon their physical environments. No great man, physically or mentally, has ever been developed in the inhospitable regions of Greenland or Tierra del Fuego. In some countries a high degree of even material progress is impossible. In Brazil, for instance, Mr. Buckle tells us, “the progress of agriculture is stopped by impassable forests, and the harvests are devoured by innumerable insects. The mountains are too high to scale—the rivers too wide to bridge.” A portion of the indomitable Anglo-Saxon race from the southern States of North America have had an opportunity recently of testing these statements. They attempted to found a colony in Brazil, but the obstacles presented by Nature proved insuperable. They have returned to the United States.[8]
Now it is well known that a belt of malarious lands, which are hotbeds of fever, extends along the whole of the West Coast of Africa, running from forty to fifty miles back from the sea-coast. In this region of country neither cattle nor horses will thrive. Horses will not live at all. Sheep, goats and hogs drag out an indifferent existence. At Sierra Leone, Monrovia and other settlements on the coast, fortunes have been expended by lovers of horses in trying to keep them alive, but in spite of all that care and money can do, they pine away and die. The experiment of keeping them constantly housed, like human beings, and imposing upon them the regulation, “early to bed, and early to rise,” has, we believe, not yet been tried.[9]
The healthfulness of a country or district, at any given time, may generally be determined by the condition of the animals. In pestilential disorders, four- footed animals are said to be first attacked, from their living more in the open air than man, and being, therefore, more exposed to the action of the atmosphere.
[10]
Footnotes:
5 British and Foreign State Papers, 1863-64; vol. liv, p. 351.
6 “Educated natives” is often used by Europeans on the coast as a phrase of contempt.
7 Colonial Policy and History, p. 158.
8 The Times, January 18, 1876.
9 In 1871, Dr. McCoy, Colonial Surgeon (of Sierra Leone), sent to the Royal Veterinary College, London, a report on the then so-called “loin disease” (of horses), and the opinion formed thereon by the professor of the College was that the disease arose out of the poisoned state of the blood, the disease being conveyed into the system by means of the atmosphere.—Sierra Leone West African Reporter, February 1, 1876.
10 On mules and dogs the infection first began, And last the vengeful arrow fixed in man.
5 British and Foreign State Papers, 1863-64; vol. liv, p. 351.
6 “Educated natives” is often used by Europeans on the coast as a phrase of contempt.
7 Colonial Policy and History, p. 158.
8 The Times, January 18, 1876.
9 In 1871, Dr. McCoy, Colonial Surgeon (of Sierra Leone), sent to the Royal Veterinary College, London, a report on the then so-called “loin disease” (of horses), and the opinion formed thereon by the professor of the College was that the disease arose out of the poisoned state of the blood, the disease being conveyed into the system by means of the atmosphere.—Sierra Leone West African Reporter, February 1, 1876.
10 On mules and dogs the infection first began, And last the vengeful arrow fixed in man.
In the elevated regions of the interior of West Africa, where there are no dense primeval forests, extensive swamps, and pestilential jungles, cattle and horses show no sign of “infection” or “poisoned state of the blood.” They flourish in uncounted herds. And in those regions men are healthy, vigorous and intelligent.
The interior tribes who have, from time to time, migrated to the coast have perished or degenerated. Every child born on the coast is stunted physically and mentally in the cradle by the jungle fever, which assails it a few days after birth. European infants seldom survive such attacks. The Vey tribe, occupying the country about Gallinas and Gape Mount, have traditions that they came to the coast as conquerors, driving before them all the tribal organisations which opposed their march. They were a numerous, intelligent, handsome people. Now, only melancholy traces of what they once were can be discovered in individuals of that waning tribe. “It is to be observed,” says the West African Reporter,[11] “that the Mendi, as he approaches the sea, becomes more degenerate. Laying aside his innocent, manly exercises, he betakes himself to plundering.” It would appear that by a process of natural selection the finest organisations die. Those most capable or “fittest” to endure the pestilential regions, by reason of a coarser or more brutal nature, “survive.” We have, then, morally speaking, the “survival” of the “unfittest.”
The steady physical, if not mental, deterioration going on among the descendants of re-captives at Sierra Leone is sometimes attributed by superficial observers to their having enjoyed facilities for European education superior to their fathers. Bnt the same decay is observable among the Mohammedan Creoles who have not deviated much from the customs of their ancestors. The Rev. S. W. Koelle, an experienced German missionary, called attention, some years ago, to the important contrast as to salubrity between the coast and the interior. In the preface to his Bornou Grammar, he says:--
The natives of dry and arid countries, as e.g., Bornou, Hausa, the Sahara, &c., die very fast in Sierra Leone; their acclimatisation there seems to be almost as difficult as that of Europeans.
In the course of thirty years, two hundred Bornouese residents of Sierra Leone had been reduced to thirty. And, as we have said, those who do not die, degenerate, and become dependent upon the tribes of the healthier regions. All the coast tribes, from Senegal to Lagos, where no alien influence interferes, are held under the sway of the inferior tribes. Everybody now knows that the tribes of the Gold Coast are no match in intelligence, enterprise and energy for the Ashantees.
Under such circumstances, unless missionary boards or committees, and the American Colonisation Society in America, are content to repeat the sacrifices they have already made of life and treasure, during another fifty years, with similar inadequate results, would it not be wisdom to try operations in the healthy regions of the interior, where “every prospect pleases,” and “man” is not so “vile”? As long as the malarious vegetation and deadly mangrove swamps occupy so large a proportion of West African territory, there will be no more probability of making any permanent moral, or even material, progress on the coast, or of developing a great mind, than there is of improving the haunts of the polar bear and the reindeer.[12] Of course, the resources of the philanthropic world in men and money are inexhaustible, and they have the power of prolonging the experiment indefinitely; and it may be the highest philanthropy to labour to prepare men for the “ world to come “ in a country where they can have no reasonable hope of enjoying the “world that now is.” Many a European visiting this coast returns to his country never to enjoy the vigour of health again. For northern constitutions, the effect of a residence in this country, generally speaking, is similar to that said to have been produced upon the ancients by a visit to the cave of Trophonius—they never smile again.
But another drawback to the success of missions on this coast is the inadequate, not to say contemptuous, view often entertained by European missionaries of the materials with which they have to deal; and this may be assigned as one of the leading causes why no serious effort is made to go to the healthy “regions beyond.” They come to the coast imbued with the notions they have derived from books, of the “sanguinary customs” and “malignant superstitions” of the natives. And under the influence of their malarious surroundings they gain more in irritability of temper than in liberality of view, often acquiring greater ignorance of the people than they had before they came. We were startled some time ago by reading a remarkable description of African character, as given by an American missionary from West Africa in the course of an address delivered in the United States. He said:--
The Chinaman meets you with the stolid morality of his Confucianism; the Hindoo with astute logic for his Pantheism. The missionary among those peoples is assaulting strongholds, bristling with guns and bayonets. When I carry my torch into the caves of Africa, I meet only filthy birds of darkness bats, owls, and evil things of night, that, bewildered by the light, know not how to blunder out, or out, blunderingly dash themselves in again.[13]
Similar to this are descriptions we have read from time to time in missionary periodicals.[14] Now, we earnestly protest against such utterances as not only gross exaggerations, but as, to the last degree, pernicious in their influence, since they are made to apply not only to the natives of the coast demoralised by their physical surroundings and by European vices, but to all Africans, and they lead young and inexperienced missionaries entirely astray as to the course they should pursue with the people. Coming to the coast under such teaching, they are induced to adopt a method of dealing with the natives, and to maintain a demeanour which, in spite of their educational and other services, inspire the people among whom they labour with feelings of impatience, if not of dislike. And it is not difficult to see that the missionary entertaining such views must labour under very great subjective disadvantages. From his out-look, the work is magnified to enormous proportions. The African mind is regarded as a great blank, or worse than a blank, filled with everything dark and horrible and repulsive. Everything is to be destroyed, and replaced by something new and foreign. Not such were the views entertained of Africans by the Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, who, having been from childhood acquainted with Negroes in the United States, spent twenty years as a missionary in West Africa, where he had opportunities of visiting every place of importance along the sea-coast, and made extensive excursions in many of the maritime districts. He studied and reduced to writing two of the leading languages of the country. In the record of his African experiences, he says:--
Looking at the African race as we have done, in their native country, we have seen no obstacles to their elevation which would not apply equally to all other uncultivated races of men.
