None Of Their Languages Fitted, So They Talked Trade
English, And Pretty Lively Talk Some Of It Was, But Of That Anon.
I cannot close this brief notice of native ideas without mentioning
the secret societies; but to go fully into this branch of the
subject would require volumes, for every tribe has its secret
society.
The Poorah of Sierra Leone, the Oru of Lagos, the Egbo of
Calabar, the Isyogo of the Igalwa, the Ukuku of the Benga, the
Okukwe of the M'pongwe, the Ikun of the Bakele, and the Lukuku of
the Bachilangi Baluba, are some of the most powerful secret
societies on the West African Coast.
These secret societies are not essentially religious, their action
is mainly judicial, and their particularly presiding spirit is not a
god or devil in our sense of the word. The ritual differs for each
in its detail, but there are broad lines of agreement between them.
There are societies both for men and for women, but mixed societies
for both sexes are rare. Those that I have mentioned above are all
male, except the Lukuku, and women are utterly forbidden to
participate in the rites or become acquainted with their secrets,
for one of the chief duties of these societies is to keep the women
in order; and besides it is undoubtedly held that women are bad for
certain forms of ju-ju, even when these forms are not directly
connected, as far as I can find out, with the secret society. For
example, the other day a chief up the Mungo River deliberately
destroyed his ju-ju by showing it to his women. It was a great ju-
ju, but expensive to keep up, requiring sacrifices of slaves and
goats, so what with trade being bad, fall in the price of oil and
ivory and so on, he felt he could not afford that ju-ju, and so
destroyed its power, so as to prevent its harming him when he
neglected it.
The general rule with these secret societies is to admit the young
free people at an age of about eight to ten years, the boys entering
the male, the girls the female society. Both societies are rigidly
kept apart. A man who attempts to penetrate the female mysteries
would be as surely killed as a woman who might attempt to
investigate the male mysteries; still I came, in 1893, across an
amusing case which demonstrates the inextinguishable thirst for
knowledge, so long as that knowledge is forbidden, which
characterises our sex.
It was in the district just south of Big Batanga. The male society
had been very hard on the ladies for some time, and one day one
star-like intellect among the latter told her next-door neighbour,
in strict confidence, that she did not believe Ikun was a spirit at
all, but only old So-and-so dressed up in leaves. This rank heresy
spread rapidly, in strict confidence, among the ladies at large, and
they used to assemble together in the house of the foundress of the
theory, secretly of course, because husbands down there are hasty
with the cutlass and the kassengo, and they talked the matter over.
Somehow or other, this came to the ears of the men.
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