THE NEGRO

W. E. B. Du Bois

New York: Holt, 1915

[Transcriber's Notes for e-book versions:

Hyphenation and accentuation are inconsistent, but are generally left asfound in the edition used for transcription. This edition may or may nothave completely replicated the 1915 edition of the book. Where changeshave been made, they are noted below. If you are using this book forresearch, please verify any spelling or punctuation with another source. 

A missing quotation mark was inserted at the beginning of thisparagraph: "It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should have obtained itfrom Europe where the oldest find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlierperiod than 800 B. C. , or from Asia, where iron is not known before 1000B. C. , and where, in the times of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still usedconcurrently with bronze, while iron beads have been only recentlydiscovered by Messrs. G. A. Wainwright and Bushe Fox in a predynasticgrave, and where a piece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found in themasonry of the great pyramid. "]

CONTENTS

 Preface I Africa II The Coming of Black Men III Ethiopia and Egypt IV The Niger and Islam V Guinea and Congo VI The Great Lakes and Zymbabwe VII The War of Races at Land's EndVIII African Culture IX The Trade in Men X The West Indies and Latin America XI The Negro in the United States XII The Negro Problems Suggestions for Further Reading

MAPS

The Physical Geography of AfricaAncient Kingdoms of AfricaRaces in AfricaDistribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern

THE NEGRO

TOA FAITHFUL HELPERM. G. A. 

PREFACE

The time has not yet come for a complete history of the Negropeoples. Archæological research in Africa has just begun, and manysources of information in Arabian, Portuguese, and other tongues arenot fully at our command; and, too, it must frankly be confessed, racial prejudice against darker peoples is still too strong in so-calledcivilized centers for judicial appraisement of the peoples of Africa. Much intensive monographic work in history and science is neededto clear mooted points and quiet the controversialist who mistakespresent personal desire for scientific proof. 

Nevertheless, I have not been able to withstand the temptation toessay such short general statement of the main known facts and theirfair interpretation as shall enable the general reader to know as mena sixth or more of the human race. Manifestly so short a story mustbe mainly conclusions and generalizations with but meager indicationof authorities and underlying arguments. Possibly, if the Publicwill, a later and larger book may be more satisfactory on these points. 

W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS. 

New York City, Feb. 1, 1915. 

[Illustration: The Physical Geography of Africa]

I AFRICA

 "Behold!The Sphinx is Africa. The bondOf Silence is upon her. OldAnd white with tombs, and rent and shorn;With raiment wet with tears and torn, And trampled on, yet all untamed. "

MILLER

Africa is at once the most romantic and the most tragic of continents. Itsvery names reveal its mystery and wide-reaching influence. It is the"Ethiopia" of the Greek, the "Kush" and "Punt" of the Egyptian, and theArabian "Land of the Blacks. " To modern Europe it is the "Dark Continent"and "Land of Contrasts"; in literature it is the seat of the Sphinx andthe lotus eaters, the home of the dwarfs, gnomes, and pixies, and therefuge of the gods; in commerce it is the slave mart and the source ofivory, ebony, rubber, gold, and diamonds. What other continent can rivalin interest this Ancient of Days?

There are those, nevertheless, who would write universal history and leaveout Africa. But how, asks Ratzel, can one leave out the land of Egypt andCarthage? and Frobenius declares that in future Africa must more and morebe regarded as an integral part of the great movement of world history. Yet it is true that the history of Africa is unusual, and its strangenessis due in no small degree to the physical peculiarities of the continent. With three times the area of Europe it has a coast line a fifth shorter. Like Europe it is a peninsula of Asia, curving southwestward around theIndian Sea. It has few gulfs, bays, capes, or islands. Even the rivers, though large and long, are not means of communication with the outerworld, because from the central high plateau they plunge in rapids andcataracts to the narrow coastlands and the sea. 

The general physical contour of Africa has been likened to an invertedplate with one or more rows of mountains at the edge and a low coastalbelt. In the south the central plateau is three thousand or more feetabove the sea, while in the north it is a little over one thousand feet. Thus two main divisions of the continent are easily distinguished: thebroad northern rectangle, reaching down as far as the Gulf of Guinea andCape Guardafui, with seven million square miles; and the peninsula whichtapers toward the south, with five million square miles. 

Four great rivers and many lesser streams water the continent. Thegreatest is the Congo in the center, with its vast curving and endlessestuaries; then the Nile, draining the cluster of the Great Lakes andflowing northward "like some grave, mighty thought, threading a dream";the Niger in the northwest, watering the Sudan below the Sahara; and, finally, the Zambesi, with its greater Niagara in the southeast. Eventhese waters leave room for deserts both south and north, but the greaterones are the three million square miles of sand wastes in the north. 

More than any other land, Africa lies in the tropics, with a warm, dryclimate, save in the central Congo region, where rain at all seasonsbrings tropical luxuriance. The flora is rich but not wide in variety, including the gum acacia, ebony, several dye woods, the kola nut, andprobably tobacco and millet. To these many plants have been added inhistoric times. The fauna is rich in mammals, and here, too, many fromother continents have been widely introduced and used. 

Primarily Africa is the Land of the Blacks. The world has always beenfamiliar with black men, who represent one of the most ancient of humanstocks. Of the ancient world gathered about the Mediterranean, they formeda part and were viewed with no surprise or dislike, because this world sawthem come and go and play their part with other men. Was Clitus thebrother-in-law of Alexander the Great less to be honored because hehappened to be black? Was Terence less famous? The medieval Europeanworld, developing under the favorable physical conditions of the northtemperate zone, knew the black man chiefly as a legend or occasionalcuriosity, but still as a fellow man--an Othello or a Prester John or anAntar. 

The modern world, in contrast, knows the Negro chiefly as a bond slave inthe West Indies and America. Add to this the fact that the darker races inother parts of the world have, in the last four centuries, lagged behindthe flying and even feverish footsteps of Europe, and we face to-day awidespread assumption throughout the dominant world that color is a markof inferiority. 

The result is that in writing of this, one of the most ancient, persistent, and widespread stocks of mankind, one faces astoundingprejudice. That which may be assumed as true of white men must be provenbeyond peradventure if it relates to Negroes. One who writes of thedevelopment of the Negro race must continually insist that he is writingof a normal human stock, and that whatever it is fair to predicate of themass of human beings may be predicated of the Negro. It is the silentrefusal to do this which has led to so much false writing on Africa andof its inhabitants. Take, for instance, the answer to the apparentlysimple question "What is a Negro?" We find the most extraordinaryconfusion of thought and difference of opinion. There is a certain type inthe minds of most people which, as David Livingstone said, can be foundonly in caricature and not in real life. When scientists have tried tofind an extreme type of black, ugly, and woolly-haired Negro, they havebeen compelled more and more to limit his home even in Africa. At leastnine-tenths of the African people do not at all conform to this type, andthe typical Negro, after being denied a dwelling place in the Sudan, alongthe Nile, in East Central Africa, and in South Africa, was finally given avery small country between the Senegal and the Niger, and even there wasfound to give trace of many stocks. As Winwood Reade says, "The typicalNegro is a rare variety even among Negroes. "

As a matter of fact we cannot take such extreme and largely fanciful stockas typifying that which we may fairly call the Negro race. In the case ofno other race is so narrow a definition attempted. A "white" man may be ofany color, size, or facial conformation and have endless variety ofcranial measurement and physical characteristics. A "yellow" man isperhaps an even vaguer conception. 

In fact it is generally recognized to-day that no scientific definition ofrace is possible. Differences, and striking differences, there are betweenmen and groups of men, but they fade into each other so insensibly that wecan only indicate the main divisions of men in broad outlines. As VonLuschan says, "The question of the number of human races has quite lostits _raison d'être_ and has become a subject rather of philosophicspeculation than of scientific research. It is of no more importance nowto know how many human races there are than to know how many angels candance on the point of a needle. Our aim now is to find out how ancient andprimitive races developed from others and how races changed or evolvedthrough migration and inter-breeding. "[1]

The mulatto (using the term loosely to indicate either an intermediatetype between white and black or a mingling of the two) is as typicallyAfrican as the black man and cannot logically be included in the "white"race, especially when American usage includes the mulatto in the Negrorace. 

It is reasonable, according to fact and historic usage, to include underthe word "Negro" the darker peoples of Africa characterized by a brownskin, curled or "frizzled" hair, full and sometimes everted lips, atendency to a development of the maxillary parts of the face, and adolichocephalic head. This type is not fixed or definite. The color varieswidely; it is never black or bluish, as some say, and it becomes oftenlight brown or yellow. The hair varies from curly to a wool-like mass, andthe facial angle and cranial form show wide variation. 

It is as impossible in Africa as elsewhere to fix with any certainty thelimits of racial variation due to climate and the variation due tointermingling. In the past, when scientists assumed one unvarying Negrotype, every variation from that type was interpreted as meaning mixture ofblood. To-day we recognize a broader normal African type which, asPalgrave says, may best be studied "among the statues of the Egyptianrooms of the British Museum; the larger gentle eye, the full but notover-protruding lips, the rounded contour, and the good-natured, easy, sensuous expression. This is the genuine African model. " To this raceAfrica in the main and parts of Asia have belonged since prehistorictimes. 

The color of this variety of man, as the color of other varieties, is dueto climate. Conditions of heat, cold, and moisture, working for thousandsof years through the skin and other organs, have given men theirdifferences of color. This color pigment is a protection against sunlightand consequently varies with the intensity of the sunlight. Thus in Africawe find the blackest men in the fierce sunlight of the desert, red pygmiesin the forest, and yellow Bushmen on the cooler southern plateau. 

Next to the color, the hair is the most distinguishing characteristic ofthe Negro, but the two characteristics do not vary with each other. Someof the blackest of the Negroes have curly rather than woolly hair, whilethe crispest, most closely curled hair is found among the yellowHottentots and Bushmen. The difference between the hair of the lighter anddarker races is a difference of degree, not of kind, and can be easilymeasured. If the hair follicles of a China-man, a European, and a Negroare cut across transversely, it will be found that the diameter of thefirst is 100 by 77 to 85, the second 100 by 62 to 72, while that of theNegro is 100 by 40 to 60. This elliptical form of the Negro's hair causesit to curl more or less tightly. 

There have been repeated efforts to discover, by measurements of variouskinds, further and more decisive differences which would serve as reallyscientific determinants of race. Gradually these efforts have been givenup. To-day we realize that there are no hard and fast racial types amongmen. Race is a dynamic and not a static conception, and the typical racesare continually changing and developing, amalgamating and differentiating. In this little book, then, we are studying the history of the darker partof the human family, which is separated from the rest of mankind by noabsolute physical line, but which nevertheless forms, as a mass, a socialgroup distinct in history, appearance, and to some extent in spiritualgift. 

We cannot study Africa without, however, noting some of the other racesconcerned in its history, particularly the Asiatic Semites. Theintercourse of Africa with Arabia and other parts of Asia has been soclose and long-continued that it is impossible to-day to disentangle theblood relationships. Negro blood certainly appears in strong strain amongthe Semites, and the obvious mulatto groups in Africa, arising fromancient and modern mingling of Semite and Negro, has given rise to theterm "Hamite, " under cover of which millions of Negroids have beencharacteristically transferred to the "white" race by some eagerscientists. 

The earliest Semites came to Africa across the Red Sea. The Phoenicianscame along the northern coasts a thousand years before Christ and begansettlements which culminated in Carthage and extended down the Atlanticshores of North Africa nearly to the Gulf of Guinea. 

From the earliest times the Greeks have been in contact with Africa asvisitors, traders, and colonists, and the Persian influence came withCambyses and others. Roman Africa was bounded by the desert, but at timescame into contact with the blacks across the Sahara and in the valley ofthe Nile. After the breaking up of the Roman Empire the Greek and LatinChristians filtered through Africa, followed finally by a Germanicinvasion in 429 A. D. 

In the seventh century the All-Mother, Asia, claimed Africa again for herown and blew a cloud of Semitic Mohammedanism all across North Africa, veiling the dark continent from Europe for a thousand years and convertingvast masses of the blacks to Islam. The Portuguese began to raise the veilin the fifteenth century, sailing down the Atlantic coast and initiatingthe modern slave trade. The Spanish, French, Dutch, and English followedthem, but as traders in men rather than explorers. 

The Portuguese explored the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea, visiting theinterior kingdoms, and then passing by the mouth of the Congo proceededsouthward. Eventually they rounded the Cape of Good Hope and pursued theirexplorations as far as the mountains of Abyssinia. This began the modernexploration of Africa, which is a curious fairy tale, and recalls to usthe great names of Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Stanley, Barth, Schweinfurth, and many others. In this way Africa has been made known tothe modern world. 

The difficulty of this modern lifting of the veil of centuries emphasizestwo physical facts that underlie all African history: the peculiarinaccessibility of the continent to peoples from without, which made it soeasily possible for the great human drama played here to hide itself fromthe ears of other worlds; and, on the other hand, the absence of interiorbarriers--the great stretch of that central plateau which placedpractically every budding center of culture at the mercy of barbarism, sweeping a thousand miles, with no Alps or Himalayas or Appalachians tohinder. 

With this peculiarly uninviting coast line and the difficulties ininterior segregation must be considered the climate of Africa. While thereis much diversity and many salubrious tracts along with vast barrenwastes, yet, as Sir Harry Johnston well remarks, "Africa is the chiefstronghold of the real Devil--the reactionary forces of Nature hostile tothe uprise of Humanity. Here Beelzebub, King of the Flies, marshals hisvermiform and arthropod hosts--insects, ticks, and nematode worms--whichmore than in other continents (excepting Negroid Asia) convey to the skin, veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates themicroorganisms which cause deadly, disfiguring, or debilitating diseases, or themselves create the morbid condition of the persecuted human being, beasts, bird, reptile, frog, or fish. "[2] The inhabitants of this landhave had a sheer fight for physical survival comparable with that in noother great continent, and this must not be forgotten when we considertheir history. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Von Luschan: in _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 16. 

[2] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, pp. 14-15. 

II THE COMING OF BLACK MEN

The movements of prehistoric man can be seen as yet but dimly in theuncertain mists of time. This is the story that to-day seems mostprobable: from some center in southern Asia primitive human beings beganto differentiate in two directions. Toward the south appeared theprimitive Negro, long-headed and with flattened hair follicle. He spreadalong southern Asia and passed over into Africa, where he survives to-dayas the reddish dwarfs of the center and the Bushmen of South Africa. 

Northward and eastward primitive man became broader headed andstraight-haired and spread over eastern Asia, forming the Mongolian type. Either through the intermingling of these two types or, as some prefer tothink, by the direct prolongation of the original primitive man, a thirdintermediate type of human being appeared with hair and cranialmeasurement intermediate between the primitive Negro and Mongolian. Allthese three types of men intermingled their blood freely and developedvariations according to climate and environment. 

Other and older theories and legends of the origin and spread of mankindare of interest now only because so many human beings have believed themin the past. The biblical story of Shem, Ham, and Japheth retains theinterest of a primitive myth with its measure of allegorical truth, [3] buthas, of course, no historic basis. 

The older "Aryan" theory assumed the migration into Europe of one dominantAsiatic race of civilized conquerors, to whose blood and influence allmodern culture was due. To this "white" race Semitic Asia, a large part ofblack Africa, and all Europe was supposed to belong. This "Aryan" theoryhas been practically abandoned in the light of recent research, and itseems probable now that from the primitive Negroid stock evolved in Asiathe Semites either by local variation or intermingling with other stocks;later there developed the Mediterranean race, with Negroidcharacteristics, and the modern Negroes. The blue-eyed, light-hairedGermanic people may have arisen as a modern variation of the mixed peoplesproduced by the mingling of Asiatic and African elements. The last word onthis development has not yet been said, and there is still much to learnand explain; but it is certainly proved to-day beyond doubt that theso-called Hamites of Africa, the brown and black curly and frizzly-hairedinhabitants of North and East Africa, are not "white" men if we draw theline between white and black in any logical way. 

The primitive Negroid race of men developed in Asia wandered eastward aswell as westward. They entered on the one hand Burmah and the South SeaIslands, and on the other hand they came through Mesopotamia and gavecurly hair and a Negroid type to Jew, Syrian, and Assyrian. Ancientstatues of Indian divinities show the Negro type with black face andclose-curled hair, and early Babylonian culture was Negroid. In Arabia theNegroes may have divided, and one stream perhaps wandered into Europe byway of Syria. Traces of these Negroes are manifest not only in skeletons, but in the brunette type of all South Europe. The other branch proceededto Egypt and tropical Africa. Another, but perhaps less probable, theoryis that ancient Negroes may have entered Africa from Europe, since themost ancient skulls of Algeria are Negroid. 

The primitive African was not an extreme type. One may judge from modernpygmy and Bushmen that his color was reddish or yellow, and his skull wassometimes round like the Mongolian. He entered Africa not less than fiftythousand years ago and settled eventually in the broad region between LakeChad and the Great Lakes and remained there long stretches of years. 

After a lapse of perhaps thirty thousand years there entered Africa afurther migration of Asiatic people, Negroid in many characteristics, butlighter and straighter haired than the primitive Negroes. From thisMediterranean race was developed the modern inhabitants of the shores ofthe Mediterranean in Europe, Asia, and Africa and, by mingling with theprimitive Negroes, the ancient Egyptians and modern Negroid races ofAfrica. 

As we near historic times the migrations of men became more frequent fromAsia and from Europe, and in Africa came movements and minglings whichgive to the whole of Africa a distinct mulatto character. The primitiveNegro stock was "mulatto" in the sense of being not widely differentiatedfrom the dark, original Australoid stock. As the earlier yellow Negrodeveloped in the African tropics to the bigger, blacker type, he wascontinually mingling his blood with similar types developed in temperateclimes to sallower color and straighter hair. 

We find therefore, in Africa to-day, every degree of development inNegroid stocks and every degree of intermingling of these developments, both among African peoples and between Africans, Europeans, and Asiatics. The mistake is continually made of considering these types as transitionsbetween absolute Caucasians and absolute Negroes. No such absolute typeever existed on either side. Both were slowly differentiated from a commonancestry and continually remingled their blood while the differentiatingwas progressing. From prehistoric times down to to-day Africa is, in thissense, primarily the land of the mulatto. So, too, was earlier Europe andAsia; only in these countries the mulatto was early bleached by theclimate, while in Africa he was darkened. 

It is not easy to summarize the history of these dark African peoples, because so little is known and so much is still in dispute. Yet, byavoiding the real controversies and being unafraid of mere questions ofdefinition, we may trace a great human movement with considerabledefiniteness. 

Three main Negro types early made their appearance: the lighter andsmaller primitive stock; the larger forest Negro in the center and on thewest coast, and the tall, black Nilotic Negro in the eastern Sudan. In theearliest times we find the Negroes in the valley of the Nile, pressingdownward from the interior. Here they mingled with Semitic types, andafter a lapse of millenniums there arose from this mingling the culture ofEthiopia and Egypt, probably the first of higher human cultures. 

To the west of the Nile the Negroes expanded straight across the continentto the Atlantic. Centers of higher culture appeared very early along theGulf of Guinea and curling backward met Egyptian, Ethiopian, and evenEuropean and Asiatic influences about Lake Chad. To the southeast, nearerthe primitive seats of the earliest African immigrants and open toEgyptian and East Indian influences, the Negro culture which culminated atZymbabwe arose, and one may trace throughout South Africa its wideramifications. 

All these movements gradually aroused the central tribes to unrest. Theybeat against the barriers north, northeast, and west, but graduallysettled into a great southeastward migration. Calling themselves proudlyLa Bantu (The People), they grew by agglomeration into a warlike nation, speaking one language. They eventually conquered all Africa south of theGulf of Guinea and spread their influence to the northward. 

While these great movements were slowly transforming Africa, she was alsoreceiving influences from beyond her shores and sending influences out. With mulatto Egypt black Africa was always in closest touch, so much sothat to some all evidence of Negro uplift seem Egyptian in origin. Thetruth is, rather, that Egypt was herself always palpably Negroid, and fromher vantage ground as almost the only African gateway received andtransmitted Negro ideals. 

Phoenician, Greek, and Roman came into touch more or less with blackAfrica. Carthage, that North African city of a million men, had a largecaravan trade with Negroland in ivory, metals, cloth, precious stones, andslaves. Black men served in the Carthaginian armies and marched withHannibal on Rome. In some of the North African kingdoms the infiltrationof Negro blood was very large and kings like Massinissa and Jugurtha wereNegroid. By way of the Atlantic the Carthaginians reached the African westcoast. Greek and Roman influences came through the desert, and theByzantine Empire and Persia came into communication with Negroland by wayof the valley of the Nile. The influence of these trade routes, added tothose of Egypt, Ethiopia, Benin, and Yoruba, stimulated centers of culturein the central and western Sudan, and European and African trade earlyreached large volume. 

Negro soldiers were used largely in the armies that enabled theMohammedans to conquer North Africa and Spain. Beginning in the tenthcentury and slowly creeping across the desert into Negroland, the newreligion found an already existent culture and came, not a conqueror, butas an adapter and inspirer. Civilization received new impetus and a waveof Mohammedanism swept eastward, erecting the great kingdoms of Melle, theSonghay, Bornu, and the Hausa states. The older Negro culture was notoverthrown, but, like a great wedge, pushed upward and inward from Yoruba, and gave stubborn battle to the newer culture for seven or eightcenturies. 

Then it was, in the fifteenth century, that the heart disease of Africadeveloped in its most virulent form. There is a modern theory that blackmen are and always have been naturally slaves. Nothing is further from thetruth. In the ancient world Africa was no more a slave hunting ground thanEurope or Asia, and both Greece and Rome had much larger numbers of whiteslaves than of black. It was natural that a stream of black slaves shouldhave poured into Egypt, because the chief line of Egyptian conquest anddefense lay toward the heart of Africa. Moreover, the Egyptians, themselves of Negro descent, had not only Negro slaves but Negroes amongtheir highest nobility and even among their Pharaohs. Mohammedanconquerors enslaved peoples of all colors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, buteventually their empire centered in Asia and Africa and their slaves cameprincipally from these countries. Asia submitted to Islam except in theFar East, which was self-protecting. Negro Africa submitted onlypartially, and the remaining heathen were in small states which could noteffectively protect themselves against the Mohammedan slave trade. In thiswise the slave trade gradually began to center in Africa, for religiousand political rather than for racial reasons. 

The typical African culture was the culture of family, town, and smalltribe. Hence domestic slavery easily developed a slave trade through warand commerce. Only the integrating force of state building could havestopped this slave trade. Was this failure to develop the great state aracial characteristic? This does not seem a fair conclusion. In four greatcenters state building began in Africa. In Ethiopia several large stateswere built up, but they tottered before the onslaughts of Egypt, Persia, Rome, and Byzantium, on the one hand, and finally fell before theturbulent Bantu warriors from the interior. The second attempt at empirebuilding began in the southeast, but the same Bantu hordes, pressing nowslowly, now fiercely, from the congested center of the continent, gradually overthrew this state and erected on its ruins a series ofsmaller and more transient kingdoms. 

The third attempt at state building arose on the Guinea coast in Benin andYoruba. It never got much beyond a federation of large industrial cities. Its expansion toward the Congo valley was probably a prime cause of theoriginal Bantu movements to the southeast. Toward the north and northeast, on the other hand, these city-states met the Sudanese armed with the newimperial Mohammedan idea. Just as Latin Rome gave the imperial idea to theNordic races, so Islam brought this idea to the Sudan. 

In the consequent attempts at imperialism in the western Sudan therearose the largest of the African empires. Two circumstances, however, militated against this empire building: first, the fierce resistance ofthe heathen south made war continuous and slaves one of the articles ofsystematic commerce. Secondly, the highways of legitimate African commercehad for millenniums lain to the north. These were suddenly closed by theMoors in the sixteenth century, and the Negro empires were thrown into theturmoil of internal war. 

It was then that the European slave traders came from the southwest. Theyfound partially disrupted Negro states on the west coast and fallingempires in the Sudan, together with the old unrest of over-population andmigration in the valley of the Congo. They not only offered a demand forthe usual slave trade, but they increased it to an enormous degree, untiltheir demand, added to the demand of the Mohammedan in Africa and Asia, made human beings the highest priced article of commerce in Africa. Undersuch circumstances there could be but one end: the virtual uprooting ofancient African culture, leaving only misty reminders of the ruin in thecustoms and work of the people. To complete this disaster came thepartition of the continent among European nations and the modern attemptto exploit the country and the natives for the economic benefit of thewhite world, together with the transplanting of black nations to the newwestern world and their rise and self-assertion there. 

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Ham is probably the Egyptian word "Khem" (black), the native name ofEgypt. In the original myth Canaan and not Ham was Noah's third son. 

The biblical story of the "curse of Canaan" (Genesis IX, 24-25) has beenthe basis of an astonishing literature which has to-day only apsychological interest. It is sufficient to remember that for severalcenturies leaders of the Christian Church gravely defended Negro slaveryand oppression as the rightful curse of God upon the descendants of a sonwho had been disrespectful to his drunken father! Cf. Bishop Hopkins:_Bible Views of Slavery_, p. 7. 

III ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT

Having viewed now the land and movements of African people in mainoutline, let us scan more narrowly the history of five main centers ofactivity and culture, namely: the valleys of the Nile and of the Congo, the borders of the great Gulf of Guinea, the Sudan, and South Africa. These divisions do not cover all of Negro Africa, but they take in themain areas and the main lines in development. 

First, we turn to the valley of the Nile, perhaps the most ancient ofknown seats of civilization in the world, and certainly the oldest inAfrica, with a culture reaching back six or eight thousand years. Like allcivilizations it drew largely from without and undoubtedly arose in thevalley of the Nile, because that valley was so easily made a center forthe meeting of men of all types and from all parts of the world. At thesame time Egyptian civilization seems to have been African in itsbeginnings and in its main line of development, despite strong influencesfrom all parts of Asia. Of what race, then, were the Egyptians? Theycertainly were not white in any sense of the modern use of thatword--neither in color nor physical measurement, in hair nor countenance, in language nor social customs. They stood in relationship nearest theNegro race in earliest times, and then gradually through the infiltrationof Mediterranean and Semitic elements became what would be described inAmerica as a light mulatto stock of Octoroons or Quadroons. This stock wasvaried continually; now by new infiltration of Negro blood from the south, now by Negroid and Semitic blood from the east, now by Berber types fromthe north and west. 

Egyptian monuments show distinctly Negro and mulatto faces. Herodotus, inan incontrovertible passage, alludes to the Egyptians as "black andcurly-haired"[4]--a peculiarly significant statement from one used to thebrunette Mediterranean type; in another passage, concerning the fable ofthe Dodonian Oracle, he again alludes to the swarthy color of theEgyptians as exceedingly dark and even black. Æschylus, mentioning a boatseen from the shore, declares that its crew are Egyptians, because oftheir black complexions. 

Modern measurements, with all their admitted limitations, show that in theThebaid from one-seventh to one-third of the Egyptian population wereNegroes, and that of the predynastic Egyptians less than half could beclassed as non-Negroid. Judging from measurements in the tombs of noblesas late as the eighteenth dynasty, Negroes form at least one-sixth of thehigher class. [5]

Such measurements are by no means conclusive, but they are apt to beunder rather than over statements of the prevalence of Negro blood. Headmeasurements of Negro Americans would probably place most of them in thecategory of whites. The evidence of language also connects Egypt withAfrica and the Negro race rather than with Asia, while religiousceremonies and social customs all go to strengthen this evidence. 

The ethnic history of Northeast Africa would seem, therefore, to have beenthis: predynastic Egypt was settled by Negroes from Ethiopia. They were ofvaried type: the broad-nosed, woolly-haired type to which the word "Negro"is sometimes confined; the black, curly-haired, sharper featured type, which must be considered an equally Negroid variation. These Negroes metand mingled with the invading Mediterranean race from North Africa andAsia. Thus the blood of the sallower race spread south and that of thedarker race north. Black priests appear in Crete three thousand yearsbefore Christ, and Arabia is to this day thoroughly permeated with Negroblood. Perhaps, as Chamberlain says, "one of the prime reasons why nocivilization of the type of that of the Nile arose in other parts of thecontinent, if such a thing were at all possible, was that Egypt acted as asort of channel by which the genius of Negro-land was drafted off into theservice of Mediterranean and Asiatic culture. "[6]

To one familiar with the striking and beautiful types arising from themingling of Negro with Latin and Germanic types in America, the puzzle ofthe Egyptian type is easily solved. It was unlike any of its neighbors anda unique type until one views the modern mulatto; then the faces ofRahotep and Nefert, of Khafra and Amenemhat I, of Aahmes and Nefertari, and even of the great Ramessu II, become curiously familiar. 

The history of Egypt is a science in itself. Before the reign of the firstrecorded king, five thousand years or more before Christ, there hadalready existed in Egypt a culture and art arising by long evolution fromthe days of paleolithic man, among a distinctly Negroid people. About 4777B. C. Aha-Mena began the first of three successive Egyptian empires. Thislasted two thousand years, with many Pharaohs, like Khafra of the FourthDynasty, of a strongly Negroid cast of countenance. 

At the end of the period the empire fell apart into Egyptian and Ethiopianhalves, and a silence of three centuries ensued. It is quite possible thatan incursion of conquering black men from the south poured over the landin these years and dotted Egypt in the next centuries with monuments onwhich the full-blooded Negro type is strongly and triumphantly impressed. The great Sphinx at Gizeh, so familiar to all the world, the Sphinxes ofTanis, the statue from the Fayum, the statue of the Esquiline at Rome, and the Colossi of Bubastis all represent black, full-blooded Negroes andare described by Petrie as "having high cheek bones, flat cheeks, both inone plane, a massive nose, firm projecting lips, and thick hair, with anaustere and almost savage expression of power. "[7]

Blyden, the great modern black leader of West Africa, said of the Sphinxat Gizeh: "Her features are decidedly of the African or Negro type, with'expanded nostrils. ' If, then, the Sphinx was placed here--looking out inmajestic and mysterious silence over the empty plain where once stood thegreat city of Memphis in all its pride and glory, as an 'emblematicrepresentation of the king'--is not the inference clear as to the peculiartype or race to which that king belonged?"[8]

The middle empire arose 3064 B. C. And lasted nearly twenty-four centuries. Under Pharaohs whose Negro descent is plainly evident, like Amenemhat Iand III and Usertesen I, the ancient glories of Egypt were restored andsurpassed. At the same time there is strong continuous pressure from thewild and unruly Negro tribes of the upper Nile valley, and we get someidea of the fear which they inspired throughout Egypt when we read of thegreat national rejoicing which followed the triumph of Usertesen III (c. 2660-22) over these hordes. He drove them back and attempted to confinethem to the edge of the Nubian Desert above the Second Cataract. Hemmed inhere, they set up a state about this time and founded Nepata. 

Notwithstanding this repulse of black men, less than one hundred yearslater a full-blooded Negro from the south, Ra Nehesi, was seated on thethrone of the Pharaohs and was called "The king's eldest son. " This maymean that an incursion from the far south had placed a black conqueror onthe throne. At any rate, the whole empire was in some way shaken, and twohundred years later the invasion of the Hyksos began. The domination ofHyksos kings who may have been Negroids from Asia[9] lasted for fivehundred years. 

The redemption of Egypt from these barbarians came from Upper Egypt, ledby the mulatto Aahmes. He founded in 1703 B. C. The new empire, whichlasted fifteen hundred years. His queen, Nefertari, "the most veneratedfigure of Egyptian history, "[10] was a Negress of great beauty, strongpersonality, and of unusual administrative force. She was for many yearsjoint ruler with her son, Amenhotep I, who succeeded his father. [11]

The new empire was a period of foreign conquest and internal splendor andfinally of religious dispute and overthrow. Syria was conquered in thesereigns and Asiatic civilization and influences poured in upon Egypt. Thegreat Tahutmes III, whose reign was "one of the grandest and most eventfulin Egyptian history, "[12] had a strong Negroid countenance, as had alsoQueen Hatshepsut, who sent the celebrated expedition to reopen ancienttrade with the Hottentots of Punt. A new strain of Negro blood came to theroyal line through Queen Mutemua about 1420 B. C. , whose son, AmenhotepIII, built a great temple at Luqsor and the Colossi at Memnon. 

The whole of the period in a sense culminated in the great Ramessu II, theoppressor of the Hebrews, who with his Egyptian, Libyan, and Negro armiesfought half the world. His reign, however, was the beginning of decline, and foes began to press Egypt from the white north and the black south. The priests transferred their power at Thebes, while the Assyrians underNimrod overran Lower Egypt. The center of interest is now transferred toEthiopia, and we pass to the more shadowy history of that land. 

The most perfect example of Egyptian poetry left to us is a celebration ofthe prowess of Usertesen III in confining the turbulent Negro tribes tothe territory below the Second Cataract of the Nile. The Egyptians calledthis territory Kush, and in the farthest confines of Kush lay Punt, thecradle of their race. To the ancient Mediterranean world Ethiopia (i. E. , the Land of the Black-faced) was a region of gods and fairies. Zeus andPoseidon feasted each year among the "blameless Ethiopians, " and BlackMemnon, King of Ethiopia, was one of the greatest of heroes. 

