American Negro Slavery | Page 3

negroes have submitted to that prohibition as to many others,
through countless generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed
were they to interdicts of nature that they added many of their own
through conventional taboo, some of them intended to prevent the
eating of supposedly injurious food, others calculated to keep the
commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the dignitaries.[2]
[Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African régime is J.A.
Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I. A fuller
survey is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a
bibliography of the sources. Among the writings of travelers and
sojourners particularly notable are Mary Kingsley's Travels in West
Africa as a vivid picture of coast life, and her West African Studies for
its elaborate and convincing discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir
A.B. Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe- and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their
analyses of institutions along the Gold Coast.]
No people is without its philosophy and religion. To the Africans the
forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive. To invest
them with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was
perhaps an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate
system of superstition. Not only did the wind and the rain have their
gods but each river and precipice, and each tribe and family and person,
a tutelary spirit. These might be kept benevolent by appropriate fetish
ceremonies; they might be used for evil by persons having specially
great powers over them. The proper course for common-place persons
at ordinary times was to follow routine fetish observances; but when

beset by witch-work the only escape lay in the services of
witch-doctors or priests. Sacrifices were called for, and on the greatest
occasions nothing short of human sacrifice was acceptable.
As to diet, vegetable food was generally abundant, but the negroes were
not willingly complete vegetarians. In the jungle game animals were
scarce, and everywhere the men were ill equipped for hunting. In lieu
of better they were often fain to satisfy their craving for flesh by eating
locusts and larvae, as tribes in the interior still do. In such conditions
cannibalism was fairly common. Especially prized was an enemy slain
in war, for not only would his body feed the hungry but fetish taught
that his bravery would pass to those who shared the feast.
In African economy nearly all routine work, including agriculture, was
classed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance.
The wife, bought with a price at the time of marriage, was virtually a
slave; her husband her master. Now one woman might keep her
husband and children in but moderate comfort. Two or more could
perform the family tasks much better. Thus a man who could pay the
customary price would be inclined to add a second wife, whom the first
would probably welcome as a lightener of her burdens. Polygamy
prevailed almost everywhere.
Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes who
gained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it
perhaps originated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to
lighten and improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves
through capture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the
status. While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and
captives were often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the
locality were generally regarded as members of their owner's family
and were shown much consideration. In the millet zone where there
was much work to be done the slaveholdings were in many cases very
large and the control relatively stringent; but in the banana districts an
easy-going schedule prevailed for all. One of the chief hardships of the
slaves was the liability of being put to death at their master's funeral in
order that their spirits might continue in his service. In such case it was

customary on the Gold Coast to give the victim notice of his
approaching death by suddenly thrusting a knife through each cheek
with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he might not curse his
master before he died. With his hands tied behind him he would then be
led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were in general eager
traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the time when the
transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding and trading,
transformed the native economy and deranged the social order.
[Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples
has been elaborately discussed by H.J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an
Industrial System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).]
Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in
Guinea was wholly on a village basis, each community