West African studies Part 23

The law of inheritance for people of distinction differs from that of the kings in the fact that the eldest son inherits by right of primogeniture, and succeeds to all his father's property, wives and slaves. He generally allows his mother a separate establishment and maintenance and finds employment and maintenance for his father's other wives in the family residence. He is expected to act liberally with his younger brothers, but there is no law on this question. Before entering into full possession of his father's property he must pet.i.tion the king to allow him to do so, accompanying the said pet.i.tion with a present to the king of a slave, as also one to each of the three great officers of the king. This pet.i.tion is invariably granted. A widow cannot marry again without the permission of her son, if she have a son; or if he be too young, the man who marries her must supply a female slave to wait upon him instead of his mother.

Theft was punished by fine only, if the stolen property was restored, but by flogging if the thief was unable to make rest.i.tution.

Murder was of rare occurrence. When detected it was punished with death by decapitation, and the body of the culprit was quartered and exposed to the beasts and birds of prey.

If the murderer be a man of some considerable position he was not executed, but escorted out of the country and never allowed to return.

In case of a murder committed in the heat of pa.s.sion, the culprit could arrange matters by giving the dead person a suitable funeral, paying a heavy fine to the three chief officers of the king and supplying a slave to suffer in his place. In this case he was bound to kneel and keep his forehead touching the slave during his execution.

In all cases where an accusation was not clearly proved, the accused would have to undergo an ordeal to prove his guilt or innocence. To fully describe the whole of these would fill several hundred pages, and as most of them could be managed by the Ju-Ju men in such a way, that they could prove a man guilty or innocent according to the amount of present they had received from the accused's friends, I will pa.s.s on to other subjects.

Adultery was very severely punished in whatever cla.s.s it took place; in the lower cla.s.ses all the property of the guilty man pa.s.sed at once to the injured husband, the woman being severely flogged and expelled from her husband's house.

Amongst the middle cla.s.s this crime could be atoned for by the friends of the guilty woman making a money present to the injured husband; and the lady would be restored to her outraged lord's favour.

The upper cla.s.ses revenged themselves by having the two culprits instantly put to death, except when the male culprit belonged to the upper cla.s.ses; then the punishment was generally reduced to banishment from the kingdom of Benin for life.

Amongst these people one finds some peculiar customs concerning children. Amongst others, a child is supposed to be under great danger from evil spirits until it has pa.s.sed its seventh day. On this day a small feast is provided by the parents; still it is thought well to propitiate the evil spirits by strewing a portion of the feast round the house where the child is.

Twin children, according to some accounts, were not looked upon with the same horror in Benin as they are in other parts of the Niger Delta; as a fact, they were looked upon with favour, except in one town of the kingdom, the name of which I have never been able to get, nor have I been able to locate the spot; but wherever it is, I am informed both mother and children were sacrificed to a demon, who resided in a wood in the neighbourhood of this town.

This law of killing twin children, like most Ju-Ju laws, could be got over if the father was himself not too deeply steeped in Ju-Juism, and was sufficiently wealthy to bribe the Ju-Ju priests. The law was always mercilessly carried out in the case of the poorer cla.s.s of natives--the above refers solely to the part of Benin kingdom directly under the king of Old Benin, and does not hold good with regard to the Sobos, Jakris, or Ijos.

ORIGIN OF THE BENIN CITY PEOPLE

According to Clapperton the Benin people are descendants of the Yoruba tribes, the Yoruba tribes being descended from six brothers, all the sons of one mother. Their names were Ikelu, Egba, Ijebu, Ife, Ibini (Benin), and Yoruba.

According to the late Sultan Bello (the Foulah chief of Sokoto at the time of Captain Clapperton's visit to that city), the Yoruba tribes are descended from the children of Canaan, who were of the tribe of Nimrod.

In my opinion there is room for much speculation on this statement of the Sultan Bello.

It is a very curious fact that the people of Benin City have been, from the earliest accounts we have of them, great workers in bra.s.s. Might not the ancestors of this people have brought the art of working in bra.s.s with them from the far distant land of Canaan? Moses, when speaking of the land of Canaan, says, "out of whose hills thou mayest dig bra.s.s"

(Deut. viii. 9). Here we must understand copper to be meant; because bra.s.s is not dug out of the earth, but copper is, and found in abundance in that part of the world.