We do not expect Africans, under any circumstances, to possess the energy, the enterprise, or the inventive powers of the white man. But there are other traits, quite as commendable as these, in which, if properly trained, he will greatly excel his white compeer. Naturally, the African is social, generous, confiding, and, when brought under the benign influence of Christianity, he exemplifies the beauty and consistency of his religion more than any other human being on the face of the earth. And the time may come when they may be held up to all the rest of the world as examples of the purest and most elevated Christian virtue.[15]
The interior tribes who have, from time to time, migrated to the coast have perished or degenerated. Every child born on the coast is stunted physically and mentally in the cradle by the jungle fever, which assails it a few days after birth. European infants seldom survive such attacks. The Vey tribe, occupying the country about Gallinas and Gape Mount, have traditions that they came to the coast as conquerors, driving before them all the tribal organisations which opposed their march. They were a numerous, intelligent, handsome people. Now, only melancholy traces of what they once were can be discovered in individuals of that waning tribe. “It is to be observed,” says the West African Reporter,[11] “that the Mendi, as he approaches the sea, becomes more degenerate. Laying aside his innocent, manly exercises, he betakes himself to plundering.” It would appear that by a process of natural selection the finest organisations die. Those most capable or “fittest” to endure the pestilential regions, by reason of a coarser or more brutal nature, “survive.” We have, then, morally speaking, the “survival” of the “unfittest.”
The steady physical, if not mental, deterioration going on among the descendants of re-captives at Sierra Leone is sometimes attributed by superficial observers to their having enjoyed facilities for European education superior to their fathers. Bnt the same decay is observable among the Mohammedan Creoles who have not deviated much from the customs of their ancestors. The Rev. S. W. Koelle, an experienced German missionary, called attention, some years ago, to the important contrast as to salubrity between the coast and the interior. In the preface to his Bornou Grammar, he says:--
The natives of dry and arid countries, as e.g., Bornou, Hausa, the Sahara, &c., die very fast in Sierra Leone; their acclimatisation there seems to be almost as difficult as that of Europeans.
In the course of thirty years, two hundred Bornouese residents of Sierra Leone had been reduced to thirty. And, as we have said, those who do not die, degenerate, and become dependent upon the tribes of the healthier regions. All the coast tribes, from Senegal to Lagos, where no alien influence interferes, are held under the sway of the inferior tribes. Everybody now knows that the tribes of the Gold Coast are no match in intelligence, enterprise and energy for the Ashantees.
Under such circumstances, unless missionary boards or committees, and the American Colonisation Society in America, are content to repeat the sacrifices they have already made of life and treasure, during another fifty years, with similar inadequate results, would it not be wisdom to try operations in the healthy regions of the interior, where “every prospect pleases,” and “man” is not so “vile”? As long as the malarious vegetation and deadly mangrove swamps occupy so large a proportion of West African territory, there will be no more probability of making any permanent moral, or even material, progress on the coast, or of developing a great mind, than there is of improving the haunts of the polar bear and the reindeer.[12] Of course, the resources of the philanthropic world in men and money are inexhaustible, and they have the power of prolonging the experiment indefinitely; and it may be the highest philanthropy to labour to prepare men for the “ world to come “ in a country where they can have no reasonable hope of enjoying the “world that now is.” Many a European visiting this coast returns to his country never to enjoy the vigour of health again. For northern constitutions, the effect of a residence in this country, generally speaking, is similar to that said to have been produced upon the ancients by a visit to the cave of Trophonius—they never smile again.
But another drawback to the success of missions on this coast is the inadequate, not to say contemptuous, view often entertained by European missionaries of the materials with which they have to deal; and this may be assigned as one of the leading causes why no serious effort is made to go to the healthy “regions beyond.” They come to the coast imbued with the notions they have derived from books, of the “sanguinary customs” and “malignant superstitions” of the natives. And under the influence of their malarious surroundings they gain more in irritability of temper than in liberality of view, often acquiring greater ignorance of the people than they had before they came. We were startled some time ago by reading a remarkable description of African character, as given by an American missionary from West Africa in the course of an address delivered in the United States. He said:--
The Chinaman meets you with the stolid morality of his Confucianism; the Hindoo with astute logic for his Pantheism. The missionary among those peoples is assaulting strongholds, bristling with guns and bayonets. When I carry my torch into the caves of Africa, I meet only filthy birds of darkness bats, owls, and evil things of night, that, bewildered by the light, know not how to blunder out, or out, blunderingly dash themselves in again.[13]
Similar to this are descriptions we have read from time to time in missionary periodicals.[14] Now, we earnestly protest against such utterances as not only gross exaggerations, but as, to the last degree, pernicious in their influence, since they are made to apply not only to the natives of the coast demoralised by their physical surroundings and by European vices, but to all Africans, and they lead young and inexperienced missionaries entirely astray as to the course they should pursue with the people. Coming to the coast under such teaching, they are induced to adopt a method of dealing with the natives, and to maintain a demeanour which, in spite of their educational and other services, inspire the people among whom they labour with feelings of impatience, if not of dislike. And it is not difficult to see that the missionary entertaining such views must labour under very great subjective disadvantages. From his out-look, the work is magnified to enormous proportions. The African mind is regarded as a great blank, or worse than a blank, filled with everything dark and horrible and repulsive. Everything is to be destroyed, and replaced by something new and foreign. Not such were the views entertained of Africans by the Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, who, having been from childhood acquainted with Negroes in the United States, spent twenty years as a missionary in West Africa, where he had opportunities of visiting every place of importance along the sea-coast, and made extensive excursions in many of the maritime districts. He studied and reduced to writing two of the leading languages of the country. In the record of his African experiences, he says:--
Looking at the African race as we have done, in their native country, we have seen no obstacles to their elevation which would not apply equally to all other uncultivated races of men.
We do not expect Africans, under any circumstances, to possess the energy, the enterprise, or the inventive powers of the white man. But there are other traits, quite as commendable as these, in which, if properly trained, he will greatly excel his white compeer. Naturally, the African is social, generous, confiding, and, when brought under the benign influence of Christianity, he exemplifies the beauty and consistency of his religion more than any other human being on the face of the earth. And the time may come when they may be held up to all the rest of the world as examples of the purest and most elevated Christian virtue.[15]
Footnotes:
10 On mules and dogs the infection first began, And last the vengeful arrow fixed in man.
11 February 1, 1876.
12 Professor Draper, in his Conflict between Religion and Science, tells us of a civilisation that had been accomplished in Central America resting on an agriculture that had neither horse nor ox nor plough. If the way could be discovered of accomplishing a civilisation in these days with the slender appliances which such a statement would imply, then there might be hope for West Africa.
13 Address delivered before the American Colonisation Society, by Rev. R. H. Nassau, M.D., January 21, 1873.
14 See an article on ‘The Negro’ in the Church Missionary Intelligencer London) for August, 1873.
15 Wilson’s Western Africa, chap. xi.
10 On mules and dogs the infection first began, And last the vengeful arrow fixed in man.
11 February 1, 1876.
12 Professor Draper, in his Conflict between Religion and Science, tells us of a civilisation that had been accomplished in Central America resting on an agriculture that had neither horse nor ox nor plough. If the way could be discovered of accomplishing a civilisation in these days with the slender appliances which such a statement would imply, then there might be hope for West Africa.
13 Address delivered before the American Colonisation Society, by Rev. R. H. Nassau, M.D., January 21, 1873.
14 See an article on ‘The Negro’ in the Church Missionary Intelligencer London) for August, 1873.
15 Wilson’s Western Africa, chap. xi.
The more slender the outfit as to educational training and experience of those who come as instructors to the coast, the more supercilious—as, of course, must be the case—is their bearing. Many and amusing are the instances encountered by intelligent Africans of the very limited qualifications, coupled with large pretensions, of not a few who are sent to the coast as instructors. “While sitting on the passengers’ deck of one of the African mail steamers, a few years ago, we heard a young Englishman who had been engaged in educational work on the coast, and was returning home on leave, descanting upon the “utter inferiority of the African”—and, by the way, these men who come to guide the “benighted” seldom hesitate (such is their high breeding) to indulge in most contemptuous utterances about the race in the hearing of any member of it who may be a stranger to them. This young man— we say young man, though his hair was slightly sprinkled with grey—overflowing with erudition, and anxious to make known the extent of his researches in African philology, remarked to a comrade, “The stolidity of these Africans is astonishing. Their words are mostly monosyllabic, and even those tribes whose vocabulary is the most copious possess no expressions for abstract ideas.” Attracted by the Johnsonese character of the sentence, we turned towards him and said, “Sir, the words in the sentence which you just uttered, that convey any idea at all, are either Roman or Greek. All the purely English words you employed are monosyllabic, expressing no abstract thought.” “Oh,” he replied, with some surprise, “but that only proves that we possessed the ability to appropriate and apply such foreign terms as we considered serviceable—a feat which your people are unable to achieve.” To this second outburst of almost pure Latin we made no reply, but turned away, leaving our learned pedagogue to enjoy the belief that, under the influence of his irresistible argument, we had succumbed; but we noticed that he took care during the remainder of the voyage to indulge, while in our hearing, in no more “high falutin.”
