Conspire together and cook up a case against a
man for the sake of getting the damages. There is nothing that
ensures a man an unblemished character in West Africa, save the
possession of sufficient power to make it risky work for people to
cast slurs on it.
The ownership of children is a great source of palaver. The law
among Negroes and Bantus is that the children of a free woman belong
to her. In the case of tribes believing in the high importance of
uncles considerable powers are vested in that relative, while in
other tribes certain powers are vested in the father.
The children of slave wives are the only children the father has
absolute power over if he is the legal owner of the slave woman.
If, as is frequently the case, a free man marries a slave woman who
belongs to another man, all her children are the absolute property
of her owner, not her husband; and the owner of the woman can take
them and sell them, or do whatsoever he chooses with them, unless
the free man father redeems them, as he usually does, although the
woman may still remain the absolute property of the owner,
recallable by him at any time.
This law is the cause of the most brain-spraining palavers that come
before the white authorities.
