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: people the
Fans cannot abide. With these Bakele the Fan can intermarry, but
there is not much advantage in so doing, as the price is equally
high, but still marry he must.
A young Fan man has to fend for himself, and has a scratchy kind of
life of it, aided only by his mother until - if he be an enterprising
youth - he is able to steal a runaway wife from a neighbouring
village, or if he is a quiet and steady young man, until he has
amassed sufficient money to buy a wife. This he does by collecting
ebony and rubber and selling it to the men who have been allotted
goods by the chief of the village, from the consignment brought up
by the black trader. He supports himself meanwhile by, if the
situation of his village permits, fishing and selling the fish, and
hunting and killing game in the forest. He keeps steadily at it in
his way, reserving his roysterings until he is settled in life. A
truly careful young man does not go and buy a baby girl cheap, as
soon as he has got a little money together; but works and saves on
until he has got enough to buy a good, tough widow lady, who,
although personally unattractive, is deeply versed in the lore of
trade, and who knows exactly how much rubbish you can incorporate in
a ball of india rubber, without the white trader, or the black bush
factory trader, instantly detecting it. When the Fan young man has
married his wife, in a legitimate way on the cash system, he takes
her round to his relations, and shows her off; and they make little
presents to help the pair set up housekeeping. But the young man
cannot yet settle down, for his wife will not allow him to. She is
not going to slave herself to death doing all the work of the house,
etc., and so he goes on collecting, and she preparing, trade stuff,
and he grows rich enough to buy other wives - some of them young
children, others widows, no longer necessarily old. But it is not
until he is well on in life that he gets sufficient wives, six or
seven. For it takes a good time to get enough rubber to buy a lady,
and he does not get a grip on the ivory trade until he has got a
certain position in the village, and plantations of his own which
the elephants can be discovered raiding, in which case a percentage
of the ivory taken from the herd is allotted to him. Now and again
he may come across a dead elephant, but that is of the nature of a
windfall; and on rubber and ebony he has to depend during his early
days. These he changes with the rich men of his village for a very
peculiar and interesting form of coinage - bikei - little iron
imitation axe-heads which are tied up in bundles called ntet, ten
going to one bundle, for with bikei must the price of a wife be
paid. You do not find bikei close down to Libreville, among the
Fans who are there in a semi-civilised state, or more properly
speaking in a state of disintegrating culture. You must go for
bush. I thought I saw in bikei a certain resemblance in underlying
idea with the early Greek coins I have seen at Cambridge, made like
the fore-parts of cattle; and I have little doubt that the articles
of barter among the Fans before the introduction of the rubber,
ebony, and ivory trades, which in their districts are comparatively
recent, were iron implements. For the Fans are good workers in
iron; and it would be in consonance with well-known instances among
other savage races in the matter of stone implements, that these
things, important of old, should survive, and be employed in the
matter of such an old and important affair as marriage. They thus
become ju-ju; and indeed all West African legitimate marriage,
although appearing to the casual observer a mere matter of barter,
is never solely such, but always has ju-ju in it.
We may as well here follow out the whole of the domestic life of the
Fan, now we have got him married. His difficulty does not only
consist in getting enough bikei together but in getting a lady he
can marry. No amount of bikei can justify a man in marrying his
first cousin, or his aunt; and as relationship among the Fans is
recognised with both his father and his mother, not as among the
Igalwa with the latter's blood relations only, there are an awful
quantity of aunts and cousins about from whom he is debarred.
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