We are not of those who deprecate international prejudices; they will exist, probably, until the millennium; for God, “who hath made of one blood all nations of men,” hath also “appointed the bounds of their habitation,” and within those “bounds” special and divergent tastes will arise among the nations. We remember when, accompanied about six years ago, on a tour in the interior of Monrovia, by Mr. Winwood Reade, we arrived at Boporo,[16] a town about seventy-five miles from the coast, where a white man had rarely been seen, how the women and children fled in every direction at the appearance of Mr, Reade; and it was not until we had been there several days that the children would venture hear enough to speak to him. We are told that a charitable old woman who afforded Mungo Park a meal and lodging, on the banks of the Niger, could not refrain, even in the midst of her kindness, from exclaiming, “ God preserve us from the DEVIL!” as she looked upon him.
These deprecatory feelings doubtless arise from the erroneous impressions entertained by Africans of the interior of the mental and moral concomitants of a white skin. The white man, in the imagination of the unsophisticated African, is a cannibal. The Negro of the ordinary traveller or missionary— and perhaps of two-thirds of the Christian world—is a purely fictitious being, constructed out of the traditions of slave-traders and slave-holders, who have circulated all sorts of absurd stories, and also out of prejudices inherited from ancestors, who were taught to regard the Negro as a legitimate object of traffic. And, perhaps, as Bishop Heber has remarked, the “hair and features” of the Negro, “far more than his colour,” are responsible for these erroneous conceptions. We entertain no resentment at such feelings on the part of Europeans; but as the object of missionary labour is undoubtedly success, we may venture to suggest that such views, cherished by missionaries, and allowed in a marked manner to influence their demeanour on mission ground, may possibly interfere with the wholesome results at which they aim.
But with regard to all the charges of superstition, &c., made against native Africans, and in consequence of which a hopeless “incapacity of amelioration” is sometimes attributed to the whole race, we may remark, that there is not a single mental or moral deficiency now existing among Africans
—not a single practice now indulged in by them—to which we cannot find a parallel in the past history of Europe, and even after the people had been brought under the influence of a nominal Christianity. “Out of savages,” says Professor Tyndall, unable to count up to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakespeares.” [17]
Take Polygamy. We are told by Dr. Maclear that--
Nowhere was the Ancient Slavonic superstition more deeply rooted than in Prussia. Every native of the country was allowed to have three wives, who were regarded as slaves, and on the death of their husbands they were expected to ascend the funeral pile or otherwise put an end to their lives.[18]
And Mr. Lecky says:--
The practice of polygamy among the barbarian kings was for some centuries unchecked, or at least unsuppressed, by Christianity. The Kings Caribert and Chilperic had both many wives at the same time, Dagobert had three wives, as well as a multitude of concubines. Charlemagne himself had at the same time two wives, and he indulged largely in concubines.[19]
Take Slavery. Slavery and the trade in slaves was almost more difficult to root out than Paganism, and the inhuman traffic was in full activity as late as the tenth century between England and Ireland—the port of Bristol being one of its principal centres.[20] In the canons of a Council in London in 1102, it is ordered that no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men in England have hitherto been sold like brute animals.[21]
Take Human Sacrifices. Tacitus tells us that the old Teutons, generally sparing in offerings, presented on certain days human victims to Wodan. The old Swedes, every nine years, on the great national festival, celebrated for nine days, offered nine male animals of every chief species, together with one man daily. The Danes, assembling every nine years in their capital, Lederun, sacrificed to their gods, 99 horses, 99 dogs, 99 cocks, 99 hawks, and 99 men. The Prussians, previous to an engagement, offered through their high priest (Criwe) an enemy to their gods, Pikollos and Potrimpos. The Goths thought victory impossible unless they had before offered a human sacrifice. The Saxons, after their war with Charlemagne, killed on the holy Harz-mountain all the Frankish prisoners in honour of their god Wodan.[22] And what shall we say of those human hecatombs offered during a period of three hundred years by Christians to the god of the slave trade?
Hearest, Thou, 0 God, those chains,
Clanking on Freedom’s plains
By Christians wrought?
Them who those chains have worn
Christians have hither borne,
Christians have bought.
We have referred to only a few of the instances we might cite, many of which show that human sacrifices have prevailed most among communities that had advanced in the path of civilisation; and we have quoted these instances not merely as a sort of tu quoque argument, but because so many careless writers are fond of dilating upon the “malignant superstitions” and “sanguinary customs” of the Africans, as if these things, owing to some essential inferiority or inherent disposition to wanton cruelty in the Negro, were peculiar to him; and as if, moreover, they could be at once abolished by a few homilies on the stupidity and cruelty of such customs.[23]
We are not of those who deprecate international prejudices; they will exist, probably, until the millennium; for God, “who hath made of one blood all nations of men,” hath also “appointed the bounds of their habitation,” and within those “bounds” special and divergent tastes will arise among the nations. We remember when, accompanied about six years ago, on a tour in the interior of Monrovia, by Mr. Winwood Reade, we arrived at Boporo,[16] a town about seventy-five miles from the coast, where a white man had rarely been seen, how the women and children fled in every direction at the appearance of Mr, Reade; and it was not until we had been there several days that the children would venture hear enough to speak to him. We are told that a charitable old woman who afforded Mungo Park a meal and lodging, on the banks of the Niger, could not refrain, even in the midst of her kindness, from exclaiming, “ God preserve us from the DEVIL!” as she looked upon him.
These deprecatory feelings doubtless arise from the erroneous impressions entertained by Africans of the interior of the mental and moral concomitants of a white skin. The white man, in the imagination of the unsophisticated African, is a cannibal. The Negro of the ordinary traveller or missionary— and perhaps of two-thirds of the Christian world—is a purely fictitious being, constructed out of the traditions of slave-traders and slave-holders, who have circulated all sorts of absurd stories, and also out of prejudices inherited from ancestors, who were taught to regard the Negro as a legitimate object of traffic. And, perhaps, as Bishop Heber has remarked, the “hair and features” of the Negro, “far more than his colour,” are responsible for these erroneous conceptions. We entertain no resentment at such feelings on the part of Europeans; but as the object of missionary labour is undoubtedly success, we may venture to suggest that such views, cherished by missionaries, and allowed in a marked manner to influence their demeanour on mission ground, may possibly interfere with the wholesome results at which they aim.
But with regard to all the charges of superstition, &c., made against native Africans, and in consequence of which a hopeless “incapacity of amelioration” is sometimes attributed to the whole race, we may remark, that there is not a single mental or moral deficiency now existing among Africans
—not a single practice now indulged in by them—to which we cannot find a parallel in the past history of Europe, and even after the people had been brought under the influence of a nominal Christianity. “Out of savages,” says Professor Tyndall, unable to count up to the number of their fingers, and speaking a language containing only nouns and verbs, arise at length our Newtons and Shakespeares.” [17]
Take Polygamy. We are told by Dr. Maclear that--
Nowhere was the Ancient Slavonic superstition more deeply rooted than in Prussia. Every native of the country was allowed to have three wives, who were regarded as slaves, and on the death of their husbands they were expected to ascend the funeral pile or otherwise put an end to their lives.[18]
And Mr. Lecky says:--
The practice of polygamy among the barbarian kings was for some centuries unchecked, or at least unsuppressed, by Christianity. The Kings Caribert and Chilperic had both many wives at the same time, Dagobert had three wives, as well as a multitude of concubines. Charlemagne himself had at the same time two wives, and he indulged largely in concubines.[19]
Take Slavery. Slavery and the trade in slaves was almost more difficult to root out than Paganism, and the inhuman traffic was in full activity as late as the tenth century between England and Ireland—the port of Bristol being one of its principal centres.[20] In the canons of a Council in London in 1102, it is ordered that no one from henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic by which men in England have hitherto been sold like brute animals.[21]
Take Human Sacrifices. Tacitus tells us that the old Teutons, generally sparing in offerings, presented on certain days human victims to Wodan. The old Swedes, every nine years, on the great national festival, celebrated for nine days, offered nine male animals of every chief species, together with one man daily. The Danes, assembling every nine years in their capital, Lederun, sacrificed to their gods, 99 horses, 99 dogs, 99 cocks, 99 hawks, and 99 men. The Prussians, previous to an engagement, offered through their high priest (Criwe) an enemy to their gods, Pikollos and Potrimpos. The Goths thought victory impossible unless they had before offered a human sacrifice. The Saxons, after their war with Charlemagne, killed on the holy Harz-mountain all the Frankish prisoners in honour of their god Wodan.[22] And what shall we say of those human hecatombs offered during a period of three hundred years by Christians to the god of the slave trade?
