Therefore, Also To The End Of
Preventing His Soul From Getting Damaged, They Are Confined To Their
Huts; This Latter Restriction Is Not Rigidly Enforced, But It Is
Held Theoretically To Be The Correct Thing.
They maintain the attitude of grief and abasement, sitting on the
ground, eating but little food, and that of a coarse kind.
In
Calabar their legal rights over property, such as slaves, are
meanwhile considerably in abeyance, and they are put to great
expense during the time the spirit is awaiting burial. They have to
keep watch, two at a time, in the hut, where the body is buried,
keeping lights burning, and they have to pay out of their separate
estate for the entertainment of all the friends of the deceased who
come to pay him compliment; and if he has been an important man, a
big man, the whole district will come, not in a squadron, but just
when it suits them, exactly as if they were calling on a live
friend. Thus it often happens that even a big woman is bankrupt by
the expense. I will not go into the legal bearings of the case
here, for they are intricate, and, to a great extent, only
interesting to a student of Negro law.
The Bantu women occupy a far inferior position in regard to the
rights of property to that held by the Negro women.
The disposal of wives after the death of the husband among the
M'pongwe and Igalwa is a subject full of interest; but it is, like
most of their law, very complicated. The brothers of the deceased
are supposed to take them - the younger brother may not marry the
elder brother's widows, but the elder brothers may marry those of
the younger brother. Should any of the women object to the
arrangement, they may "leave the family."
I own that the ground principle of African law practically is "the
simple plan that they should take who have the power, and they
should keep who can," and this tells particularly against women and
children who have not got living, powerful relations of their own.
Unless the children of a man are grown up and sufficiently powerful
on their own account, they have little chance of sharing in the
distribution of his estate; but in spite of this abuse of power
there is among Negroes and Bantus a definite and acknowledged Law,
to which an appeal can be made by persons of all classes, provided
they have the wherewithal to set the machinery of it in motion. The
difficulty the children and widows have in sharing in the
distribution of the estate of the father and husband arises, I
fancy, in the principle of the husband's brothers being the true
heir, which has sunk into a fossilised state near the trading
stations in the face of the white culture. The reason for this
inheritance of goods passing from the man to his brother by the same
mother has no doubt for one of its origins the recognition of the
fact that the brother by the same mother must be a near relation,
whereas, in spite of the strict laws against adultery, the
relationship to you of the children born of your wives is not so
certain. Nevertheless this is one of the obvious and easy
explanations for things it is well to exercise great care before
accepting, for you must always remember that the African's mind does
not run on identical lines with the European - what may be self-
evident to you is not so to him, and vice versa. I have frequently
heard African metaphysicians complain that white men make great
jumps in their thought-course, and do not follow an idea step by
step. You soon become conscious of the careful way a Negro follows
his idea. Certain customs of his you can, by the exercise of great
patience, trace back in a perfectly smooth line from their source in
some natural phenomenon. Others, of course, you cannot, the traces
of the intervening steps of the idea having been lost, owing partly
to the veneration in which old customs are held, which causes them
to regard the fact that their fathers had this fashion as reason
enough for their having it, and above all to the total absence of
all but oral tradition. But so great a faith have I in the lack of
inventive power in the African, that I feel sure all their customs,
had we the material that has slipped down into the great swamp of
time, could be traced back either, as I have said, to some natural
phenomenon, or to the thing being advisable, for reasons of utility.
The uncertainty in the parentage of offspring may seem to be such a
utilitarian underlying principle, but, on the other hand, it does
not sufficiently explain the varied forms of the law of inheritance,
for in some tribes the eldest or most influential son does succeed
to his father's wealth; in other places you have the peculiar custom
of the chief slave inheriting. I think, from these things, that the
underlying idea in inheritance of property is the desire to keep the
wealth of "the house," i.e. estate, together, and if it were allowed
to pass into the hands of weak people, like women and young
children, this would not be done. Another strong argument against
the theory that it arises from the doubtful relationship of the son,
is that certain ju-ju always go to the son of the chief wife, if he
is old enough, at the time of the father's death, even in those
tribes where the wealth goes elsewhere.
Certain tribes acknowledge the right of the women and children to
share in the dead man's wealth, given that these are legally married
wives, or the children of legally married wives; it is so in
Cameroons, for example. An esteemed friend of mine who helps to
manage things for the Fatherland down there was trying a palaver the
other day with a patience peculiar to him, and that intelligent and
elaborate care I should think only a mind trained on the methods of
German metaphysicians could impart into that most wearisome of
proceedings, wherein every one says the same thing over fourteen
different times at least, with a similar voice and gesture, the only
variation being in the statements regarding the important points,
and the facts of the case, these varying with each individual.
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