The Tribes That Have Had The Trade Of The Bight Of Biafra
Passing Through Their Hands Have Been Accustomed, According To The
German Government Who Are Also Pressing Inland, To Make Seventy-Five
Per Cent.
Profit on it, and they resent being deprived of this.
A
good deal is to be said in favour of their views; among other things
that the greater part of the seaboard districts of West Africa, I
may say every part from Sierra Leone to Cameroon, is structurally
incapable of being self-supporting under existing conditions. Below
Cameroon, on my beloved South-west coast, which is infinitely richer
than the Bight of Benin, rich producing districts come down to the
sea in most places until you reach the Congo; but here again the
middleman is of great use to the interior tribes, and if they do
have to pay him seventy-five per cent, serve them right. They
should not go making wife palaver, and blood palaver all over the
place to such an extent that the inhabitants of no village, unless
they go en masse, dare take a ten mile walk, save at the risk of
their lives, in any direction, so no palaver live.
We will now enter into the reason that induces the bush man to
collect stuff to sell among the Fans, which is the expensiveness of
the ladies in the tribe. A bush Fan is bound to marry into his
tribe, because over a great part of the territory occupied by them
there is no other tribe handy to marry into; and a Fan residing in
villages in touch with other tribes, has but little chance of
getting a cheaper lady. For there is, in the Congo Francais and the
country adjacent to the north of it (Batanga), a regular style of
aristocracy which may be summarised firstly thus: All the other
tribes look down on the Fans, and the Fans look down on all the
other tribes. This aristocracy has sub-divisions, the M'pongwe of
Gaboon are the upper circle tribe; next come the Benga of Corisco;
then the Bapuka; then the Banaka. This system of aristocracy is
kept up by the ladies. Thus a M'pongwe lady would not think of
marrying into one of the lower tribes, so she is restricted, with
many inner restrictions, to her own tribe. A Benga lady would marry
a M'pongwe, or a Benga, but not a Banaka, or Bapuka; and so on with
the others; but not one of them would marry a Fan. As for the men,
well of course they would marry any lady of any tribe, if she had a
pretty face, or a good trading connection, if they were allowed to:
that's just man's way. To the south-east the Fans are in touch with
the Bakele, a tribe that has much in common with the Fan, but who
differ from them in getting on in a very friendly way with the
little dwarf people, the Matimbas, or Watwa, or Akoa:
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