"The Ethiopians conceive themselves, " says Diodorus Siculus (Lib. III), "to be of greater antiquity than any other nation; and it is probablethat, born under the sun's path, its warmth may have ripened them earlierthan other men. They suppose themselves also to be the inventors of divineworship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and everyreligious practice. They affirm that the Egyptians are one of theircolonies. "

The Egyptians themselves, in later days, affirmed that they and theircivilization came from the south and from the black tribes of Punt, andcertainly "at the earliest period in which human remains have beenrecovered Egypt and Lower Nubia appear to have formed culturally andracially one land. "[13]

The forging ahead of Egypt in culture was mainly from economic causes. Ethiopia, living in a much poorer land with limited agriculturalfacilities, held to the old arts and customs, and at the same time lostthe best elements of its population to Egypt, absorbing meantime theoncoming and wilder Negro tribes from the south and west. Under the oldempire, therefore, Ethiopia remained in comparative poverty, except assome of its tribes invaded Egypt with their handicrafts. 

As soon as the civilization below the Second Cataract reached a heightnoticeably above that of Ethiopia, there was continued effort to protectthat civilization against the incursion of barbarians. Hundreds ofcampaigns through thousands of years repeatedly subdued or checked theblacks and brought them in as captives to mingle their blood with theEgyptian nation; but the Egyptian frontier was not advanced. 

A separate and independent Ethiopian culture finally began to arise duringthe middle empire of Egypt and centered at Nepata and Meroe. Widespreadtrade in gold, ivory, precious stones, skins, wood, and works ofhandicraft arose. [14] The Negro began to figure as the great trader ofEgypt. 

This new wealth of Ethiopia excited the cupidity of the Pharaohs and ledto aggression and larger intercourse, until at last, when the dread Hyksosappeared, Ethiopia became both a physical and cultural refuge forconquered Egypt. The legitimate Pharaohs moved to Thebes, nearer theboundaries of Ethiopia, and from here, under Negroid rulers, Lower Egyptwas redeemed. 

The ensuing new empire witnessed the gradual incorporation of Ethiopiainto Egypt, although the darker kingdom continued to resist. Both mulattoPharaohs, Aahmes and Amenhotep I, sent expeditions into Ethiopia, and inthe latter's day sons of the reigning Pharaoh began to assume the title of"Royal Son of Kush" in some such way as the son of the King of Englandbecomes the Prince of Wales. 

Trade relations were renewed with Punt under circumstances which lead usto place that land in the region of the African lakes. The Sudanese tribeswere aroused by these and other incursions, until the revolts becameformidable in the fourteenth century before Christ. 

Egyptian culture, however, gradually conquered Ethiopia where her armiescould not, and Egyptian religion and civil rule began to center in thedarker kingdom. When, therefore, Shesheng I, the Libyan, usurped thethrone of the Pharaohs in the tenth century B. C. , the Egyptian legitimatedynasty went to Nepata as king priests and established a theocraticmonarchy. Gathering strength, the Ethiopian kingdom under this dynastyexpanded north about 750 B. C. And for a century ruled all Egypt. 

The first king, Pankhy, was Egyptian bred and not noticeably Negroid, buthis successors showed more and more evidence of Negro blood--Kashta theKushite, Shabaka, Tarharqa, and Tanutamen. During the century of Ethiopianrule a royal son was appointed to rule Egypt, just as formerly a royalEgyptian had ruled Kush. In many ways this Ethiopian kingdom showed itsNegro peculiarities: first, in its worship of distinctly Sudanese gods;secondly, in the rigid custom of female succession in the kingdom, andthirdly, by the election of kings from the various royal claimants to thethrone. "It was the heyday of the Negro. For the greater part of thecentury . . . Egypt itself was subject to the blacks, just as in the newempire the Sudan had been subject to Egypt. "[15]

Egypt now began to fall into the hands of Asia and was conquered first bythe Assyrians and then by the Persians, but the Ethiopian kings kept theirindependence. Aspeluta, whose mother and sister are represented asfull-blooded Negroes, ruled from 630 to 600 B. C. Horsiatef (560-525 B. C. )made nine expeditions against the warlike tribes south of Meroe, and hissuccessor, Nastosenen (525-500 B. C. ) was the one who repelled Cambyses. Healso removed the capital from Nepata to Meroe, although Nepata continuedto be the religious capital and the Ethiopian kings were still crowned onits golden throne. 

From the fifth to the second century B. C. We find the wild Sudanese tribespressing in from the west and Greek culture penetrating from the east. King Arg-Amen (Ergamenes) showed strong Greek influences and at the sametime began to employ the Ethiopian speech in writing and used a newEthiopian alphabet. 

While the Ethiopian kings were still crowned at Nepata, Meroe graduallybecame the real capital and supported at one time four thousand artisansand two hundred thousand soldiers. It was here that the famous Candacesreigned as queens. Pliny tells us that one Candace of the time of Nero hadhad forty-four predecessors on the throne, while another Candace figuresin the New Testament. [16]

It was probably this latter Candace who warred against Rome at the time ofAugustus and received unusual consideration from her formidable foe. Theprestige of Ethiopia at this time was considerable throughout the world. Pseudo-Callisthenes tells an evidently fabulous story of the visit ofAlexander the Great to Candace, Queen of Meroe, which neverthelessillustrates her fame: Candace will not let him enter Ethiopia and says heis not to scorn her people because they are black, for they are whiter insoul than his white folk. She sent him gold, maidens, parrots, sphinxes, and a crown of emeralds and pearls. She ruled eighty tribes, who wereready to punish those who attacked her. 

The Romans continued to have so much trouble with their Ethiopian frontierthat finally, when Semitic mulattoes appeared in the east, the EmperorDiocletian invited the wild Sudanese tribe of Nubians (Nobadæ) from thewest to repel them. These Nubians eventually embraced Christianity, andnorthern Ethiopia came to be known in time as Nubia. 

The Semitic mulattoes from the east came from the highlands bordering theRed Sea and Asia. On both sides of this sea Negro blood is strongly inevidence, predominant in Africa and influential in Asia. Ludolphus, writing in the seventeenth century, says that the Abyssinians "aregenerally black, which [color] they most admire. " Trade and war united thetwo shores, and merchants have passed to and fro for thirty centuries. 

In this way Arabian, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences spreadslowly upon the Negro foundation. Early legendary history declares that aqueen, Maqueda, or Nikaula of Sheba, a state of Central Abyssinia, visitedSolomon in 1050 B. C. And had her son Menelik educated in Jerusalem. Thiswas the supposed beginning of the Axumite kingdom, the capital of which, Axume, was a flourishing center of trade. Ptolemy Evergetes and hissuccessors did much to open Abyssinia to the world, but most of thepopulation of that day was nomadic. In the fourth century Byzantineinfluences began to be felt, and in 330 St. Athanasius of Alexandriaconsecrated Fromentius as Bishop of Ethiopia. He tutored the heir to theAbyssinian kingdom and began its gradual christianization. By the earlypart of the sixth century Abyssinia was trading with India and Byzantiumand was so far recognized as a Christian country that the EmperorJustinian appealed to King Kaleb to protect the Christians in southwesternArabia. Kaleb conquered Yemen in 525 and held it fifty years. 

Eventually a Jewish princess, Judith, usurped the Axumite throne; theAbyssinians were expelled from Arabia, and a long period begins when asGibbon says, "encompassed by the enemies of their religion, the Ethiopiansslept for nearly a thousand years, forgetful of the world by whom theywere forgotten. " Throughout the middle ages, however, the legend of agreat Christian kingdom hidden away in Africa persisted, and the searchfor Prester John became one of the world quests. 

It was the expanding power of Abyssinia that led Rome to call in theNubians from the western desert. The Nubians had formed a strong league oftribes, and as the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia declined they drove backthe Abyssinians, who had already established themselves at Meroe. 

In the sixth century the Nubians were converted to Christianity by aByzantine priest, and they immediately began to develop. A new capital, Dongola, replaced Nepata and Meroe, and by the twelfth century churchesand brick dwellings had appeared. As the Mohammedan flood pressed up theNile valley it was the Nubians that held it back for two centuries. 

Farther south other wild tribes pushed out of the Sudan and began asimilar development. Chief among these were the Fung, who fixed theircapital at Senaar, at the junction of the White and Blue Nile. When theMohammedan flood finally passed over Nubia, the Fung diverted it bydeclaring themselves Moslems. This left the Fung as the dominant power inthe fifteenth century from the Three Cataracts to Fazogli and from the RedSea at Suakin to the White Nile. Islam then swept on south in a greatcircle, skirted the Great Lakes, and then curled back to Somaliland, completely isolating Abyssinia. 

Between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries the Egyptian Sudan became acongeries of Mohammedan kingdoms with Arab, mulatto, and Negro kings. Farto the west, near Lake Chad, arose in 1520 the sultanate of Baghirmi, which reached its highest power in the seventh century. This dynasty wasoverthrown by the Negroid Mabas, who established Wadai to the eastwardabout 1640. South of Wadai lay the heathen and cannibals of the Congovalley, against which Islam never prevailed. East of Wadai and nearer theNile lay the kindred state of Darfur, a Nubian nation whose sultansreigned over two hundred years and which reached great prosperity in theearly seventeenth century under Soliman Solon. 

Before the Mohammedan power reached Abyssinia the Portuguese pioneers hadentered the country from the east and begun to open the country again toEuropean knowledge. Without doubt, in the centuries of silence, acivilization of some height had flourished in Abyssinia, but all authenticrecords were destroyed by fire in the tenth century. When the Portuguesecame, the older Axumite kingdom had fallen and had been succeeded by anumber of petty states. 

The Sudanese kingdoms of the Sudan resisted the power of the Mameluke beysin Egypt, and later the power of the Turks until the nineteenth century, when the Sudan was made nominally a part of Egypt. Continuous upheaval, war, and conquest had by this time done their work, and little of ancientEthiopian culture survived except the slave trade. 

The entrance of England into Egypt, after the building of the Suez Canal, stirred up eventually revolt in the Sudan, for political, economic, andreligious reasons. Led by a Sudanese Negro, Mohammed Ahmad, who claimed tobe the Messiah (Mahdi), the Sudan arose in revolt in 1881, determined toresist a hated religion, foreign rule, and interference with their chiefcommerce, the trade in slaves. The Sudan was soon aflame, and the ablemulatto general, Osman Digna, aided by revolt among the heathen Dinka, drove Egypt and England out of the Sudan for sixteen years. It was notuntil 1898 that England reëntered the Sudan and in petty revengedesecrated the bones of the brave, even if misguided, prophet. 

Meantime this Mahdist revolt had delayed England's designs on Abyssinia, and the Italians, replacing her, attempted a protectorate. Menelik ofShoa, one of the smaller kingdoms of Abyssinia, was a shrewd man ofpredominantly Negro blood, and had been induced to make a treaty with theItalians after King John had been killed by the Mahdists. The exact termsof the treaty were disputed, but undoubtedly the Italians tried by thismeans to reduce Menelik to vassalage. Menelik stoutly resisted, and at thegreat battle of Adua, one of the decisive battles of the modern world, theAbyssinians on March 1, 1896, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Italians, killing four thousand of them and capturing two thousand prisoners. Theempress, Taitou, a full-blooded Negress, led some of the charges. By thisbattle Abyssinia became independent. 

Such in vague and general outline is the strange story of the valley ofthe Nile--of Egypt, the motherland of human culture and

"That starr'd Ethiop Queen that strove To set her beauty's praise aboveThe sea nymphs. "

FOOTNOTES:

[4] [Greek: "autos de eikasa têde kai hote melanchroes eisi kaioulotriches. "] Liber II, Cap. 104. 

[5] Cf. Maciver and Thompson: _Ancient Races of the Thebaid_. 

[6] _Journal of Race Development_, I, 484. 

[7] Petrie: _History of Egypt_, I, 51, 237. 

[8] _From West Africa to Palestine_, p. 114. 

[9] Depending partly on whether the so-called Hyksos sphinxes belong tothe period of the Hyksos kings or to an earlier period (cf. Petrie, I, 52-53, 237). That Negroids largely dominated in the early history ofwestern Asia is proven by the monuments. 

[10] Petrie: _History of Egypt_, II, 337. 

[11] Chamberlain: _Journal of Race Development_, April, 1911. 

[12] Petrie: _History of Egypt_, II, 337. 

[13] Reisner: _Archeological Survey of Nubia_, I, 319. 

[14] Hoskins declares that the arch had its origin in Ethiopia. 

[15] Maciver and Wooley: _Areika_, p. 2. 

[16] Acts VIII, 27. 

IV THE NIGER AND ISLAM

The Arabian expression "Bilad es Sudan" (Land of the Blacks) was appliedto the whole region south of the Sahara, from the Atlantic to the Nile. Itis a territory some thirty-five hundred miles by six hundred miles, containing two million square miles, and has to-day a population ofperhaps eighty million. It is thus two-thirds the size of the UnitedStates and quite as thickly settled. In the western Sudan the Niger playsthe same role as the Nile in the east. In this chapter we follow thehistory of the Niger. 

The history of this part of Africa was probably something as follows:primitive man, entering Africa from Arabia, found the Great Lakes, spreadin the Nile valley, and wandered westward to the Niger. Herodotus tells ofcertain youths who penetrated the desert to the Niger and found there acity of black dwarfs. Succeeding migrations of Negroes and Negroids pushedthe dwarfs gradually into the inhospitable forests and occupied the Sudan, pushing on to the Atlantic. Here the newcomers, curling northward, met theMediterranean race coming down across the western desert, while to thesouthward the Negro came to the Gulf of Guinea and the thick forests ofthe Congo valley. Indigenous civilizations arose on the west coast inYoruba and Benin, and contact of these with the Mediterranean race in thedesert, and with Egyptian and Arab from the east, gave rise to centers ofNegro culture in the Sudan at Ghana and Melle and in Songhay, Nupe, theHausa states, and Bornu. 

The history of the Sudan thus leads us back again to Ethiopia, thatstrange and ancient center of world civilization whose inhabitants in theancient world were considered to be the most pious and the oldest of men. From this center the black originators of African culture, and to a largedegree of world culture, wandered not simply down the Nile, but alsowestward. These Negroes developed the original substratum of culture whichlater influences modified but never displaced. 

We know that Egyptian Pharaohs in several cases ventured into the westernSudan and that Egyptian influences are distinctly traceable. Greek andByzantine culture and Phoenician and Carthaginian trade also penetrated, while Islam finally made this whole land her own. Behind all theseinfluences, however, stood from the first an indigenous Negro culture. Thestone figures of Sherbro, the megaliths of Gambia, the art and industry ofthe west coast are all too deep and original evidences of civilization tobe merely importations from abroad. 

Nor was the Sudan the inert recipient of foreign influence when it came. According to credible legend, the "Great King" at Byzantium importedglass, tin, silver, bronze, cut stones, and other treasure from the Sudan. Embassies were sent and states like Nupe recognized the suzerainty of theByzantine emperor. The people of Nupe especially were filled with pridewhen the Byzantine people learned certain kinds of work in bronze andglass from them, and this intercourse was only interrupted by theMohammedan conquest. 

To this ancient culture, modified somewhat by Byzantine and Christianinfluences, came Islam. It approached from the northwest, comingstealthily and slowly and being handed on particularly by the MandingoNegroes. About 1000-1200 A. D. The situation was this: Ghana was on theedge of the desert in the north, Mandingoland between the Niger and theSenegal in the south and the western Sahara, Djolof was in the west on theSenegal, and the Songhay on the Niger in the center. The Mohammedans camechiefly as traders and found a trade already established. Here and therein the great cities were districts set aside for these new merchants, andthe Mohammedans gave frequent evidence of their respect for these blacknations. 

Islam did not found new states, but modified and united Negro statesalready ancient; it did not initiate new commerce, but developed awidespread trade already established. It is, as Frobenius says, "easilyproved from chronicles written in Arabic that Islam was only effective infact as a fertilizer and stimulant. The essential point is theresuscitative and invigorative concentration of Negro power in the serviceof a new era and a Moslem propaganda, as well as the reaction therebyproduced. "[17]

Early in the eighth century Islam had conquered North Africa and convertedthe Berbers. Aided by black soldiers, the Moslems crossed into Spain; inthe following century Berber and Arab armies crossed the west end of theSahara and came to Negroland. Later in the eleventh century Arabspenetrated the Sudan and Central Africa from the east, filtering throughthe Negro tribes of Darfur, Kanem, and neighboring regions. The Arabs weretoo nearly akin to Negroes to draw an absolute color line. Antar, one ofthe great pre-Islamic poets of Arabia, was the son of a black woman, andone of the great poets at the court of Haroun al Raschid was black. In thetwelfth century a learned Negro poet resided at Seville, and Sidjilmessa, the last town in Lower Morocco toward the desert, was founded in 757 by aNegro who ruled over the Berber inhabitants. Indeed, many towns in theSudan and the desert were thus ruled, and felt no incongruity in thisarrangement. They say, to be sure, that the Moors destroyed Audhoghastbecause it paid tribute to the black town of Ghana, but this was becausethe town was heathen and not because it was black. On the other hand, there is a story that a Berber king overthrew one of the cities of theSudan and all the black women committed suicide, being too proud to allowthemselves to fall into the hands of white men. 

In the west the Moslems first came into touch with the Negro kingdom ofGhana. Here large quantities of gold were gathered in early days, and wehave names of seventy-four rulers before 300 A. D. Running throughtwenty-one generations. This would take us back approximately a thousandyears to 700 B. C. , or about the time that Pharaoh Necho of Egypt sent outthe Phoenician expedition which circumnavigated Africa, and possiblybefore the time when Hanno, the Carthaginian, explored the west coast ofAfrica. 

By the middle of the eleventh century Ghana was the principal kingdom inthe western Sudan. Already the town had a native and a Mussulman quarter, and was built of wood and stone with surrounding gardens. The king had anarmy of two hundred thousand and the wealth of the country was great. Acentury later the king had become Mohammedan in faith and had a palacewith sculptures and glass windows. The great reason for this developmentwas the desert trade. Gold, skins, ivory, kola nuts, gums, honey, wheat, and cotton were exported, and the whole Mediterranean coast traded in theSudan. Other and lesser black kingdoms like Tekrou, Silla, and Masinasurrounded Ghana. 

In the early part of the thirteenth century the prestige of Ghana began tofall before the rising Mandingan kingdom to the west. Melle, as it wascalled, was founded in 1235 and formed an open door for Moslem and Moorishtraders. The new kingdom, helped by its expanding trade, began to grow, and Islam slowly surrounded the older Negro culture west, north, and east. However, a great mass of the older heathen culture, pushing itself upwardfrom the Guinea coast, stood firmly against Islam down to the nineteenthcentury. 

Steadily Mohammedanism triumphed in the growing states which almostencircled the protagonists of ancient Atlantic culture. Mandingan Melleeventually supplanted Ghana in prestige and power, after Ghana had beenoverthrown by the heathen Su Su from the south. 

The territory of Melle lay southeast of Ghana and some five hundred milesnorth of the Gulf of Guinea. Its kings were known by the title of Mansa, and from the middle of the thirteenth century to the middle of thefourteenth the Mellestine, as its dominion was called, was the leadingpower in the land of the blacks. Its greatest king, Mari Jalak (MansaMusa), made his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, with a caravan of sixtythousand persons, including twelve thousand young slaves gowned in figuredcotton and Persian silk. He took eighty camel loads of gold dust (worthabout five million dollars) to defray his expenses, and greatly impressedthe people of the East with his magnificence. 

On his return he found that Timbuktu had been sacked by the Mossi, but herebuilt the town and filled the new mosque with learned blacks from theUniversity of Fez. Mansa Musa reigned twenty-five years and "wasdistinguished by his ability and by the holiness of his life. The justiceof his administration was such that the memory of it still lives. "[18] TheMellestine preserved its preëminence until the beginning of the sixteenthcentury, when the rod of Sudanese empire passed to Songhay, the largestand most famous of the black empires. 

The known history of Songhay covers a thousand years and three dynastiesand centers in the great bend of the Niger. There were thirty kings of theFirst Dynasty, reigning from 700 to 1335. During the reign of one of thesethe Songhay kingdom became the vassal kingdom of Melle, then at the heightof its glory. In addition to this the Mossi crossed the valley, plunderedTimbuktu in 1339, and separated Jenne, the original seat of the Songhay, from the main empire. The sixteenth king was converted to Mohammedanism in1009, and after that all the Songhay princes were Mohammedans. Mansa Musatook two young Songhay princes to the court of Melle to be educated in1326. These boys when grown ran away and founded a new dynasty in Songhay, that of the Sonnis, in 1355. Seventeen of these kings reigned, the lastand greatest being Sonni Ali, who ascended the throne in 1464. Melle wasat this time declining, other cities like Jenne, with its seven thousandvillages, were rising, and the Tuaregs (Berbers with Negro blood) hadcaptured Timbuktu. 

Sonni Ali was a soldier and began his career with the conquest of Timbuktuin 1469. He also succeeded in capturing Jenne and attacked the Mossi andother enemies on all sides. Finally he concentrated his forces for thedestruction of Melle and subdued nearly the whole empire on the west bendof the Niger. In summing up Sonni Ali's military career the chronicle saysof him, "He surpassed all his predecessors in the numbers and valor of hissoldiery. His conquests were many and his renown extended from the risingto the setting of the sun. If it is the will of God, he will be longspoken of. "[19]

Sonni Ali was a Songhay Negro whose father was a Berber. He was succeededby a full-blooded black, Mohammed Abou Bekr, who had been his primeminister. Mohammed was hailed as "Askia" (usurper) and is best known asMohammed Askia. He was strictly orthodox where Ali was rather a scoffer, and an organizer where Ali was a warrior. On his pilgrimage to Mecca in1495 there was nothing of the barbaric splendor of Mansa Musa, but abrilliant group of scholars and holy men with a small escort of fifteenhundred soldiers and nine hundred thousand dollars in gold. He stopped andconsulted with scholars and politicians and studied matters of taxation, weights and measures, trade, religious tolerance, and manners. In Cairo, where he was invested by the reigning caliph of Egypt, he may have heardof the struggle of Europe for the trade of the Indies, and perhaps of theparceling of the new world between Portugal and Spain. He returned to theSudan in 1497, instituted a standing army of slaves, undertook a holy waragainst the indomitable Mossi, and finally marched against the Hausa. Hesubdued these cities and even imposed the rule of black men on the Berbertown of Agades, a rich city of merchants and artificers with statelymansions. In fine Askia, during his reign, conquered and consolidated anempire two thousand miles long by one thousand wide at its greatestdiameters; a territory as large as all Europe. The territory was dividedinto four vice royalties, and the system of Melle, with itssemi-independent native dynasties, was carried out. His empire extendedfrom the Atlantic to Lake Chad and from the salt mines of Tegazza and thetown of Augila in the north to the 10th degree of north latitude towardthe south. 

It was a six months' journey across the empire and, it is said, "he wasobeyed with as much docility on the farthest limits of the empire as hewas in his own palace, and there reigned everywhere great plenty andabsolute peace. "[20] The University of Sankore became a center of learningin correspondence with Egypt and North Africa and had a swarm of blackSudanese students. Law, literature, grammar, geography and surgery werestudied. Askia the Great reigned thirty-six years, and his dynastycontinued on the throne until after the Moorish conquest in 1591. 

Meanwhile, to the eastward, two powerful states appeared. They neverdisputed the military supremacy of Songhay, but their industrialdevelopment was marvelous. The Hausa states were formed by seven originalcities, of which Kano was the oldest and Katsena the most famous. Theirgreatest leaders, Mohammed Rimpa and Ahmadu Kesoke, arose in the fifteenthand early sixteenth centuries. The land was subject to the Songhay, butthe cities became industrious centers of smelting, weaving, and dyeing. Katsena especially, in the middle of the sixteenth century, is describedas a place thirteen or fourteen miles in circumference, divided intoquarters for strangers, for visitors from various other states, and forthe different trades and industries, as saddlers, shoemakers, dyers, etc. 

Beyond the Hausa states and bordering on Lake Chad was Bornu. The peopleof Bornu had a large infiltration of Berber blood, but were predominantlyNegro. Berber mulattoes had been kings in early days, but they were soonreplaced by black men. Under the early kings, who can be traced back tothe third century, these people had ruled nearly all the territory betweenthe Nile and Lake Chad. The country was known as Kanem, and the pagandynasty of Dugu reigned there from the middle of the ninth to the end ofthe eleventh century. Mohammedanism was introduced from Egypt at the endof the eleventh century, and under the Mohammedan kings Kanem became oneof the first powers of the Sudan. By the end of the twelfth century thearmies of Kanem were very powerful and its rulers were known as "Kings ofKanem and Lords of Bornu. " In the thirteenth century the kings even daredto invade the southern country down toward the valley of the Congo. 

Meantime great things were happening in the world beyond the desert, theocean, and the Nile. Arabian Mohammedanism had succumbed to the wildfanaticism of the Seljukian Turks. These new conquerors were not onlyfirmly planted at the gates of Vienna, but had swept the shores of theMediterranean and sent all Europe scouring the seas for their lost tradeconnections with the riches of India. Religious zeal, fear of conquest, and commercial greed inflamed Europe against the Mohammedan and led to thediscovery of a new world, the riches of which poured first on Spain. Oppression of the Moors followed, and in 1502 they were driven back intoAfrica, despoiled and humbled. Here the Spaniards followed and harassedthem and here the Turks, fighting the Christians, captured theMediterranean ports and cut the Moors off permanently from Europe. In theslow years that followed, huddled in Northwest Africa, they became adecadent people and finally cast their eyes toward Negroland. 

The Moors in Morocco had come to look upon the Sudan as a gold mine, andknew that the Sudan was especially dependent upon salt. In 1545 Moroccoclaimed the principal salt mines at Tegazza, but the reigning Askiarefused to recognize the claim. 

When the Sultan Elmansour came to the throne of Morocco, he increased theefficiency of his army by supplying it with fire arms and cannon. Elmansour determined to attack the Sudan and sent four hundred men underPasha Djouder, who left Morocco in 1590. The Songhay, with their bows andarrows, were helpless against powder and shot, and they were defeated atTenkadibou April 12, 1591. Askia Ishak, the king, offered terms, andDjouder Pasha referred them to Morocco. The sultan, angry with hisgeneral's delay, deposed him and sent another, who crushed andtreacherously murdered the king and set up a puppet. Thereafter there weretwo Askias, one under the Moors at Timbuktu and one who maintained himselfin the Hausa states, which the Moors could not subdue. Anarchy reigned inSonghay. The Moors tried to put down disorder with a high hand, drove outand murdered the distinguished men of Timbuktu, and as a result let loosea riot of robbery and decadence throughout the Sudan. Pasha now succeededpasha with revolt and misrule until in 1612 the soldiers elected their ownpasha and deliberately shut themselves up in the Sudan by cutting offapproach from the north. 

Hausaland and Bornu were still open to Turkish and Mohammedan influencefrom the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the slave trade from the south, but the face of the finest Negro civilization the modern world had everproduced was veiled from Europe and given to the defilement of wildMoorish soldiers. In 1623 it is written "excesses of every kind are nowcommitted unchecked by the soldiery, " and "the country is profoundlyconvulsed and oppressed. "[21] The Tuaregs marched down from the desert anddeprived the Moors of many of the principal towns. The rest of the empireof the Songhay was by the end of the eighteenth century divided amongseparate Moorish chiefs, who bought supplies from the Negro peasantry andwere "at once the vainest, proudest, and perhaps the most bigoted, ferocious, and intolerant of all the nations of the south. "[22] They liveda nomadic life, plundering the Negroes. To such depths did the mightySonghay fall. 

As the Songhay declined a new power arose in the nineteenth century, theFula. The Fula, who vary in race from Berber mulattoes to full-bloodedNegroes, may be the result of a westward migration of some people like the"Leukoæthiopi" of Pliny, or they may have arisen from the migration ofBerber mulattoes in the western oases, driven south by Romans and Arabs. 

These wandering herdsmen lived on the Senegal River and the ocean in veryearly times and were not heard of until the nineteenth century. By thistime they had changed to a Negro or dark mulatto people and livedscattered in small communities between the Atlantic and Darfur. They werewithout political union or national sentiment, but were all Mohammedans. Then came a sudden change, and led by a religious fanatic, these despisedand persecuted people became masters of the central Sudan. They were theones who at last broke down that great wedge of resisting Atlanticculture, after it had been undermined and disintegrated by the Americanslave trade. 

Thus Islam finally triumphed in the Sudan and the ancient culture combinedwith the new. In the Sudan to-day one may find evidences of the union oftwo classes of people. The representatives of the older civilization dwellas peasants in small communities, carrying on industries and speaking alarge number of different languages. With them or above them is the rulingMohammedan caste, speaking four main languages: Mandingo, Hausa, Fula, andArabic. These latter form the state builders. Negro blood predominatesamong both classes, but naturally there is more Berber blood among theMohammedan invaders. 

Europe during the middle ages had some knowledge of these movements in theSudan and Africa. Melle and Songhay appear on medieval maps. In literaturewe have many allusions: the mulatto king, Feirifis, was one of Wolfram vonEschenbach's heroes; Prester John furnished endless lore; Othello, thewarrior, and the black king represented by medieval art as among the threewise men, and the various black Virgin Marys' all show legendary knowledgeof what African civilization was at that time doing. 

It is a curious commentary on modern prejudice that most of this splendidhistory of civilization and uplift is unknown to-day, and men confidentlyassert that Negroes have no history. 

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, II, 359-360. 

[18] Ibn Khaldun, quoted in Lugard, p. 128. 

[19] Quoted in Lugard, p. 180. 

[20] Es-Sa 'di, quoted by Lugard, p. 199. 

[21] Lugard, p. 373. 

[22] Mungo Park, quoted in Lugard, p. 374. 

V GUINEA AND CONGO

One of the great cities of the Sudan was Jenne. The chronicle says "thatits markets are held every day of the week and its populations are veryenormous. Its seven thousand villages are so near to one another that thechief of Jenne has no need of messengers. If he wishes to send a note toLake Dibo, for instance, it is cried from the gate of the town andrepeated from village to village, by which means it reaches itsdestination almost instantly. "[23]

From the name of this city we get the modern name Guinea, which is usedto-day to designate the country contiguous to the great gulf of thatname--a territory often referred to in general as West Africa. Here, reaching from the mouth of the Gambia to the mouth of the Niger, is acoast of six hundred miles, where a marvelous drama of world history hasbeen enacted. The coast and its hinterland comprehends many well-knownnames. First comes ancient Guinea, then, modern Sierra Leone and Liberia;then follow the various "coasts" of ancient traffic--the grain, ivory, gold, and slave coasts--with the adjoining territories of Ashanti, Dahomey, Lagos, and Benin, and farther back such tribal and territorialnames as those of the Mandingoes, Yorubas, the Mossi, Nupe, Borgu, andothers. 

Recent investigation makes it certain that an ancient civilization existedon this coast which may have gone back as far as three thousand yearsbefore Christ. Frobenius, perhaps fancifully, identified this Africancoast with the Atlantis of the Greeks and as part of that great westernmovement in human culture, "beyond the pillars of Hercules, " whichthirteen centuries before Christ strove with Egypt and the East. It is, atany rate, clear that ancient commerce reached down the west coast. ThePhoenicians, 600 B. C. , and the Carthaginians, a century or more later, record voyages, and these may have been attempted revivals of still moreancient intercourse. 

These coasts at some unknown prehistoric period were peopled from theNiger plateau toward the north and west by the black West African type ofNegro, while along the west end of the desert these Negroes mingled withthe Berbers, forming various Negroid races. 

Movement and migration is evident along this coast in ancient and moderntimes. The Yoruba-Benin-Dahomey peoples were among the earliest arrivals, with their remarkable art and industry, which places them in some lines oftechnique abreast with the modern world. Behind them came the Mossi fromthe north, and many other peoples in recent days have filtered through, like the Limba and Temni of Sierra Leone and the Agni-Ashanti, who movedfrom Borgu some two thousand years ago to the Gold and Ivory coasts. 

We have already noted in the main the history of black men along thewonderful Niger and seen how, pushing up from the Gulf of Guinea, apowerful wedge of ancient culture held back Islam for a thousand years, now victorious, now stubbornly disputing every inch of retreat. The centerof this culture lay probably, in oldest times, above the Bight of Benin, along the Slave Coast, and reached east, west, and north. We trace itto-day not only in the remarkable tradition of the natives, but in stonemonuments, architecture, industrial and social organization, and works ofart in bronze, glass, and terra cotta. 