Yet another curious subject for reflection, from the first information that European travellers give us (_circa_ 1485) in their descriptions of the city of Benin, mention has invariably made of towers, from the summits of which monster bra.s.s serpents were suspended. Upon the entry of the punitive expedition into Benin City in the month of February, 1897, Benin City still possessed one of these serpents in bra.s.s, not hanging from a tower, but laid upon the roof of one of the king's houses.

Might not these brazen serpents be a remnant of some tradition handed down from the time of Moses? for do we not read in the Scriptures, that the people of Israel had sinned; and G.o.d to punish them sent fiery serpents, which bit the people, and many died. Then Moses cried to G.o.d, and G.o.d told him to make a serpent of bra.s.s, and set it on a pole.

(Numbers xxi. 9.)

While on the subject of serpents, I may mention that in the neighbourhood of Benin, there is a Ju-Ju ordeal pond or river, said to be infested with dangerous and poisonous snakes and alligators, through which a man accused of any crime pa.s.sing unscathed proves his innocence.

There are some other customs connected with the position of the king of Benin, as the head of the Ju-Juism of his country, which seem to have some trace of a Biblical origin, but which I will not discuss here, but leave to the ethnologists to unravel, if they can.

That they were a superior people to the surrounding tribes is amply demonstrated by their being workers in bra.s.s and iron; displaying considerable art in some of their castings in bra.s.s, iron, copper and bronze, their carving in ivory, and their manufacture of cotton cloth--no other people in the Delta showing any such ability.

The Jakri tribe, who inhabit that part of the country lying between the Sobo country and the Ijo country, were the dominant tribe in the lower or New Benin country. Being themselves tributary to the Benin king, they dare not make the Sobo or Ijo men pay a direct tribute to them for the right to live, but they indirectly took a much larger tribute from them than ever they paid the king of Benin.

The Jakris were the brokers, and would not allow either of the above-named tribes to trade direct with the white men.

The princ.i.p.al towns of the Jakri men were:--Brohemie[82] (destroyed by the English in 1894): this town was generally called Nana's town of late years. Nana was Governor of the whole of the country lying between a line drawn from the Gwato Creek to Wari and the sea-coast; his governors.h.i.+p extending a little beyond the Benin River, and running down the coast to the Ramos River. This appointment he held from the king of Benin, and was officially recognised by the British Consul as the head-man of the Jakri tribe, and for any official business in connection with the country over which he was Governor. Jeboo or Chief Peggy's town, situated on the waterway to Lagos; Jaquah town or Chief Ogrie's town. The above towns are all on the right bank of the river.

On the left bank of the river are found the following towns:--Bateri, or Chief Numa's town, lying about half an hour's pull in a boat from Deli Creek. Chief Numa, was the son of the late Chief Chinome, a rival in his day to Allumah, the father of Nana, the late Governor; Chinome was the son of Queen Doto of Wari, who years ago was most anxious to see the white man at her town, and repeatedly advised the white men to use the Forcados for their princ.i.p.al trading station; but the old Chief Allumah was against any such exodus, and as he was a very big trader in palm-oil, he of course carried the day, and the white men stuck to their swamp at the mouth of the river Benin.

Close to Numa's town his brother Fragoni has established a small town.

At some little distance from Bateri is b.o.o.boo, or the late Chief Bregbi's town. Galey, the eldest son of the late Chinome, has a small town in the Deli Creek. This man, though the eldest son of the late Chief Chinome, is not a chief, though his younger brother Numa is. Here is a knotty point in Jakri law of inheritance, which differs from the Benin City law on the subject.

Wari, the capital of Jakri, though almost if not actually as old a town as Benin City, has never had the bad reputation that the latter city has always had. I attribute this to the fact that the ladies of Warri have always been a power in the land.

Sapele is a place that has come very much into notice since the country has been under the jurisdiction of the Niger Coast Protectorate, and is without doubt one of the best stations on the Benin territory. I am glad to say that the Europeans have at last deserted to a great extent their factories at the mouth of the Benin River, and are now princ.i.p.ally located at Sapele and Wari.