Hearest, Thou, 0 God, those chains,
Clanking on Freedom’s plains
By Christians wrought?
Them who those chains have worn
Christians have hither borne,
Christians have bought.
We have referred to only a few of the instances we might cite, many of which show that human sacrifices have prevailed most among communities that had advanced in the path of civilisation; and we have quoted these instances not merely as a sort of tu quoque argument, but because so many careless writers are fond of dilating upon the “malignant superstitions” and “sanguinary customs” of the Africans, as if these things, owing to some essential inferiority or inherent disposition to wanton cruelty in the Negro, were peculiar to him; and as if, moreover, they could be at once abolished by a few homilies on the stupidity and cruelty of such customs.[23]
Footnotes:
16 This visit is described in Reade’s African Sketch Book, vol. ii. Mr. Reade correctly represents the impressions of Africans on first seeing a white man. Vol. i, pp. 328-29.
17 Address at Belfast, 1874, p. 52.
18 Apostles of Mediæval Europe, p. 259.
19 Lecky’s History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 363.
20 Maclear’s Mediæval Europe, p. 259.
21 Influence of Christianity on Civilisation; by Thomas Craddock,—Longmans, 1856.
22 Kalisoh’s Commentary on Leviticus, Part I.
23 See a letter addressed to Mr. Winwood Reade by Mr. A. Swanzy on the possibility of effecting important reforms in Dahomey by personal interviews with the King.—Reade’s African Sketch Book, vol. ii, p. 510.
16 This visit is described in Reade’s African Sketch Book, vol. ii. Mr. Reade correctly represents the impressions of Africans on first seeing a white man. Vol. i, pp. 328-29.
17 Address at Belfast, 1874, p. 52.
18 Apostles of Mediæval Europe, p. 259.
19 Lecky’s History of European Morals, vol. ii, p. 363.
20 Maclear’s Mediæval Europe, p. 259.
21 Influence of Christianity on Civilisation; by Thomas Craddock,—Longmans, 1856.
22 Kalisoh’s Commentary on Leviticus, Part I.
23 See a letter addressed to Mr. Winwood Reade by Mr. A. Swanzy on the possibility of effecting important reforms in Dahomey by personal interviews with the King.—Reade’s African Sketch Book, vol. ii, p. 510.
Now, as to the “sanguinary customs” of the King of Dahomey. Every candid mind who will take the trouble to read carefully the descriptions of intelligent travellers who have visited the Dahomeyan capital—Norris, Forbes, Wilmot, and even the cynical Burton— will find out that the accounts often circulated of the large numbers killed are gross exaggerations, and that the customs, far from being the result of a wanton desire to destroy human life, are “a practice founded on a pure religious basis, designed as a sinceremanifestation of the King’s filial piety, sanctioned by long usage, upheld by a powerful priesthood, and believed to be closely bound up with the existence of Dahomey itself.” It is not in the power of the King to abrogate the custom. Its gradual extinction must be the result of the increasing intelligence of the people.
Commodore Wilmot had the opportunity of witnessing one of the “annual customs” at the capital of Dahomey, in reference to which the King said to him:
“You have seen that only a few are sacrificed, and not the thousands that wicked men have told the world. If I were to give up this custom at once, my head would be taken off to-morrow. These institutions cannot be opped in the way you propose. By-and-bye, little by little, much may be done softly, softly, not by threats. You see how I am placed, and the difficulties in the way; by-and-bye, by- and-bye.”
Dr. Draper says:--
In vain the Spaniards excuse their atrocities on the plea that a nation like the Mexican, which permitted cannibalism, should not be regarded as having emerged from the barbarous state, and that one which, like Peru, sacrificed human hecatombs at the funeral solemnities of great men, must have been savage. Let it be remembered that there is no civilised nation whose popular practices do not lag behind its intelligence. In America, human sacrifice was part of a religious solemnity, unsustained by passion.[24]
But not only are there exaggerated tales in circulation in foreign countries disparaging to the Pagan natives of Africa, there are equally erroneous impressions abroad about the Mohammedans. There is something lamentable
—we were going to say grotesque— in the ignorance of some who assume to be authorities and guides on African matters, of the condition of things at even a little distance from the coast. The editor of the Church Missionary Intelligencer, in what purports to be an examination of Mr. Bosworth Smith’s statements on the subject, informs his readers that “in the waiting-room of Euston Square Station all the Mohammedan Negroes in Africa who have read the Koran, even once, might be most comfortably accommodated. The priests themselves cannot distingaish between ‘mumpsimus’ and ‘sumpsimus’ when they jabber the Koran, and do not attempt to understand other Arabic books.” [25] We read and explained this passage to a young Mohammedan from the interior; his only reply to it was an outburst of uproarious laughter, and he could not, for a long time, suppress his merriment at what seemed to him an extraordinary lack of information on the part of one of the “people of the book,” as to the condition of things in Africa. Not by such weapons is Africa to be penetrated. The work requires earnestness and accuracy of information. The day is past for such summary disposition of important and perplexing questions. All efforts which ignore the importance of accurate information of the people and the country must utterly fail, as being behind the times.
Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit: rauco quod protenus aere repulsum, Et summo clypei nequidquam umbone pependit.[26]
Only a few hours’ travel from Sierra Leone—if he would venture to visit the coast-—would take the writer of the paragraph quoted above to a Mohammedan town where he would be able to count hundreds of Arabic volumes read and understood by their owners, and where he would find little boys who have read the Koran through.
In January, 1873, the present writer visited, in company with Governor Pope Hennessy, of Sierra Leone, the Mohammedan Literary Institution at Billeh, on the Great Scarcies River, about sixty miles N.E. of Freetown; and in an interview with Fode Tarawally, the venerable head of the institution, we had an opportunity of examining his library. By order of the Governor, the Arabic writer to the Government took down the names of the principal works. In the list submitted were the titles of eighty-nine volumes, among which we noticed the following: Commentary of Jelaladdin on the Koran, Commentary of Beidhawi, Traditions of Bukhari; Law Book, by Khalil Ishak (2 vols.); Rizalat of Imam, Malik, Medical Treatise, Metrical Guide, Grammar, Rhetoric, Prosody, Makamat of Hariri), Ancient History, &c., written by Arabs. There were also volumes of Prayers, Poetry, Rhetoric, History, composed by Mandingo and Foulah authors. The library of this distinguished Sheikh, who is considered to be the most learned Mohammedan in this portion of West Africa, embraced well-nigh all the branches of human knowledge and research—theology, medicine, history, astronomy, grammar, &c. He entered into an interesting discussion on the respective merits of the different commentaries on the Koran, and seemed to give the preference to Beidhawi. Among his co-religionists, complete confidence is placed in the exactness of his traditional information, and on all doubtful questions his opinion is final. One of his sons composed calamo currente, an acrostic poem in Arabic on the name of Governor Hennessy.[27]
Commodore Wilmot had the opportunity of witnessing one of the “annual customs” at the capital of Dahomey, in reference to which the King said to him:
“You have seen that only a few are sacrificed, and not the thousands that wicked men have told the world. If I were to give up this custom at once, my head would be taken off to-morrow. These institutions cannot be opped in the way you propose. By-and-bye, little by little, much may be done softly, softly, not by threats. You see how I am placed, and the difficulties in the way; by-and-bye, by- and-bye.”
Dr. Draper says:--
In vain the Spaniards excuse their atrocities on the plea that a nation like the Mexican, which permitted cannibalism, should not be regarded as having emerged from the barbarous state, and that one which, like Peru, sacrificed human hecatombs at the funeral solemnities of great men, must have been savage. Let it be remembered that there is no civilised nation whose popular practices do not lag behind its intelligence. In America, human sacrifice was part of a religious solemnity, unsustained by passion.[24]
But not only are there exaggerated tales in circulation in foreign countries disparaging to the Pagan natives of Africa, there are equally erroneous impressions abroad about the Mohammedans. There is something lamentable
—we were going to say grotesque— in the ignorance of some who assume to be authorities and guides on African matters, of the condition of things at even a little distance from the coast. The editor of the Church Missionary Intelligencer, in what purports to be an examination of Mr. Bosworth Smith’s statements on the subject, informs his readers that “in the waiting-room of Euston Square Station all the Mohammedan Negroes in Africa who have read the Koran, even once, might be most comfortably accommodated. The priests themselves cannot distingaish between ‘mumpsimus’ and ‘sumpsimus’ when they jabber the Koran, and do not attempt to understand other Arabic books.” [25] We read and explained this passage to a young Mohammedan from the interior; his only reply to it was an outburst of uproarious laughter, and he could not, for a long time, suppress his merriment at what seemed to him an extraordinary lack of information on the part of one of the “people of the book,” as to the condition of things in Africa. Not by such weapons is Africa to be penetrated. The work requires earnestness and accuracy of information. The day is past for such summary disposition of important and perplexing questions. All efforts which ignore the importance of accurate information of the people and the country must utterly fail, as being behind the times.