Benin art has been practiced without interruption for centuries, and VonLuschan says that it is "of extraordinary significance that by thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries a local and monumental art had beenlearned in Benin which in many respects equaled European art and developeda technique of the very highest accomplishment. "[24]

Summing up Yoruban civilization, Frobenius concluded that "the technicalsummit of that civilization was reached in the terra-cotta industry, andthat the most important achievements in art were not expressed in stone, but in fine clay baked in the furnace; that hollow casting was thoroughlyknown, too, and practiced by these people; that iron was mainly used fordecoration; that, whatever their purpose, they kept their glass beads instoneware urns within their own locality, and that they manufactured bothearthen and glass ware; that the art of weaving was highly developed amongthem; that the stone monuments, it is true, show some dexterity inhandling and are so far instructive, but in other respects evidence acultural condition insufficiently matured to grasp the utility of stonemonumental material; and, above all, that the then great and significantidea of the universe as imaged in the Templum was current in thosedays. "[25]

Effort has naturally been made to ascribe this civilization to whitepeople. First it was ascribed to Portuguese influence, but much of it isevidently older than the Portuguese discovery. Egypt and India have beenevoked and Greece and Carthage. But all these explanations arefar-fetched. If ever a people exhibited unanswerable evidence ofindigenous civilization, it is the west-coast Africans. Undoubtedly theyadapted much that came to them, utilized new ideas, and grew from contact. But their art and culture is Negro through and through. 

Yoruba forms one of the three city groups of West Africa; another isaround Timbuktu, and a third in the Hausa states. The Timbuktu cities havefrom five to fifteen hundred towns, while the Yoruba cities have onehundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and more. The Hausa cities are manyof them important, but few are as large as the Yoruba cities and they liefarther apart. AH three centers, however, are connected with the Niger, and the group nearest the coast--that is, the Yoruba cities--has thegreatest numbers of towns, the most developed architectural styles, andthe oldest institutions. 

The Yoruba cities are not only different from the Sudanese in population, but in their social relations. The Sudanese cities were influenced fromthe desert and the Mediterranean, and form nuclei of larger surroundingmonarchial states. The Yoruba cities, on the other hand, remainedcomparatively autonomous organizations down to modern times, and theirrelative importance changed from time to time without developing animperialistic idea or subordinating the group to one overpowering city. 

This social and industrial state of the Yorubas formerly spread andwielded great influence. We find Yoruba reaching out and subduing stateslike Nupe toward the northward. But the industrial democracy and cityautonomy of Yoruba lent itself indifferently to conquest, and the statefell eventually a victim to the fanatical Fula Mohammedans and was made apart of the modern sultanate of Gando. 

West of Yoruba on the lower courses of the Niger is Benin, an ancientstate which in 1897 traced its twenty-three kings back one thousand years;some legends even named a line of sixty kings. It seems probable thatBenin developed the imperial idea and once extended its rule into theCongo valley. Later and also to the west of the Yoruba come two statesshowing a fiercer and ruder culture, Dahomey and Ashanti. The state ofDahomey was founded by Tacondomi early in the seventeenth century, anddeveloped into a fierce and bloody tyranny with wholesale murder. The kinghad a body of two thousand to five thousand Amazons renowned for theirbravery and armed with rifles. The kingdom was overthrown by the French in1892-93. Under Sai Tutu, Ashanti arose to power in the seventeenthcentury. A military aristocracy with cruel blood sacrifices was formed. By1816 the king had at his disposal two hundred thousand soldiers. TheAshanti power was crushed by the English in the war of 1873-74. 

In these states and in later years in Benin the whole character ofwest-coast culture seems to change. In place of the Yoruban culture, withits city democracy, its elevated religious ideas, its finely organizedindustry, and its noble art, came Ashanti and Dahomey. What was it thatchanged the character of the west coast from this to the orgies of war andblood sacrifice which we read of later in these lands?

There can be but one answer: the slave trade. Not simply the sale of men, but an organized traffic of such proportions and widely organizedramifications as to turn the attention and energies of men from nearly allother industries, encourage war and all the cruelest passions of war, andconcentrate this traffic in precisely that part of Africa farthest fromthe ancient Mediterranean lines of trade. 

We need not assume that the cultural change was sudden or absolute. Ancient Yoruba had the cruelty of a semi-civilized land, but it was notdominant or tyrannical. Modern Benin and Dahomey showed traces of skill, culture, and industry along with inexplicable cruelty andbloodthirstiness. But it was the slave trade that turned the balance andset these lands backward. Dahomey was the last word in a series of humandisasters which began with the defeat of the Askias at Tenkadibou. [26]

From the middle of the fifteenth to the last half of the nineteenthcenturies the American slave trade centered in Guinea and devastated thecoast morally, socially, and physically. European rum and fire arms weretraded for human beings, and it was not until 1787 that any measures weretaken to counteract this terrible scourge. In that year the idea arose ofrepatriating stolen Negroes on that coast and establishing civilizedcenters to supplant the slave trade. About four hundred Negroes fromEngland were sent to Sierra Leone, to whom the promoters consideratelyadded sixty white prostitutes as wives. The climate on the low coast, however, was so deadly that new recruits were soon needed. An AmericanNegro, Thomas Peters, who had served as sergeant under Sir Henry Clintonin the British army in America, went to England seeking an allotment ofland for his fellows. The Sierra Leone Company welcomed him and offeredfree passage and land in Sierra Leone to the Negroes of Nova Scotia. As aresult fifteen vessels sailed with eleven hundred and ninety Negroes in1792. Arriving in Africa, they found the chief white man in control thereso drunk that he soon died of delirium tremens. John Clarkson, however, brother of Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist, eventually took the lead, founded Freetown, and the colony began its checkered career. In 1896 thecolony was saved from insurrection by the exiled Maroon Negroes fromJamaica. After 1833, when emancipation in English colonies took place, severer measures against the slave trade was possible and the colony beganto grow. To-day its imports and exports amount to fifteen million dollarsa year. 

Liberia was a similar American experiment. In 1816 Americanphilanthropists decided that slavery was bound to die out, but that theproblem lay in getting rid of the freed Negroes, of which there were thentwo hundred thousand in the United States. Accordingly the AmericanColonization Society was proposed this year and founded January 1, 1817, with Bushrod Washington as President. It was first thought to encouragemigration to Sierra Leone, and eighty-eight Negroes were sent, but theywere not welcomed. As a result territory was bought in the presentconfines of Liberia, December 15, 1821, and colonists began to arrive. Alittle later an African depot for recaptured slaves taken in thecontraband slave trade, provided for in the Act of 1819, was establishedand an agent was sent to Africa to form a settlement. Gradually thissettlement was merged with the settlement of the Colonization Society, andfrom this union Liberia was finally evolved. 

The last white governor of Liberia died in 1841 and was succeeded by thefirst colored governor, Joseph J. Roberts, a Virginian. The totalpopulation in 1843 was about twenty-seven hundred and ninety, and withthis as a beginning in 1847 Governor Roberts declared the independence ofthe state. The recognition of Liberian independence by all countriesexcept the United States followed in 1849. The United States, not wishingto receive a Negro minister, did not recognize Liberia until 1862. 

No sooner was the independence of Liberia announced than England andFrance began a long series of aggressions to limit her territory andsovereignty. Considerable territory was lost by treaty, and in the effortto get capital to develop the rest, Liberia was saddled with a debt offour hundred thousand dollars, of which she received less than one hundredthousand dollars in actual cash. Finally the Liberians turned to theUnited States for capital and protection. As a result the Liberian customshave been put under international control and Major Charles Young, theranking Negro officer in the United States army, with several coloredassistants, has been put in charge of the making of roads and drilling aconstabulary to keep order in the interior. 

To-day Liberia has an area of forty thousand square miles, about threehundred and fifty miles of coast line, and an estimated total populationof two million of which fifty thousand are civilized. The revenue amountedin 1913 to $531, 500. The imports in 1912 were $1, 667, 857 and the exports$1, 199, 152. The latter consisted chiefly of rubber, palm oil and kernels, coffee, piassava fiber, ivory, ginger, camwood, and arnotto. 

Perhaps Liberia's greatest citizen was the late Edward Wilmot Blyden, whomigrated in early life from the Danish West Indies and became a prophet ofthe renaissance of the Negro race. 

Turning now from Guinea we pass down the west coast. In 1482 Diego Cam ofPortugal, sailing this coast, set a stone at the mouth of a great riverwhich he called "The Mighty, " but which eventually came to be known by thename of the powerful Negro kingdom through which it flowed--the Congo. 

We must think of the valley of the Congo with its intricate interlacing ofwater routes and jungle of forests as a vast caldron shut away at firstfrom the African world by known and unknown physical hindrances. Then itwas penetrated by the tiny red dwarfs and afterward horde after horde oftall black men swirled into the valley like a maelstrom, moving usuallyfrom north to east and from south to west. 

The Congo valley became, therefore, the center of the making of what weknow to-day as the Bantu nations. They are not a unified people, but acongeries of tribes of considerable physical diversity, united by thecompelling bond of language and other customs imposed on the conquered byinvading conquerors. 

The history or these invasions we must to-day largely imagine. Between twoand three thousand years ago the wilder tribes of Negroes began to moveout of the region south or southeast of Lake Chad. This was always a landof shadows and legends, where fearful cannibals dwelt and where noEgyptian or Ethiopian or Sudanese armies dared to go. It is possible, however, that pressure from civilization in the Nile valley and risingculture around Lake Chad was at this time reënforced by expansion of theYoruba-Benin culture on the west coast. Perhaps, too, developing culturearound the Great Lakes in the east beckoned or the riotous fertility ofthe Congo valleys became known. At any rate the movement commenced, now byslow stages, now in wild forays. There may have been a preliminarymovement from east to west to the Gulf of Guinea. The main movement, however, was eastward, skirting the Congo forests and passing down by theVictoria Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Here two paths beckoned: the lakesand the sea to the east, the Congo to the west. A great stream of menswept toward the ocean and, dividing, turned northward and fought its waydown the Nile valley and into the Abyssinian highlands; another branchturned south and approached the Zambesi, where we shall meet it again. 

Another horde of invaders turned westward and entered the valley of theCongo in three columns. The northern column moved along the Lualaba andCongo rivers to the Cameroons; the second column became the industrial andstate-building Luba and Lunda peoples in the southern Congo valley andAngola; while the third column moved into Damaraland and mingled withBushman and Hottentot. 

In the Congo valley the invaders settled in village and plain, absorbedsuch indigenous inhabitants as they found or drove them deeper into theforest, and immediately began to develop industry and politicalorganization. They became skilled agriculturists, raising in somelocalities a profusion of cereals, fruit, and vegetables such as manioc, maize, yams, sweet potatoes, ground nuts, sorghum, gourds, beans, peas, bananas, and plantains. Everywhere they showed skill in mining and thewelding of iron, copper, and other metals. They made weapons, wire andingots, cloth, and pottery, and a widespread system of trade arose. Sometribes extracted rubber from the talamba root; others had remarkablebreeds of fowl and cattle, and still others divided their people by craftsinto farmers, smiths, boat builders, warriors, cabinet makers, armorers, and speakers. Women here and there took part in public assemblies and wererulers in some cases. Large towns were built, some of which required hoursto traverse from end to end. 

Many tribes developed intelligence of a high order. Wissmann called the BaLuba "a nation of thinkers. " Bateman found them "thoroughly andunimpeachably honest, brave to foolhardiness, and faithful to each otherand to their superiors. " One of their kings, Calemba, "a really princelyprince, " Bateman says would "amongst any people be a remarkable and indeedin many respects a magnificent man. "[27]

These beginnings of human culture were, however, peculiarly vulnerable toinvading hosts of later comers. There were no natural protecting barrierslike the narrow Nile valley or the Kong mountains or the forests belowLake Chad. Once the pathways to the valley were open and for hundreds ofyears the newcomers kept arriving, especially from the welter of tribessouth of the Sudan and west of the Nile, which rising culture beyond keptin unrest and turmoil. 

Against these intruders there was but one defense, the State. Statebuilding was thus forced on the Congo valley. How early it started wecannot say, but when the Portuguese arrived in the fifteenth century, there had existed for centuries a large state among the Ba-Congo, with itscapital at the city now known as San Salvador. 

The Negro Mfumu, or emperor, was eventually induced to acceptChristianity. His sons and many young Negroes of high birth were taken toPortugal to be educated. There several were raised to the Catholicpriesthood and one became bishop; others distinguished themselves at theuniversities. Thus suddenly there arose a Catholic kingdom south of thevalley of the Congo, which lasted three centuries, but was partiallyoverthrown by invading barbarians from the interior in the seventeenthcentury. A king of Congo still reigns as pensioner of Portugal, and on thecoast to-day are the remains of the kingdom in the civilized blacks andmulattoes, who are intelligent traders and boat builders. 

Meantime the Luba-Lunda people to the eastward founded Kantanga and otherstates, and in the sixteenth century the larger and more ambitious realmof the Mwata Yamvo. The last of the fourteen rulers of this line wasfeudal lord of about three hundred chiefs, who paid him tribute in ivory, skins, corn, cloth, and salt. His territory included about one hundredthousand square miles and two million or more inhabitants. Eventually thisstate became torn by internal strife and revolt, especially by attacksfrom the south across the Congo-Zambesi divide. 

Farther north, among the Ba-Lolo and the Ba-Songo, the village policypersisted and the cannibals of the northeast pressed down on the moresettled tribes. The result was a curious blending of war and industry, artistic tastes and savage customs. 

The organized slave trade of the Arabs penetrated the Congo valley in thesixteenth century and soon was aiding all the forces of unrest andturmoil. Industry was deranged and many tribes forced to take refuge incaves and other hiding places. 

Here, as on the west coast, disintegration and retrogression followed, foras the American traffic lessened, the Arabian traffic increased. When, therefore, Stanley opened the Congo valley to modern knowledge, Leopold IIof Belgium conceived the idea of founding here a free international statewhich was to bring civilization to the heart of Africa. Consequently therewas formed in 1878 an international committee to study the region. Stanleywas finally commissioned to inquire as to the best way of introducingEuropean trade and culture. "I am charged, " he said, "to open and keepopen, if possible, all such districts and countries as I may explore, forthe benefit of the commercial world. The mission is supported by aphilanthropic society, which numbers nobleminded men of several nations. It is not a religious society, but my instructions are entirely of thatspirit. No violence must be used, and wherever rejected, the mission mustwithdraw to seek another field. "[28]

The Bula Matadi or Stone Breaker, as the natives called Stanley, threwhimself energetically into the work and had by 1881 built a road past thefalls to the plateau, where thousands of miles of river navigation werethus opened. Stations were established, and by 1884 Stanley returned armedwith four hundred and fifty "treaties" with the native chiefs, and the new"State" appealed to the world for recognition. 

The United States first recognized the "Congo Free State, " which was atlast made a sovereign power under international guarantees by the Congressof Berlin in the year 1885, and Leopold II was chosen its king. The statehad an area of about nine hundred thousand square miles, with a populationof about thirty million. 

One of the first tasks before the new state was to check the Arab slavetraders. The Arabs had hitherto acted as traders and middlemen along theupper Congo, and when the English and Congo state overthrew Mzidi, thereigning king in the Kantanga country, a general revolt of the Arabs andmulattoes took place. For a time, 1892-93, the whites were driven out, butin a year or two the Arabs and their allies were subdued. 

Humanity and commerce, however, did not replace the Arab slave traders. Rather European greed and serfdom were substituted. The land wasconfiscated by the state and farmed out to private Belgian corporations. The wilder cannibal tribes were formed into a militia to prey on theindustrious, who were taxed with specific amounts of ivory and rubber, andscourged and mutilated if they failed to pay. Harris declares that KingLeopold's regime meant the death of twelve million natives. 

"Europe was staggered at the Leopoldian atrocities, and they were terribleindeed; but what we, who were behind the scenes, felt most keenly was thefact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was the desolation and murderin the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destructionof every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, theintroduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the peopledumb with horror--in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immoralityoverwhelmed the Congo tribes. "[29]

So notorious did the exploitation and misrule become that Leopold wasforced to take measures toward reform, and finally in 1909 the Free Statebecame a Belgian colony. Some reforms have been inaugurated and others mayfollow, but the valley of the Congo will long stand as a monument of shameto Christianity and European civilization. 

FOOTNOTES:

[23] Quoted in Du Bois: _Timbuktu_. 

[24] Von Luschan: _Verhandlungen der berliner Gesellschaft fürAnthropologie_, etc. , 1898. 

[25] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I. 

[26] Cf. P. 58. 

[27] Keane: _Africa_, II, 117-118. 

[28] _The Congo_, I, Chap. III. 

[29] Harris: _Dawn in Africa_. 

VI THE GREAT LAKES AND ZYMBABWE

We have already seen how a branch of the conquering Bantus turned eastwardby the Great Lakes and thus reached the sea and eventually both the Nileand South Africa. 

This brought them into the ancient and mysterious land far up the Nile, south of Ethiopia. Here lay the ancient Punt of the Egyptians (whether weplace it in Somaliland or, as seems far more likely, around the GreatLakes) and here, as the Egyptians thought, their civilization began. Theearliest inhabitants of the land were apparently of the Bushman orHottentot type of Negro. These were gradually pushed southward andwestward by the intrusion of the Nilotic Negroes. Five thousand yearsbefore Christ the mulatto Egyptians were in the Nile valley below theFirst Cataract. The Negroes were in the Nile valley down as far as theSecond Cataract and between the First and Second Cataracts were Negroesinto whose veins Semitic blood had penetrated more or less. These mixedelements became the ancestors of the modern Somali, Gala, Bishari, andBeja and spread Negro blood into Arabia beyond the Red Sea. The NiloticNegroes to the south early became great traders in ivory, gold, leopardskins, gums, beasts, birds, and slaves, and they opened up systematictrade between Egypt and the Great Lakes. 

The result was endless movement and migration both in ancient and moderndays, which makes the cultural history of the Great Lakes region verydifficult to understand. Three great elements are, however, clear: first, the Egyptian element, by the northward migration of the Negro ancestors ofpredynastic Egypt and the southern conquests and trade of dynastic Egypt;second, the Semitic influence from Arabia and Persia; third, the Negroinfluences from western and central Africa. 

The migration of the Bantu is the first clearly defined movement of moderntimes. As we have shown, they began to move southward at least a thousandyears before Christ, skirting the Congo forests and wandering along theGreat Lakes and down to the Zambesi. What did they find in this land?

We do not know certainly, but from what we do know we may reconstruct thesituation in this way: the primitive culture of the Hottentots of Punt hadbeen further developed by them and by other stronger Negro stocks until itreached a highly developed culture. Widespread agriculture, and mining ofgold, silver, and precious stones started a trade that penetrated to Asiaand North Africa. This may have been the source of the gold of the Ophir. 

The state that thus arose became in time strongly organized; it employedslave labor in crushing the hard quartz, sinking pits, and carryingunderground galleries; it carried out a system of irrigation and builtstone buildings and fortifications. There exists to-day many remains ofthese building operations in the Kalahari desert and in northern Rhodesia. Five hundred groups, covering over an area of one hundred and fiftythousand square miles, lie between the Limpopo and Zambesi rivers. Miningoperations have been carried on in these plains for generations, and oneestimate is that at least three hundred and seventy-five million dollars'worth of gold had been extracted. Some have thought that the olderworkings must date back to one or even three thousand years before theChristian era. 

"There are other mines, " writes De Barros in the seventeenth century, [30]"in a district called Toroa, which is otherwise known as the kingdom ofButua, whose ruler is a prince, by name Burrow, a vassal of Benomotapa. This land is near the other which we said consisted of extensive plains, and those ruins are the oldest that are known in that region. They are allin a plain, in the middle of which stands a square fortress, all ofdressed stones within and without, well wrought and of marvelous size, without any lime showing the joinings, the walls of which are overtwenty-five hands thick, but the height is not so great compared to thethickness. And above the gateway of that edifice is an inscription whichsome Moorish [Arab] traders who were there could not read, nor say whatwriting it was. All these structures the people of this country callSymbaoe [Zymbabwe], which with them means a court, for every place whereBenomotapa stays is so called. "

Later investigation has shown that these buildings were in many casescarefully planned and built fortifications. At Niekerk, for instance, nineor ten hills are fortified on concentric walls thirty to fifty feet innumber, with a place for the village at the top. The buildings are forts, miniature citadels, and also workshops and cattle kraals. Iron implementsand handsome pottery were found here, and close to the Zambesi there areextraordinary fortifications. Farther south at Inyanga there is lessstrong defense, and at Umtali there are no fortifications, showing thatbuilders feared invasion from the north. 

These people worked in gold, silver, tin, copper, and bronze and madebeautiful pottery. There is evidence of religious significance in thebuildings, and what is called the temple was the royal residence andserved as a sort of acropolis. The surrounding residences in the valleywere evidently occupied by wealthy traders and were not fortified. Herethe gold was received from surrounding districts and bartered withtraders. 

As usual there have been repeated attempts to find an external andespecially an Asiatic origin for this culture. So far, however, archeological research seems to confirm its African origin. Theimplements, weapons, and art are characteristically African and there isno evident connection with outside sources. How far back this civilizationdates it is difficult to say, a great deal depending upon the dating ofthe iron age in South Africa. If it was the same as in the Mediterraneanregions, the earliest limit was 1000 B. C. ; it might, however, have beenmuch earlier, especially if, as seems probable, the use of iron originatedin Africa. On the other hand the culmination of this culture has beenplaced by some as late as the modern middle ages. 

What was it that overthrew this civilization? Undoubtedly the same sort ofraids of barbarous warriors that we have known in our day. For instance, in 1570 there came upon the country of Mozambique, farther up the coast, "such an inundation of pagans that they could not be numbered. They camefrom that part of Monomotapa where is the great lake from which springthese great rivers. They left no other signs of the towns they passed butthe heaps of ruins and the bones of inhabitants. " So, too, it is told howthe Zimbas came, "a strange people never before seen there, who, leavingtheir own country, traversed a great part of this Ethiopia like a scourgeof God, destroying every living thing they came across. They were twentythousand strong and marched without children or women, " just as fourhundred years later the Zulu impi marched. Again in 1602 a horde of peoplecame from the interior called the Cabires, or cannibals. They entered thekingdom of Monomotapa, and the reigning king, being weak, was in greatterror. Thus gradually the Monomotapa fell, and its power was scattereduntil the Kaffir-Zulu raids of our day. [31]

The Arab writer, Macoudi, in the tenth century visited the East Africancoast somewhere north of the equator. He found the Indian Sea at that timefrequented by Arab and Persian vessels, but there were no Asiaticsettlements on the African shore. The Bantu, or as he calls them, Zenji, inhabited the country as far south as Sofala, where they bordered upon theBushmen. These Bantus were under a ruler with the dynastic title ofWaklimi. He was paramount over all the other tribes of the north and couldput three hundred thousand men in the field. They used oxen as beasts ofburden and the country produced gold in abundance, while panther skin waslargely used for clothing. Ivory was sold to Asia and the Bantu used ironfor personal adornment instead of gold or silver. They rode on their oxen, which ran with great speed, and they ate millet and honey and the flesh ofanimals. 

Inland among the Bantu arose later the line of rulers called theMonomotapa among the gifted Makalanga. Their state was very extensive, ranging from the coast far into the interior and from Mozambique down tothe Limpopo. It was strongly organized, with feudatory allied states, andcarried on an extensive commerce by means of the traders on the coast. Thekings were converted to nominal Christianity by the Portuguese. 

There are indications of trade between Nupe in West Africa and Sofala onthe east coast, and certainly trade between Asia and East Africa isearlier than the beginning of the Christian era. The Asiatic traderssettled on the coast and by means of mulatto and Negro merchants broughtCentral Africa into contact with Arabia, India, China, and Malaysia. 

The coming of the Asiatics was in this wise: Zaide, great-grandson of Ali, nephew and son-in-law of Mohammed, was banished from Arabia as a heretic. He passed over to Africa and formed temporary settlements. His peoplemingled with the blacks, and the resulting mulatto traders, known as theEmoxaidi, seem to have wandered as far south as the equator. Soon otherArabian families came over on account of oppression and founded the townsof Magadosho and Brava, both not far north of the equator. The first townbecame a place of importance and other settlements were made. TheEmoxaidi, whom the later immigrants regarded as heretics, were driveninland and became the interpreting traders between the coast and theBantu. Some wanderers from Magadosho came into the Port of Sofala andthere learned that gold could be obtained. This led to a small Arabsettlement at that place. 

Seventy years later, and about fifty years before the Norman conquest ofEngland, certain Persians settled at Kilwa in East Africa, led by Ali, whohad been despised in his land because he was the son of a black Abyssinianslave mother. Kilwa, because of this, eventually became the most importantcommercial station on the East African coast, and in this and all thesesettlements a very large mulatto population grew up, so that very soon thewhole settlement was indistinguishable in color from the Bantu. 

In 1330 Ibn Batuta visited Kilwa. He found an abundance of ivory and somegold and heard that the inhabitants of Kilwa had gained victories over theZenji or Bantu. Kilwa had at that time three hundred mosques and was"built of handsome houses of stone and lime, and very lofty, with theirwindows like those of the Christians; in the same way it has streets, andthese houses have got terraces, and the wood-work is with the masonry, with plenty of gardens, in which there are many fruit trees and muchwater. "[32] Kilwa after a time captured Sofala, seizing it from Magadosho. Eventually Kilwa became mistress of the island of Zanzibar, of Mozambique, and of much other territory. The forty-third ruler of Kilwa after Ali wasnamed Abraham, and he was ruling when the Portuguese arrived. The latterreported that these people cultivated rice and cocoa, built ships, and hadconsiderable commerce with Asia. All the people, of whatever color, wereMohammedans, and the richer were clothed in gorgeous robes of silk andvelvet. They traded with the inland Bantus and met numerous tribes, receiving gold, ivory, millet, rice, cattle, poultry, and honey. 

On the islands the Asiatics were independent, but on the main lands southof Kilwa the sheiks ruled only their own people, under the overlordship ofthe Bantus, to whom they were compelled to pay large tribute each year. 

Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 and went north on theeast coast as far as India. In the next ten years the Portuguese hadoccupied more than six different points on that coast, includingSofala. [33]

Thus civilization waxed and waned in East Africa among prehistoricNegroes, Arab and Persian mulattoes on the coast, in the Zend or Zengempire of Bantu Negroes, and later in the Bantu rule of the Monomotapa. And thus, too, among later throngs of the fiercer, warlike Bantu, theancient culture of the land largely died. Yet something survived, and inthe modern Bantu state, language, and industry can be found clear linksthat establish the essential identity of the absorbed peoples with thebuilders of Zymbabwe. 

So far we have traced the history of the lands into which the southwardstream of invading Bantus turned, and have followed them to the LimpopoRiver. We turn now to the lands north from Lake Nyassa. 

The aboriginal Negroes sustained in prehistoric time invasions from thenortheast by Negroids of a type like the ancient Egyptians and like themodern Gallas, Masai, and Somalis. To these migrations were added attacksfrom the Nile Negroes to the north and the Bantu invaders from the south. This has led to great differences among the groups of the population andin their customs. Some are fierce mountaineers, occupying hilly plateaussix thousand feet above the sea level; others, like the Wa Swahili, aretraders on the coast. There are the Masai, chocolate-colored andfrizzly-haired, organized for war and cattle lifting; and Negroids likethe Gallas, who, blending with the Bantus, have produced the race ofmodern Uganda. 

It was in this region that the kingdom of Kitwara was founded by the Gallachief, Kintu. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the empire wasdismembered, the largest share falling to Uganda. The ensuing history ofUganda is of great interest. When King Mutesa came to the throne in 1862, he found Mohammedan influences in his land and was induced to admitEnglish Protestants and French Catholics. Uganda thereupon became anextraordinary religious battlefield between these three beliefs. Mutesa'ssuccessor, Mwanga, caused an English bishop to be killed in 1885, believing (as has since proven quite true) that the religion he offeredwould be used as a cloak for conquest. The final result was that, afteropen war between the religions, Uganda was made an English protectorate in1894. 

The Negroes of Uganda are an intelligent people who had organized acomplex feudal state. At the head stood the king, and under him twelvefeudal lords. The present king, Daudi Chua, is the young grandson ofMutesa and rules under the overlordship of England. 

Many things show the connection between Egypt and this part of Africa. Thesame glass beads are found in Uganda and Upper Egypt, and similar canoesare built. Harps and other instruments bear great resemblance. Finally theBahima, as the Galla invaders are called, are startlingly Egyptian intype; at the same time they are undoubtedly Negro in hair and color. Perhaps we have here the best racial picture of what ancient Egyptian andupper Nile regions were in predynastic times and later. 

Thus in outline was seen the mission of The People--La Bantu as theycalled themselves. They migrated, they settled, they tore down, and theylearned, and they in turn were often overthrown by succeeding tribes oftheir own folk. They rule with their tongue and their power all Africasouth of the equator, save where the Europeans have entered. They havenever been conquered, although the gold and diamond traders have sought todebauch them, and the ivory and rubber capitalists have cruelly wrongedtheir weaker groups. They are the Africans with whom the world ofto-morrow must reckon, just as the world of yesterday knew them to itscost. 

FOOTNOTES:

[30] Quoted in Bent: _Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_, pp. 203 ff. 

[31] Cf. "Ethiopia Oriental, " by J. Dos Santos, in Theal's _Records ofSouth Africa_, Vol. VII. 

[32] Barbosa, quoted in Keane, II, 482. 

[33] It was called Sofala, from an Arabic word, and may be associated withthe Ophir of Solomon. So, too, the river Sabi, a little off Sofala, may beassociated with the name of the Queen of Sheba, whose lineage was supposedto be perpetuated in the powerful Monomotapa as well as the Abyssinians. 

VII THE WAR OF RACES AT LAND'S END

Primitive man in Africa is found in the interior jungles and down atLand's End in South Africa. The Pygmy people in the jungles representto-day a small survival from the past, but a survival of curious interest, pushed aside by the torrent of conquest. Also pushed on by these waves ofBantu conquest, moved the ancient Abatwa or Bushmen. They are small instature, yellow in color, with crisp-curled hair. The traditions of theBushmen say that they came southward from the regions of the Great Lakes, and indeed the king and queen of Punt, as depicted by the Egyptians, wereBushmen or Hottentots. 

Their tribes may be divided, in accordance with their noticeable artistictalents, into the painters and the sculptors. The sculptors entered SouthAfrica by moving southward through the more central portions of thecountry, crossing the Zambesi, and coming down to the Cape. The painters, on the other hand, came through Damaraland on the west coast; when theycame to the great mountain regions, they turned eastward and can be tracedas far as the mountains opposite Delagoa Bay. The mass of them settleddown in the lower part of the Cape and in the Kalahari desert. Thepainters were true cave dwellers, but the sculptors lived in largecommunities on the stony hills, which they marked with their carvings. 

These Bushmen believed in an ancient race of people who preceded them inSouth Africa. They attributed magic power to these unknown folk, and saidthat some of them had been translated as stars to the sky. Before theirgroups were dispersed the Bushmen had regular government. Tribes withtheir chiefs occupied well-defined tracts of country and were subdividedinto branch tribes under subsidiary chiefs. The great cave represented thedignity and glory of the entire tribe. 

The Bushmen suffered most cruelly in the succeeding migrations andconquests of South Africa. They fought desperately in self-defense; theysaw their women and children carried into bondage and they themselveshunted like wild beasts. Both savage and civilized men appropriated theirland. Still they were brave people. "In this struggle for existence theirbitterest enemies, of whatever shade of color they might be, were forcedto make an unqualified acknowledgement of the courage and daring they soinvariably exhibited. "[34]

Here, to a remote corner of the world, where, as one of their number said, they had supposed that the only beings in the world were Bushmen andlions, came a series of invaders. It was the outer ripples of civilizationstarting far away, the indigenous and external civilizations of Africabeating with great impulse among the Ethiopians and the Egyptian mulattoesand Sudanese Negroes and Yorubans, and driving the Bantu race southward. The Bantus crowded more and more upon the primitive Bushmen, and probablya mingling of the Bushmen and the Bantus gave rise to the Hottentots. 

The Hottentots, or as they called themselves, Khoi Khoin (Men of Men), were physically a stronger race than the Abatwa and gave many evidences ofdegeneration from a high culture, especially in the "phenomenalperfection" of a language which "is so highly developed, both in its richphonetic system, as represented by a very delicately graduated series ofvowels and diphthongs, and in its varied grammatical structure, thatLepsius sought for its affinities in the Egyptian at the other end of thecontinent. "

When South Africa was first discovered there were two distinct types ofHottentot. The more savage Hottentots were simply large, strong Bushmen, using weapons superior to the Bushmen, without domestic cattle or sheep. Other tribes nearer the center of South Africa were handsomer inappearance and raised an Egyptian breed of cattle which they rode. 

In general the Hottentots were yellow, with close-curled hair, high cheekbones, and somewhat oblique eyes. Their migration commenced about the endof the fourteenth century and was, as is usual in such cases, a scattered, straggling movement. The traditions of the Hottentots point to the lakecountry of Central Africa as their place of origin, whence they weredriven by the Bechuana tribes of the Bantu. They fled westward to theocean and then turned south and came upon the Bushmen, whom they had onlypartially subdued when the Dutch arrived as settlers in 1652. 