The Jakri tribe claim to be of the same race as the people of Benin City and kingdom. This I am inclined to dispute; I think they were a coast tribe like the Ijos. Tradition says that Wari was founded by people from Benin kingdom and for many years was tributary to the king of Benin, but in 1778 Wari was reported to be quite independent. They may have become almost the same race by intermarriage with the Benin people that went to Wari; but that they were originally the same race I say no.

The religion of the Jakri tribe and the native laws and system of ordeals were, as far as I have been able to ascertain, identical with those of the Benin kingdom; with the exception of the human sacrifices and their law of inheritance which does not admit the right of primogeniture--following in this respect, the laws of the Bonny men and their neighbours. Twin children are usually killed by the Jakris, and the mother driven into the bush to die.

The Jakri tribe are, without doubt, one of the finest in the Niger Coast Protectorate; many of their present chiefs are very honest and intelligent men, also excellent traders. Their women are noted as being the finest and best looking for miles round.

The Jakri women have already made great strides towards their complete emanc.i.p.ation from the low state in which the women of neighbouring tribes still find themselves, many of them being very rich and great traders.

The Sobo tribe have been kept so much in the background by the Jakris that little is known about them. What little is known of them is to their credit.

We now come to the Ijo tribe, or at least, that portion of them that live within the Niger Coast Protectorate; these men are reported by some travellers to be cannibals, and a very turbulent people; this character has been given them by interested parties. Their looks are very much against them as they disfigure their faces by heavy cuts as tribal marks, and some pick up the flesh between their eyes making a kind of ridge, that gives them a savage expression. Though I have put the limit of these people at the river Ramos, they really extend along the coast as far as the western bank of the Aka.s.sa river. They have never had a chance and, with the exception of large timber for making canoes, their country does not produce much. Though I have seen considerable numbers of rubber-producing trees in their country, I never was able to induce them to work it. No doubt they asked the advice of their Ju-Ju as to taking my advice, and he followed the usual rule laid down by the priesthood of Ju-Ju-ism, no innovations.

Whilst I was in the Ijo country I carefully studied their Ju-Ju, as I had been told they were great believers in, and practisers of Ju-Ju-ism.

I found little in their system differing from that practised in most of the rivers of the Delta.

In all these practices human agency plays a very large part, and this seems to be known even to the lower orders of the people; as an instance, I must here relate an experience I once had amongst the Ijos.

I had arranged with a chief living on the Ba.s.sa Creek to lend me his fastest canoe and twenty-five of his people, to take me to the Bra.s.s river; the bargain was that his canoe should be ready at c.o.c.k-Crow Peak the following morning. I was ready at the water-side by the time appointed, but only about six of the smallest boys had put in an appearance; the old chief was there in a most furious rage, sending off messengers in all directions to find the canoe boys. After about two hours' work and the expenditure of much bad language on the part of the old chief, also some hard knocks administered to the canoe boys by the men who had been sent after them, as evidenced by the wales I saw on their backs, the canoe was at last manned, and I took my seat in it under a very good mat awning which nearly covered the canoe from end to end, and thanking my stars that now my troubles had come to an end I hoped at least for a time. I was, however, a very big bit too premature, for before the old chief would let the canoe start, he informed me he must make Ju-Ju for the safety of his canoe and the safe return of it and all his boys, to say nothing of my individual safety.

One of the first requirements of that particular Ju-Ju cost me further delay, for a bottle of gin had to be procured, and as the daily market in that town had not yet opened, and no public house had yet been established by any enterprising Ijo, it took some time to procure.

On the arrival of the article, however, my friend the old chief proceeded in a most impressive manner to repeat a short prayer, the princ.i.p.al portion I was able to understand and which was as follows: "I beg you, I beg you, don't capsize my canoe. If you do, don't drown any of my boys and don't do any harm to my friend the white man." This was addressed to the spirit of the water; having finished this little prayer, he next sprinkled a little gin about the bows of the canoe and in the river, afterwards taking a drink himself. He then produced a leaf with about an ounce of broken-up cooked yam mixed with a little palm oil, which he carefully fixed in the extreme foremost point of the canoe.