Sic fatus senior, telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit: rauco quod protenus aere repulsum, Et summo clypei nequidquam umbone pependit.[26]
Only a few hours’ travel from Sierra Leone—if he would venture to visit the coast-—would take the writer of the paragraph quoted above to a Mohammedan town where he would be able to count hundreds of Arabic volumes read and understood by their owners, and where he would find little boys who have read the Koran through.
In January, 1873, the present writer visited, in company with Governor Pope Hennessy, of Sierra Leone, the Mohammedan Literary Institution at Billeh, on the Great Scarcies River, about sixty miles N.E. of Freetown; and in an interview with Fode Tarawally, the venerable head of the institution, we had an opportunity of examining his library. By order of the Governor, the Arabic writer to the Government took down the names of the principal works. In the list submitted were the titles of eighty-nine volumes, among which we noticed the following: Commentary of Jelaladdin on the Koran, Commentary of Beidhawi, Traditions of Bukhari; Law Book, by Khalil Ishak (2 vols.); Rizalat of Imam, Malik, Medical Treatise, Metrical Guide, Grammar, Rhetoric, Prosody, Makamat of Hariri), Ancient History, &c., written by Arabs. There were also volumes of Prayers, Poetry, Rhetoric, History, composed by Mandingo and Foulah authors. The library of this distinguished Sheikh, who is considered to be the most learned Mohammedan in this portion of West Africa, embraced well-nigh all the branches of human knowledge and research—theology, medicine, history, astronomy, grammar, &c. He entered into an interesting discussion on the respective merits of the different commentaries on the Koran, and seemed to give the preference to Beidhawi. Among his co-religionists, complete confidence is placed in the exactness of his traditional information, and on all doubtful questions his opinion is final. One of his sons composed calamo currente, an acrostic poem in Arabic on the name of Governor Hennessy.[27]
Footnotes:
24 History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, chap. xix.
25 Church Missionary Intelligencer, August, 1847, p. 247.
26 Virgil’s Æneid Book II, pp. 543-545.
27 See a paper read by Governor Hennessy before the Society of Arts, April 29, 1873; and Reade’s
African Sketch Book, vol, i, p. 312 (foot-note).
24 History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, chap. xix.
25 Church Missionary Intelligencer, August, 1847, p. 247.
26 Virgil’s Æneid Book II, pp. 543-545.
27 See a paper read by Governor Hennessy before the Society of Arts, April 29, 1873; and Reade’s
African Sketch Book, vol, i, p. 312 (foot-note).
At a town not far from Billeh, a Foulah boy, not more than fourteen years old, was introduced to us as a Hafiz—one who knows the Koran by heart. We tried him on several long chapters, and he recited them verbatim, literatim, et punctuatim, without the slightest hesitation. But he was only one of a number of such youths, whom we met in subsequent travels in the interior, who could recite not only the Koran, but many of the standard Arabic poems. Are there many youths in Christian lands who could recite even one book of the Bible from memory?
Every traveller who enters the Mohammedan regions of West and Central Africa with sufficient basis of information to understand what he sees and hears, is forced to admit that the man makes a great mistake who approaches the Negro Muslims with the idea that they are “benighted Africans.”
Mohammedanism in Africa, instead of being treated in the offhand and contemptuous manner adopted by some, who seem to have gathered all their knowledge of the religion from the Arabian Nights, ought to be approached with earnestness and respect; for there is much in it which Christians may profitably study, and from which they might glean important lessons. Mr.
Bosworth Smith remarks, in his Lectures on Mohammed and Mohammedanism, that “Christians have something at least to learn from Mohammedans which will make them not less but more Christian than they werebefore,”[28] and no one who has seriously studied the subject will deny the truth of the remark. In the pending controversy, for example, about religious and secular education, Christians might profit by the example of Mohammedan communities where the one involves and is inseparable from the other. Their education is religious and their religion educational. The example set by them in the constant and unremitting study of their sacred book, the Koran, is not unworthy of imitation. Sir Wilfred Lawson, again, in his laudable efforts in behalf of temperance, might appeal to the effective Mohammedan legislation on the subject, and gather encouragement from the practical exemplification in all Mohammedan countries of the ultimate result of his theories. The advocates of a “beneficent Erastianism” might study Islam with profit. The Mohammedans have certainly attained, though on a lower ground, a degree of religious unity not yet witnessed in the Christian Church. At all events, those who are engaged in missionary work in Mohammedan countries would not lose anything by heeding the thoughtful and common-sense advice of Barthélemy Saint Hilaire:--
Il y a aujourd’hui dans trois parties du monde plus de cent millions do Mussulmans, et voilà douze cents ans passés que leur religion reegne sur une bonne partie do l’Asie, de l’Afrique et même de l’Europe. A moins do traitor avec une légècreté aveugle cette portion considérable de lhumanité, qui a cependant à peu près les mêmes idées que nous sur Dieu et sa providence, il faut bien prendre aux sérieux un fait aussi vaste et aussi durable. Le Mahométisme n’est pas près de disparaître; et pour faciliter les rapports qu’on a nécessaire-jnent avec lui, il faut tacher do le comprendre dans tout ce qu’il a do vrai et de bon, et de no pas l’exclure, malgré ses défauts trop réels, de cette bienveillance universelle que recommande la charité Chrétienne.[29]
Growing out of the general misunderstanding of the people, the first and constant effort of the missionaries is to Europeanise them, without reference to their race peculiarities or the climatic conditions of the country, and this course has been attended with many serious drawbacks, preventing any healthy or permanent result. The missionary, often young and inexperienced, and having no model before him but that which he has left at home, endeavours to bring things in his new field as nearly as possible into conformity to the old. Everything is new and strange to him, and nearly everything he regards with contempt for being so un-European; and with the earnest vigour and sanguine temper which belong to youth he preaches a crusade against the harmless customs and prejudices of the people— superseding many customs and habits necessary and useful in the climate and for the people by practices which, however useful they might be in Europe, become, when introduced indiscriminately into Africa, artificial, ineffective and absurd. The “thin varnish of European civilisation,” which the native thus receives, is mistaken for a genuine mental metamorphosis, when, as a rule, owing to the imprudent hurry by which the convert’s reformation has been brought about, his Christianity, instead of being pure is superstitious, instead of being genuine is only nominal, instead of being deep is utterly superficial, and, not having fairly taken root, it cannot flourish and become reproductive. And here we cannot do better than quote from the utterances of a native clergyman of ability who, educated on the coast under missionary teaching, has felt the drawbacks of the system, He says:--
In the work of elevating Africans, foreign teachers have always proceeded with their work on the assumption that the Negro or the African is in every one of his normal susceptibilities an inferior race, and that it is needful in everything to give him a foreign model to copy; no account has been made of our peculiarities—our languages, enriched with the traditions of centuries; our parables, many of them the quintessence of family and national histories; our modes of thought, influenced more or less by local circumstances; our poetry and manufactures, which, though rude, had their own tales to tell; our social habits and even the necessities of our climate. It has been forgotten that European ideas, tastes, languages and social habits, like those of other nations, have been influenced more or less by geographical positions and climatic peculiarities; that what is esteemed by one country polite, may bo justly esteemed by another rude and barbarous; and that God does not intend to have the races confounded, but that the Negro or African should be raised upon his own idiosyncracies. The result has been that we, as a people, think more of everything that is foreign, and less of that which is purely native; have lost our self-respect and our love for our own race, are become a sort of nondescript people, and are, in many things, inferior to our brethren in the interior countries. There is evidently a fetter upon our minds even when the body is free; mental weakness, even where there is physical strength, and barrenness even where there appears fertility.[30]
Every traveller who enters the Mohammedan regions of West and Central Africa with sufficient basis of information to understand what he sees and hears, is forced to admit that the man makes a great mistake who approaches the Negro Muslims with the idea that they are “benighted Africans.”