The Dutch "Boers" began by purchasing land from the Hottentots and then, as they grew more powerful, they dispossessed the dark men and tried toenslave them. There grew up a large Dutch-Hottentot class. Indeed thefiltration of Negro blood noticeable in modern Boers accounts for muchcurious history. Soon after the advent of the Dutch some of theHottentots, of whom there were not more than thirty or forty thousand, ledby the Korana clans, began slowly to retreat northward, followed by theinvading Dutch and fighting the Dutch, each other, and the wretchedBushmen. In the latter part of the eighteenth century the Hottentots hadreached the great interior plain and met the on-coming outposts of theBantu nations. 

The Bechuana, whom the Hottentots first met, were the most advanced of theNegro tribes of Central Africa. They had crossed the Zambesi in thefourteenth or fifteenth century; their government was a sort of feudalsystem with hereditary chiefs and vassals; they were carefulagriculturists, laid out large towns with great regularity, and were themost skilled of smiths. They used stone in building, carved on wood, andmany of them, too, were keen traders. These tribes, coming southward, occupied the east-central part of South Africa comprising modernBechuanaland. Apparently they had started from the central lake countrysomewhere late in the fifteenth century, and by the middle of theeighteenth century one of their great chiefs, Tao, met the on-comingHottentots. 

The Hottentots compelled Tao to retreat, but the mulatto Gricquas arrivedfrom the south, and, allying themselves with the Bechuana, stopped therout. The Gricquas sprang from and took their name from an old Hottentottribe. They were led by Kok and Barends, and by adding other elements theybecame, partly through their own efforts and partly through the efforts ofthe missionaries, a community of fairly well civilized people. InGricqualand West the mulatto Gricquas, under their chiefs Kok andWaterboer, lived until the discovery of diamonds. 

The Griquas and Bechuana tribes were thus gradually checking theHottentots when, in the nineteenth century, there came two newdevelopments: first, the English took possession of Cape Colony, and theDutch began to move in larger numbers toward the interior; secondly, anewer and fiercer element of the Bantu tribes, the Zulu-Kaffirs, appeared. The Kaffirs, or as they called themselves, the Amazosas, claimed descentfrom Zuide, a great chief of the fifteenth century in the lake country. They are among the tallest people in the world, averaging five feet teninches, and are slim, well-proportioned, and muscular. The more warliketribes were usually clothed in leopard or ox skins. Cattle formed theirchief wealth, stock breeding and hunting and fighting their main pursuits. Mentally they were men of tact and intelligence, with a national religionbased upon ancestor worship, while their government was a patriarchalmonarchy limited by an aristocracy and almost feudal in character. Thecommon law which had grown up from the decisions of the chiefs made thehead of the family responsible for the conduct of its branches, a villagefor all its residents, and the clan for all its villages. Finally therewas a paramount chief, who was the civil and military father of hispeople. These people laid waste to the coast regions and in 1779 came incontact with the Dutch. A series of Dutch-Kaffir wars ensued between 1779and 1795 in which the Dutch were hard pressed. 

In 1806 the English took final possession of Cape Colony. At that timethere were twenty-five thousand Boers, twenty-five thousand pure and mixedHottentots, and twenty-five thousand slaves secured from the east coast. Between 1811 and 1877 there were six Kaffir-English wars. One of these in1818 grew out of the ignorant interference of the English with the Kaffirtribal system; then there came a terrible war between 1834 and 1835, followed by the annexation of all the country as far as the Kei River. Thewar of the Axe (1846-48) led to further annexation by the British. 

Hostilities broke out again in 1856 and 1863. In the former year, despairing of resistance to invading England, a prophet arose who advisedthe wholesale destruction of all Kaffir property except weapons, in orderthat this faith might bring back their dead heroes. The result was thatalmost a third of the nation perished from hunger. Fresh troubles occurredin 1877, when the Ama-Xosa confederacy was finally broken up, and to-daygradually these tribes are passing from independence to a state of mildvassalage to the British. 

Meantime the more formidable part of the Zulu-Kaffirs had been unitedunder the terrible Chief Chaka. He had organized a military system, not anew one by any means, but one of which we hear rumors back in the lakeregions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. McDonald says, "Therehas probably never been a more perfect system of discipline than that bywhich Chaka ruled his army and kingdom. At a review an order might begiven in the most unexpected manner, which meant death to hundreds. If theregiment hesitated or dared to remonstrate, so perfect was the disciplineand so great the jealousy that another was ready to cut them down. Awarrior returning from battle without his arms was put to death withouttrial. A general returning unsuccessful in the main purpose of hisexpedition shared the same fate. Whoever displeased the king wasimmediately executed. The traditional courts practically ceased to existso far as the will and action of the tyrant was concerned. " With this armyChaka fell on tribe after tribe. The Bechuana fled before him and sometribes of them were entirely destroyed. The Hottentots suffered severelyand one of his rival Zulu tribes under Umsilikatsi fled into Matabililand, pushing back the Bechuana. By the time the English came to Port Natal, Chaka was ruling over the whole southeastern seaboard, from the LimpopoRiver to Cape Colony, including the Orange and Transvaal states and thewhole of Natal. Chaka was killed in 1828 and was eventually succeeded byhis brother Dingan, who reigned twelve years. It was during Dingan's reignthat England tried to abolish slavery in Cape Colony, but did not paypromptly for the slaves, as she had promised; the result was the so-called"Great Trek, " about 1834, when thousands of Boers went into the interioracross the Orange and Vaal rivers. 

Dingan and these Boers were soon engaged in a death struggle in which theZulus were repulsed and Dingan replaced by Panda. Under this chief therewas something like repose for sixteen years, but in 1856 civil war brokeout between his sons, one of whom, Cetewayo, succeeded his father in 1882. He fell into border disputes with the English, and the result was one ofthe fiercest clashes of Europe and Africa in modern days. The Zulus foughtdesperately, annihilating at one time a whole detachment and killing theyoung prince Napoleon. But after all it was assagais against machine guns, and the Zulus were finally defeated at Ulundi, July 4, 1879. ThereuponZululand was divided among thirteen semi-independent chiefs and became aBritish protectorate. 

[Illustration: Ancient Kingdom of Africa]

Since then the best lands have been gradually reoccupied by a large numberof tribes--Kaffirs from the south and Zulus from the north. The tribalorganization, without being actually broken up, has been deprived of itsdangerous features by appointing paid village headmen and transforming thehereditary chief into a British government official. In Natal there areabout one hundred and seventy tribal chiefs, and nearly half of these havebeen appointed by the governor. 

Umsilikatsi, who had been driven into Matabililand by the terrible Chakain 1828 and defeated by the Dutch in 1837, had finally reestablished hisheadquarters in Rhodesia in 1838. Here he introduced the Zulu militarysystem and terrorized the peaceful and industrious Bechuana populations. Lobengula succeeded Umsilikatsi in 1870 and, realizing that his power waswaning, began to retreat northward toward the Zambesi. He was finallydefeated by the British and native forces in 1893 and the land wasincorporated into South Central Africa. 

The result of all these movements was to break the inhabitants ofBechuanaland into numerous fragments. There were small numbers of mulattoGricquas in the southwest and similar Bastaards in the northwest. TheHottentots and Bushmen were dispersed into groups and seem doomed toextinction, the last Hottentot chief being deposed in 1810 and replaced byan English magistrate. Partially civilized Hottentots still live groupedtogether in their kraals and are members of Christian churches. TheBechuana hold their own in several centers; one is in Basutoland, west ofNatal, where a number of tribes were welded together under the far-sightedMoshesh into a modern and fairly well civilized nation. In the north partof Bechuanaland are the self-governing Bamangwato and the Batwana, theformer ruled by Khama, one of the canniest of modern rulers in Africa. 

Meantime, in Portuguese territory south of the Zambesi, there arose Gaza, a contemporary and rival of Chaka. His son, Manikus, was deputed byDingan, Chaka's successor, to drive out the Portuguese. This Manikusfailed to do, and to escape vengeance he migrated north of the Limpopo. Here he established his military kraal in a district thirty-six hundredand fifty feet above the sea and one hundred and twenty miles inland fromSofala. From this place his soldiery nearly succeeded in driving thePortuguese out of East Africa. He was succeeded by his son, Umzila, andUmzila's brother, Guzana (better known as Gungunyana), who exercised for atime joint authority. Gungunyana was finally overthrown in November, 1895, captured, and removed to the Azores. 

[Illustration: Races in Africa]

North of the Zambesi, in British territory, the chief role in recent timeshas been played by the Bechuana, the first of the Bantu to returnnorthward after the South African migration. Livingstone found there theMakolo, who with other tribes had moved northward on account of thepressure of the Dutch and Zulus below, and by conquering various tribesin the Zambesi region had established a strong power. This kingdom wasnearly overthrown by the rebellion of the Barotse, and in 1875 the Barotsekingdom comprised a large territory. To-day their king, Lewanika, rulesdirectly and indirectly fifty thousand square miles, with a populationbetween one and two and a half million. They are under a protectorate ofthe British. 

In Southwest Africa, Hottentot mulattoes crossing from the Cape causedwidespread change. They were strong men and daring fighters and soonbecame dominant in what is now German Southwest Africa, where they foughtfiercely with the Bantu Ova-Hereros. Armed with fire arms, these NamakwaHottentots threatened Portuguese West Africa, but Germany intervened, ostensibly to protect missionaries. By spending millions of dollars andthousands of soldiers Germany has nearly exterminated these brave men. 

Thus we have between the years 1400 and 1900 a great period of migrationup to 1750, when Bushmen, Hottentot, Bantu, and Dutch appeared insuccession at Land's End. In the latter part of the eighteenth century wehave the clash of the Hottentots and Bechuana, followed in the nineteenthcentury by the terrible wars of Chaka, the Kaffirs, and Matabili. Finally, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, we see the gradualsubjection of the Kaffir-Zulus and the Bechuana under the English and thefinal conquest of the Dutch. The resulting racial problem in South Africais one of great intricacy. 

To the racial problem has been added the tremendous problem of moderncapital brought by the discovery of gold and diamond mines, so that thefuture of the Negro race is peculiarly bound up in developments here atLand's End, where the ship of the Flying Dutchman beats back and forth onits endless quest. 

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Stowe: Native Races of South Africa, pp. 215-216. 

VIII AFRICAN CULTURE

We have followed the history of mankind in Africa down the valley of theNile, past Ethiopia to Egypt; we have seen kingdoms arise along the greatbend of the Niger and strive with the ancient culture at its mouth. Wehave seen the remnants of mankind at Land's End, the ancient culture atPunt and Zymbabwe, and followed the invading Bantu east, south, and westto their greatest center in the vast jungle of the Congo valleys. 

We must now gather these threads together and ask what manner of men thesewere and how far and in what way they progressed on the road of humanculture. 

That Negro peoples were the beginners of civilization along the Ganges, the Euphrates, and the Nile seems proven. Early Babylon was founded by aNegroid race. Hammurabi's code, the most ancient known, says "Anna and Belcalled me, Hammurabi the exalted prince, the worshiper of the gods; tocause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked, to preventthe strong from oppressing the weak, to go forth like the sun over theblack-head race, to enlighten the land, and to further the welfare of thepeople. " The Assyrians show a distinct Negroid strain and early Egypt waspredominantly Negro. These earliest of cultures were crude and primitive, but they represented the highest attainment of mankind after tens ofthousands of years in unawakened savagery. 

It has often been assumed that the Negro is physically inferior to otherraces and markedly distinguishable from them; modern science gives noauthority for such an assumption. The supposed inferiority cannot rest oncolor, [35] for that is "due to the combined influences of a great numberof factors of environment working through physiological processes, " and"however marked the contrasts may be, there is no corresponding differencein anatomical structure discoverable. "[36] So, too, difference in textureof hair is a matter of degree, not kind, and is caused by heat, moisture, exposure, and the like. 

The bony skeleton presents no distinctly racial lines of variation. Prognathism "presents too many individual varieties to be taken as adistinctive character of race. "[37] Difference in physical measurementsdoes not show the Negro to be a more primitive evolutionary form. Comparative ethnology to-day affords "no support to the view which sees inthe so-called lower races of mankind a transition stage from beast toman. "[38]

Much has been made of the supposed smaller brain of the Negro race; butthis is as yet an unproved assumption, based on the uncritical measurementof less than a thousand Negro brains as compared with eleven thousand ormore European brains. Even if future measurement prove the average Negrobrain lighter, the vast majority of Negro brain weights fall within thesame limits as the whites; and finally, "neither size nor weight of thebrain seems to be of importance" as an index of mental capacity. We may, therefore, say with Ratzel, "There is only one species of man. Thevariations are numerous, but do not go deep. "[39]

To this we may add the word of the Secretary of the First Races Congress:"We are, then, under the necessity of concluding that an impartialinvestigator would be inclined to look upon the various important peoplesof the world as to all intents and purposes essentially equal inintellect, enterprise, morality, and physique. "[40]

If these conclusions are true, we should expect to see in Africa thehuman drama play itself out much as in other lands, and such has actuallybeen the fact. At the same time we must expect peculiarities arising fromthe physiography of the land--its climate, its rainfall, its deserts, andthe peculiar inaccessibility of the coast. 

Three principal zones of habitation appear: first, the steppes and desertsaround the Sahara in the north and the Kalahari desert in the south;secondly, the grassy highlands bordering the Great Lakes and connectingthese two regions; thirdly, the forests and rivers of Central and WestAfrica. In the deserts are the nomads, and the Pygmies are in the forestfastnesses. Herdsmen and their cattle cover the steppes and highlands, save where the tsetse fly prevents. In the open forests and grassyhighlands are the agriculturists. 

Among the forest farmers the village is the center of life, while in theopen steppes political life tends to spread into larger political units. Political integration is, however, hindered by an ease of internalcommunication almost as great as the difficulty of reaching outer worldsbeyond the continent. The narrow Nile valley alone presented physicalbarriers formidable enough to keep back the invading barbarians of thesouth, and even then with difficulty. Elsewhere communication was all tooeasy. For a while the Congo forests fended away the restless, but thisonly temporarily. 

On the whole Africa from the Sahara to the Cape offered no great physicalbarrier to the invader, and we continually have whirlwinds of invadinghosts rushing now southward, now northward, from the interior to the coastand from the coast inland, and hurling their force against states, kingdoms, and cities. Some resisted for generations, some for centuries, some but a few years. It is, then, this sudden change and the fear of itthat marks African culture, particularly in its political aspects, andwhich makes it so difficult to trace this changing past. Neverthelessbeneath all change rests the strong substructure of custom, religion, industry, and art well worth the attention of students. 

Starting with agriculture, we learn that "among all the great groups ofthe 'natural' races, the Negroes are the best and keenest tillers of theground. A minority despise agriculture and breed cattle; many combine bothoccupations. Among the genuine tillers the whole life of the family istaken up in agriculture, and hence the months are by preference calledafter the operations which they demand. Constant clearings change foreststo fields, and the ground is manured with the ashes of the burnt thicket. In the middle of the fields rise the light watch-towers, from which awatchman scares grain-eating birds and other thieves. An Africancultivated landscape is incomplete without barns. The rapidity with which, when newly imported, the most various forms of cultivation spread inAfrica says much for the attention which is devoted to this branch ofeconomy. Industries, again, which may be called agricultural, like thepreparation of meal from millet and other crops, also from cassava, thefabrication of fermented drinks from grain, or the manufacture of cotton, are widely known and sedulously fostered. "[41]

Bücher reminds us of the deep impression made upon travelers when theysight suddenly the well-attended fields of the natives on emerging fromthe primeval forests. "In the more thickly populated parts of Africa thesefields often stretch for many a mile, and the assiduous care of the Negrowomen shines in all the brighter light when we consider the insecurity oflife, the constant feuds and pillages, in which no one knows whether hewill in the end be able to harvest what he has sown. Livingstone givessomewhere a graphic description of the devastations wrought by slavehunts; the people were lying about slain, the dwellings were demolished;in the fields, however, the grain was ripening and there was none toharvest it. "[42]

Sheep, goat, and chickens are domestic animals all over Africa, and VonFranzius considers Africa the home of the house cattle and the Negro asthe original tamer. Northeastern Africa especially is noted foragriculture, cattle raising, and fruit culture. In the eastern Sudan, andamong the great Bantu tribes extending from the Sudan down toward thesouth, cattle are evidences of wealth; one tribe, for instance, having somany oxen that each village had ten or twelve thousand head. Lenz (1884), Bouet-Williaumez (1848), Hecquard (1854), Bosman (1805), and Baker (1868)all bear witness to this, and Schweinfurth (1878) tells us of great cattleparks with two to three thousand head and of numerous agricultural andcattle-raising tribes. Von der Decken (1859-61) described the paradise ofthe dwellers about Kilimanjaro--the bananas, fruit, beans and peas, cattleraising with stall feed, the fertilizing of the fields, and irrigation. The Negroid Gallas have seven or eight cattle to each inhabitant. Livingstone bears witness to the busy cattle raising of the Bantus andKaffirs. Hulub (1881) and Chapman (1868) tell of agriculture and fruitraising in South Africa. Shutt (1884) found the tribes in the southwesternbasin of the Congo with sheep, swine, goats, and cattle. On thisagricultural and cattle-raising economic foundation has arisen theorganized industry of the artisan, the trader, and the manufacturer. 

While the Pygmies, still living in the age of wood, make no iron or stoneimplements, they seem to know how to make bark cloth and fiber baskets andsimple outfits for hunting and fishing. Among the Bushmen the art ofmaking weapons and working in hides is quite common. The Hottentots arefurther advanced in the industrial arts, being well versed in themanufacture of clothing, weapons, and utensils. In the dressing of skinsand furs, as well as in the plaiting of cords and the weaving of mats, wefind evidences of their workmanship. In addition they are good workers iniron and copper, using the sheepskin bellows for this purpose. TheAshantis of the Gold Coast know how to make "cotton fabrics, turn andglaze earthenware, forge iron, fabricate instruments and arms, embroiderrugs and carpets, and set gold and precious stones. "[43] Among the peopleof the banana zone we find rough basket work, coarse pottery, grass cloth, and spoons made of wood and ivory. The people of the millet zone, becauseof uncertain agricultural resources, quite generally turn tomanufacturing. Charcoal is prepared by the smiths, iron is smelted, andnumerous implements are manufactured. Among them we find axes, hatchets, hoes, knives, nails, scythes, and other hardware. Cloaks, shoes, sandals, shields, and water and oil vessels are made from leather which the nativeshave dressed. Soap is manufactured in the Bautschi district, glass ismade, formed, and colored by the people of Nupeland, and in almost everycity cotton is spun and woven and dyed. Barth tells us that the weaving ofcotton was known in the Sudan as early as the eleventh century. There isalso extensive manufacture of wooden ware, tools, implements, andutensils. 

In describing particular tribes, Baker and Felkin tell of smiths ofwonderful adroitness, goatskins prepared better than a European tannercould do, drinking cups and kegs of remarkable symmetry, and polished clayfloors. Schweinfurth says, "The arrow and the spear heads are of thefinest and most artistic work; their bristlelike barbs and points arebaffling when one knows how few tools these smiths have. " Excellent woodcarving is found among the Bongo, Ovambo, and Makololo. Pottery andbasketry and careful hut building distinguish many tribes. Cameron (1877)tells of villages so clean, with huts so artistic, that, save in bookknowledge, the people occupied no low plane of civilization. The Mangbettuwork both iron and copper. "The masterpieces of the Monbutto [Mangbettu]smiths are the fine chains worn as ornaments, and which in perfection ofform and fineness compare well with our best steel chains. " Shubotz in1911 called the Mangbettu "a highly cultivated people" in architecture andhandicraft. Barth found copper exported from Central Africa in competitionwith European copper at Kano. 

Nor is the iron industry confined to the Sudan. About the Great Lakes andother parts of Central Africa it is widely distributed. Thornton says, "This iron industry proves that the East Africans stand by no means on solow a plane of culture as many travelers would have us think. It isunnecessary to be reminded what a people without instruction, and with therudest tools to do such skilled work, could do if furnished with steeltools. " Arrows made east of Lake Nyanza were found to be nearly as good asthe best Swedish iron in Birmingham. From Egypt to the Cape, Livingstoneassures us that the mortar and pestle, the long-handled axe, the goatskinbellows, etc. , have the same form, size, etc. , pointing to a migrationsouthwestward. Holub (1879), on the Zambesi, found fine workers in ironand bronze. The Bantu huts contain spoons, wooden dishes, milk pails, calabashes, handmills, and axes. 

Kaffirs and Zulus, in the extreme south, are good smiths, and the lattermelt copper and tin together and draw wire from it, according to Kranz(1880). West of the Great Lakes, Stanley (1878) found wonderful examplesof smith work: figures worked out of brass and much work in copper. Cameron (1878) saw vases made near Lake Tanganyika which reminded him ofthe amphorae in the Villa of Diomedes, Pompeii. Horn (1882) praises tribeshere for iron and copper work. Livingstone (1871) passed thirty smeltinghouses in one journey, and Cameron came across bellows with valves, andtribes who used knives in eating. He found tribes which no Europeans hadever visited, who made ingots of copper in the form of the St. Andrew'scross, which circulated even to the coast. In the southern Congo basiniron and copper are worked; also wood and ivory carving and pottery makingare pursued. In equatorial West Africa, Lenz and Du Chaillu (1861) foundiron workers with charcoal, and also carvers of bone and ivory. Near CapeLopez, Hübbe-Schleiden found tribes making ivory needles inlaid withebony, while the arms and dishes of the Osaka are found among many tribeseven as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Wilson (1856) found natives in WestAfrica who could repair American watches. 

Gold Coast Negroes make gold rings and chains, forming the metal into allkinds of forms. Soyaux says, "The works in relief which natives of LowerGuinea carve with their own knives out of ivory and hippopotamus teeth arereally entitled to be called works of art, and many wooden figures offetishes in the Ethnographical Museum of Berlin show some understanding ofthe proportions of the human body. " Great Bassam is called by Hecquard the"Fatherland of Smiths. " The Mandingo in the northwest are remarkableworkers in iron, silver, and gold, we are told by Mungo Park (1800), whilethere is a mass of testimony as to the work in the north-west of Africa ingold, tin, weaving, and dyeing. Caille found the Negroes in Bambanamanufacturing gunpowder (1824-28), and the Hausa make soap; so, too, Negroes in Uganda and other parts have made guns after seeing Europeanmodels. 

So marked has been the work of Negro artisans and traders in themanufacture and exchange of iron implements that a growing number ofarcheologists are disposed to-day to consider the Negro as the originatorof the art of smelting iron. Gabriel de Mortillet (1883) declared Negroesthe only iron users among primitive people. Some would, therefore, arguethat the Negro learned it from other folk, but Andree declares that theNegro developed his own "Iron Kingdom. " Schweinfurth, Von Luschan, Boaz, and others incline to the belief that the Negroes invented the smelting ofiron and passed it on to the Egyptians and to modern Europe. 

Boaz says, "It seems likely that at a time when the European was stillsatisfied with rude stone tools, the African had invented or adopted theart of smelting iron. Consider for a moment what this invention has meantfor the advance of the human race. As long as the hammer, knife, saw, drill, the spade, and the hoe had to be chipped out of stone, or had to bemade of shell or hard wood, effective industrial work was not impossible, but difficult. A great progress was made when copper found in largenuggets was hammered out into tools and later on shaped by melting, andwhen bronze was introduced; but the true advancement of industrial lifedid not begin until the hard iron was discovered. It seems not unlikelythat the people who made the marvelous discovery of reducing iron ores bysmelting were the African Negroes. Neither ancient Europe, nor ancientwestern Asia, nor ancient China knew the iron, and everything points toits introduction from Africa. At the time of the great African discoveriestoward the end of the past century, the trade of the blacksmith was foundall over Africa, from north to south and from east to west. With hissimple bellows and a charcoal fire he reduced the ore that is found inmany parts of the continent and forged implements of great usefulness andbeauty. "[44]

Torday has argued recently, "I feel convinced by certain arguments thatseem to prove to my satisfaction that we are indebted to the Negro for thevery keystone of our modern civilization and that we owe him the discoveryof iron. That iron could be discovered by accident in Africa seems beyonddoubt: if this is so in other parts of the world, I am not competent tosay. I will only remind you that Schweinfurth and Petherick record thefact that in the northern part of East Africa smelting furnaces are workedwithout artificial air current and, on the other hand, Stuhlmann andKollmann found near Victoria Nyanza that the natives simply mixed powderedore with charcoal and by introduction of air currents obtained the metal. These simple processes make it simple that iron should have beendiscovered in East or Central Africa. No bronze implements have ever beenfound in black Africa; had the Africans received iron from the Egyptians, bronze would have preceded this metal and all traces of it would not havedisappeared. Black Africa was for a long time an exporter of iron, andeven in the twelfth century exports to India and Java are recorded byIdrisi. 

"It is difficult to imagine that Egypt should have obtained it fromEurope where the oldest find (in Hallstadt) cannot be of an earlier periodthan 800 B. C. , or from Asia, where iron is not known before 1000 B. C. , andwhere, in the times of Ashur Nazir Pal, it was still used concurrentlywith bronze, while iron beads have been only recently discovered byMessrs. G. A. Wainwright and Bushe Fox in a predynastic grave, and where apiece of this metal, possibly a tool, was found in the masonry of thegreat pyramid. "[45]

The Negro is a born trader. Lenz says, "our sharpest European merchants, even Jews and Armenians, can learn much of the cunning and trade of theNegroes. " We know that the trade between Central Africa and Egypt was inthe hands of Negroes for thousands of years, and in early days the citiesof the Sudan and North Africa grew rich through Negro trade. 

Leo Africanus, writing of Timbuktu in the sixteenth century, said, "It isa wonder to see what plentie of Merchandize is daily brought hither andhow costly and sumptuous all things be. . . . Here are many shops ofartificers and merchants and especially of such as weave linnen andcloth. "

Long before cotton weaving was a British industry, West Africa and theSudan were supplying a large part of the world with cotton cloth. Evento-day cities like Kuka on the west shore of Lake Chad and Sokota aremanufacturing centers where cotton is spun and woven, skins tanned, implements and iron ornaments made. 

"Travelers, " says Bücher, "have often observed this tribal or localdevelopment of industrial technique. 'The native villages, ' relates aBelgian observer of the Lower Congo, 'are often situated in groups. Theiractivities are based upon reciprocality, and they are to a certain extentthe complements of one another. Each group has its more or less stronglydefined specialty. One carries on fishing; another produces palm wine; athird devotes itself to trade and is broker for the others, supplying thecommunity with all products from outside; another has reserved to itselfwork in iron and copper, making weapons for war and hunting, variousutensils, etc. None may, however, pass beyond the sphere of its ownspecialty without exposing itself to the risk of being universallyproscribed. '"

From the Loango Coast, Bastian tells of a great number of centers forspecial products of domestic industry. "Loango excels in mats and fishingbaskets, while the carving of elephants' tusks is specially followed inChilungo. The so-called Mafooka hats with raised patterns are drawnchiefly from the bordering country of Kakongo and Mayyume. In Bakunya aremade potter's wares, which are in great demand; in Basanza, excellentswords; in Basundi, especially beautiful ornamented copper rings; on theCongo, clever wood and tablet carvings; in Loango, ornamented clothes andintricately designed mats; in Mayumbe, clothing of finely woven mat-work;in Kakongo, embroidered hats and also burnt clay pitchers; and among theBayakas and Mantetjes, stuffs of woven grass. "[46]

A native Negro student tells of the development of trade among theAshanti. "It was a part of the state system of Ashanti to encourage trade. The king once in every forty days, at the Adai custom, distributed among anumber of chiefs various sums of gold dust with a charge to turn the sameto good account. These chiefs then sent down to the coast caravans oftradesmen, some of whom would be their slaves, sometimes some two or threehundred strong, to barter ivory for European goods, or buy such goods withgold dust, which the king obtained from the royal alluvial workings. Downto 1873 a constant stream of Ashanti traders might be seen daily wendingtheir way to the merchants of the coast and back again, yielding morecertain wealth and prosperity to the merchants of the Gold Coast and GreatBritain than may be expected for some time yet to come from the miningindustry and railway development put together. The trade chiefs would, indue time, render a faithful account to the king's stewards, being allowedto retain a fair portion of the profit. In the king's household, too, hewould have special men who directly traded for him. Important chiefscarried on the same system of trading with the coast as did the king. Thusevery member of the state, from the king downward, took an active interestin the promotion of trade and in the keeping open of trade routes into theinterior. "[47]

The trade thus encouraged and carried on in various parts of West Africareached wide areas. From the Fish River to Kuka, and from Lagos toZanzibar, the markets have become great centers of trade, the leadingimplement to civilization. Permanent markets are found in places likeUjiji and Nyangwe, where everything can be bought and sold fromearthenware to wives; from the one to three thousand traders flocked here. 

"How like is the market traffic, with all its uproar and sound of humanvoices, to one of our own markets! There is the same rivalry in praisingthe goods, the violent, brisk movements, the expressive gesture, theinquiring, searching glance, the changing looks of depreciation ortriumph, of apprehension, delight, approbation. So says Stanley. Tradecustoms are not everywhere alike. If when negotiating with the Bangalas ofAngola you do not quickly give them what they want, they go away and donot come back. Then perhaps they try to get possession of the covetedobject by means of theft. It is otherwise with the Songos and Kiokos, wholet you deal with them in the usual way. To buy even a small article youmust go to the market; people avoid trading anywhere else. If a man saysto another; 'Sell me this hen' or 'that fruit, ' the answer as a rule willbe, 'Come to the market place. ' The crowd gives confidence to individuals, and the inviolability of the visitor to the market, and of the marketitself, looks like an idea of justice consecrated by long practice. Doesnot this remind us of the old Germanic 'market place'?"[48]

Turning now to Negro family and social life we find, as among allprimitive peoples, polygamy and marriage by actual or simulated purchase. Out of the family develops the typical African village organization, whichis thus described in Ashanti by a native Gold Coast writer: "The headman, as his name implies, is the head of a village community, a ward in atownship, or of a family. His position is important, inasmuch as he hasdirectly to deal with the composite elements of the general bulk of thepeople. 

"It is the duty of the head of a family to bring up the members thereof inthe way they should go; and by 'family' you must understand the entirelineal descendants of a materfamilias, if I may coin a convenient phrase. It is expected of him by the state to bring up his charge in the knowledgeof matters political and traditional. It is his work to train up his wardsin the ways of loyalty and obedience to the powers that be. He is heldresponsible for the freaks of recalcitrant members of his family, and heis looked to to keep them within bounds and to insist upon conformity oftheir party with the customs, laws, and traditional observances of thecommunity. In early times he could send off to exile by sale a troublesomerelative who would not observe the laws of the community. 

"It is a difficult task that he is set to, but in this matter he hasall-powerful helpers in the female members of the family, who will beeither the aunts, or the sisters, or the cousins, or the nieces of theheadman; and as their interests are identical with his in everyparticular, the good women spontaneously train up their children toimplicit obedience to the headman, whose rule in the family thus becomes asimple and an easy matter. 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules theworld. ' What a power for good in the native state system would the mothersof the Gold Coast and Ashanti become by judicious training upon nativelines!

"The headman is par excellence the judge of his family or ward. Not onlyis he called upon to settle domestic squabbles, but frequently he sitsjudge over more serious matters arising between one member of the ward andanother; and where he is a man of ability and influence, men from otherwards bring him their disputes to settle. When he so settles disputes, heis entitled to a hearing fee, which, however, is not so much as would bepayable in the regular court of the king or chief. 

"The headman is naturally an important member of his company and often isa captain thereof. When he combines the two offices of headman andcaptain, he renders to the community a very important service. For intimes of war, where the members of the ward would not serve cordiallyunder a stranger, they would in all cases face any danger with their ownkinsman as their leader. The headman is always succeeded by his uterinebrother, cousin, or nephew--the line of succession, that is to say, following the customary law. "[49]

We may contrast this picture with the more warlike Bantus of SoutheastAfrica. Each tribe lived by itself in a town with from five to fifteenthousand inhabitants, surrounded by gardens of millet, beans, andwatermelon. Beyond these roamed their cattle, sheep, and goats. Theirreligion was ancestor worship with sacrifice to spirits and the dead, andsome of the tribes made mummies of the corpses and clothed them forburial. They wove cloth of cotton and bark, they carved wood and builtwalls of unhewn stone. They had a standing military organization, and thetribes had their various totems, so that they were known as the Men ofIron, the Men of the Sun, the Men of the Serpents, Sons of the CornCleaners, and the like. Their system of common law was well conceived andthere were organized tribunals of justice. In difficult cases precedentswere sought and learned antiquaries consulted. At the age of fifteen orsixteen the boys were circumcised and formed into guilds. The land wasowned by the tribe and apportioned to the chief by each family, and themain wealth of the tribe was in its cattle. 

In general, among the African clans the idea of private property was butimperfectly developed and never included land. The main mass of visiblewealth belonged to the family and clan rather than to the individual; onlyin the matter of weapons and ornaments was exclusive private ownershipgenerally recognized. 