At last this ceremony was at an end and we started off, but alas! my troubles were only just beginning. We had been started about half an hour, and I had quietly dozed off into a pleasant sleep, when I was awakened by feeling the canoe rolling from side to side as if we were in rough water; just then the boys all stopped pulling, and on my remonstrance they informed me Ju-Ju "no will," _id est_, that the Ju-ju had told them they must go back. I used gentle persuasion in the form of offers of extra pay at first, then I stormed and used strong language, or at least, what little Ijo strong language I knew, but all to no avail. I then began to inquire what Ju-Ju had spoken, and they pointed out a small bird that just then flew away into the bush; it looked to me something like a kingfisher. The head boy of the canoe then explained to me that this Ju-ju bird having spoken, _id est_, chirped on the right-hand side of the canoe, and the goat's skull hanging up to the foremost awning stanchion having fallen the same way (this ornament I had not previously noticed), signified that we must turn back. So turn back we did, though I thought at the time the boys did not want to go the journey, owing to the almost continual state of quarrelling that had been going on for years between the Ijos and the Bra.s.smen. I was not far wrong, for when we eventually did arrive at Bra.s.s, I had to hide these Ijo people in the hold of my s.h.i.+p, as the very sight of a Bra.s.sman made them s.h.i.+ver.

The following morning the same performance was gone through; we started, and at about the same point Ju-Ju spoke again; again we returned. My old friend the chief was very sorry he said, but he could not blame his boys for acting as they had done, Ju-Ju having told them to return. He would not listen when I told him I felt confident his boys had a.s.sisted the Ju-Ju by making the canoe roll about from side to side.

However, I thought the matter over to myself during that second day, and decided I would make sure one part of that Ju-ju should not speak against me the next morning, and that was the goat's skull, so during that night after every Ijo was fast asleep, I visited that skull and carefully secured it to its post by a few turns of very fine fis.h.i.+ng line in such a manner that no one could notice what I had done, if they did not specially examine it. I dare not fix it to the left, that being the favourable side, for fear of it being noticed, but I fixed it straight up and down, so that it could not demonstrate against my journey.

I retired to my sleeping quarters and slept the sleep of the just, and next morning started in the best of spirits, though continually haunted by the fear that my little stratagem might be discovered. We had got about the same distance from the town that we had on the two previous mornings when the canoe began to oscillate as usual, caused by a combined movement of all the boys in the canoe, I was perfectly convinced, for the creek we were in was as smooth as a mill pond. Many anxious glances were cast at the skull, and the canoe was made to roll more and more until the water slopped over into her, but the skull did not budge, and, strange to relate, the bird of ill omen did not show itself or chirp this morning, so the boys gave up making the canoe oscillate and commenced to paddle for all they were worth, and the following evening we arrived at my s.h.i.+p in Bra.s.s. We could have arrived much earlier, but the Ijos did not wish to meet with any Bra.s.smen, so we waited until the shades of night came on, and thus pa.s.sed un.o.bserved several Bra.s.s canoes, arriving safely at my s.h.i.+p in time for dinner.

I carefully questioned the head boy of the Ijo boys all about this bird that had given me so much trouble. He explained to me that once having pa.s.sed a certain point in the creek, the bird not having spoken and the skull not having demonstrated either, it was quite safe to continue on our journey, conveying to me the idea that this bird was a regular inhabitant of a certain portion of the bush, which was also their sacred bush wherein the Ju-Ju priests practised their most private devotions.

The same species of bird showed itself several times both on the right of us and on the left of us as we pa.s.sed through other creeks on our way to Bra.s.s, but the canoe boys took no notice of it.

In dealing with the Benin Kingdom I have allowed myself somewhat to encroach upon the Royal Niger Company's territory, which commences on the left bank of the river Forcados and takes in all the rivers down to the Nun (Aka.s.sa), and the sea-sh.o.r.e to leeward of this river as far as a point midway between the latter river and the mouth of the Bra.s.s river, thence a straight line is drawn to a place called Idu, on the Niger River, forming the eastern boundary between the Royal Niger Company's territory and the Niger Coast Protectorate. I have not defined the western boundary between the Royal Niger Company's territory and the other portion of the Niger Coast Protectorate otherwise than stating that it commences on the seash.o.r.e at the eastern point of the Forcados.

Benin Kingdom, as a kingdom, may now be numbered with the past. For years the cruelties known to be enacted in the city of Benin have been such that it was only a question of ways and means that deterred the Protectorate officials from smas.h.i.+ng up the place several years ago.