Mohammedanism in Africa, instead of being treated in the offhand and contemptuous manner adopted by some, who seem to have gathered all their knowledge of the religion from the Arabian Nights, ought to be approached with earnestness and respect; for there is much in it which Christians may profitably study, and from which they might glean important lessons. Mr.
Bosworth Smith remarks, in his Lectures on Mohammed and Mohammedanism, that “Christians have something at least to learn from Mohammedans which will make them not less but more Christian than they werebefore,”[28] and no one who has seriously studied the subject will deny the truth of the remark. In the pending controversy, for example, about religious and secular education, Christians might profit by the example of Mohammedan communities where the one involves and is inseparable from the other. Their education is religious and their religion educational. The example set by them in the constant and unremitting study of their sacred book, the Koran, is not unworthy of imitation. Sir Wilfred Lawson, again, in his laudable efforts in behalf of temperance, might appeal to the effective Mohammedan legislation on the subject, and gather encouragement from the practical exemplification in all Mohammedan countries of the ultimate result of his theories. The advocates of a “beneficent Erastianism” might study Islam with profit. The Mohammedans have certainly attained, though on a lower ground, a degree of religious unity not yet witnessed in the Christian Church. At all events, those who are engaged in missionary work in Mohammedan countries would not lose anything by heeding the thoughtful and common-sense advice of Barthélemy Saint Hilaire:--
Il y a aujourd’hui dans trois parties du monde plus de cent millions do Mussulmans, et voilà douze cents ans passés que leur religion reegne sur une bonne partie do l’Asie, de l’Afrique et même de l’Europe. A moins do traitor avec une légècreté aveugle cette portion considérable de lhumanité, qui a cependant à peu près les mêmes idées que nous sur Dieu et sa providence, il faut bien prendre aux sérieux un fait aussi vaste et aussi durable. Le Mahométisme n’est pas près de disparaître; et pour faciliter les rapports qu’on a nécessaire-jnent avec lui, il faut tacher do le comprendre dans tout ce qu’il a do vrai et de bon, et de no pas l’exclure, malgré ses défauts trop réels, de cette bienveillance universelle que recommande la charité Chrétienne.[29]
Growing out of the general misunderstanding of the people, the first and constant effort of the missionaries is to Europeanise them, without reference to their race peculiarities or the climatic conditions of the country, and this course has been attended with many serious drawbacks, preventing any healthy or permanent result. The missionary, often young and inexperienced, and having no model before him but that which he has left at home, endeavours to bring things in his new field as nearly as possible into conformity to the old. Everything is new and strange to him, and nearly everything he regards with contempt for being so un-European; and with the earnest vigour and sanguine temper which belong to youth he preaches a crusade against the harmless customs and prejudices of the people— superseding many customs and habits necessary and useful in the climate and for the people by practices which, however useful they might be in Europe, become, when introduced indiscriminately into Africa, artificial, ineffective and absurd. The “thin varnish of European civilisation,” which the native thus receives, is mistaken for a genuine mental metamorphosis, when, as a rule, owing to the imprudent hurry by which the convert’s reformation has been brought about, his Christianity, instead of being pure is superstitious, instead of being genuine is only nominal, instead of being deep is utterly superficial, and, not having fairly taken root, it cannot flourish and become reproductive. And here we cannot do better than quote from the utterances of a native clergyman of ability who, educated on the coast under missionary teaching, has felt the drawbacks of the system, He says:--
In the work of elevating Africans, foreign teachers have always proceeded with their work on the assumption that the Negro or the African is in every one of his normal susceptibilities an inferior race, and that it is needful in everything to give him a foreign model to copy; no account has been made of our peculiarities—our languages, enriched with the traditions of centuries; our parables, many of them the quintessence of family and national histories; our modes of thought, influenced more or less by local circumstances; our poetry and manufactures, which, though rude, had their own tales to tell; our social habits and even the necessities of our climate. It has been forgotten that European ideas, tastes, languages and social habits, like those of other nations, have been influenced more or less by geographical positions and climatic peculiarities; that what is esteemed by one country polite, may bo justly esteemed by another rude and barbarous; and that God does not intend to have the races confounded, but that the Negro or African should be raised upon his own idiosyncracies. The result has been that we, as a people, think more of everything that is foreign, and less of that which is purely native; have lost our self-respect and our love for our own race, are become a sort of nondescript people, and are, in many things, inferior to our brethren in the interior countries. There is evidently a fetter upon our minds even when the body is free; mental weakness, even where there is physical strength, and barrenness even where there appears fertility.[30]
Footnotes:
28 Mohammed and Mohammedanism; preface to first edition, p. xi.
29 Mohamet et la Coran, p.213.
30 From a letter addressed by Rev. James Johnson, native pastor of Sierra Leone (now of Lagos), to Governor Pope Hennessy, dated December 24th, 1872, and published in the Negro newspaper, January 1, 1873.
28 Mohammed and Mohammedanism; preface to first edition, p. xi.
29 Mohamet et la Coran, p.213.
30 From a letter addressed by Rev. James Johnson, native pastor of Sierra Leone (now of Lagos), to Governor Pope Hennessy, dated December 24th, 1872, and published in the Negro newspaper, January 1, 1873.
Such is the able and pathetic protest of a highly intelligent native, well known as a hard worker for the improvement of his people in the right direction. And as the natives advance in intelligence and culture, they will see things more and more as Mr. Johnson sees them; their views on social questions will diverge in important particulars from those of their European teachers. We regret to notice that there has been an outcry, among some who should rejoice, against those distinctive features and really moral and beneficial results of the contact of the native mind with European culture.
The objectors to such deprecatory utterances from intelligent natives seem blind to the embarrassing social problems which must spring up among a distinct race from the new conditions. But it ought to be evident to them that there is no solution to be found in sneering at the aspirations and yearnings of the people and in scorning their “instincts.” If there is danger for the future of West Africa, it does not arise from the new aspect which things are assuming, and will, more and more, assume, among the enlightened natives, but from the insufficiency of the agency employed to cope with the new conditions, and to direct and organise the forces evolved.
The attempt to Europeanise the Negro in Africa will always be a profitless task. This is the feeling of the most advanced minds of the race. If it were possible—which, happily, it is not—to civilise and Christianise the whole of Africa according to the notions of some Europeans, neither would the people themselves nor the outside world be any great gainers by it; for the African would then fail of the ability to perform his specific part in the world’s work, as a distinct portion of the human race. The warnings of history on this subject are numerous.
Neither Greek science nor Roman culture (says the Rev. Stopford Brooke) had power to spread beyond itself. . . . The fact was that Rome did not try to civilise in the right way. Instead of drawing forth the native energies of these nations, while it left them free to develop their own national peculiarities in their own way, it imposed upon them from without the Roman education. It tried to turn them into Romans. Where this effort was unsuccesful, the men remained barbarous; where it was successful, the nation lost its distinctive elements in the Roman elements, at least, till after some centuries the overwhelming influence of Rome had perished. Meantime they were not Britons nor Gauls, but spurious Romans. The natural growth of the people was arrested. Men living out of their native element became stunted and spiritless.[31]
The same mistake is being committed in Africa, and, probably, from the same leading cause which is assigned by Mr. Brooke for the mistake of the Romans: “The Romans,” he says, “considered the barbarous Western nations incapable of culture.”
There is a solidarity of humanity which requires the complete development of each part in order to the effective working of the whole. To make the African a parasite upon the European would be no gain to mankind. The problem, it appears to us, which the imagination, the wisdom, and the Christian charity of the missionary world has to solve is, how to elevate the African, or enable him to elevate himself, according to the true Christian standard, upon the basis, as Mr. Johnson suggests, of “his own idiosyncrasies.” Any progress made otherwise must be unreal, unsatisfactory, precarious, transitory.