The government, vested in fathers and chiefs, varied in different tribesfrom absolute despotisms to limited monarchies, almost republican. Viewingthe Basuto National Assembly in South Africa, Lord Bryce recently wrote, "The resemblance to the primary assemblies of the early peoples of Europeis close enough to add another to the arguments which discredit the theorythat there is any such thing as an Aryan type of institutions. "[50]

While women are sold into marriage throughout Africa, nevertheless theirstatus is far removed from slavery. In the first place the tracing ofrelationships through the female line, which is all but universal inAfrica, gives the mother great influence. Parental affection is verystrong, and throughout Negro Africa the mother is the most influentialcouncilor, even in cases of tyrants like Chaka or Mutesa. 

"No mother can love more tenderly or be more deeply beloved than the Negromother. Robin tells of a slave in Martinique who, with his savings, freedhis mother instead of himself. 'Everywhere in Africa, ' writes Mungo Park, 'I have noticed that no greater affront can be offered a Negro thaninsulting his mother. 'Strike me, ' cried a Mandingo to his enemy, 'butrevile not my mother!' . . . The Herero swears 'By my mother's tears!'. . TheAngola Negroes have a saying, 'As a mist lingers on the swamps, so lingersthe love of father and mother. '"[51]

Black queens have often ruled African tribes. Among the Ba-Lolo, we aretold, women take part in public assemblies where all-important questionsare discussed. The system of educating children among such tribes as theYoruba is worthy of emulation by many more civilized peoples. 

Close knit with the family and social organization comes the religiouslife of the Negro. The religion of Africa is the universal animism orfetishism of primitive peoples, rising to polytheism and approachingmonotheism chiefly, but not wholly, as a result of Christian and Islamicmissions. Of fetishism there is much misapprehension. It is not meresenseless degradation. It is a philosophy of life. Among primitive Negroesthere can be, as Miss Kingsley reminds us, no such divorce of religionfrom practical life as is common in civilized lands. Religion is life, andfetish an expression of the practical recognition of dominant forces inwhich the Negro lives. To him all the world is spirit. Miss Kingsley says, "If you want, for example, to understand the position of man in natureaccording to fetish, there is, as far as I know, no clearer statement ofit made than is made by Goethe in his superb 'Prometheus. '"[52] Fetish isa severely logical way of accounting for the world in terms of good andmalignant spirits. 

"It is this power of being able logically to account for everything thatis, I believe, at the back of the tremendous permanency of fetish inAfrica, and the cause of many of the relapses into it by Africansconverted to other religions; it is also the explanation of the fact thatwhite men who live in the districts where death and danger are everydayaffairs, under a grim pall of boredom, are liable to believe in fetish, though ashamed of so doing. For the African, whose mind has been soaked infetish during his early and most impressionable years, the voice of fetishis almost irresistible when affliction comes to him. "[53]

Ellis tells us of the spirit belief of the Ewe people, who believe thatmen and all nature have the indwelling "Kra, " which is immortal; that theman himself after death may exist as a ghost, which is often conceived ofas departed from the "Kra, " a shadowy continuing of the man. Bryce, speaking of the Kaffirs of South Africa, says, "To the Kaffirs, as to themost savage races, the world was full of spirits--spirits of the rivers, the mountains, and the woods. Most important were the ghosts of the dead, who had power to injure or help the living, and who were, therefore, propitiated by offerings at stated periods, as well as on occasions whentheir aid was especially desired. This kind of worship, the worship oncemost generally diffused throughout the world, and which held its groundamong the Greeks and Italians in the most flourishing period of ancientcivilization, as it does in China and Japan to-day, was, and is, virtuallythe religion of the Kaffirs. "[54]

African religion does not, however, stop with fetish, but, as in the caseof other peoples, tends toward polytheism and monotheism. Among theYoruba, for instance, Frobenius shows that religion and city-state go handin hand. 

"The first experienced glance will here detect the fact that this nationoriginally possessed a clear and definite organization so duly ordered andso logical that we but seldom meet with its like among all the peoples ofthe earth. And the basic idea of every clan's progeniture is a powerfulGod; the legitimate order in which the descendants of a particular clanunite in marriage to found new families, the essential origin of everynew-born babe's descent in the founder of its race and its considerationas a part of the God in Chief; the security with which the newly weddedwife not only may, but should, minister to her own God in an unfamiliarhome. "[55]

The Yoruba have a legend of a dying divinity. "This people . . . Giveevidence of a generalized system; a theocratic scheme, a well-conceivedperceptible organization, reared in rhythmically proportioned manner. "

Miss Kingsley says, "The African has a great Over God. "[56] Nassau, themissionary, declares, "After more than forty years' residence among thesetribes, fluently using their language, conversant with their customs, dwelling intimately in their huts, associating with them in the variousrelations of teacher, pastor, friend, master, fellow-traveler, and guest, and in my special office as missionary, searching after their religiousthought (and therefore being allowed a deeper entrance into the arcana oftheir soul than would be accorded to a passing explorer), I am ableunhesitatingly to say that among all the multitude of degraded ones withwhom I have met, I have seen or heard of none whose religious thought wasonly a superstition. 

"Standing in the village street, surrounded by a company whom their chiefhas courteously summoned at my request, when I say to him, 'I have come tospeak to your people, ' I do not need to begin by telling them that thereis a God. Looking on that motley assemblage of villagers, --the bold, gauntcannibal with his armament of gun, spear, and dagger; the artisan withrude adze in hand, or hands soiled at the antique bellows of the villagesmithy; women who have hasted from their kitchen fire with hands whitewith the manioc dough or still grasping the partly scaled fish; andchildren checked in their play with tiny bow and arrow or startled fromtheir dusty street pursuit of dog or goat, --I have yet to be asked, 'Whois God?'"[57]

The basis of Egyptian religion was "of a purely Nigritian character, "[58]and in its developed form Sudanese tribal gods were invoked and veneratedby the priests. In Upper Egypt, near the confines of Ethiopia, paintingsrepeatedly represent black priests conferring on red Egyptian priests theinstruments and symbols of priesthood. In the Sudan to-day Frobeniusdistinguishes four principal religions: first, earthly ancestor worship;next, the social cosmogony of the Atlantic races; third, the religion ofthe Bori, and fourth, Islam. The Bori religion spreads from Nubia as faras the Hausa, and from Lake Chad in the Niger as far as the Yoruba. It isthe religion of possession and has been connected by some with Asiaticinfluences. 

From without have come two great religious influences, Islam andChristianity. Islam came by conquest, trade, and proselytism. As aconqueror it reached Egypt in the seventh century and had by the end ofthe fourteenth century firm footing in the Egyptian Sudan. It overran thecentral Sudan by the close of the seventeenth century, and at thebeginning of the nineteenth century had swept over Senegambia and thewhole valley of the Niger down to the Gulf of Guinea. On the east Islamapproached as a trader in the eighth century; it spread into Somalilandand overran Nubia in the fourteenth century. To-day Islam dominates Africanorth of ten degrees north latitude and is strong between five and tendegrees north latitude. In the east it reaches below the Victoria Nyanza. 

Christianity early entered Africa; indeed, as Mommsen says, "It wasthrough Africa that Christianity became the religion of the world. Tertullian and Cyprian were from Carthage, Arnobius from Sicca Veneria, Lactantius, and probably in like manner Minucius Felix, in spite of theirLatin names, were natives of Africa, and not less so Augustine. In Africathe Church found its most zealous confessors of the faith and its mostgifted defenders. "[59]

The Africa referred to here, however, was not Negroland, but Africa abovethe desert, where Negro blood was represented in the ancient Mediterraneanrace and by intercourse across the desert. On the other hand Christianitywas early represented in the valley of the Nile under "the most holy popeand patriarch of the great city of Alexandria and of all of the land ofEgypt, of Jerusalem, the holy city, of Nubia, Abyssinia, and Pentapolis, and all the preaching of St. Mark. " This patriarchate had a hundredbishoprics in the fourth century and included thousands of blackChristians. Through it the Cross preceded the Crescent in some of theremotest parts of black Africa. 

All these beginnings were gradually overthrown by Islam except among theCopts in Egypt, and in Abyssinia. The Portuguese in the sixteenth centurybegan to replant the Christian religion and for a while had great success, both on the east and west coasts. Roman Catholic enterprise halted in theeighteenth century and the Protestants began. To-day the west coast isstudded with English and German missions, South Africa is largelyChristian through French and English influence, and the region about theGreat Lakes is becoming christianized. The Roman Catholics have latelyincreased their activities, and above all the Negroes of America haveentered with their own churches and with the curiously significant"Ethiopian" movement. 

Coming now to other spiritual aspects of African culture, we can speak atpresent only in a fragmentary way. Roughly speaking, Africa can be dividedinto two language zones: north of the fifth degree of north latitude isthe zone of diversity, with at least a hundred groups of widely divergentlanguages; south of the line there is one minor language(Bushman-Hottentot), spoken by less than fifty thousand people, andelsewhere the predominant Bantu tongue with its various dialects, spokenby at least fifty million. The Bantu tongue, which thus rules all Central, West, and South Africa, is an agglutinative tongue which makes especialuse of prefixes. The hundreds of Negro tongues or dialects in the northrepresent most probably the result of war and migration and the breakingup of ancient centers of culture. In Abyssinia and the great horn of EastAfrica the influence of Semitic tongues is noted. Despite much effort onthe part of students, it has been impossible to show any Asiatic originfor the Egyptian language. As Sergi maintains, "everything favors anAfrican origin. "[60] The most brilliant suggestion of modern days linkstogether the Egyptian of North Africa and the Hottentot and Bushmentongues of South Africa. 

Language was reduced to writing among the Egyptians and Ethiopians and tosome extent elsewhere in Africa. Over 100 manuscripts of Ethiopian andEthiopic-Arabian literature are extant, including a version of the Bibleand historical chronicles. The Arabic was used as the written tongue ofthe Sudan, and Negroland has given us in this tongue many chronicles andother works of black authors. The greatest of these, the Epic of the Sudan(Tarikh-es-Soudan), deserves to be placed among the classics of allliterature. In other parts of Africa there was no written language, butthere was, on the other hand, an unusual perfection of oral traditionthrough bards, and extraordinary efficiency in telegraphy by drum andhorn. 

The folklore and proverbs of the African tribes are exceedingly rich. Someof these have been made familiar to English writers through the work of"Uncle Remus. " Others have been collected by Johnston, Ellis, and Theal. 

A black bard of our own day has described the onslaught of the Matabili inpoetry of singular force and beauty:

 They saw the clouds ascend from the plains: It was the smoke of burning towns. The confusion of the whirlwindWas in the heart of the great chief of the blue-colored cattle. The shout was raised, "They are friends!" But they shouted again, "They are foes!"Till their near approach proclaimed them Matabili. The men seized their arms, And rushed out as if to chase the antelope. The onset was as the voice of lightning, And their javelins as the shaking of the forest in the autumn storm. [61]

There can be no doubt of the Negro's deep and delicate sense of beauty inform, color, and sound. Soyaux says of African industry, "Whoever deniesto them independent invention and individual taste in their work eithershuts his eyes intentionally before perfectly evident facts, or lack ofknowledge renders him an incompetent judge. "[62] M. Rutot had lately toldus how the Negro race brought art and sculpture to pre-historic Europe. The bones of the European Negroids are almost without exception found incompany with drawings and sculpture in high and low relief; some of theirsculptures, like the Wellendorff "Venus, " are unusually well finished forprimitive man. So, too, the painting and carving of the Bushmen and theirforerunners in South Africa has drawn the admiration of students. TheNegro has been prolific in the invention of musical instruments and hasgiven a new and original music to the western world. 

Schweinfurth, who has preserved for us much of the industrial art of theNegroes, speaks of their delight in the production of works of art for theembellishment and convenience of life. Frobenius expressed hisastonishment at the originality of the African in the Yoruba temple whichhe visited. "The lofty veranda was divided from the passageway byfantastically carved and colored pillars. On the pillars were sculpturedknights, men climbing trees, women, gods, and mythical beings. The darkchamber lying beyond showed a splendid red room with stone hatchets, wooden figures, cowry beads, and jars. The whole picture, the columnscarved in colors in front of the colored altar, the old man sitting in thecircle of those who reverenced him, the open scaffolding of ninetyrafters, made a magnificent impression. "[63]

The Germans have found, in Kamarun, towns built, castellated, andfortified in a manner that reminds one of the prehistoric cities of Crete. The buildings and fortifications of Zymbabwe have already been describedand something has been said of the art of Benin, with its brass and bronzeand ivory. All the work of Benin in bronze and brass was executed bycasting, and by methods so complicated that it would be no easy task for amodern European craftsman to imitate them. 

Perhaps no race has shown in its earlier development a more magnificentart impulse than the Negro, and the student must not forget how far Negrogenius entered into the art in the valley of the Nile from Meroe andNepata down to the great temples of Egypt. 

Frobenius has recently directed the world's attention to art in WestAfrica. Quartz and granite he found treated with great dexterity. But moremagnificent than the stone monument is the proof that at some remote eraglass was made and molded in Yorubaland and that the people here werebrilliant in the production of terra-cotta images. The great mass ofpotsherds, lumps of glass, heaps of slag, etc. , "proves, at all events, that the glass industry flourished in this locality in ages past. It isplain that the glass beads found to have been so very common in Africawere not only not imported, but were actually manufactured in greatquantities at home. "

The terra-cotta pieces are "remains of another ancient and fine type ofart" and were "eloquent of a symmetry, a vitality, a delicacy of form, andpractically a reminiscence of the ancient Greeks. " The antique bronze headFrobenius describes as "a head of marvelous beauty, wonderfully cast, " and"almost equal in beauty and, at least, no less noble in form, and asancient as the terra-cotta heads. "[64]

In a park of monuments Frobenius saw the celebrated forge and hammer: amighty mass of iron, like a falling drop in shape, and a block of quartzfashioned like a drum. Frobenius thinks these were relics dating from pastages of culture, when the manipulation of quartz and granite wasthoroughly understood and when iron manipulation gave evidence of a skillnot met with to-day. 

Even when we contemplate such revolting survivals of savagery ascannibalism we cannot jump too quickly at conclusions. Cannibalism isspread over many parts of Negro Africa, yet the very tribes who practicecannibalism show often other traits of industry and power. "These cannibalBassonga were, according to the types we met with, one of those rarenations of the African interior which can be classed with the mostesthetic and skilled, most discreet and intelligent of all those generallyknown to us as the so-called natural races. Before the Arabic and Europeaninvasion they did not dwell in 'hamlets, ' but in towns with twenty orthirty thousand inhabitants, in towns whose highways were shaded byavenues of splendid palms planted at regular intervals and laid out withthe symmetry of colonnades. Their pottery would be fertile in suggestionto every art craftsman in Europe. Their weapons of iron were so perfectlyfashioned that no industrial art from abroad could improve upon theirworkmanship. The iron blades were cunningly ornamented with damascenedcopper, and the hilts artistically inlaid with the same metal. Moreover, they were most industrious and capable husbandmen, whose careful tillageof the suburbs made them able competitors of any gardener in Europe. Theirsexual and parental relations evidenced an amount of tact and delicacy offeelings unsurpassed among ourselves, either in the simplicity of thecountry or the refinements of the town. Originally their political andmunicipal system was organized on the lines of a representative republic. True, it is on record that these well-governed towns often waged aninternecine warfare; but in spite of this it had been their invariablecustom from time immemorial, even in times of strife, to keep the traderoutes open and to allow their own and foreign merchants to go their waysunharmed. And the commerce of these nations ebbed and flowed along a roadof unknown age, running from Itimbiri to Batubenge, about six hundredmiles in length. This highway was destroyed by the 'missionaries ofcivilization' from Arabia only toward the close of the eighteenth century. But even in my own time there were still smiths who knew the names ofplaces along that wonderful trade route driven through the heart of the'impenetrable forests of the Congo. ' For every scrap of imported iron wascarried over it. "[65]

In disposition the Negro is among the most lovable of men. Practically allthe great travelers who have spent any considerable time in Africa testifyto this and pay deep tribute to the kindness with which they werereceived. One has but to remember the classic story of Mungo Park, thestrong expressions of Livingstone, the words of Stanley and hundreds ofothers to realize this. 

Ceremony and courtesy mark Negro life. Livingstone again and again remindsus of "true African dignity. " "When Ilifian men or women salute eachother, be it with a plain and easy curtsey (which is here the simplestform adopted), or kneeling down, or throwing oneself upon the ground, orkissing the dust with one's forehead, no matter which, there is yet adeliberateness, a majesty, a dignity, a devoted earnestness in the mannerof its doing, which brings to light with every gesture, with every fold ofclothing, the deep significance and essential import of every singleaction. Everyone may, without too greatly straining his attention, noticethe very striking precision and weight with which the upper and lowernative classes observe these niceties of intercourse. "[66]

All this does not mean that the African Negro is not human with theall-too-well-known foibles of humanity. Primitive life among them is, after all, as bare and cruel as among primitive Germans or Chinese, but itis not more so, and the more we study the Negro the more we realize thatwe are dealing with a normal human stock which under reasonable conditionshas developed and will develop in the same lines as other men. Why is it, then, that so much of misinformation and contempt is widespread concerningAfrica and its people, not simply among the unthinking mass, but among menof education and knowledge?

One reason lies undoubtedly in the connotation of the term "Negro. " InNorth America a Negro may be seven-eights white, since the term refers toany person of Negro descent. If we use the term in the same senseconcerning the inhabitants of the rest of world, we may say truthfullythat Negroes have been among the leaders of civilization in every age ofthe world's history from ancient Babylon to modern America; that they havecontributed wonderful gifts in art, industry, political organization, andreligion, and that they are doing the same to-day in all parts of theworld. 

In sharp contrast to this usage the term "Negro" in Africa has been moreand more restricted until some scientists, late in the last century, declared that the great mass of the black and brown people of Africa werenot Negroes at all, and that the "real" Negro dwells in a small spacebetween the Niger and the Senegal. Ratzel says, "If we ask what justifiesso narrow a limitation, we find that the hideous Negro type, which thefancy of observers once saw all over Africa, but which, as Livingstonesays, is really to be seen only as a sign in front of tobacco shops, hason closer inspection evaporated from all parts of Africa, to settle no oneknows how in just this region. If we understand that an extreme case mayhave been taken for the genuine and pure form, even so we do notcomprehend the ground of its geographical limitation and location; forwherever dark, woolly-haired men dwell, this ugly type also crops up. Weare here in the presence of a refinement of science which to anunprejudiced eye will hardly hold water. "[67]

In this restricted sense the Negro has no history, culture, or ability, for the simple fact that such human beings as have history and evidenceculture and ability are not Negroes! Between these two extremedefinitions, with unconscious adroitness, the most extraordinary andcontradictory conclusions have been reached. 

Let it therefore be said, once for all, that racial inferiority is not thecause of anti-Negro prejudice. Boaz, the anthropologist, says, "Anunbiased estimate of the anthropological evidence so far brought forwarddoes not permit us to countenance the belief in a racial inferiority whichwould unfit an individual of the Negro race to take his part in moderncivilization. We do not know of any demand made on the human body or mindin modern life that anatomical or ethnological evidence would prove to bebeyond the powers of the Negro. "[68]

"We have every reason to suppose that all races are capable, under properguidance, of being fitted into the complex scheme of our moderncivilization, and the policy of artificially excluding them from itsbenefits is as unjustifiable scientifically as it is ethicallyabhorrent. "[69] What is, then, this so-called "instinctive" modernprejudice against black folk?

Lord Bryce says of the intermingling of blacks and whites in SouthAmerica, "The ease with which the Spaniards have intermingled by marriagewith the Indian tribes--and the Portuguese have done the like, not onlywith the Indians, but with the more physically dissimilar Negroes--showsthat race repugnance is no such constant and permanent factor in humanaffairs as members of the Teutonic peoples are apt to assume. Instead ofbeing, as we Teutons suppose, the rule in the matter, we are rather theexception, for in the ancient world there seems to have been little racerepulsion. "

In nearly every age and land men of Negro descent have distinguishedthemselves. In literature there is Terence in Rome, Nosseyeb and Antar inArabia, Es-Sa'di in the Sudan, Pushkin in Russia, Dumas in France, AlKanemi in Spain, Heredia in the West Indies, and Dunbar in the UnitedStates, not to mention the alleged Negro strain in Æsop and RobertBrowning. As rulers and warriors we remember such Negroes as QueenNefertari and Amenhotep III among many others in Egypt; Candace andErgamenes in Ethiopia; Mansa Musa, Sonni Ali, and Mohammed Askai in theSudan; Diaz in Brazil, Toussaint L'Ouverture in Hayti, Hannivalov inRussia, Sakanouye Tamuramaro in Japan, the elder Dumas in France, Cazembeand Chaka among the Bantu, and Menelik, of Abyssinia; the numberless blackleaders of India, and the mulatto strain of Alexander Hamilton. In musicand art we recall Bridgewater, the friend of Beethoven, and theunexplained complexion of Beethoven's own father; Coleridge-Taylor inEngland, Tanner in America, Gomez in Spain; Ira Aldridge, the actor, andJohnson, Cook, and Burleigh, who are making the new American syncopatedmusic. In the Church we know that Negro blood coursed in the veins of manyof the Catholic African fathers, if not in certain of the popes; and therewere in modern days Benoit of Palermo, St. Benedict, Bishop Crowther, theMahdi who drove England from the Sudan, and Americans like Allen, LotCarey, and Alexander Crummell. In science, discovery, and invention theNegroes claim Lislet Geoffroy of the French Academy, Latino and Amo, wellknown in European university circles; and in America the explorersDorantes and Henson; Banneker, the almanac maker; Wood, the telephoneimprover; McCoy, inventor of modern lubrication; Matseliger, whorevolutionized shoemaking. Here are names representing all degrees ofgenius and talent from the mediocre to the highest, but they are stronghuman testimony to the ability of this race. 

We must, then, look for the origin of modern color prejudice not tophysical or cultural causes, but to historic facts. And we shall find theanswer in modern Negro slavery and the slave trade. 

FOOTNOTES:

[35] "Some authors write that the Ethiopians paint the devil white, indisdain of our complexions. "--Ludolf: _History of Ethiopia_, p. 72. 

[36] Ripley: _Races of Europe_, pp. 58, 62. 

[37] Denniker: _Races of Men_, p. 63. 

[38] G. Finot: _Race Prejudice_. F. Herz: _Moderne Rassentheorien_. 

[39] Ratzel: quoted in Spiller: _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 31. 

[40] Spiller: _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 35. 

[41] Ratzel: _History of Mankind_, II, 380 ff. 

[42] _Industrial Evolution_, p. 47. 

[43] These and other references in this chapter are from Schneider:Culturfähigkeit des Negers. 

[44] Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19. 

[45] _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute_, XLIII, 414, 415. Cf. Also _The Crisis_, Vol. IX, p. 234. 

[46] Bücher: _Industrial Revolution_ (tr. By Wickett), pp. 57-58. 

[47] Hayford: _Native Institutions_, pp. 95-96. 

[48] Ratzel, II, 376. 

[49] Hayford: _Native Institutions_, pp. 76 ff. 

[50] _Impressions of South Africa_, 3d ed. , p. 352. 

[51] William Schneider. 

[52] _West African Studies_, Chap. V. 

[53] _Op. Cit. _

[54] _Impressions of South Africa. _

[55] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I. 

[56] _West African Studies_, p. 107. 

[57] Nassau: _Fetishism in West Africa_, p. 36. 

[58] _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th ed. , XX, 362. 

[59] _The African Provinces_, II, 345. 

[60] _Mediterranean Race_, p. 10. 

[61] Stowe: _Native Races_, etc. , pp. 553-554. 

[62] Quoted in Schneider. 

[63] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I, Chap. XIV. 

[64] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, Vol. I. 

[65] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, I, 14-15. 

[66] Frobenius: _Voice of Africa_, I, 272. 

[67] Ratzel: _History of Mankind_, II, 313. 

[68] Atlanta University Publications, No. 11. 

[69] Robert Lowie in the _New Review_, Sept. , 1914. 

IX THE TRADE IN MEN

Color was never a badge of slavery in the ancient or medieval world, norhas it been in the modern world outside of Christian states. Homer singsof a black man, a "reverend herald"

 Of visage solemn, sad, but sable hue, Short, woolly curls, o'erfleeced his bending head, . . . Eurybiates, in whose large soul alone, Ulysses viewed an image of his own. 

Greece and Rome had their chief supplies of slaves from Europe and Asia. Egypt enslaved races of all colors, and if there were more blacks thanothers among her slaves, there were also more blacks among her nobles andPharaohs, and both facts are explained by her racial origin andgeographical position. The fall of Rome led to a cessation of the slavetrade, but after a long interval came the white slave trade of theSaracens and Moors, and finally the modern trade in Negroes. 

Slavery as it exists universally among primitive people is a systemwhereby captives in war are put to tasks about the homes and in thefields, thus releasing the warriors for systematic fighting and the womenfor leisure. Such slavery has been common among all peoples and waswide-spread in Africa. The relative number of African slaves under theseconditions was small and the labor not hard; they were members of thefamily and might and did often rise to high position in the tribe. 

Remembering that in the fifteenth century there was no great disparitybetween the civilization of Negroland and that of Europe, what made thestriking difference in subsequent development? European civilization, cutoff by physical barriers from further incursions of barbaric races, settled more and more to systematic industry and to the domination of onereligion; African culture and industries were threatened by powerfulbarbarians from the west and central regions of the continent and by theMoors in the north, and Islam had only partially converted the leadingpeoples. 

When, therefore, a demand for workmen arose in America, Europeanexportation was limited by religious ties and economic stability. Africanexportation was encouraged not simply by the Christian attitude towardheathen, but also by the Moslem enmity toward the unconverted Negroes. Twogreat modern religions, therefore, agreed at least in the policy ofenslaving heathen blacks, while the overthrow of black Askias by the Moorsat Tenkadibou brought that economic chaos among the advanced Negro peoplesand movement among the more barbarous tribes which proved of primeadvantage to the development of a systematic trade in men. 

The modern slave trade began with the Mohammedan conquests in Africa, whenheathen Negroes were seized to supply the harems, and as soldiers andservants. They were bought from the masters and seized in war, until thegrowing wealth and luxury of the conquerors demanded larger numbers. ThenNegroes from the Egyptian Sudan, Abyssinia, and Zanzibar began to passinto Arabia, Persia, and India in increased numbers. As Negro kingdoms andtribes rose to power they found the slave trade lucrative and natural, since the raids in which slaves were captured were ordinary inter-tribalwars. It was not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that thedemand for slaves in Christian lands made slaves the object, and not theincident, of African wars. 

In Mohammedan countries there were gleams of hope in slavery. In fictionand in truth the black slave had a chance. Once converted to Islam, hebecame a brother to the best, and the brotherhood of the faith was not thesort of idle lie that Christian slave masters made it. In Arabia blackleaders arose like Antar; in India black slaves carved out principalitieswhere their descendants still rule. 

Some Negro slaves were brought to Europe by the Spaniards in thefourteenth century, and a small trade was continued by the Portuguese, whoconquered territory from the "tawny" Moors of North Africa in the earlyfifteenth century. Later, after their severe repulse at Al-Kasr-Al-Kabu, the Portuguese began to creep down the west coast in quest of trade. Theyreached the River of Gold in 1441, and their story is that their leaderseized certain free Moors and the next year exchanged them for ten blackslaves, a target of hide, ostrich eggs, and some gold dust. The trade waseasily justified on the ground that the Moors were Mohammedans and refusedto be converted to Christianity, while heathen Negroes would be bettersubjects for conversion and stronger laborers. In the next few years asmall number of Negroes continued to be imported into Spain and Portugalas servants. We find, for instance, in 1474, that Negro slaves were commonin Seville. There is a letter from Ferdinand and Isabella in the year 1474to a celebrated Negro, Juan de Valladolid, commonly called the "NegroCount" (El Conde Negro), nominating him to the office of "mayoral of theNegroes" in Seville. The slaves were apparently treated kindly, allowed tokeep their own dances and festivals, and to have their own chief, whorepresented them in the courts, as against their own masters, and settledtheir private quarrels. 

Between 1455 and 1492 little mention is made of slaves in the trade withAfrica. Columbus is said to have suggested Negroes for America, butFerdinand and Isabella refused. Nevertheless, by 1501, we have the firstincidental mention of Negroes going to America in a declaration that Negroslaves "born in the power of Christians were to be allowed to pass to theIndies, and the officers of the royal revenue were to receive the money tobe paid for their permits. "

About 1501 Ovando, Governor of Spanish America, was objecting to Negroslaves and "solicited that no Negro slaves should be sent to Hispaniola, for they fled amongst the Indians and taught them bad customs, and nevercould be captured. " Nevertheless a letter from the king to Ovando, datedSegovia, the fifteenth of September, 1505, says, "I will send more Negroslaves as you request; I think there may be a hundred. At each time atrustworthy person will go with them who may have some share in the goldthey may collect and may promise them ease if they work well. "[70] Thereis a record of a hundred slaves being sent out this very year, and DiegoColumbus was notified of fifty to be sent from Seville for the mines in1510. 

After this time frequent notices show that Negroes were common in the newworld. [71] When Pizarro, for instance, had been slain in Peru, his bodywas dragged to the cathedral by two Negroes. After the battle of Anaquitothe head of the viceroy was cut off by a Negro, and during the greatearthquake in Guatemala a most remarkable figure was a gigantic Negro seenin various parts of the city. Nunez had thirty Negroes with him on the topof the Sierras, and there was rumor of an aboriginal tribe of Negroes inSouth America. One of the last acts of King Ferdinand was to urge that nomore Negroes be sent to the West Indies, but under Charles V, Bishop LasCasas drew up a plan of assisted migration to America and asked in 1517the right for immigrants to import twelve Negro slaves, in return forwhich the Indians were to be freed. 

Las Casas, writing in his old age, owns his error: "This advice thatlicense should be given to bring Negro slaves to these lands, the ClerigoCasas first gave, not considering the injustice with which the Portuguesetake them and make them slaves; which advice, after he had apprehended thenature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in the world. For he always held that they had been made slaves unjustly andtyrannically; for the same reason holds good of them as of theIndians[72]. "

As soon as the plan was broached a Savoyard, Lorens de Gomenot, Governorof Bresa, obtained a monopoly of this proposed trade and shrewdly sold itto the Genoese for twenty-five thousand ducats. Other monopolies weregranted in 1523, 1527, and 1528[73]. Thus the American trade becameestablished and gradually grew, passing successively into the hands of thePortuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English. 

At first the trade was of the same kind and volume as that already passingnorthward over the desert routes. Soon, however, the American tradedeveloped. A strong, unchecked demand for brute labor in the West Indiesand on the continent of America grew until it culminated in the eighteenthcentury, when Negro slaves were crossing the Atlantic at the rate of fiftyto one hundred thousand a year. This called for slave raiding on a scalethat drew upon every part of Africa--upon the west coast, the western andEgyptian Sudan, the valley of the Congo, Abyssinia, the lake regions, theeast coast, and Madagascar. Not simply the degraded and weaker types ofNegroes were seized, but the strong Bantu, the Mandingo and Songhay, theNubian and Nile Negroes, the Fula, and even the Asiatic Malay, wererepresented in the raids. 

There was thus begun in modern days a new slavery and slave trade. It wasdifferent from that of the past, because more and more it came in time tobe founded on racial caste, and this caste was made the foundation of anew industrial system. For four hundred years, from 1450 to 1850, Europeancivilization carried on a systematic trade in human beings of suchtremendous proportions that the physical, economic, and moral effects arestill plainly to be remarked throughout the world. To this must be addedthe large slave trade of Mussulman lands, which began with the seventhcentury and raged almost unchecked until the end of the nineteenthcentury. 

These were not days of decadence, but a period that gave the worldShakespeare, Martin Luther, and Raphael, Haroun-al-Raschid and AbrahamLincoln. It was the day of the greatest expansion of two of the world'smost pretentious religions and of the beginnings of the modernorganization of industry. In the midst of this advance and uplift thisslave trade and slavery spread more human misery, inculcated moredisrespect for and neglect of humanity, a greater callousness tosuffering, and more petty, cruel, human hatred than can well becalculated. We may excuse and palliate it, and write history so as to letmen forget it; it remains the most inexcusable and despicable blot onmodern human history. 

The Portuguese built the first slave-trading fort at Elmina, on the GoldCoast, in 1482, and extended their trade down the west coast and up theeast coast. Under them the abominable traffic grew larger and larger, until it became far the most important in money value of all the commerceof the Zambesi basin. There could be no extension of agriculture, nomining, no progress of any kind where it was so extensively carriedon[74]. 

