DAHOMEY—SLAVISH SUBJECTION OF THE PEOPLE—DEPENDENCE OF THE KING ON THE SLAVE-TRADE—EXHIBITION OF HUMAN SKULLS—ANNUAL HUMAN SACRIFICES—LAGOS—THE CHANGES OF THREE CENTURIES.
Dalziel, in slave-trading times, shocked the world with details in reference to Dahomey. Duncan and Forbes have again presented the picture in the same hues of darkness and of blood. Ghezo is a good king as things go, and rather particularly good for an African, for whom the world has done nothing, and who, therefore, cannot be expected to do much for the world. He has a threatening example before him. His elder brother is a prisoner, with as much to eat and more to drink than is good for him—caged up by a crowd of guards, who prevent him from doing any thing else. He was deposed, and reduced to this state, because his rule did not suit his subjects.
Ghezo, therefore, has the office of seeing men roll on the earth before him, and scrape up dust over themselves; of being deafened by vociferations of his dignity and virtue and glory and honor, by court poets and parasites, on state occasions; the office of keeping satisfied, with pay and plunder, the ferocious spirit of a blood-thirsty people; the office of looking out for some victim tribe, whom, by craft and violence, they may ruin; and the office of procuring, catching and buying some scores of human victims, whom he and his savages murder, at different set seasons, in public.
A good share of this used to be effected by means of the slave-trade. But that is gone, or nearly so, and with it may go much of the atrocity of Dahomean public life. Things are yet, however, and may long remain, in a transition state. He and his people will not suddenly lose their taste for the excitement of human suffering; and it would be a danger for which, it is probable, he has not the moral courage, or a result for which he has no real wish, to bring old national ceremonies to a sudden pause. But there are circumstances likely to act with effect in producing the change, which is a matter destined to occur at some time or other, and to be obtained when it occurs only in one mode; and the sooner the process is begun, the sooner it will end.
F.E. Forbes, delt.
Lith. of Sarony & Co. N. Y.
SKULL ORNAMENTS & BANNERS OF DAHOMEY.
As to what it is that higher principles must banish from the world, Commander Forbes, of the British Navy, in 1850, the latest visitor of that country who has given an account of it, tells us what he saw. He says: “There is something fearful in the state of subjection in which, in outward show, the kings of Dahomey hold their highest officers; yet, when the system is examined, these prostrations are merely keeping up of ancient customs. Although no man’s head in Dahomey can be considered warranted for twenty-four hours, still the great chief himself would find his tottering if one of these customs was omitted.”
They were preparing for the ceremony of watering the graves of the royal ancestors with blood; during which the king also presents some victims as a royal gift to his people. This merely means that they are knocked down in public, and their heads cut off, amidst trumpeting, and clamor, and jesting.
“With much ceremony,” we read, “two large calabashes, containing the skulls of kings,” conquered by the Dahomeans, “ornamented with copper, brass, coral, &c., were brought in and placed on the ground. Some formed the heads of walking-sticks, distaffs; while those of chiefs and war-men ornamented drums, umbrellas, surmounted standards, and decorated doorways. They were on all sides in thousands.”
“There was much to disgust the white man in the number of human skulls and jaw-bones displayed; but can the reader imagine twelve unfortunate human beings lashed hands and feet, and tied in small canoes and baskets, dressed in clean white dresses, with a high red cap, carried on the heads of fellow-men? These, and an alligator and a cat, were the gift of the monarch to the people—prisoners of war.”... “When carried round the court, they bore the gaze of their enemies without shrinking. At the foot of the throne they halted, while the Mayo presented each with a head (bunch) of cowries, extolling the munificence of the monarch, who had sent it to them to purchase a last meal, for to-morrow they must die.”
Again: “But of the fourteen now brought on the platform, we the unworthy instruments of the Divine will, succeeded in saving the lives of three. Lashed as we have described before, these sturdy men met the gaze of their persecutors, with a firmness perfectly astonishing. Not a sigh was breathed. In all my life I never saw such coolness before, so near death.... The victims were held high above the heads of their bearers, and the naked ruffians thus acknowledged the munificence of their prince.... Having called their names, the nearest one was divested of his clothes; the foot of the basket placed on the parapet, when the king gave its upper part an impetus, and the victim fell at once into the pit beneath. A fall upwards of twelve feet may have stunned him, and before sense could return, his head was cut off, and the body thrown to the mob; who, now armed with clubs and branches, brutally mutilated it and dragged it to a distant pit.” Forbes and his companion had retired to their seats away from the sight. Two sons of Da Souza, the notorious slayer, remained to look on.
F.E. Forbes, delt.
Lith. of Sarony & Co. N. Y.
THE PLATFORM OF THE AH-TOH.