If the African is a part of humanity, there need be no fear—if his progress be normal—that he will not eventually come into thorough harmony with the laws of humanity, rejecting whatever may be the result of any distortions or eccentricities in his individuality. We are unwilling, for one moment, to admit the idea that Africans cannot acquire those trusts and convictions and that moral and spiritual development essential to human peace and guidance in this world, and to life everlasting in the world to come, without being cast in the European mould. We believe that Africans can attain to a knowledge of science, receive intellectual culture, acquire skill to develop the resources of their country, and be made “wise unto salvation,” without becoming Europeans; “for God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
Some of the best European thinkers deprecate any effort to cause the African to part with his special characteristics. A distinguished American writer says:--
When the epoch of the civilisation of the Negro family arrives, in the lapse of ages, they will display in their native land some very peculiar and interesting traits of character, of which we, a distinct branch of the human family, can at present form no conception. It will be—indeed, it must be—a civilisation of a peculiar stamp: perhaps, we venture to conjecture, not so much distinguished by art as a certain beautiful nature, not so marked or adorned by science as exalted and refined by a new and lovely theology—a reflection of the light of heaven more perfect and endearing than that which the intellects of the Caucasian race have ever exhibited. There is more of the child, of unsophisticated nature, in the Negro race than in the European.[32]
With this corresponds the view of Governor Pope Hennessy as stated in his reply to Mr. Johnson’s letter quoted above. He says:--
Fortunately, the injurious influences to which you refer have left almost untouched and uninjured the great mass of your race. It is only along the coast that the degenerating effect is seen. Dr. Livingstone bears testimony to the high intelligence and honourable character of your countrymen, as he has met them in the heart of Southern Negroland. Dr. Barth and others have done this for Central Nigritia. The many chiefs and messengers who have come to me from the northern valleys of the Niger have been in themselves witnesses of the same fact. In these times, when sceptical and irreverent inquirios have become the fashion in what are called the leading nations of Europe, it is satisfactory to know that your race is distinguished by a child-like capacity for faith. By keeping your race pure, you will preserve that all-important characteristic. As a student of history and a clergyman, you cannot have failed to see that mixed races are in this respect inferior to your own.[33]
The objectors to such deprecatory utterances from intelligent natives seem blind to the embarrassing social problems which must spring up among a distinct race from the new conditions. But it ought to be evident to them that there is no solution to be found in sneering at the aspirations and yearnings of the people and in scorning their “instincts.” If there is danger for the future of West Africa, it does not arise from the new aspect which things are assuming, and will, more and more, assume, among the enlightened natives, but from the insufficiency of the agency employed to cope with the new conditions, and to direct and organise the forces evolved.
The attempt to Europeanise the Negro in Africa will always be a profitless task. This is the feeling of the most advanced minds of the race. If it were possible—which, happily, it is not—to civilise and Christianise the whole of Africa according to the notions of some Europeans, neither would the people themselves nor the outside world be any great gainers by it; for the African would then fail of the ability to perform his specific part in the world’s work, as a distinct portion of the human race. The warnings of history on this subject are numerous.
Neither Greek science nor Roman culture (says the Rev. Stopford Brooke) had power to spread beyond itself. . . . The fact was that Rome did not try to civilise in the right way. Instead of drawing forth the native energies of these nations, while it left them free to develop their own national peculiarities in their own way, it imposed upon them from without the Roman education. It tried to turn them into Romans. Where this effort was unsuccesful, the men remained barbarous; where it was successful, the nation lost its distinctive elements in the Roman elements, at least, till after some centuries the overwhelming influence of Rome had perished. Meantime they were not Britons nor Gauls, but spurious Romans. The natural growth of the people was arrested. Men living out of their native element became stunted and spiritless.[31]
The same mistake is being committed in Africa, and, probably, from the same leading cause which is assigned by Mr. Brooke for the mistake of the Romans: “The Romans,” he says, “considered the barbarous Western nations incapable of culture.”
There is a solidarity of humanity which requires the complete development of each part in order to the effective working of the whole. To make the African a parasite upon the European would be no gain to mankind. The problem, it appears to us, which the imagination, the wisdom, and the Christian charity of the missionary world has to solve is, how to elevate the African, or enable him to elevate himself, according to the true Christian standard, upon the basis, as Mr. Johnson suggests, of “his own idiosyncrasies.” Any progress made otherwise must be unreal, unsatisfactory, precarious, transitory.
If the African is a part of humanity, there need be no fear—if his progress be normal—that he will not eventually come into thorough harmony with the laws of humanity, rejecting whatever may be the result of any distortions or eccentricities in his individuality. We are unwilling, for one moment, to admit the idea that Africans cannot acquire those trusts and convictions and that moral and spiritual development essential to human peace and guidance in this world, and to life everlasting in the world to come, without being cast in the European mould. We believe that Africans can attain to a knowledge of science, receive intellectual culture, acquire skill to develop the resources of their country, and be made “wise unto salvation,” without becoming Europeans; “for God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.”
Some of the best European thinkers deprecate any effort to cause the African to part with his special characteristics. A distinguished American writer says:--
When the epoch of the civilisation of the Negro family arrives, in the lapse of ages, they will display in their native land some very peculiar and interesting traits of character, of which we, a distinct branch of the human family, can at present form no conception. It will be—indeed, it must be—a civilisation of a peculiar stamp: perhaps, we venture to conjecture, not so much distinguished by art as a certain beautiful nature, not so marked or adorned by science as exalted and refined by a new and lovely theology—a reflection of the light of heaven more perfect and endearing than that which the intellects of the Caucasian race have ever exhibited. There is more of the child, of unsophisticated nature, in the Negro race than in the European.[32]
With this corresponds the view of Governor Pope Hennessy as stated in his reply to Mr. Johnson’s letter quoted above. He says:--
Fortunately, the injurious influences to which you refer have left almost untouched and uninjured the great mass of your race. It is only along the coast that the degenerating effect is seen. Dr. Livingstone bears testimony to the high intelligence and honourable character of your countrymen, as he has met them in the heart of Southern Negroland. Dr. Barth and others have done this for Central Nigritia. The many chiefs and messengers who have come to me from the northern valleys of the Niger have been in themselves witnesses of the same fact. In these times, when sceptical and irreverent inquirios have become the fashion in what are called the leading nations of Europe, it is satisfactory to know that your race is distinguished by a child-like capacity for faith. By keeping your race pure, you will preserve that all-important characteristic. As a student of history and a clergyman, you cannot have failed to see that mixed races are in this respect inferior to your own.[33]
Footnotes:
31 Sermons on Christ in Modem Life, p. 58.
32 Alexander Kinmont, quoted by Dr. W. E. Channing in his Works, vol. vi.
33 Published in the Negro newspaper for January 1, 1873.
31 Sermons on Christ in Modem Life, p. 58.
32 Alexander Kinmont, quoted by Dr. W. E. Channing in his Works, vol. vi.
33 Published in the Negro newspaper for January 1, 1873.
Another drawback—and the last we shall notice at present— to the success of missions on the coast, is the pernicious example of European traders and other non-missionary residents. From the time of the discovery of the Negro country by the Portuguese to the present, Europe has sent to the coast as traders some of its vilest characters.
They (Europeans) spread themselves (says a leading article in the Times of December 21, 1872) over the world, following everywhere the bent of their own nature, doing their own will, following their own gain, too generally being and doing nothing that a Heathen will recognise as better than himself. These preach something, and have their own mischievous mission. They preach irreligion, and the views that go with it. Their gospel does its work, and reaps its fruit.
No stone should he left unturned (says the Standard, August 27, 1874) to convince both Mussulman and Brahmin, Caffre and New Zealander, Fantee and Ashantee, that Christianity is the religion of the host men whom Europe boasts of, and that the leaders of science and philosophy, of government and society, profess the same faith as is preached to them by the humble missionary.
The settlements along the coast where it has been thought fit to establish and keep up missionary operations are commercial seaports, with all the disadvantages attaching to such localities. The population consists of a heterogeneous crowd—Government officials, itinerant mercantile agents, traders from the interior, and permanent native merchants, all intent upon worldly gains. Mohammedans or Pagans coming from the interior, and forming the larger part of the floating population, do not get the most favourable view of Christianity. But such a view as they get they carry back to their country. The intelligent natives of the interior with whom we have conversed in our travels between Sierra Leone and the head-waters of the Niger, look, with hardly an exception, upon the religion and books of the white man as intended not to teach men the way to heaven, but how to become rich and great in this world.
It is unfortunate for the English and other European languages that, in this part of Africa, they have come to the greater portion of the natives associated with profligacy, plunder, and cruelty, and devoid of any connection with spiritual things; while the Arabic is regarded by them as the language of prayer and devotion, of religion and piety, of all that is unworldly and spiritual.