It was the Dutch, however, who launched the oversea slave trade as aregular institution. They began their fight for freedom from Spain in1579; in 1595, as a war measure against Spain, who at that time wasdominating Portugal, they made their first voyage to Guinea. By 1621 theyhad captured Portugal's various slave forts on the west coast and theyproceeded to open sixteen forts along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got slaves in exchange for theirgoods, carried the slaves to the West Indies or Brazil, and returned homeladen with sugar. In 1621 the private companies trading in the west wereall merged into the Dutch West India Company, which sent in four yearsfifteen thousand four hundred and thirty Negroes to Brazil, carried on warwith Spain, supplied even the English plantations, and gradually becamethe great slave carrier of the day. 

The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and emulationof the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was aimed at them, andtwo wars were necessary to wrest the slave trade from them and place it inthe hands of the English. The final terms of peace, among other things, surrendered New Netherlands to England and opened the way for England tobecome henceforth the world's greatest slave trader. 

The English trade began with Sir John Hawkins' voyages in 1562 and later, in which "the Jesus, our chiefe shippe" played a leading part. Desultorytrade was kept up by the English until the middle of the seventeenthcentury, when English chartered slave-trading companies began to appear. In 1662 the "Royal Adventurers, " including the king, the queen dowager, and the Duke of York, invested in the trade, and finally the Royal AfricanCompany, which became the world's chief slave trader, was formed in 1672and carried on a growing trade for a quarter of a century. Jamaica hadfinally been captured and held by Oliver Cromwell in 1655 and formed aWest Indian base for the trade in men. 

The chief contract for trade in Negroes was the celebrated "Asiento" oragreement of the King of Spain to the importation of slaves into Spanishdomains. The Pope's Bull or Demarkation, 1493, debarred Spain from Africanpossessions, and compelled her to contract with other nations for slaves. This contract was in the hands of the Portuguese in 1600; in 1640 theDutch received it, and in 1701 the French. The War of the SpanishSuccession brought this monopoly to England. 

This Asiento of 1713 was an agreement between England and Spain by whichthe latter granted the former a monopoly of the Spanish colonial slavetrade for thirty years, and England engaged to supply the colonies withinthat time with at least one hundred and forty-four thousand slaves at therate of forty-eight hundred per year. The English counted this prize asthe greatest result of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which ended themighty struggle against the power of Louis XIV. The English held themonopoly until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), although they had togo to war over it in 1739. 

From this agreement the slave traders reaped a harvest. The trade centeredat Liverpool, and that city's commercial greatness was built largely onthis foundation. In 1709 it sent out one slaver of thirty tons' burden;encouraged by Parliamentary subsidies which amounted to nearly half amillion dollars between 1729 and 1750, the trade amounted to fifty-threeships in 1751; eighty-six in 1765, and at the beginning of the nineteenthcentury one hundred and eighty-five, which carried forty-nine thousand twohundred and thirteen slaves in one year. 

The slave trade thus begun by the Portuguese, enlarged by the Dutch, andcarried to its culmination by the English centered on the west coast nearthe seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. Itcame at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupehad exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood ofMohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, looselyfederated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developedstrong resistance toward the Sudan state builders toward the north, as inthe case of the fighting Mossi; but behind this warlike resistance lay thepeaceful city life which gave industrial ideas to Byzantium and sharedsomething of Ethiopian and Mediterranean culture. 

The first advent of the slave traders increased and encouraged nativeindustry, as is evidenced by the bronze work of Benin; but soon this waspushed into the background, for it was not bronze metal but bronze fleshthat Europe wanted. A new tyranny, blood-thirsty, cruel, and built on war, forced itself forward in the Niger delta. The powerful state of Dahomeyarose early in the eighteenth century and became a devastating tyranny, reaching its highest power early in the nineteenth century. Ashanti, asimilar kingdom, began its conquests in 1719 and grew with the slavetrade. Thus state building in West Africa began to replace the cityeconomy, but it was a state built on war and on war supported andencouraged largely for the sake of trade in human flesh. The nativeindustries were changed and disorganized. Family ties and government wereweakened. Far into the heart of Africa this devilish disintegration, coupled with Christian rum and Mohammedan raiding, penetrated. The face ofAfrica was turned south on these slave traders instead of northward towardthe Mediterranean, where for two thousand years and more Europe and Africahad met in legitimate trade and mutual respect. The full significance ofthe battle of Tenkadibou, which overthrew the Askias, was now clear. Hereafter Africa for centuries was to appear before the world, not as theland of gold and ivory, of Mansa Musa and Meroe, but as a bound andcaptive slave, dumb and degraded. 

The natural desire to avoid a painful subject has led historians to glossover the details of the slave trade and leave the impression that it was alocal west-coast phenomenon and confined to a few years. It was, on thecontrary, continent wide and centuries long and an economic, social, andpolitical catastrophe probably unparalleled in human history. 

The exact proportions of the slave trade can be estimated onlyapproximately. From 1680 to 1688 we know that the English African Companyalone sent 249 ships to Africa, shipped there 60, 783 Negro slaves, andafter losing 14, 387 on the middle passage, delivered 46, 396 in America. 

It seems probable that 25, 000 Negroes a year arrived in America between1698 and 1707. After the Asiento of 1713 this number rose to 30, 000annually, and before the Revolutionary War it had reached at least 40, 000and perhaps 100, 000 slaves a year. 

The total number of slaves imported is not known. Dunbar estimates thatnearly 900, 000 came to America in the sixteenth century, 2, 750, 000 in theseventeenth, 7, 000, 000 in the eighteenth, and over 4, 000, 000 in thenineteenth, perhaps 15, 000, 000 in all. Certainly it seems that at least10, 000, 000 Negroes were expatriated. Probably every slave importedrepresented on the average five corpses in Africa or on the high seas. TheAmerican slave trade, therefore, meant the elimination of at least60, 000, 000 Negroes from their fatherland. The Mohammedan slave trade meantthe expatriation or forcible migration in Africa of nearly as many more. It would be conservative, then, to say that the slave trade cost NegroAfrica 100, 000, 000 souls. And yet people ask to-day the cause of thestagnation of culture in that land since 1600!

Such a large number of slaves could be supplied only by organized slaveraiding in every corner of Africa. The African continent gradually becamerevolutionized. Whole regions were depopulated, whole tribes disappeared;villages were built in caves and on hills or in forest fastnesses; thecharacter of peoples like those of Benin developed their worst excesses ofcruelty instead of the already flourishing arts of peace. The dark, irresistible grasp of fetish took firmer hold on men's minds. 

Further advances toward civilization became impossible. Not only was therethe immense demand for slaves which had its outlet on the west coast, butthe slave caravans were streaming up through the desert to theMediterranean coast and down the valley of the Nile to the centers ofMohammedanism. It was a rape of a continent to an extent never paralleledin ancient or modern times. 

In the American trade there was not only the horrors of the slave raid, which lined the winding paths of the African jungles with bleached bones, but there was also the horrors of what was called the "middle passage, "that is, the voyage across the Atlantic. As Sir William Dolben said, "TheNegroes were chained to each other hand and foot, and stowed so close thatthey were not allowed above a foot and a half for each in breadth. Thuscrammed together like herrings in a barrel, they contracted putrid andfatal disorders; so that they who came to inspect them in a morning hadoccasionally to pick dead slaves out of their rows, and to unchain theircarcases from the bodies of their wretched fellow-sufferers to whom theyhad been fastened[75]. "

It was estimated that out of every one hundred lot shipped from Africaonly about fifty lived to be effective laborers across the sea, and amongthe whites more seamen died in that trade in one year than in the wholeremaining trade of England in two. The full realization of the horrors ofthe slave trade was slow in reaching the ears and conscience of the modernworld, just as to-day the treatment of dark natives in European coloniesis brought to publicity with the greatest difficulty. The first moveagainst the slave trade in England came in Parliament in 1776, but it wasnot until thirty-one years later, in 1807, that the trade was bannedthrough the arduous labors of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Sharpe, and others. 

Denmark had already abolished the trade, and the United States attemptedto do so the following year. Portugal and Spain were induced to abolishthe trade between 1815 and 1830. Notwithstanding these laws, thecontraband trade went on until the beginning of the Civil War in America. The reasons for this were the enormous profit of the trade and thecontinued demand of the American slave barons, who had no sympathy withthe efforts to stop their source of cheap labor supply. 

However, philanthropy was not working alone to overthrow Negro slavery andthe slave trade. It was seen, first in England and later in othercountries, that slavery as an industrial system could not be made to worksatisfactorily in modern times. Its cost was too great, and one of thecauses of this cost was the slave insurrections from the very beginning, when the slaves rose on the plantation of Diego Columbus down to the CivilWar in America. Actual and potential slave insurrection in the WestIndies, in North and South America, kept the slave owners in apprehensionand turmoil, or called for a police system difficult to maintain. In NorthAmerica revolt finally took the form of organized running away to theNorth, and this, with the growing scarcity of suitable land and the moralrevolt, led to the Civil War and the disappearance of the American slavetrade. 

There was still, however, the Mohammedan slave trade to deal with, andthis has been the work of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Inthe last quarter of the nineteenth century ten thousand slaves annuallywere being distributed on the southern and eastern coast of theMediterranean and at the great slave market in Bornu. 

On the east coast of Africa in 1862 nineteen thousand slaves were passedinto Zanzibar and thence into Arabia and Persia. As late as 1880, threethousand annually were being thus transplanted, but now the trade is aboutstopped. To-day the only centers of actual slave trading may be said to bethe cocoa plantations of the Portuguese Islands on the west coast ofAfrica, and the Congo Free State. 

Such is the story of the Rape of Ethiopia--a sordid, pitiful, cruel tale. Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sung; andthrough it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the seaamid the bleaching bones of the dead; for four hundred years the sharksfollowed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewnwith the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for fourhundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God. 

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Cf. Helps: _Spanish Conquest_, IV, 401. 

[71] Helps, _op. Cit. _, I, 219-220. 

[72] Helps, _op. Cit. _, II, 18-19. 

[73] Helps, _op. Cit. _, III, 211-212. 

[74] Theal: _History and Ethnography of South Africa before 1795_, I, 476. 

[75] Ingram: _History of Slavery_, p. 152. 

X THE WEST INDIES AND LATIN AMERICA

That was a wonderful century, the fifteenth, when men realized that beyondthe scowling waste of western waters were dreams come true. Curious andyet crassly human it is that, with all this poetry and romance, arose atonce the filthiest institution of the modern world and the costliest. Foron Negro slavery in America was built, not simply the abortive cottonkingdom, but the foundations of that modern imperialism which is based onthe despising of backward men. 

According to some accounts Alonzo, "the Negro, " piloted one of the shipsof Columbus, and certainly there was Negro blood among his sailors. Asearly as 1528 there were nearly ten thousand Negroes in the new world. Wehear of them in all parts. In Honduras, for instance, a Negro is sent toburn a native village; in 1555 the town council of Santiago de Chile votedto allow an enfranchised Negro possession of land in the town, andevidently treated him just as white applicants were treated. D'Allyon, whoexplored the coast of Virginia in the first quarter of the sixteenthcentury, used Negro slaves (who afterward revolted) to build his ships andhelp in exploration; Balboa had with him thirty Negroes, who, in 1513, helped to build the first ships on the Pacific coast; Cortez had threehundred Negro porters in 1522. 

Before 1530 there were enough Negroes in Mexico to lead to aninsurrection, where the Negroes fought desperately, but were overcome andtheir ringleaders executed. Later the followers of another Negroinsurgent, Bayano, were captured and sent back to Spain. Negroes foundedthe town of Santiago del Principe in 1570, and in 1540 a Negro slave ofHernandez de Alarcon was the only one of the party to carry a messageacross the country to the Zunis of New Mexico. A Negro, Stephen Dorantes, discovered New Mexico. This Stephen or "Estevanico" was sent ahead bycertain Spanish friars to the "Seven Cities of Cibola. " "As soon asStephen had left said friars, he determined to earn all the reputation andhonor for himself, and that the boldness and daring of having alonediscovered those villages of high stories so much spoken of throughoutthat country should be attributed to him; and carrying along with him thepeople who followed him, he endeavored to cross the wilderness which isbetween Cibola and the country he had gone through, and he was so farahead of the friars that when they arrived at Chichilticalli, which is onthe edge of the wilderness, he was already at Cibola, which is eightyleagues of wilderness beyond. " But the Indians of the new and strangecountry took alarm and concluded that Stephen "must be a spy or guide forsome nations who intended to come and conquer them, because it seemed tothem unreasonable for him to say that the people were white in the countryfrom which he came, being black himself and being sent by them. "[76]

Slaves imported under the Asiento treaties went to all parts of theAmericas. Spanish America had by the close of the eighteenth century tenthousand in Santo Domingo, eighty-four thousand in Cuba, fifty thousand inPorto Rico, sixty thousand in Louisiana and Florida, and sixty thousand inCentral and South America. 

The history of the Negro in Spanish America centered in Cuba, Venezuela, and Central America. In the sixteenth century slaves began to arrive inCuba and Negroes joined many of the exploring expeditions from there tovarious parts of America. The slave trade greatly increased in the latterpart of the eighteenth century, and after the revolution in Hayti largenumbers of French emigrants from that island settled in Cuba. This andSpanish greed increased the harshness of slavery and eventually led torevolt among the Negroes. In 1844 Governor O'Donnell began a cruelpersecution of the blacks on account of a plot discovered among them. Finally in 1866 the Ten Years' War broke out in which Negro and whiterebels joined. They demanded the abolition of slavery and equal politicalrights for natives and foreigners, whites and blacks. The war was crueland bloody but ended in 1878 with the abolition of slavery, while afurther uprising the following year secured civil rights for Negroes. Spanish economic oppression continued, however, and the leading chiefs ofthe Ten Years' War including such leaders as the mulatto, Antonio Maceo, with large numbers of Negro soldiers, took the field again in 1895. Theresult was the freeing of Cuba by the intervention of the United States. Negro regiments from the United States played here a leading role. Anumber of leaders in Cuba in political, industrial, and literary lineshave been men of Negro descent. 

Slavery was abolished by Guatemala in 1824 and by Mexico in 1829. Argentine, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Paraguay ceased to recognize it about1825. Between 1840 and 1845 it came to an end in Colombia, Venezuela, andEcquador. Bolivar, Paez, Sucre, and other South American leaders usedNegro soldiers in fighting for freedom (1814-16), and Hayti twice atcritical times rendered assistance and received Bolivar twice as arefugee. 

Brazil was the center of Portuguese slavery, but slaves were notintroduced in large numbers until about 1720, when diamonds werediscovered in the territory above Rio Janeiro. Gradually the seaboard fromPernambuco to Rio Janeiro and beyond became filled with Negroes, andalthough the slave trade north of the equator was theoretically abolishedby Portugal in 1815 and south of the equator in 1830, and by Brazil inthese regions in 1826 and 1830, nevertheless between 1825 and 1850 over amillion and a quarter of Negroes were introduced. Not until Brazilabolished slavery in 1888 did the importation wholly cease. Brazilianslavery allowed the slave to purchase his freedom, and the color line wasnot strict. Even in the eighteenth century there were black clergy andbishops; indeed the Negro clergy seem to have been on a higher moral levelthan the whites. 

Insurrection was often attempted, especially among the Mohammedan Negroesaround Bahia. In 1695 a tribe of revolted slaves held out for a long time. In 1719 a widespread conspiracy failed, but many of the leaders fled tothe forest. In 1828 a thousand rose in revolt at Bahia, and again in 1830. From 1831 to 1837 revolt was in the air, and in 1835 came the great revoltof the Mohammedans, who attempted to enthrone a queen. The Negroes foughtwith furious bravery, but were finally defeated. 

By 1872 the number of free Negroes had very greatly increased, so thatemancipation did not come as a shock. While Mohammedan Negroes still gavetrouble and were in some cases sent back to Africa, yet on the wholeemancipation was peaceful, and whites, Negroes, and Indians are to-dayamalgamating into a new race. "At the present moment there is scarcely alowly or a highly placed federal or provincial official at the head of orwithin any of the great departments of state that has not more or lessNegro or Amer-Indian blood in his veins. "[77]

Lord Bryce says, "It is hardly too much to say that along the coast fromRio to Bahia and Pernambuco, as well as in parts of the interior behindthese two cities, the black population predominates. . . . The Brazilianlower class intermarries freely with the black people; the Brazilianmiddle class intermarries with mulattoes and Quadroons. Brazil is the onecountry in the world, besides the Portuguese colonies on the east and westcoasts of Africa, in which a fusion of the European and African races isproceeding unchecked by law or custom. The doctrines of human equality andhuman solidarity have here their perfect work. The result is so farsatisfactory that there is little or no class friction. The white man doesnot lynch or maltreat the Negro; indeed I have never heard of a lynchinganywhere in South America except occasionally as part of a politicalconvulsion. The Negro is not accused of insolence and does not seem todevelop any more criminality than naturally belongs to any ignorantpopulation with loose notions of morality and property. 

"What ultimate effect the intermixture of blood will have on the Europeanelement in Brazil I will not venture to predict. If one may judge from afew remarkable cases, it will not necessarily reduce the intellectualstandard. One of the ablest and most refined Brazilians I have known hadsome color; and other such cases have been mentioned to me. Assumptionsand preconceptions must be eschewed, however plausible they mayseem. "[78]

A Brazilian writer said at the First Races Congress: "The coöperation ofthe _metis_[79] in the advance of Brazil is notorious and far frominconsiderable. They played the chief part during many years in Brazil inthe campaign for the abolition of slavery. I could quote celebrated namesof more than one of these _metis_ who put themselves at the head of theliterary movement. They fought with firmness and intrepidity in the pressand on the platform. They faced with courage the gravest perils to whichthey were exposed in their struggle against the powerful slave owners, whohad the protection of a conservative government. They gave evidence ofsentiments of patriotism, self-denial, and appreciation during the longcampaign in Paraguay, fighting heroically at the boarding of the ships inthe naval battle of Riachuelo and in the attacks on the Brazilian army, onnumerous occasions in the course of this long South American war. It wasowing to their support that the republic was erected on the ruins of theempire. "[80]

The Dutch brought the first slaves to the North American continent. JohnRolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia "aDutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars. "[81] This was probably oneof the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading companies which earlyentered into the developed and the lucrative African slave trade. Althoughthe Dutch thus commenced the continental slave trade they did not actuallyfurnish a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside theWest Indies. A small trade had by 1698 brought a few thousand to New Yorkand still fewer to New Jersey. 

The Dutch found better scope for slaves in Guiana, which they settled in1616. Sugar cane became the staple crop, but the Negroes early began torevolt and the Dutch brought in East Indian coolies. The slaves were badlytreated and the runaways joined the revolted Bush Negroes in the interior. From 1715 to 1775 there was continuous fighting with the Bush Negroes orinsurrections, until at last in 1749 a formal treaty between sixteenhundred Negroes and the Dutch was made. Immediately a new group revoltedunder a Mohammedan, Arabi, and they obtained land and liberty. In 1763 thecoast Negroes revolted. They were checked, but made terms and settled inthe interior. The Bush Negroes fought against both French and English tosave Guiana to the Dutch, but Guiana was eventually divided between thethree. The Bush Negroes still maintain their independence and vigor. 

The French encouraged settlements in the West Indies in the seventeenthcentury, but at last, finding that French immigrants would not come, theybegan about 1642 to import Negroes. Owing to wars with England, slaveswere supplied by the Dutch and Portuguese, although the Royal SenegalCompany held the coveted Asiento from 1701 to 1713. 

It was in the island of Hayti, however, that French slavery centered. Pirates from many nations, but chiefly French, began to frequent theisland, and in 1663 the French annexed the eastern part, thus dividing theisland between France and Spain. By 1680 there were so many slaves andmulattoes that Louis XIV issued his celebrated Code Noir, which wasnotable in compelling bachelor masters, fathers of slave children, tomarry their concubines. Children followed the condition of the mother asto slavery or freedom; they could have no property; harsh punishments wereprovided for, but families could not be separated by sale except in thecase of grown children; emancipation with full civil rights was madepossible for any slave twenty years of age or more. When Louisiana wassettled and the Alabama coast, slaves were introduced there. Louisiana wastransferred to Spain in 1762, against the resistance of both settlers andslaves, but Spain took possession in 1769 and introduced more Negroes. 

Later, in Hayti, a more liberal policy encouraged trade; war was over andcapital and slaves poured in. Sugar, coffee, chocolate, indigo, dyes, andspices were raised. There were large numbers of mulattoes, many of whomwere educated in France, and many masters married Negro women who hadinherited large properties, just as in the United States to-day white menare marrying eagerly the landed Indian women in the West. When whiteimmigration increased in 1749, however, prejudice arose against thesemulattoes and severe laws were passed depriving them of civil rights, entrance into the professions, and the right to hold office; severe edictswere enforced as to clothing, names, and social intercourse. Finally, after 1777, mulattoes were forbidden to come to France. 

When the French Revolution broke out, the Haytians managed to send twodelegates to Paris. Nevertheless the planters maintained the upper hand, and one of the colored delegates, Oge, on returning, started a smallrebellion. He and his companions were killed with great brutality. Thisled the French government to grant full civil rights to free Negroes, Immediately planters and free Negroes flew to arms against each other andthen, suddenly, August 22, 1791, the black slaves, of whom there were fourhundred and fifty-two thousand, arose in revolt to help the free Negroes. 

For many years runaway slaves had hidden in the mountains under their ownchiefs. One of the earliest of these chiefs was Polydor, in 1724, who wassucceeded by Macandal. The great chief of these runaways or "Maroons" atthe time of the slave revolt was Jean François, who was soon succeeded byBiassou. 

Pierre Dominic Toussaint, known as Toussaint L'Ouverture, joined theseMaroon bands, where he was called "the doctor of the armies of the king, "and soon became chief aid to Jean François and Biassou. Upon their deathsToussaint rose to the chief command. He acquired complete control over theblacks, not only in military matters, but in politics and socialorganization; "the soldiers regarded him as a superior being, and thefarmers prostrated themselves before him. All his generals trembled beforehim (Dessalines did not dare to look in his face), and all the worldtrembled before his generals. "[82]

The revolt once started, blacks and mulattoes murdered whites withoutmercy and the whites retaliated. Commissioners were sent from France, whoasked simply civil rights for freedmen, and not emancipation. Indeed thatwas all that Toussaint himself had as yet demanded. The planters intriguedwith the British and this, together with the beheading of the king (animpious act in the eyes of Negroes), induced Toussaint to join theSpaniards. In 1793 British troops were landed and the French commissionersin desperation declared the slaves emancipated. This at once won backToussaint from the Spaniards. He became supreme in the north, whileRigaud, leader of the mulattoes, held the south and the west. By 1798 theBritish, having lost most of their forces by yellow fever, surrenderedMole St. Nicholas to Toussaint and departed. Rigaud finally left forFrance, and Toussaint in 1800 was master of Hayti. He promulgated aconstitution under which Hayti was to be a self-governing colony; all menwere equal before the law, and trade was practically free. Toussaint wasto be president for life, with the power to name his successor. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, master of France, had at this time dreams of a greatAmerican empire, and replied to Toussaint's new government by sendingtwenty-five thousand men under his brother-in-law to subdue thepresumptuous Negroes, as a preliminary step to his occupation anddevelopment of the Mississippi valley. Fierce fighting and yellow feverdecimated the French, but matters went hard with the Negroes too, andToussaint finally offered to yield. He was courteously received withmilitary honors and then, as soon as possible, treacherously seized, bound, and sent to France. He was imprisoned at Fort Joux and died, perhaps of poison, after studied humiliations, April 7, 1803. 

Thus perished the greatest of American Negroes and one of the great men ofall time, at the age of fifty-six. A French planter said, "God in histerrestrial globe did not commune with a purer spirit. "[83] WendellPhillips said, "Some doubt the courage of the Negro. Go to Hayti and standon those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had andask them what they think of the Negro's sword. I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea ofblood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, butCromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with himinto his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian heldslaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave trade inthe humblest village of his dominions. You think me a fanatic, for youread history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fiftyyears hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will putPhocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for the English, LaFayette for France, choose Washington as the bright, consummate flower ofour earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, willwrite in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, thestatesman, the martyr, Toussaint L'Ouverture. "

The treacherous killing of Toussaint did not conquer Hayti. In 1802 and1803 some forty thousand French soldiers died of war and fever. A newcolored leader, Dessalines, arose and all the eight thousand remainingFrench surrendered to the blockading British fleet. 

The effect of all this was far-reaching. Napoleon gave up his dream ofAmerican empire and sold Louisiana for a song. "Thus, all of IndianTerritory, all of Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa and Wyoming and Montana andthe Dakotas, and most of Colorado and Minnesota, and all of Washington andOregon states, came to us as the indirect work of a despised Negro. Praise, if you will, the work of a Robert Livingstone or a Jefferson, butto-day let us not forget our debt to Toussaint L'Ouverture, who wasindirectly the means of America's expansion by the Louisiana Purchase of1803. "[84]

With the freedom of Hayti in 1801 came a century of struggle to fit thepeople for the freedom they had won. They were yet slaves, crushed by acruel servitude, without education or religious instruction. The Haytianleaders united upon Dessalines to maintain the independence of therepublic. Dessalines, like Toussaint and his lieutenant Christophe, wasnoted in slavery days for his severity toward his fellows and thediscipline which he insisted on. He had other characteristics of Africanchieftains. "There were seasons when he broke through his naturalsullenness and showed himself open, affable, and even generous. His vanitywas excessive and manifested itself in singular perversities. "[85] He wasa man of great personal bravery and succeeded in maintaining theindependence of Hayti, which had already cost the Frenchmen fifty thousandlives. 

On January 1, 1804, at the place whence Toussaint had been treacherouslyseized and sent to France, the independence of Hayti was declared by themilitary leaders. Dessalines was made governor-general for life andafterward proclaimed himself emperor. This was not an act ofgrandiloquence and mimicry. "It is truer to say that in it both Dessalinesand later Christophe were actuated by a clear insight into the socialhistory and peculiarities of their people. There was nothing in theconstitution which did not have its companion in Africa, where theorganization of society was despotic, with elective hereditary chiefs, royal families, polygamic marriages, councils, and regencies. "[86]

The population was divided into soldiers and laborers. The territory wasparceled out to chiefs, and the laborers were bound to the soil and workedunder rigorous inspection; part of the products were reserved for theirsupport, and the rest went to the chiefs, the king, the generalgovernment, and the army. The army was under stern discipline andmilitary service was compulsory. Women did much of the agricultural labor. Under Toussaint the administration of this system was committed toDessalines, who carried it out with rigor; it was afterward followed byChristophe. The latter even imported four thousand Negroes from Africa, from whom he formed a national guard for patrolling the land. Theseregulations brought back for a time a large part of the former prosperityof the island. 

The severity with which Dessalines enforced the laws soon began to turnmany against him. The educated mulattoes especially objected to submissionto the savage African _mores_. Dessalines started to suppress theirrevolt, but was killed in ambush in October, 1806. 

Great Britain now began to intrigue for a protectorate over the island andthe Spanish end of the island threatened attack. These difficulties wereovercome, but at a cost of great internal strain. After the death ofDessalines it seemed that Hayti was about to dissolve into a number ofpetty subdivisions. At one time Christophe was ruling as king in thenorth, Petion as president at Port au Prince, Rigaud in the south, and asemi-brigand, Goman, in the extreme southwest. Very soon, however, therivalry narrowed down to Petion and Christophe. Petion was a man ofconsiderable ability and did much, not simply for Hayti, but for SouthAmerica. Already as early as 1779, before the revolution in Hayti, theHaytian Negroes had helped the United States. The British had capturedSavannah in 1778. The French fleet appeared on the coast of Georgia latethat year and was ordered to recruit men in Hayti. Eight hundred youngfreedmen, blacks and mulattoes, offered to take part in the expedition, and they fought valiantly in the siege and covered themselves with glory. It was this legion that made the charge on the British and saved theretreating American army. Among the men who fought there was Christophe. 

When Simon Bolivar, Commodore Aury, and many Venezuelan families weredriven from their country in 1815, they and their ships took temporaryrefuge in Hayti. Notwithstanding the embarrassed condition of therepublic, Petion received them and gave them four thousand rifles withammunition, provisions, and last and best a printing press. He alsosettled some international quarrels among members of the groups, andBolivar expressed himself afterward as being "overwhelmed with magnanimousfavors. "[87]

Petion died in 1818 and was succeeded by his friend Boyer. Christophecommitted suicide the following year and Boyer became not simply ruler ofwestern Hayti, but also, by arrangement with the eastern end of theisland, gained the mastery there, where they were afraid of Spanishaggression. Thus from 1822 to 1843 Boyer, a man of much ability, ruled thewhole of the island and gained the recognition of Haytian independencefrom France and other nations. 

France, under Charles X, demanded an indemnity of thirty million dollarsto reimburse the planters for confiscated lands and property. This Haytitried to pay, but the annual installment was a tremendous burden to theimpoverished country. Further negotiations were entered into. Finally in1838 France recognized the independence of the republic and the indemnitywas reduced to twelve million dollars. Even this was a large burden forHayti, and the payment of it for years crippled the island. 

The United States and Great Britain in 1825-26 recognized the independenceof Hayti. A concordat was arranged with the Pope for governing the churchin Hayti, and finally in 1860 the church placed under the Frenchhierarchy. Thus Boyer did unusually well; but his necessary concessions toFrance weakened his influence at home, and finally an earthquake, whichdestroyed several towns in 1842, raised the superstitious of the populaceagainst him. He resigned in 1843, leaving the treasury well filled; butwith his withdrawal the Spanish portion of the island was lost to Hayti. 

The subsequent history of Hayti since 1843 has been the struggle of asmall divided country to maintain political independence. The richresources of the country called for foreign capital, but outside capitalmeant political influence from abroad, which the little nation rightlyfeared. Within, the old antagonism between the freedman and the slavesettled into a color line between the mulatto and the black, which for atime meant the difference between educated liberalism and reactionaryignorance. This difference has largely disappeared, but some vestiges ofthe color line remain. The result has been reaction and savagery underSoulouque, Dominique, and Nord Alexis, and decided advance underpresidents like Nissage-Saget, Solomon, Legitime, and Hyppolite. 

In political life Hayti is still in the sixteenth century; but ineconomic life she has succeeded in placing on their own little farms thehappiest and most contented peasantry in the world, after raising themfrom a veritable hell of slavery. If modern capitalistic greed can berestrained from interference until the best elements of Hayti securepermanent political leadership the triumph of the revolution will becomplete. 

In other parts of the French-American dominion the slaves achieved freedomalso by insurrection. In Guadeloupe they helped the French drive out theBritish, and thus gained emancipation. In Martinique it took three revoltsand a civil war to bring freedom. 

The English slave empire in America centered in the Bermudas, Barbadoes, Jamaica and the lesser islands, and in the United States. Barbadoesdeveloped a savage slave code, and the result was attempted slaveinsurrections in 1674, 1692, and 1702. These were not successful, but arising in 1816 destroyed much property under the leadership of a mulatto, Washington Franklin, and the repeal of bad laws and eventualenfranchisement of the colored people followed. One Barbadian mulatto, SirConrad Reeves, has held the position of chief justice in the island andwas knighted. A Negro insurrection in Dominica under Farcel greatlyexercised England in 1791 and 1794 and delayed slave trade abolition; in1844 and 1847 further uprisings took place, and these continued from 1853to 1893. 

The chief island domain of English slavery was Jamaica. It was OliverCromwell who, in his zeal for God and the slave trade, sent an expeditionto seize Hayti. His fleet, driven off there, took Jamaica in 1655. TheEnglish found the mountains already infested with runaway slaves known as"Maroons, " and more Negroes joined them when the English arrived. In 1663the freedom of the Maroons was acknowledged, land was given them, andtheir leader, Juan de Bolas, was made a colonel in the militia. He waskilled, however, in the following year, and from 1664 to 1738 the threethousand or more black Maroons fought the British Empire in guerrillawarfare. Soldiers, Indians, and dogs were sent against them, and finallyin 1738 Captain Cudjo and other chiefs made a formal treaty of peace withGovernor Trelawney. They were granted twenty-five hundred acres and theirfreedom was recognized. 

The peace lasted until 1795, when they rebelled again and gave theBritish a severe drubbing, besides murdering planters. Bloodhounds againwere imported. The Maroons offered to surrender on the express conditionthat none of their number should be deported from the island, as thelegislature wished. General Walpole hesitated, but could get peace on noother terms and gave his word. The Maroons surrendered their arms, andimmediately the whites seized six hundred of the ringleaders andtransported them to the snows of Nova Scotia! The legislature then voted asword worth twenty-five hundred dollars to General Walpole, which heindignantly refused to accept. Eventually these exiled Maroons found theirway to Sierra Leone, West Africa, in time to save that colony to theBritish crown. [88]

The pressing desire for peace with the Maroons on the part of the whiteplanters arose from the new sugar culture introduced in 1673. A greatlyincreased demand for slaves followed, and between 1700 and 1786 sixhundred and ten thousand slaves were imported; nevertheless, so severelywere they driven, that there were only three hundred thousand Negroes inJamaica in the latter year. 