The circumstance most likely to have effect in restraining these barbarities, is the value which slaves will now bear as the means of cultivating the ground, and raising exportable produce, to which alone the monarch and people must look, in the diminished state of the slave-trade, to furnish means for their expenses. Victims and slaves will also be more difficult to be procured by warfare, inasmuch as civilized people have more general access to the country, and will introduce a better policy, and more powerful defensive means among the people. Christianity also is adventuring there, and carrying its peaceful influence and nobler motives with it.
Lagos plundered recaptured slaves returning to their homes. The authorities deserved no favor. A better man—perhaps a more legitimate claimant for the royal dignity—was found, and after a severe fight, in which the British cruisers warmly participated, he was seated on the throne. A severe blow was given to the slave-trade. Affairs seemed to be going on smoothly until early in the autumn of 1853, when a revolution broke out, amidst which the king died, and the country, as far as is known, remains in confusion.
The present is an interesting period in the history of the world. Changes are rapid and irrevocable. Circumstances illustrative of the condition of our race as it has been, are disappearing rapidly. The future must trust to our philosophic observation, and faithful testimony, for its knowledge of savage life. The helplessness, and artlessness, and miserable shifts of barbarism are becoming things of the past. There is perhaps no region of the earth which is now altogether beyond the reach of civilized arts. Shells, and flints, and bows, and clubs, and bone-headed spears are everywhere giving way to more useful or more formidable implements. Improvements in dress and tools and furniture will soon be universal. The history of man as he has been, requires therefore to be written now, while the evidence illustrative of it has not altogether vanished.
The changes of the last three centuries have, to only a slight degree, influenced the African races. An inaccessible interior, and a coast bristling with slave-factories, and bloody with slaving cruelties, probably account for this. The slight progress made shows the obduracy of the degradation to be removed, and the difficulty of the first steps needed for its removal. Wherever the slave-trade or its effects penetrated, there of course peace vanished, and prosperity became impossible. This evil affected not only the coast, but spread warfare to rob the country of its inhabitants, far into the interior regions. There were tribes, however, uninfluenced by it, and some of these have gained extensive, although but temporary authority. Yet nowhere has there been any real civilization. It is singular that these people should have rested in this unalloyed barbarism for thousands of years, and that there should have been no native-born advancement, as in Mexico, or Peru, or China; and no flowing in upon its darkness of any glimmering of light from the brilliant progress and high illumination of the outside world. It has been considered worthy of note, that a few years ago one of the Veys had contrived a cumbrous alphabet to express the sounds of his language; but it is surely, to an incomparable degree, more a matter of surprise, that centuries passed away in communication with Europeans, without such an attempt having been made by any individual, of so many millions, during so many generations of men.
The older state of negro society, therefore, still continues. With the exception of civilized vices, civilized arms, and some amount of civilized luxuries, life on the African coast, or at no great distance from it, remains now much the same as the first discoverers found it.
As it was two hundred years ago, the food of the people consists of rice, maize and millet; or the Asiatic, the American and the African native grains. A few others, of comparatively little importance, might be added to these. Many fruits, as bananas, figs and pumpkins, compose part of their subsistence.
Flesh of all kinds was used abundantly before European arms began to render game scarce. Fish along the coast, and beside the rivers and interior lakes, are used, except by some tribes, who regard them as unclean. The Bushmen south of Elephants’ Bay, reject no kind of reptile. The snake’s poison arms their weapon, and its body is eaten. As the poisons used act rapidly, and do not affect the flesh of the animal, it is devoured without scruple and without danger. Throughout all the deserts, as in ancient times, the locust, or large winged grasshopper, is used as an article of food, not nutritive certainly, but capable of sustaining life. The wings and legs are pulled off, and the bodies are scorched, in holes heated as ovens, and having the hot sand hauled over them.
In Dahomey, according to Duncan, there is some improvement in agriculture, traced to the return from the Brazils of a few who had been trained as slaves in that empire. This influence, and that of ideas imported from civilized society, seem to be more prevalent in Dahomey than elsewhere. The present sovereign has mitigated the laws, diminished the transit duties, and acted with such judicious kindness towards tribes who submitted without resistance, that his neighbors, tired of war and confusion, have willingly, in some instances, preferred to come under his jurisdiction.
These circumstances, together with the treaty formed by England with the King of Dahomey, in 1852, for the suppression of the slave-trade, indicate that a new destiny is opening for the African races. It may be but rarely that a man of so much intelligence gains power; and the successor of the present king may suffer matters to decline; but still great sources of evil are removed, and the people are acquiring a taste for better practices. Human sacrifices have, to a great extent, been abolished; and the wants of cultivation will of themselves render human life of higher value. The two great states of Ashantee and Dahomey, now both open to missionary influence, are likely to run an emulative race in the career of improvement.