The Church Missionary Society has wisely devoted a great deal of time and money to the task of reducing to writing some of the leading languages of West and Central Africa. The indigenous tongues will be far more effective instruments of conveying to the native mind the truths of the Gospel than any European language. The Rev, James Johnson—himself an adept in his native tongue, the Aku—in a speech delivered at a recent meeting of the Lagos branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society, made the sagacious remark that “as the African Church failed once in North Africa in clays gone by, so it will fail again, unless we read the Bible in our own native tongue.” [34]
We need hardly mention that one of the most pernicious elements in the demoralisation of the coast tribes is ardent spirits. It is a very fortunate circumstance for Africa that the Mohammedans of the interior present so formidable and impenetrable a barrier to the desolating flood which, but for them, would sweep across the continent. The abstemiousness of Islam is one of its good qualities which we should like Africans to retain, whatever may be the future fortunes of that faith on this continent. The Negro race, in their debilitating climate, do not possess the hardihood of the North American Indian or of the New Zealander; and, under the influence of that apparently inseparable concomitant of European civilisation, they would, in a much shorter time than it has taken the last-named nations, reach the deplorable distinction of being “civilised off the face of the earth.” And Mr. Galton, by a much easier process than he proposed, would have an opportunity of introducing his “hardy and prolific Chinese” protégés to take the place of the “lazy, palavering savages,” who, according to that accomplished traveller, now “cumber the ground” of a whole continent.[35]
And we cannot help thinking that it would be a step in advance in the intercourse of European Governments with the Pagan tribes along the coast if their agents were discouraged in the injudicious practice of giving ardents spirits as presents to the chiefs—a practice inaugurated by Europeans in the days of the slave trade. The correspondent of the Daily News refers to the practice, as he saw it at Cape Coast in 1873, as follows:--
At the end of the speech (Sir Garnet Wolseley’s) it was announced by the interpreter that the “usual present” would be made to the kings. This present consisted of a certain quantity of gin, which, according to immemorial usage, appears, on these occasions, to have been issued to the chiefs. It would clearly not have been possible to have broken through the rule at that moment; but as meeting after meeting subsequently took place, at which the chiefs begged for more gin, one began to doubt the advantages of the system.[36]
Commodore Wilmot states in an official despatch that, during his visit to Dahomey, he distributed rum to the people in the way of “dash.”[37]
We may remark, in conclusion, that, in view of the great work to be done in Africa, and the innumerable hindrances thereto, it will be seen that a profound conviction of the exclusive truth of the Gospel and an earnest zeal for the conversion of souls—though necessary and indispensable—are not the only qualifications needed by the missionary. The Christian missionaries in Africa should not only be well trained, highly educated, and large-minded men, but they should be men of imagination, logical power, and philosophic spirit, understanding how to set most effectively to work in clearing away what is really evil, in order to lay a durable foundation and erect a permanent superstructure of good. They should be men who understand that it is useless to pour new wine into old bottles, and who will be content to prepare the soil by the painful and judicious husbandry of years, if not of generations.
The following weighty words of Dean Stanley are suggestive and reassuring for the future of missionary work:--
Above all, it is now beginning to be felt that education is in itself a powerful, almost indispensable, engine, for the introduction of the Gospel. From time to time the truth has been recognised that Christianity depends for its due effect on the condition of those who receive it. It was recognised by Gregory the Great, when he warned the hasty missionary who first planted it amongst our Saxon forefathers, that we move by steps, not leaps. It was recognised by Innocent III, when he warned the first evangelisers of Prussia that they must put new wine into new bottles. It was recognised by the Moravians in their simple phrase that they must teach their converts to count the number Three before they taught them the doctrine of the Trinity.[38]
They (Europeans) spread themselves (says a leading article in the Times of December 21, 1872) over the world, following everywhere the bent of their own nature, doing their own will, following their own gain, too generally being and doing nothing that a Heathen will recognise as better than himself. These preach something, and have their own mischievous mission. They preach irreligion, and the views that go with it. Their gospel does its work, and reaps its fruit.
No stone should he left unturned (says the Standard, August 27, 1874) to convince both Mussulman and Brahmin, Caffre and New Zealander, Fantee and Ashantee, that Christianity is the religion of the host men whom Europe boasts of, and that the leaders of science and philosophy, of government and society, profess the same faith as is preached to them by the humble missionary.
The settlements along the coast where it has been thought fit to establish and keep up missionary operations are commercial seaports, with all the disadvantages attaching to such localities. The population consists of a heterogeneous crowd—Government officials, itinerant mercantile agents, traders from the interior, and permanent native merchants, all intent upon worldly gains. Mohammedans or Pagans coming from the interior, and forming the larger part of the floating population, do not get the most favourable view of Christianity. But such a view as they get they carry back to their country. The intelligent natives of the interior with whom we have conversed in our travels between Sierra Leone and the head-waters of the Niger, look, with hardly an exception, upon the religion and books of the white man as intended not to teach men the way to heaven, but how to become rich and great in this world.
It is unfortunate for the English and other European languages that, in this part of Africa, they have come to the greater portion of the natives associated with profligacy, plunder, and cruelty, and devoid of any connection with spiritual things; while the Arabic is regarded by them as the language of prayer and devotion, of religion and piety, of all that is unworldly and spiritual.
The Church Missionary Society has wisely devoted a great deal of time and money to the task of reducing to writing some of the leading languages of West and Central Africa. The indigenous tongues will be far more effective instruments of conveying to the native mind the truths of the Gospel than any European language. The Rev, James Johnson—himself an adept in his native tongue, the Aku—in a speech delivered at a recent meeting of the Lagos branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society, made the sagacious remark that “as the African Church failed once in North Africa in clays gone by, so it will fail again, unless we read the Bible in our own native tongue.” [34]
We need hardly mention that one of the most pernicious elements in the demoralisation of the coast tribes is ardent spirits. It is a very fortunate circumstance for Africa that the Mohammedans of the interior present so formidable and impenetrable a barrier to the desolating flood which, but for them, would sweep across the continent. The abstemiousness of Islam is one of its good qualities which we should like Africans to retain, whatever may be the future fortunes of that faith on this continent. The Negro race, in their debilitating climate, do not possess the hardihood of the North American Indian or of the New Zealander; and, under the influence of that apparently inseparable concomitant of European civilisation, they would, in a much shorter time than it has taken the last-named nations, reach the deplorable distinction of being “civilised off the face of the earth.” And Mr. Galton, by a much easier process than he proposed, would have an opportunity of introducing his “hardy and prolific Chinese” protégés to take the place of the “lazy, palavering savages,” who, according to that accomplished traveller, now “cumber the ground” of a whole continent.[35]
And we cannot help thinking that it would be a step in advance in the intercourse of European Governments with the Pagan tribes along the coast if their agents were discouraged in the injudicious practice of giving ardents spirits as presents to the chiefs—a practice inaugurated by Europeans in the days of the slave trade. The correspondent of the Daily News refers to the practice, as he saw it at Cape Coast in 1873, as follows:--
At the end of the speech (Sir Garnet Wolseley’s) it was announced by the interpreter that the “usual present” would be made to the kings. This present consisted of a certain quantity of gin, which, according to immemorial usage, appears, on these occasions, to have been issued to the chiefs. It would clearly not have been possible to have broken through the rule at that moment; but as meeting after meeting subsequently took place, at which the chiefs begged for more gin, one began to doubt the advantages of the system.[36]
Commodore Wilmot states in an official despatch that, during his visit to Dahomey, he distributed rum to the people in the way of “dash.”[37]
We may remark, in conclusion, that, in view of the great work to be done in Africa, and the innumerable hindrances thereto, it will be seen that a profound conviction of the exclusive truth of the Gospel and an earnest zeal for the conversion of souls—though necessary and indispensable—are not the only qualifications needed by the missionary. The Christian missionaries in Africa should not only be well trained, highly educated, and large-minded men, but they should be men of imagination, logical power, and philosophic spirit, understanding how to set most effectively to work in clearing away what is really evil, in order to lay a durable foundation and erect a permanent superstructure of good. They should be men who understand that it is useless to pour new wine into old bottles, and who will be content to prepare the soil by the painful and judicious husbandry of years, if not of generations.
The following weighty words of Dean Stanley are suggestive and reassuring for the future of missionary work:--
Above all, it is now beginning to be felt that education is in itself a powerful, almost indispensable, engine, for the introduction of the Gospel. From time to time the truth has been recognised that Christianity depends for its due effect on the condition of those who receive it. It was recognised by Gregory the Great, when he warned the hasty missionary who first planted it amongst our Saxon forefathers, that we move by steps, not leaps. It was recognised by Innocent III, when he warned the first evangelisers of Prussia that they must put new wine into new bottles. It was recognised by the Moravians in their simple phrase that they must teach their converts to count the number Three before they taught them the doctrine of the Trinity.[38]
Footnotes:
34 Reported in the African Times, January 1,1876.
35 The Times, June 5, 1873.
36 Ashantee War, by the Daily News Special Correspondent: p, 52.
37 British and Foreign State Papers, 1863-1864, p. 325.
38 Sermon on the ‘Prospect of Christian Missions.'
34 Reported in the African Times, January 1,1876.
35 The Times, June 5, 1873.
36 Ashantee War, by the Daily News Special Correspondent: p, 52.
37 British and Foreign State Papers, 1863-1864, p. 325.
38 Sermon on the ‘Prospect of Christian Missions.'
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