Despite the Moravian missions and other efforts late in the eighteenthcentury, unrest among the Jamaica slaves and freedmen grew and wasincreased by the anti-slavery agitation in England and the revolt inHayti. There was an insurrection in 1796; and in 1831 again the Negroes ofnorthwest Jamaica, impatient because of the slow progress of theemancipation, arose in revolt and destroyed nearly three and a halfmillion dollars' worth of property, well-nigh ruining the planters there. The next year two hundred and fifty-five thousand slaves were set free, for which the planters were paid nearly thirty million dollars. Thereensued a discouraging condition of industry. The white officials sent outin these days were arbitrary and corrupt. Little was done for the mass ofthe people and there was outrageous over-taxation. Nevertheless thebackwardness of the colony was attributed to the Negro. Governor Eyrecomplained in 1865 that the young and strong were good for nothing andwere filling the jails; but a simultaneous report by a missionary told thetruth concerning the officials. This aroused the colored people, and amulatto, George William Gordon, called a meeting. Other meetings wereafterward held, and finally the Negro peasantry began a riot in 1861, inwhich eighteen people were killed, only a few of whom were white. 

The result was that Governor Eyre tried and executed by court-martial 354persons, and in addition to this killed without trial 85, a total of 439. One thousand Negro homes were burned to the ground and thousands ofNegroes flogged or mutilated. Children had their brains dashed out, pregnant women were murdered, and Gordon was tried by court-martial andhanged. In fact the punishment was, as the royal commissioners said, "reckless and positively barbarous. "[89]

This high-handed act aroused England. Eyre was not punished, but theisland was made a crown colony in 1866, and given representation in thelegislature in 1886. 

In the island of St. Vincent, Indians first sought to enslave the fugitiveNegroes wrecked there, but the Negroes took the Carib women and then drovethe Indian men away. These "black Caribs" fought with Indians, English, and others for three quarters of a century, until the Indians wereexterminated. The British took possession in 1763. The black Caribsresisted, and after hard fighting signed a treaty in 1773, receivingone-third of the island as their property. They afterward helped theFrench against the British, and were finally deported to the island ofRuatan, off Honduras. In Trinidad and British Guiana there have beenmutinies and rioting of slaves and a curious mingling of races. 

Other parts of South America must be dismissed briefly, because ofinsufficient data. Colombia and Venezuela, with perhaps eight millionpeople, have at least one-third of their population of Negro and Indiandescent. Here Simon Bolivar with his Negro, mulatto, and Indian forcesbegan the war that liberated South America. Central America has a smallerproportion of Negroids, perhaps one hundred thousand in all. Bolivia andPeru have small amounts of Negro blood, while Argentine and Uruguay havevery little. The Negro population in these lands is everywhere in processof rapid amalgamation with whites and Indians. 

FOOTNOTES:

[76] H. O. Flipper's translation of Castaneda de Nafera's narrative. 

[77] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, p. 109. 

[78] Bryce: _South America_, pp. 479-480. 

[79] I. E. , mulattoes. 

[80] _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 381. 

[81] Smith: _General History of Virginia_. 

[82] La Croix: _Mémoires sur la Révolution_, I, 253, 408. 

[83] Marquis d'Hermonas. Cf. Johnston: _Negro in the New World_, p. 158. 

[84] DeWitt Talmage, in Christian Herald, November 28, 1906. 

[85] Aimes: _African Institutions in America_ (reprinted from _Journal ofAmerican Folk Lore_), p. 25. 

[86] Brown: _History of San Domingo_, II, 158-159. 

[87] See Leger: _Hayti_, Chap. XI. 

[88] Cf. Chapter V, p. 69. 

[89] Johnston: _Negro in the New World_. 

XI THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES

There were half a million slaves in the confines of the United States whenthe Declaration of Independence declared "that all men are created equal;that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. " Theland that thus magniloquently heralded its advent into the family ofnations had supported the institution of human slavery for one hundred andfifty-seven years and was destined to cling to it eighty-seven yearslonger. 

The greatest experiment in Negro slavery as a modern industrial system wasmade on the mainland of North America and in the confines of the presentUnited States. And this experiment was on such a scale and solong-continued that it is profitable for study and reflection. There werein the United States in its dependencies, in 1910, 9, 828, 294 persons ofacknowledged Negro descent, not including the considerable infiltration ofNegro blood which is not acknowledged and often not known. To-day thenumber of persons called Negroes is probably about ten and a quartermillion. These persons are almost entirely descendants of African slaves, brought to America in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, andnineteenth centuries. 

The importation of Negroes to the mainland of North America was smalluntil the British got the coveted privilege of the Asiento in 1713. Beforethat Northern States like New York had received some slaves from theDutch, and New England had early developed a trade by which she imported anumber of house servants. Ships went out to the African coast with rum, sold the rum, and brought the slaves to the West Indies; there theyexchanged the slaves for sugar and molasses and brought the molasses backto New England, to be made into rum for further exploits. After theAsiento treaty the Negro population increased in the eighteenth centuryfrom about 50, 000 in 1710 to 220, 000 in 1750 and to 462, 000 in 1770. Whenthe colonies became independent, the foreign slave trade was soon madeillegal; but illicit trade, annexation of territory and natural increaseenlarged the Negro population from a little over a million at thebeginning of the nineteenth century to four and a half millions at theoutbreak of the Civil War and to about ten and a quarter millions in 1914. 

The present so-called Negro population of the United States is:

1. A mixture of the various African populations, Bantu, Sudanese, west-coast Negroes, some dwarfs, and some traces of Arab, Berber, andSemitic blood. 

2. A mixture of these strains with the blood of white Americans through asystem of concubinage of colored women in slavery days, together with somelegal intermarriage. 

The figures as to mulattoes[90] have been from time to time officiallyacknowledged to be understatements. Probably one-third of the Negroes ofthe United States have distinct traces of white blood. This blending ofthe races has led to interesting human types, but racial prejudice hashitherto prevented any scientific study of the matter. In general theNegro population in the United States is brown in color, darkening toalmost black and shading off in the other direction to yellow and white, and is indistinguishable in some cases from the white population. 

Much has been written of the black man in America, but most of this hasbeen from the point of view of the whites, so that we know of the effectof Negro slavery on the whites, the strife among the whites for andagainst abolition, and the consequent problem of the Negro so far as thewhite population is concerned. 

This chapter, however, is dealing with the matter more from the point ofview of the Negro group itself, and seeking to show what slavery meant tothem, how they reacted against it, what they did to secure their freedom, and what they are doing with their partial freedom to-day. 

The slaves landing from 1619 onward were received by the colonies at firstas laborers, on the same plane as other laborers. For a long time therewas in law no distinction between the indented white servant from Englandand the black servant from Africa, except in the term of their service. Even here the distinction was not always observed, some of the whitesbeing kept beyond term of their service and Negroes now and then securingtheir freedom. Gradually the planters realized the advantage of laborersheld for life, but they were met by certain moral difficulties. Theopposition to slavery had from the first been largely stilled when it wasstated that this was a method of converting the heathen to Christianity. The corollary was that when a slave was converted he became free. Up to1660 or thereabouts it seemed accepted in most colonies and in the EnglishWest Indies that baptism into a Christian church would free a Negro slave. Masters therefore, were reluctant in the seventeenth century to have theirslaves receive Christian instruction. Massachusetts first apparentlylegislated on this matter by enacting in 1641 that slavery should beconfined to captives in just wars "and such strangers as willingly sellthemselves or are sold to us, "[91] meaning by "strangers" apparentlyheathen, but saying nothing as to the effect of conversion. Connecticutadopted similar legislation in 1650, and Virginia declared in 1661 thatNegroes "are incapable of making satisfaction" for time lost in runningaway by lengthening their time of services, thus implying that they wereslaves for life. Maryland declared in 1663 that Negro slaves should serve_durante vita_, but it was not until 1667 that Virginia finally plucked upcourage to attack the issue squarely and declared by law: "Baptism dothnot alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom, inorder that diverse masters freed from this doubt may more carefullyendeavor the propagation of Christianity. "[92]

The transplanting of the Negro from his African clan life to the WestIndian plantation was a social revolution. Marriage became geographicaland transient, while women and girls were without protection. 

The private home as a self-protective, independent unit did not exist. That powerful institution, the polygamous African home, was almostcompletely destroyed, and in its place in America arose sexualpromiscuity, a weak community life, with common dwelling, meals, and childnurseries. The internal slave trade tended further to weaken natural ties. A small number of favored house servants and artisans were raised abovethis--had their private homes, came in contact with the culture of themaster class, and assimilated much of American civilization. This was, however, exceptional; broadly speaking, the greatest social effect ofAmerican slavery was to substitute for the polygamous Negro home a newpolygamy less guarded, less effective, and less civilized. 

At first sight it would seem that slavery completely destroyed everyvestige of spontaneous movement among the Negroes. This is not strictlytrue. The vast power of the priest in the African state is well known; hisrealm alone--the province of religion and medicine--remained largelyunaffected by the plantation system. The Negro priest, therefore, earlybecame an important figure on the plantation and found his function as theinterpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and asthe one who expressed, rudely but picturesquely, the longing anddisappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginningsarose and spread with marvelous rapidity the Negro church, the firstdistinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first byany means a Christian church, but a mere adaptation of those rites offetish which in America is termed obe worship, or "voodooism. "[93]Association and missionary effort soon gave these rites a veneer ofChristianity and gradually, after two centuries, the church becameChristian, with a simple Calvinistic creed, but with many of the oldcustoms still clinging to the services. It is this historic fact, that theNegro church of to-day bases itself upon the sole surviving socialinstitution of the African fatherland, that accounts for its extraordinarygrowth and vitality. 

The slave codes at first were really labor codes based on an attempt toreestablish in America the waning feudalism of Europe. The laborers weremainly black and were held for life. Above them came the artisans, freewhites with a few blacks, and above them the master class. The feudalismcalled for the plantation system, and the plantation system as developedin America, and particularly in Virginia, was at first a feudal domain. Onthese plantations the master was practically supreme. The slave codes inearly days were but moderately harsh, allowing punishment by the master, but restraining him in extreme cases and providing for care of the slavesand of the aged. With the power, however, solely in the hands of themaster class, and with the master supreme on his own plantation, his powerover the slave was practically what he wished it to be. In some cases thecruelty was as great as on the worst West Indian plantations. In othercases the rule was mild and paternal. 

Up through this American feudalism the Negro began to rise. He learned inthe eighteenth century the English language, he began to be identifiedwith the Christian church, he mingled his blood to a considerable extentwith the master class. The house servants particularly were favored, insome cases receiving education, and the number of free Negroes graduallyincreased. 

Present-day students are often puzzled at the apparent contradictions ofSouthern slavery. One hears, on the one hand, of the staid and gentlepatriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, easeand happiness; on the other hand one hears of barbarous cruelty andunbridled power and wide oppression of men. Which is the true picture? Theanswer is simple: both are true. They are not opposite sides of the sameshield; they are different shields. They are pictures, on the one hand, ofhouse service in the great country seats and in the towns, and on theother hand of the field laborers who raised the great tobacco, rice, andcotton crops. We have thus not only carelessly mixed pictures of what werereally different kinds of slavery, but of that which represented differentdegrees in the development of the economic system. House service was theolder feudal idea of personal retainership, developed in Virginia andCarolina in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It had all theadvantages and disadvantages of such a system; the advantage of the strongpersonal tie and disadvantage of unyielding caste distinctions, with theresultant immoralities. At its worst, however, it was a matter primarilyof human relationships. 

Out of this older type of slavery in the northern South there developed, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the southern South thetype of slavery which corresponds to the modern factory system in itsworst conceivable form. It represented production of a staple product on alarge scale; between the owner and laborer were interposed the overseerand the drivers. The slaves were whipped and driven to a mechanical tasksystem. Wide territory was needed, so that at last absentee landlordshipwas common. It was this latter type of slavery that marked the cottonkingdom, and the extension of the area of this system southward andwestward marked the aggressive world-conquering visions of the slavebarons. On the other hand it was the milder and far different Virginiahouse service and the personal retainership of town life in which mostwhite children grew up; it was this that impressed their imaginations andwhich they have so vividly portrayed. The Negroes, however, knew the otherside, for it was under the harsher, heartless driving of the fields thatfully nine-tenths of them lived. 

There early began to be some internal development and growth ofself-consciousness among the Negroes: for instance, in New England townsNegro "governors" were elected. This was partly an African customtransplanted and partly an endeavor to put the regulation of the slavesinto their own hands. Negroes voted in those days: for instance, in NorthCarolina until 1835 the Constitution extended the franchise to everyfreeman, and when Negroes were disfranchised in 1835, several hundredcolored men were deprived of the vote. In fact, as Albert Bushnell Hartsays, "In the colonies freed Negroes, like freed indentured whiteservants, acquired property, founded families, and came into the politicalcommunity if they had the energy, thrift, and fortune to get the necessaryproperty. "[94]

The humanitarian movement of the eighteenth century was active towardNegroes, because of the part which they played in the Revolutionary War. Negro regiments and companies were raised in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and a large number of Negroes were members of the continental armieselsewhere. Individual Negroes distinguished themselves. It is estimatedthat five thousand Negroes fought in the American armies. 

The mass of the Americans considered at the time of the adoption of theConstitution that Negro slavery was doomed. There soon came a series oflaws emancipating slaves in the North: Vermont began in 1779, followed byjudicial decision in Massachusetts in 1780 and gradual emancipation inPennsylvania beginning the same year; emancipation was accomplished in NewHampshire in 1783, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. Themomentous exclusion of slavery in the Northwest Territory took place in1787, and gradual emancipation began in New York and New Jersey in 1799and 1804. 

Beneficial and insurance societies began to appear among colored people. Nearly every town of any size in Virginia in the early eighteenth centuryhad Negro organizations for caring for the sick and burying the dead. Asthe number of free Negroes increased, particularly in the North, thesefinancial societies began to be openly formed. One of the earliest was theFree African Society of Philadelphia. This eventually became the presentAfrican Methodist Church, which has to-day half a million members and overeleven million dollars' worth of property. 

Negroes began to be received into the white church bodies in separatecongregations, and before 1807 there is the record of the formation ofeight such Negro churches. This brought forth leaders who were usuallypreachers in these churches. Richard Allen, the founder of the AfricanMethodist Church, was one; Lot Carey, one of the founders of Liberia, wasanother. In the South there was John Chavis, who passed through a regularcourse of studies at what is now Washington and Lee University. He starteda school for young white men in North Carolina and had among his pupils aUnited States senator, sons of a chief justice of North Carolina, agovernor of the state, and many others. He was a full-blooded Negro, but aSouthern writer says that "all accounts agree that John Chavis was agentleman. He was received socially among the best whites and asked totable. "[95]

In the war of 1812 thirty-three hundred Negroes helped Jackson win thebattle of New Orleans, and numbers fought in New York State and in thenavy under Perry, Channing, and others. Phyllis Wheatley, a Negro girl, wrote poetry, and the mulatto, Benjamin Banneker, published one of thefirst American series of almanacs. 

In fine, it seemed in the early years of the nineteenth century thatslavery in the United States would gradually disappear and that the Negrowould have, in time, a man's chance. A change came, however, between 1820and 1830, and it is directly traceable to the industrial revolution of thenineteenth century. 

Between 1738 and 1830 there had come a remarkable series of inventionswhich revolutionized the methods of making cloth. This series included theinvention of the fly shuttle, the carding machine, the steam engine, andthe power loom. The world began to look about for a cheaper and largersupply of fiber for weaving. It was found in the cotton plant, and thesouthern United States was especially adapted to its culture. Theinvention of the cotton gin removed the last difficulties. The South nowhad a crop which could be attended to by unskilled labor and for whichthere was practically unlimited demand. There was land, and rich land, inplenty. The result was that the cotton crop in the United States increasedfrom 8, 000 bales in 1790 to 650, 000 bales in 1820, to 2, 500, 000 bales in1850, and to 4, 000, 000 bales in 1860. 

In this growth one sees the economic foundation of the new slavery in theUnited States, which rose in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Manifestly the fatal procrastination in dealing with slavery in theeighteenth century received in the nineteenth century its terrible reward. The change in the attitude toward slavery was manifest in various ways. The South no longer excused slavery, but began to defend it as an economicsystem. The enforcement of the slave trade laws became notoriously laxand there was a tendency to make slave codes harsher. 

This led to retaliation on the part of the Negroes. There had not been inthe United States before this many attempts at insurrection. The slaveswere distributed over a wide territory, and before they became intelligentenough to cooperate the chance of emancipation was held before them. Several small insurrections are alluded to in South Carolina early in theeighteenth century, and one by Cato at Stono in 1740 caused widespreadalarm. The Negro plot in New York in 1712 put the city into hysterics. There was no further plotting on any scale until the Haytian revolt, whenGabriel in Virginia made an abortive attempt. In 1822 a free Negro, Denmark Vesey, in South Carolina, failed in a well-laid plot, and tenyears after that, in 1831, Nat Turner led his insurrection in Virginia andkilled fifty-one persons. The result of this insurrection was tocrystallize tendencies toward harshness which the economic revolution wasmaking advisable. 

A wave of legislation passed over the South, prohibiting the slaves fromlearning to read and write, forbidding Negroes to preach, and interferingwith Negro religious meetings. Virginia declared in 1831 that neitherslaves nor free Negroes might preach, nor could they attend religiousservice at night without permission. In North Carolina slaves and freeNegroes were forbidden to preach, exhort, or teach "in any prayer meetingor other association for worship where slaves of different families arecollected together" on penalty of not more than thirty-nine lashes. Maryland and Georgia and other states had similar laws. 

The real effective revolt of the Negro against slavery was not, however, by fighting, but by running away, usually to the North, which had beenrecently freed from slavery. From the beginning of the nineteenth centuryslaves began to escape in considerable numbers. Four geographical pathswere chiefly followed: one, leading southward, was the line of swampsalong the coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to the northern border of Florida. This gave rise to the Negro element among the Indians in Florida and ledto the two Seminole wars of 1817 and 1835. These wars were really slaveraids to make the Indians give up the Negro and half-breed slavesdomiciled among them. The wars cost the United States ten million dollarsand two thousand lives. 

The great Appalachian range, with its abutting mountains, was the safestpath northward. Through Tennessee and Kentucky and the heart of theCumberland Mountains, using the limestone caverns, was the third route, and the valley of the Mississippi was the western tunnel. 

These runaways and the freedmen of the North soon began to form a group ofpeople who sought to consider the problem of slavery and the destiny ofthe Negro in America. They passed through many psychological changes ofattitude in the years from 1700 to 1850. At first, in the early part ofthe eighteenth century, there was but one thought: revolt and revenge. Thedevelopment of the latter half of the century brought an attitude of hopeand adjustment and emphasized the differences between the slave and thefree Negro. The first part of the nineteenth century brought twomovements: among the free Negroes an effort at self-development andprotection through organization; among slaves and recent fugitives adistinct reversion to the older idea of revolt. 

As the new industrial slavery, following the rise of the cotton kingdom, began to press harder, a period of storm and stress ensued in the blackworld, and in 1829 came the first full-voiced, almost hysterical protestof a Negro against slavery and the color line in David Walker's Appeal, which aroused Southern legislatures to action. 

The decade 1830-40 was a severe period of trial. Not only were the chainsof slavery tighter in the South, but in the North the free Negro wasbeginning to feel the ostracism and competition of white workingmen, native and foreign. In Philadelphia, between 1829 and 1849, six mobs ofhoodlums and foreigners murdered and maltreated Negroes. In the MiddleWest harsh black laws which had been enacted in earlier days were hauledfrom their hiding places and put into effect. No Negro was allowed tosettle in Ohio unless he gave bond within twenty days to the amount offive thousand dollars to guarantee his good behavior and support. Harboring or concealing fugitives was heavily fined, and no Negro couldgive evidence in any case where a white man was party. These laws began tobe enforced in 1829 and for three days riots went on in Cincinnati andNegroes were shot and killed. Aroused, the Negroes sent a deputation toCanada where they were offered asylum. Fully two thousand migrated fromOhio. Later large numbers from other parts of the United States joinedthem. 

In 1830-31 the first Negro conventions were called in Philadelphia toconsider the desperate condition of the Negro population, and in 1833 theconvention met again and local societies were formed. The first Negropaper was issued in New York in 1827, while later emancipation in theBritish West Indies brought some cheer in the darkness. 

A system of separate Negro schools was established and the little band ofabolitionists led by Garrison and others appeared. In spite of all theuntoward circumstances, therefore, the internal development of the freeNegro in the North went on. The Negro population increased twenty-threeper cent between 1830 and 1840; Philadelphia had, in 1838, one hundredsmall beneficial societies, while Ohio Negroes had ten thousand acres ofland. The slave mutiny on the Creole, the establishment of the Negro OddFellows, and the growth of the Negro churches all indicated advancement. 

Between 1830 and 1850 the concerted coöperation to assist fugitives cameto be known as the Underground Railroad. It was an organization not simplyof white philanthropists, but the coöperation of Negroes in the mostdifficult part of the work made it possible. Hundreds of Negroes visitedthe slave states to entice the slaves away, and the list of UndergroundRailroad operators given by Siebert contains one hundred and twenty-eightnames of Negroes. In Canada and in the northern United States there was asecret society, known as the League of Freedom, which especially worked tohelp slaves run away. Harriet Tubman was one of the most energetic ofthese slave conductors and brought away several thousand slaves. WilliamLambert, a colored man, was reputed between 1829 and 1862 to have aided inthe escape of thirty thousand. 

The decade 1840-50 was a period of hope and uplift for the Negro group, with clear evidences of distinct self-assertion and advance. A fewwell-trained lawyers and physicians appeared, and colored men took theirplace among the abolition orators. The catering business in Philadelphiaand other cities fell largely into their hands, and some small merchantsarose here and there. Above all, Frederick Douglass made his first speechin 1841 and thereafter became one of the most prominent figures in theabolition crusade. A new series of national conventions began to assemblelate in the forties, and the delegates were drawn from the artisans andhigher servants, showing a great increase of efficiency in the rank andfile of the free Negroes. 

By 1850 the Negroes had increased to three and a half million. Those inCanada were being organized in settlements and were accumulating property. The escape of fugitive slaves was systematized and some of the mostrepresentative conventions met. One particularly, in 1854, grappledfrankly with the problem of emigration. It looked as though it was goingto be impossible for Negroes to remain in the United States and be free. As early as 1788 a Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed ageneral exodus to Africa. John and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for theright to vote in 1780, started in 1815 for Africa, organizing anexpedition at their own expense which cost four thousand dollars. LotCarey organized the African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negrocollege graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent ofpublic schools. The Colonization Society encouraged this migration, andthe Negroes themselves had organized the Canadian exodus. 

The Rochester Negro convention in 1853 pronounced against migration, butnevertheless emissaries were sent in various directions to see whatinducements could be offered. One went to the Niger valley, one to CentralAmerica, and one to Hayti. The Haytian trip was successful and about twothousand black emigrants eventually settled in Hayti. 

Delaney, who went to Africa, concluded a treaty with eight kings offeringinducements to Negroes, but nothing came of it. In 1853 Negroes likePurvis and Barbadoes helped in the formation of the American Anti-slaverysociety, and for a while colored men coöperated with John Brown andprobably would have given him considerable help if they had thoroughlyknown his plans. As it was, six or seven of his twenty-two followers wereNegroes. 

Meantime the slave power was impelled by the high price of slaves and theexhaustion of cotton land to make increased demands. Slavery was forcednorth of Mason and Dixon's line in 1820; a new slave empire with thousandsof slaves was annexed in 1850, and a fugitive slave law was passed whichendangered the liberty of every free Negro; finally a determined attemptwas made to force slavery into the Northwest in competition with freewhite labor, and less effective but powerful movements arose to annex moreslave territory to the south and to reopen the African slave trade. 

It looked like a triumphal march for the slave barons, but each step costmore than the last. Missouri gave rise to the early abolitionist movement. Mexico and the fugitive slave law aroused deep opposition in the North, and Kansas developed an attack upon the free labor system, not simply ofthe North, but of the civilized world. The result was war; but the war wasnot against slavery. It was fought to protect free white laborers againstthe competition of slaves, and it was thought possible to do this bysegregating slavery. 

The first thing that vexed the Northern armies on Southern soil during thewar was the question of the disposition of the fugitive slaves, whoimmediately began to arrive in increasing numbers. Butler confiscatedthem, Fremont freed them, and Halleck caught and returned them; but theirnumbers swelled to such large proportions that the mere economic problemof their presence overshadowed everything else, especially after theEmancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was glad to have them come after oncehe realized their strength to the Confederacy. 

The Emancipation Proclamation was forced, not simply by the necessity ofparalyzing industry in the South, but also by the necessity of employingNegro soldiers. During the first two years of the war no one wanted Negrosoldiers. It was declared to be a "white man's war. " General Hunter triedto raise a regiment in South Carolina, but the War Department disavowedthe act. In Louisiana the Negroes were anxious to enlist, but were heldoff. In the meantime the war did not go as well as the North had hoped, and on the twenty-sixth of January, 1863, the Secretary of War authorizedthe Governor of Massachusetts to raise two regiments of Negro troops. Frederick Douglass and others began the work with enthusiasm, and in theend one hundred and eighty-seven thousand Negroes enlisted in the Northernarmies, of whom seventy thousand were killed and wounded. The conduct ofthese troops was exemplary. They were indispensable in camp duties andbrave on the field, where they fought in two hundred and thirteen battles. General Banks wrote, "Their conduct was heroic. No troops could be moredetermined or more daring. "[96]

The assault on Fort Wagner, led by a thousand black soldiers under thewhite Colonel Shaw, is one of the greatest deeds of desperate bravery onrecord. On the other hand the treatment of Negro soldiers when captured bythe Confederates was barbarous. At Fort Pillow, after the surrender of thefederal troops, the colored regiment was indiscriminately butchered andsome of them were buried alive. 

Abraham Lincoln said, "The slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove toany man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Democraticstrategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States near two hundredthousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending andacquiring Union territory. . . . Abandon all the posts now garrisoned byblack men; take two hundred thousand men from our side and put them in thebattlefield or cornfield against us, and we would be compelled to abandonthe war in three weeks. "[97] Emancipation thus came as a war measure tobreak the power of the Confederacy, preserve the Union, and gain thesympathy of the civilized world. 

However, two hundred and forty-four years of slavery could not be stoppedby edict. There were legal difficulties, the whole slow problem ofeconomic readjustment, and the subtle and far-reaching questions of futurerace relations. 

The peculiar circumstances of emancipation forced the legal and politicaldifficulties to the front, and these were so striking that they have sinceobscured the others in the eyes of students. Quite unexpectedly andwithout forethought the nation had emancipated four million slaves. Oncethe deed was done, the majority of the nation was glad and recognized thatthis was, after all, the only result of a fearful four years' war which inany degree justified it. But how was the result to be secured for alltime? There were three possibilities: (1) to declare the slave free andleave him at the mercy of his former masters; (2) to establish a carefulgovernment guardianship designed to guide the slave from legal to realeconomic freedom; (3) to give the Negro the political power to guardhimself as well as he could during this development. It is very easy toforget that the United States government tried each one of these insuccession and was literally forced to adopt the third, because the firsthad utterly failed and the second was thought too "paternal" andespecially too costly. To leave the Negroes helpless after a paper edictof emancipation was manifestly impossible. It would have meant that thewar had been fought in vain. 

Carl Schurz, who traversed the South just after the war, said, "Averitable reign of terror prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negrofound scant justice in the local courts against the white man. He couldlook for protection only to the military forces of the United States stillgarrisoning the states lately in rebellion and to the Freedmen'sBureau. "[98] This Freedmen's Bureau was proposed by Charles Sumner. If ithad been presented to-day instead of fifty years ago, it would have beenregarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than the state insurance ofEngland and Germany. A half century ago, however, and in a country whichgave the _laisser faire_ economics their extremest trial, the Freedmen'sBureau struck the whole nation as unthinkable, save as a very temporaryexpedient and to relieve the more pointed forms of distress following war. Yet the proposals of the Bureau were both simple and sensible:

1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts for freedmen. 

2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen's best friend. 

3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital. 

4. To establish schools. 

5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor reliefstations, etc. 

How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedomwith less than this it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage extendingover a period of two or three decades, the ultimate end had to beenfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen whoattained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neitherobject nor guarantee. Precisely on this account the former masters opposedthe Freedmen's Bureau with all their influence. They did not want theNegro trained or really freed, and they criticized mercilessly the manymistakes of the new Bureau. 

The North at first thought to pay for the main cost of the Freedmen'sBureau by confiscating the property of former slave owners; but findingthis not in accordance with law, they realized that they were embarking onan enterprise which bade fair to add many millions to the alreadystaggering cost of the war. When, therefore, they saw that the abolitionof slavery could not be left to the white South and could not be done bythe North without time and money, they determined to put theresponsibility on the Negro himself. This was without a doubt a tremendousexperiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it succeeded to anastonishing degree. It made the immediate reëstablishment of the oldslavery impossible, and it was probably the only quick method of doingthis. It gave the freedmen's sons a chance to begin their education. Itdiverted the energy of the white South slavery to the recovery ofpolitical power, and in this interval, small as it was, the Negro took hisfirst steps toward economic freedom. 

The difficulties that stared reconstruction politicians in the face werethese: (1) They must act quickly. (2) Emancipation had increased thepolitical power of the South by one-sixth. Could this increased politicalpower be put in the hands of those who, in defense of slavery, haddisrupted the Union? (3) How was the abolition of slavery to be madeeffective? (4) What was to be the political position of the freedmen?

The Freedmen's Bureau in its short life accomplished a great task. CarlSchurz, in 1865, felt warranted in saying that "not half of the labor thathas been done in the South this year, or will be done there next year, would have been or would be done but for the exertions of the Freedmen'sBureau. . . . No other agency except one placed there by the nationalgovernment could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was sonecessary to prevent Southern society from falling at once into the chaosof a general collision between its different elements. "[99]Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary, was regarded as amakeshift, and soon abandoned. 

Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not only just, but almostinevitable. Lincoln, in 1864, "cautiously" suggested to Louisiana'sprivate consideration "whether some of the colored people may not be letin as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who foughtgallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time tocome, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom. " Indeed, the"family of freedom" in Louisiana being somewhat small just then, who elsewas to be intrusted with the "jewel"? Later and for different reasonsJohnson, in 1865, wrote to Mississippi, "If you could extend the electivefranchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of theUnited States in English and write their name, and to all persons of colorwho own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and setan example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfectsafety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to freepersons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope andtrust your convention will do this. "

The Negroes themselves began to ask for the suffrage. The Georgiaconvention in Augusta (1866) advocated "a proposition to give those whocould write and read well and possessed a certain property qualificationthe right of suffrage. " The reply of the South to these suggestions wasdecisive. In Tennessee alone was any action attempted that even suggestedpossible Negro suffrage in the future, and that failed. In all otherstates the "Black Codes" adopted were certainly not reassuring to thefriends of freedom. To be sure, it was not a time to look for calm, cool, thoughtful action on the part of the white South. Their economic conditionwas pitiable, their fear of Negro freedom genuine. Yet it was reasonableto expect from them something less than repression and utter reactiontoward slavery. To some extent this expectation was fulfilled. Theabolition of slavery was recognized on the statute book, and the civilrights of owning property and appearing as a witness in cases in which hewas a party were generally granted the Negro; yet with these in many caseswent harsh and unbearable regulations which largely neutralized theconcessions and certainly gave ground for an assumption that, once free, the South would virtually reenslave the Negro. The colored peoplethemselves naturally feared this, protesting, as in Mississippi, "againstthe reactionary policy prevailing and expressing the fear that thelegislature will pass such prescriptive laws as will drive the freedmenfrom the state, or practically reënslave them. "

The codes spoke for themselves. As Burgess says, "Almost every act, word, or gesture of the Negro, not consonant with good taste and good manners aswell as good morals, was made a crime or misdemeanor for which he couldfirst be fined by the magistrates and then be consigned to a condition ofalmost slavery for an indefinite time, if he could not pay the bill. "[100]

All things considered, it seems probable that, if the South had beenpermitted to have its way in 1865, the harshness of Negro slavery wouldhave been mitigated so as to make slave trading difficult, and so as tomake it possible for a Negro to hold property and appear in some cases incourt; but that in most other respects the blacks would have remained inslavery. 

What could prevent this? A Freedmen's Bureau established for ten, twenty, or forty years, with a careful distribution of land and capital and asystem of education for the children, might have prevented such anextension of slavery. But the country would not listen to such acomprehensive plan. A restricted grant of the suffrage voluntarily made bythe states would have been a reassuring proof of a desire to treat thefreedmen fairly and would have balanced in part, at least, the increasedpolitical power of the South. There was no such disposition evident. 

In Louisiana, for instance, under the proposed reconstruction "not oneNegro was allowed to vote, though at that very time the wealthyintelligent free colored people of the state paid taxes on propertyassessed at fifteen million dollars and many of them were well known fortheir patriotic zeal and love for the Union. "[101]

Thus the arguments for universal Negro suffrage from the start were strongand are still strong, and no one would question their strength were it notfor the assumption that the experiment failed. Frederick Douglass said toPresident Johnson, "Your noble and humane predecessor placed in our handsthe sword to assist in saving the nation, and we do hope that you, hisable successor, will favorably regard the placing in our hands the ballotwith which to save ourselves. "[102]

Carl Schurz wrote, "It is idle to say that it will be time to speak ofNegro suffrage when the whole colored race will be educated, for theballot may be necessary to him to secure his education. "[103]

The granting of full Negro suffrage meant one of two alternatives to theSouth: (1) The uplift of the Negro for sheer self-preservation. This iswhat Schurz and the saner North expected. As one Southern schoolsuperintendent said, "The elevation of this class is a matter of primeimportance, since a ballot in the hands of a black citizen is quite aspotent as in the hands of a white one. " Or (2) Negro suffrage meant adetermined concentration of Southern effort by actual force to deprive theNegro of the ballot or nullify its use. This last is what really happened. But even in this case, so much energy was taken in keeping the Negro fromvoting that the plan for keeping him in virtual slavery and denying himeducation partially failed. It took ten years to nullify Negro suffrage inpart and twenty years to escape the fear of federal intervention. In thesetwenty years a vast number of Negroes had arisen so far as to escapeslavery forever. Debt peonage could be fastened on part of the rural Southand was; but even here the new Negro landholder appeared. Thus despiteeverything the Fifteenth Amendment, and that alone, struck the death knellof slavery. 

The steps toward the Fifteenth Amendment were taken slowly. First Negroeswere allowed to take part in reconstructing the state governments. Thiswas inevitable if loyal governments were to be obtained. Next the restoredstate governments were directed to enfranchise all citizens, black orwhite, or have their representation in Congress cut down proportionately. Finally the United States said the last word of simple justice: the statesmay regulate the suffrage, but no state may deprive a person of the rightto vote simply because he is a Negro or has been a slave. 

For such reasons the Negro was enfranchised. What was the result? Nolanguage has been spared to describe these results as the worstimaginable. This is not true. There were bad results, and bad resultsarising from Negro suffrage; but those results were not so bad as usuallypainted, nor was Negro suffrage the prime cause of many of them. Let usnot forget that the white South believed it to be of vital interest to itswelfare that the experiment of Negro suffrage should fail ignominiouslyand that almost to a man the whites were willing to insure this failureeither by active force or passive acquiescence; that besides this therewere, as might be expected, men, black and white, Northern and Southern, only too eager to take advantage of such a situation for feathering theirown nests. Much evil must result in such case; but to charge the evil toNegro suffrage is unfair. It may be charged to anger, poverty, venality, and ignorance, but the anger and poverty were the almost inevitableaftermath of war; the venality was much greater among whites than Negroesboth North and South, and while ignorance was the curse of Negroes, thefault was not theirs and they took the initiative to correct it. 

The chief charges against the Negro governments are extravagance, theft, and incompetency of officials. There is no serious charge that thesegovernments threatened civilization or the foundations of social order. The charge is that they threatened property and that they wereinefficient. These charges are in part undoubtedly true, but they areoften exaggerated. The South had been terribly impoverished and saddledwith new social burdens. In other words, states with smaller resourceswere asked not only to do a work of restoration, but a larger socialwork. The property holders were aghast. They not only demurred, but, predicting ruin and revolution, they appealed to secret societies, tointimidation, force, and murder. They refused to believe that thesenovices in government and their friends were aught but scamps and fools. Under the circumstances occurring directly after the war, the wiseststatesman would have been compelled to resort to increased taxation andwould have, in turn, been execrated as extravagant, dishonest, andincompetent. It is easy, therefore, to see what flaming and incrediblestories of Reconstruction governments could gain wide currency and belief. In fact the extravagance, although great, was not universal, and much ofit was due to the extravagant spirit pervading the whole country in a dayof inflated currency and speculation. 

That the Negroes led by the astute thieves, became at first tools andreceived some small share of the spoils is true. But two considerationsmust be added: much of the legislation which resulted in fraud wasrepresented to the Negroes as good legislation, and thus their votes weresecured by deliberate misrepresentation. Take, for instance, the landfrauds of South Carolina. A wise Negro leader of that state, advocatingthe state purchase of farm lands, said, "One of the greatest of slaverybulwarks was the infernal plantation system, one man owning his thousand, another his twenty, another fifty thousand acres of land. This is the onlyway by which we will break up that system, and I maintain that our freedomwill be of no effect if we allow it to continue. What is the main cause ofthe prosperity of the North? It is because every man has his own farm andis free and independent. Let the lands of the South be similarlydivided. "[104]

From such arguments the Negroes were induced to aid a scheme to buy landand distribute it. Yet a large part of eight hundred thousand dollarsappropriated was wasted and went to the white landholders' pockets. 

The most inexcusable cheating of the Negroes took place through theFreedmen's Bank. This bank was incorporated by Congress in 1865 and had inits list of incorporators some of the greatest names in America includingPeter Cooper, William Cullen Bryan and John Jay. Yet the bank was allowedto fail in 1874 owing the freedmen their first savings of over threemillions of dollars. They have never been reimbursed. 

Many Negroes were undoubtedly venal, but more were ignorant and deceived. The question is: Did they show any signs of a disposition to learn tobetter things? The theory of democratic government is not that the will ofthe people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of averageintelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course bybitter experience. This is precisely what the Negro voters showedindubitable signs of doing. First they strove for schools to abolishignorance, and second, a large and growing number of them revolted againstthe extravagance and stealing that marred the beginning of Reconstruction, and joined with the best elements to institute reform. The greatest stigmaon the white South is not that it opposed Negro suffrage and resentedtheft and incompetence, but that, when it saw the reform movements growingand even in some cases triumphing, and a larger and larger number of blackvoters learning to vote for honesty and ability, it still preferred aReign of Terror to a campaign of education and disfranchised Negroesinstead of punishing rascals. 

No one has expressed this more convincingly than a Negro who was himself amember of the Reconstruction legislature of South Carolina, and who spokeat the convention which disfranchised him against one of the onslaughts ofTillman. "We were eight years in power. We had built school houses, established charitable institutions, built and maintained the penitentiarysystem, provided for the education of the deaf and dumb, rebuilt the jailsand court houses, rebuilt the bridges, and reestablished the ferries. Inshort, we had reconstructed the state and placed it upon the road toprosperity, and at the same time, by our acts of financial reform, transmitted to the Hampton government an indebtedness not greater by morethan two and a half million dollars than was the bonded debt of the statein 1868, before the Republican Negroes and their white allies came intopower. "[105]

So, too, in Louisiana in 1872, and in Mississippi later, the betterelement of the Republicans triumphed at the polls and, joining with theDemocrats, instituted reforms, repudiated the worst extravagance, andstarted toward better things. Unfortunately there was one thing that thewhite South feared more than Negro dishonesty, ignorance, andincompetency, and that was Negro honesty, knowledge, and efficiency. 

In the midst of all these difficulties the Negro governments in the Southaccomplished much of positive good. We may recognize three things whichNegro rule gave to the South: (1) democratic government, (2) free publicschools, (3) new social legislation. 

In general, the words of Judge Albion W. Tourgee, a white "carpet bagger, "are true when he says of the Negro governments, "They obeyed theConstitution of the United States and annulled the bonds of states, counties, and cities which had been issued to carry on the War ofRebellion and maintain armies in the field against the Union. Theyinstituted a public school system in a realm where public schools had beenunknown. They opened the ballot box and the jury box to thousands of whitemen who had been debarred from them by a lack of earthly possessions. Theyintroduced home rule into the South. They abolished the whipping post, thebranding iron, the stocks, and other barbarous forms of punishment whichhad up to that time prevailed. They reduced capital felonies from abouttwenty to two or three. In an age of extravagance they were extravagant inthe sums appropriated for public works. In all of that time no man'srights of persons were invaded under the forms of law. Every Democrat'slife, home, fireside, and business were safe. No man obstructed any whiteman's way to the ballot box, interfered with his freedom of speech, orboycotted him on account of his political faith. "[106]

A thorough study of the legislation accompanying these constitutions andits changes since shows the comparatively small amount of change in lawand government which the overthrow of Negro rule brought about. There weresharp and often hurtful economies introduced, marking the return ofproperty to power; there was a sweeping change of officials, but the mainbody of Reconstruction legislation stood. The Reconstruction democracybrought forth new leaders and definitely overthrew the old Southernaristocracy. Among these new men were Negroes of worth and ability. JohnR. Lynch, when Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, wasgiven a public testimonial by Republicans and Democrats, and the leadingwhite paper said, "His bearing in office had been so proper, and hisrulings in such marked contrasts to the partisan conduct of the ignoblewhites of his party who have aspired to be leaders of the blacks, that theconservatives cheerfully joined in the testimonial. "[107]

Of the colored treasurer of South Carolina the white Governor Chamberlainsaid, "I have never heard one word or seen one act of Mr. Cardoza's whichdid not confirm my confidence in his personal integrity and his politicalhonor and zeal for the honest administration of the state government. Onevery occasion, and under all circumstances, he has been against fraud androbbery and in favor of good measures and good men. "[108]

Jonathan C. Gibbs, a colored man and the first state superintendent ofinstruction in Florida, was a graduate of Dartmouth. He established thesystem and brought it to success, dying in harness in 1874. Such men--andthere were others--ought not to be forgotten or confounded with othertypes of colored and white Reconstruction leaders. 

There is no doubt that the thirst of the black man for knowledge, a thirstwhich has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity or whim, gave birth to the public school system of the South. It was the questionupon which black voters and legislators insisted more than anything else, and while it is possible to find some vestiges of free schools in some ofthe Southern States before the war, yet a universal, well-establishedsystem dates from the day that the black man got political power. 

Finally, in legislation covering property, the wider functions of thestate, the punishment of crime and the like, it is sufficient to say thatthe laws on these points established by Reconstruction legislatures werenot only different from and even revolutionary to the laws in the olderSouth, but they were so wise and so well suited to the needs of the newSouth that, in spite of a retrogressive movement following the overthrowof the Negro governments, the mass of this legislation, with elaborationsand development, still stands on the statute books of the South. [109]

The triumph of reaction in the South inaugurated a new era in which we maydistinguish three phases: the renewed attempt to reduce the Negroes toserfdom, the rise of the Negro metayer, and the economic disfranchisementof the Southern working class. 

The attempt to replace individual slavery had been frustrated by theFreedmen's Bureau and the Fifteenth Amendment. The disfranchisement of1876 was followed by the widespread rise of "crime" peonage. Stringentlaws on vagrancy, guardianship, and labor contracts were enacted and largediscretion given judge and jury in cases of petty crime. As a resultNegroes were systematically arrested on the slightest pretext and thelabor of convicts leased to private parties. This "convict lease system"was almost universal in the South until about 1890, when its outrageousabuses and cruelties aroused the whole country. It still survives overwide areas, and is not only responsible for the impression that the Negrois a natural criminal, but also for the inability of the Southern courtsto perform their normal functions after so long a prostitution to ends farremoved from justice. 

In more normal economic lines the employers began with the labor contractsystem. Before the war they owned labor, land, and subsistence. After thewar they still held the land and subsistence. The laborer was hired andthe subsistence "advanced" to him while the crop was growing. The fall ofthe Freedmen's Bureau hindered the transmutation of this system into amodern wage system, and allowed the laborers to be cheated by highinterest charges on the subsistence advanced and actual cheating often inbook accounts. 

The black laborers became deeply dissatisfied under this system and beganto migrate from the country to the cities, where there was an increasingdemand for labor. The employing farmers complained bitterly of thescarcity of labor and of Negro "laziness, " and secured the enactment ofharsher vagrancy and labor contract laws, and statutes against the"enticement" of laborers. So severe were these laws that it was oftenimpossible for a laborer to stop work without committing a felony. Nevertheless competition compelled the landholders to offer moreinducements to the farm hand. The result was the rise of the black sharetenant: the laborer securing better wages saved a little capital and beganto hire land in parcels of forty to eighty acres, furnishing his own toolsand seed and practically raising his own subsistence. In this way thewhole face of the labor contract in the South was, in the decade 1880-90, in process of change from a nominal wage contract to a system of tenantry. The great plantations were apparently broken up into forty and eighty acrefarms with black farmers. To many it seemed that emancipation wasaccomplished, and the black folk were especially filled with joy and hope. 

It soon was evident, however, that the change was only partial. Thelandlord still held the land in large parcels. He rented this in smallfarms to tenants, but retained direct control. In theory the laborer wasfurnishing capital, but in the majority of cases he was borrowing atleast a part of this capital from some merchant. 

The retail merchant in this way entered on the scene as middle man betweenlandlord and laborer. He guaranteed the landowner his rent and relievedhim of details by taking over the furnishing of supplies to the laborer. He tempted the laborer by a larger stock of more attractive goods, made adirect contract with him, and took a mortgage on the growing crop. Thus hesoon became the middle man to whom the profit of the transaction largelyflowed, and he began to get rich. 

If the new system benefited the merchant and the landlord, it also broughtsome benefits to the black laborers. Numbers of these were still held inpeonage, and the mass were laborers working for scant board and clothes;but above these began to rise a large number of independent tenants andfarm owners. 

In 1890, therefore, the South was faced by this question: Are we willingto allow the Negro to advance as a free worker, peasant farmer, metayer, and small capitalist, with only such handicaps as naturally impede thepoor and ignorant, or is it necessary to erect further artificial barriersto restrain the advance of the Negroes? The answer was clear andunmistakable. The advance of the freedmen had been too rapid and the Southfeared it; every effort must be made to "keep the Negro in his place" as aservile caste. 

To this end the South strove to make the disfranchisement of the Negroeseffective and final. Up to this time disfranchisement was illegal andbased on intimidation. The new laws passed between 1890 and 1910 sought ontheir face to base the right to vote on property and education in such away as to exclude poor and illiterate Negroes and admit all whites. Infact they could be administered so as to exclude nearly all Negroes. Tothis was added a series of laws designed publicly to humiliate andstigmatize Negro blood: as, for example, separate railway cars; separateseats in street cars, and the like; these things were added to theseparation in schools and churches, and the denial of redress to seducedcolored women, which had long been the custom in the South. All these newenactments meant not simply separation, but subordination, caste, humiliation, and flagrant injustice. 

To all this was added a series of labor laws making the exploitation ofNegro labor more secure. All this legislation had to be accomplished inthe face of the labor movement throughout the world, and particularly inthe South, where it was beginning to enter among the white workers. Thiswas accomplished easily, however, by an appeal to race prejudice. Nomethod of inflaming the darkest passions of men was unused. The lynchingmob was given its glut of blood and egged on by purposely exaggerated andoften wholly invented tales of crime on the part of perhaps the mostpeaceful and sweet-tempered race the world has ever known. Under the flameof this outward noise went the more subtle and dangerous work. Theelection laws passed in the states where three-fourths of the Negroeslive, were so ingeniously framed that a black university graduate could beprevented from voting and the most ignorant white hoodlum could beadmitted to the polls. Labor laws were so arranged that imprisonment fordebt was possible and leaving an employer could be made a penitentiaryoffense. Negro schools were cut off with small appropriations or whollyneglected, and a determined effort was made with wide success to see thatno Negro had any voice either in the making or the administration oflocal, state, or national law. 

The acquiescence of the white labor vote of the South was further insuredby throwing white and black laborers, so far as possible, into rivalcompeting groups and making each feel that the one was the cause of theother's troubles. The neutrality of the white people of the North wassecured through their fear for the safety of large investments in theSouth, and through the fatalistic attitude common both in America andEurope toward the possibility of real advance on the part of the darkernations. 

The reaction of the Negro Americans upon this wholesale and open attemptto reduce them to serfdom has been interesting. Naturally they began toorganize and protest and in some cases to appeal to the courts. Then, totheir astonishment, there arose a colored leader, Mr. Booker T. Washington, who advised them to yield to disfranchisement and caste andwait for greater economic strength and general efficiency before demandingfull rights as American citizens. The white South naturally agreed withMr. Washington, and the white North thought they saw here a chance forpeace in the racial conflict and safety for their Southern investments. 

For a time the colored people hesitated. They respected Mr. Washington forshrewdness and recognized the wisdom of his homely insistence on thriftand hard work; but gradually they came to see more and more clearly that, stripped of political power and emasculated by caste, they could nevergain sufficient economic strength to take their place as modern men. Theyalso realized that any lull in their protests would be taken advantage ofby Negro haters to push their caste program. They began, therefore, withrenewed persistence to fight for their fundamental rights as Americancitizens. The struggle tended at first to bitter personal dissensionwithin the group. But wiser counsels and the advice of white friendseventually prevailed and raised it to the broad level of a fight for thefundamental principles of democracy. The launching of the "NiagaraMovement" by twenty-nine daring colored men in 1905, followed by theformation of the National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople in 1910, marked an epoch in the advance of the Negro. This latterorganization, with its monthly organ, _The Crisis_, is now waging anation-wide fight for justice to Negroes. Other organizations, and anumber of strong Negro weekly papers are aiding in this fight. What hasbeen the net result of this struggle of half a century?

In 1863 there were about five million persons of Negro descent in theUnited States. Of these, four million and more were just being releasedfrom slavery. These slaves could be bought and sold, could move from placeto place only with permission, were forbidden to learn to read or write, and legally could never hold property or marry. Ninety per cent weretotally illiterate, and only one adult in six was a nominal Christian. 

Fifty years later, in 1913, there were in the United States ten and aquarter million persons of Negro descent, an increase of one hundred andfive per cent. Legal slavery has been abolished leaving, however, vestigesin debt slavery, peonage, and the convict lease system. The mass of thefreedmen and their sons have

1. Earned a living as free and partially free laborers. 

2. Shared the responsibilities of government. 

3. Developed the internal organization of their race. 

4. Aspired to spiritual self-expression. 

The Negro was freed as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer. There were a few free Negroes who owned property in the South, and alarger number who owned property in the North; but ninety-nine per cent ofthe race in the South were penniless field hands and servants. 

To-day there are two and a half million laborers, the majority of whom areefficient wage earners. Above these are more than a million servants andtenant farmers; skilled and semi-skilled workers make another million andat the top of the economic column are 600, 000 owners and managers of farmsand businesses, cash tenants, officials, and professional men. This makesa total of 5, 192, 535 colored breadwinners in 1910. 

More specifically these breadwinners include 218, 972 farm owners and319, 346 cash farm tenants and managers. There were in all 62, 755 miners, 288, 141 in the building and hand trades; 28, 515 workers in clay, glass, and stone; 41, 739 iron and steel workers; 134, 102 employees on railways;62, 822 draymen, cab drivers, and liverymen; 133, 245 in wholesale andretail trade; 32, 170 in the public service; and 69, 471 in professionalservice, including 29, 750 teachers, 17, 495 clergymen, and 4, 546physicians, dentists, trained nurses, etc. Finally, we must not forget2, 175, 000 Negro homes, with their housewives, and 1, 620, 000 children inschool. 

Fifty years ago the overwhelming mass of these people were not onlypenniless, but were themselves assessed as real estate. By 1875 theNegroes probably had gotten hold of something between 2, 000, 000 and4, 000, 000 acres of land through their bounties as soldiers and the lowprice of land after the war. By 1880 this was increased to about 6, 000, 000acres; in 1890 to about 8, 000, 000 acres; in 1900 to over 12, 000, 000 acres. In 1910 this land had increased to nearly 20, 000, 000 acres, a realm aslarge as Ireland. 

The 120, 738 farms owned by Negroes in 1890 increased to 218, 972 in 1910, or eighty-one per cent. The value of these farms increased from$179, 796, 639 in 1900 to $440, 992, 439 in 1910; Negroes owned in 1910 about500, 000 homes out of a total of 2, 175, 000. Their total property in 1900was estimated at $300, 000, 000 by the American Economic Association. On thesame basis of calculation it would be worth to-day not less than$800, 000, 000. 

Despite the disfranchisement of three-fourths of his voting population, the Negro to-day is a recognized part of the American government. He holds7, 500 offices in the executive service of the nation, besides furnishingfour regiments in the army and a large number of sailors. In the state andmunicipal service he holds nearly 20, 000 other offices, and he furnishes500, 000 of the votes which rule the Union. 

In these same years the Negro has relearned the lost art of organization. Slavery was the almost absolute denial of initiative and responsibility. To-day Negroes have nearly 40, 000 churches, with edifices worth at least$75, 000, 000 and controlling nearly 4, 000, 000 members. They raisethemselves $7, 500, 000 a year for these churches. 

There are 200 private schools and colleges managed and almost entirelysupported by Negroes, and these and other public and private Negro schoolshave received in 40 years $45, 000, 000 of Negro money in taxes anddonations. Five millions a year are raised by Negro secret and beneficialsocieties which hold at least $6, 000, 000 in real estate. Negroes supportwholly or in part over 100 old folks' homes and orphanages, 30 hospitals, and 500 cemeteries. Their organized commercial life is extending rapidlyand includes over 22, 000 small retail businesses and 40 banks. 

Above and beyond this material growth has gone the spiritual uplift of agreat human race. From contempt and amusement they have passed to thepity, perplexity, and fear on the part of their neighbors, while withintheir own souls they have arisen from apathy and timid complaint to openprotest and more and more manly self-assertion. Where nine-tenths of themcould not read or write in 1860, to-day over two-thirds can; they have 300papers and periodicals, and their voice and expression are compellingattention. Already in poetry, literature, music, and painting the work ofAmericans of Negro descent has gained notable recognition. Instead ofbeing led and defended by others, as in the past, American Negroes aregaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals. Self-realization is thus coming slowly but surely to another of theworld's great races, and they are to-day girding themselves to fight inthe van of progress, not simply for their own rights as men, but for theideals of the greater world in which they live: the emancipation of women, universal peace, democratic government, the socialization of wealth, andhuman brotherhood. 

FOOTNOTES:

[90]

The figures given by the census are as follows:1850, mulattoes formed 11. 2 per cent of the total Negro population. 1860, mulattoes formed 13. 2 per cent of the total Negro population. 1870, mulattoes formed 12 per cent of the total Negro population. 1890, mulattoes formed 15. 2 per cent of the total Negro population. 1910, mulattoes formed 20. 9 per cent of the total Negro population. 

Or in actual numbers:1850, 405, 751 mulattoes. 1860, 588, 352 mulattoes. 1870, 585, 601 mulattoes. 1890, 1, 132, 060 mulattoes. 1910, 2, 050, 686 mulattoes. 

[91] Cf. "The Spanish Jurist Solorzaris, " quoted in Helps: _SpanishConquest_, IV, 381. 

[92] Hurd: _Law of Freedom and Bondage_. 

[93] "Obi (Obeah, Obiah, or Obia) is the adjective; Obe or Obi, the noun. It is of African origin, probably connected with Egyptian Ob, Aub, orObron, meaning 'serpent. ' Moses forbids Israelites ever to consult thedemon Ob, i. E. , 'Charmer, Wizard. ' The Witch of Endor is called Oub or Ob. Oubaois is the name of the Baselisk or Royal Serpent, emblem of the Sun, and, according to Horus Appollo, 'the Ancient Deity of Africa. '"--Edwards:_West Indies_, ed. 1819, II. 106-119. Cf. Johnston: _Negro in the NewWorld_, pp. 65-66; _also Atlanta University Publications_, No. 8, pp. 5-6. 

[94] _Boston Transcript_, March 24, 1906. 

[95] Bassett: _North Carolina_, pp. 73-76. 

[96] Cf. Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_. 

[97] Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_, p. 108. 

[98] _American Historical Review_, Vol. XV. 

[99] Report to President Johnson. 

[100] _Reconstruction and the Constitution. _

[101] Brewster: _Sketches_, etc. 

[102] McPherson: _Reconstruction_, p. 52. 

[103] Report to the President, 1865. 

[104] _American Historical Review_, Vol. XV, No. 4. 

[105] _Occasional Papers_, American Negro Academy, No. 6. 

[106] _Occasional Papers_, American Negro Academy, No. 6. 

[107] _Jackson (Miss. ) Clarion_, April 24, 1873. 

[108] Allen: _Governor Chamberlain's Administration_, p. 82. 

[109] Reconstruction Constitutions, practically unaltered, were kept inFlorida, 1868-85, seventeen years; Virginia, 1870-1902, thirty-two years;South Carolina, 1868-95, twenty-seven years; Mississippi, 1868-90, twenty-two years. 

XII THE NEGRO PROBLEMS

It is impossible to separate the population of the world accurately byrace, since that is no scientific criterion by which to divide races. Ifwe divide the world, however, roughly into African Negroes and Negroids, European whites, and Asiatic and American brown and yellow peoples, wehave approximately 150, 000, 000 Negroes, 500, 000, 000 whites, and900, 000, 000 yellow and brown peoples. Of the 150, 000, 000 Negroes, 121, 000, 000 live in Africa, 27, 000, 000[110] in the new world, and2, 000, 000 in Asia. 

What is to be the future relation of the Negro race to the rest of theworld? The visitor from Altruria might see here no peculiar problem. Hewould expect the Negro race to develop along the lines of other humanraces. In Africa his economic and political development would restore andeventually outrun the ancient glories of Egypt, Ethiopia, and Yoruba;overseas the West Indies would become a new and nobler Africa, built inthe very pathway of the new highway of commerce between East and West--thereal sea route to India; while in the United States a large part of itscitizenship (showing for perhaps centuries their dark descent, butnevertheless equal sharers of and contributors to the civilization of theWest) would be the descendants of the wretched victims of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century slave trade. 

This natural assumption of a stranger finds, however, lodging in the mindsof few present-day thinkers. On the contrary, such an outcome is usuallydismissed summarily. Most persons have accepted that tacit but clearmodern philosophy which assigns to the white race alone the hegemony ofthe world and assumes that other races, and particularly the Negro race, will either be content to serve the interests of the whites or die outbefore their all-conquering march. This philosophy is the child of theAfrican slave trade and of the expansion of Europe during the nineteenthcentury. 

The Negro slave trade was the first step in modern world commerce, followed by the modern theory of colonial expansion. Slaves as an articleof commerce were shipped as long as the traffic paid. When the Americashad enough black laborers for their immediate demand, the moral action ofthe eighteenth century had a chance to make its faint voice heard. 

The moral repugnance was powerfully reënforced by the revolt of the slavesin the West Indies and South America, and by the fact that North Americaearly began to regard itself as the seat of advanced ideas in politics, religion, and humanity. 

Finally European capital began to find better investments than slaveshipping and flew to them. These better investments were the fruit of thenew industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, with its factorysystem; they were also in part the result of the cheapened price of goldand silver, brought about by slavery and the slave trade to the new world. Commodities other than gold, and commodities capable of manufacture andexploitation in Europe out of materials furnishable by America, becameenhanced in value; the bottom fell out of the commercial slave trade andits suppression became possible. 

The middle of the nineteenth century saw the beginning of the rise of themodern working class. By means of political power the laborers slowly butsurely began to demand a larger share in the profiting industry. In theUnited States their demand bade fair to be halted by the competition ofslave labor. The labor vote, therefore, first confined slavery to limitsin which it could not live, and when the slave power sought to exceedthese territorial limits, it was suddenly and unintentionally abolished. 

As the emancipation of millions of dark workers took place in the WestIndies, North and South America, and parts of Africa at this time, it wasnatural to assume that the uplift of this working class lay along the samepaths with that of European and American whites. This was the _first_suggested solution of the Negro problem. Consequently these Negroesreceived partial enfranchisement, the beginnings of education, and some ofthe elementary rights of wage earners and property holders, while theindependence of Liberia and Hayti was recognized. However, long beforethey were strong enough to assert the rights thus granted or to gatherintelligence enough for proper group leadership, the new colonialism ofthe later nineteenth and twentieth centuries began to dawn. The newcolonial theory transferred the reign of commercial privilege andextraordinary profit from the exploitation of the European working classto the exploitation of backward races under the political domination ofEurope. For the purpose of carrying out this idea the European and whiteAmerican working class was practically invited to share in this newexploitation, and particularly were flattered by popular appeals to theirinherent superiority to "Dagoes, " "Chinks, " "Japs, " and "Niggers. "

This tendency was strengthened by the fact that the new colonial expansioncentered in Africa. Thus in 1875 something less than one-tenth of Africawas under nominal European control, but the Franco-Prussian War and theexploration of the Congo led to new and fateful things. Germany desiredeconomic expansion and, being shut out from America by the MonroeDoctrine, turned to Africa. France, humiliated in war, dreamed of anAfrican empire from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Italy became ambitiousfor Tripoli and Abyssinia. Great Britain began to take new interest in herAfrican realm, but found herself largely checkmated by the jealousy of allEurope. Portugal sought to make good her ancient claim to the larger partof the whole southern peninsula. It was Leopold of Belgium who started tomake the exploration and civilization of Africa an international movement. This project failed, and the Congo Free State became in time simply aBelgian colony. While the project was under discussion, the internationalscramble for Africa began. As a result the Berlin Conference andsubsequent wars and treaties gave Great Britain control of 2, 101, 411square miles of African territory, in addition to Egypt and the EgyptianSudan with 1, 600, 000 square miles. This includes South Africa, Bechuanaland and Rhodesia, East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar, Nigeria, andBritish West Africa. The French hold 4, 106, 950 square miles, includingnearly all North Africa (except Tripoli) west of the Niger valley andLibyan Desert, and touching the Atlantic at four points. To this is addedthe Island of Madagascar. The Germans have 910, 150 square miles, principally in Southeast and South-west Africa and the Kamerun. ThePortuguese retain 787, 500 square miles in Southeast and Southwest Africa. The Belgians have 900, 000 square miles, while Liberia (43, 000 squaremiles) and Abyssinia (350, 000 square miles) are independent. The Italianshave about 600, 000 square miles and the Spanish less than 100, 000 squaremiles. 

This partition of Africa brought revision of the ideas of Negro uplift. Why was it necessary, the European investors argued, to push a continentof black workers along the paths of social uplift by education, trades-unionism, property holding, and the electoral franchise when theworkers desired no change, and the rate of European profit would suffer?

There quickly arose then the _second_ suggestion for settling the Negroproblem. It called for the virtual enslavement of natives in certainindustries, as rubber and ivory collecting in the Belgian Congo, cocoaraising in Portuguese Angola, and diamond mining in South Africa. This newslavery or "forced" labor was stoutly defended as a necessary foundationfor implanting modern industry in a barbarous land; but its likeness toslavery was too clear and it has been modified, but not wholly abolished. 

The _third_ attempted solution of the Negro sought the result of the_second_ by less direct methods. Negroes in Africa, the West Indies, andAmerica were to be forced to work by land monopoly, taxation, and littleor no education. In this way a docile industrial class working for lowwages, and not intelligent enough to unite in labor unions, was to bedeveloped. The peonage systems in parts of the United States and the laborsystems of many of the African colonies of Great Britain and Germanyillustrate this phase of solution. [111] It is also illustrated in many ofthe West Indian islands where we have a predominant Negro population, andthis population freed from slavery and partially enfranchised. Land andcapital, however, have for the most part been so managed and monopolizedthat the black peasantry have been reduced to straits to earn a living inone of the richest parts of the world. The problem is now going to beintensified when the world's commerce begins to sweep through the PanamaCanal. 

All these solutions and methods, however, run directly counter to modernphilanthropy, and have to be carried on with a certain concealment andhalf-hypocrisy which is not only distasteful in itself, but always liableto be discovered and exposed by some liberal or religious movement of themasses of men and suddenly overthrown. These solutions are, therefore, gradually merging into a _fourth_ solution, which is to-day very popular. This solution says: Negroes differ from whites in their inherent geniusand stage of development. Their development must not, therefore, be soughtalong European lines, but along their own native lines. Consequently theeffort is made to-day in British Nigeria, in the French Congo and Sudan, in Uganda and Rhodesia to leave so far as possible the outward structureof native life intact; the king or chief reigns, the popular assembliesmeet and act, the native courts adjudicate, and native social and familylife and religion prevail. All this, however, is subject to the veto andcommand of a European magistracy supported by a native army with Europeanofficers. The advantage of this method is that on its face it carries noclue to its real working. Indeed it can always point to certain undoubtedadvantages: the abolition of the slave trade, the suppression of war andfeud, the encouragement of peaceful industry. On the other hand, back ofpractically all these experiments stands the economic motive--thedetermination to use the organization, the land, and the people, not fortheir own benefit, but for the benefit of white Europe. For this reasoneducation is seldom encouraged, modern religious ideas are carefullylimited, sound political development is sternly frowned upon, and industryis degraded and changed to the demands of European markets. The mostruthless class of white mercantile exploiters is allowed large liberty, ifnot a free hand, and protected by a concerted attempt to deify white menas such in the eyes of the native and in their own imagination. [112]

White missionary societies are spending perhaps as much as five milliondollars a year in Africa and accomplishing much good, but at the same timewhite merchants are sending at least twenty million dollars' worth ofEuropean liquor into Africa each year, and the debauchery of the almostunrestricted rum traffic goes far to neutralize missionary effort. 

[Illustration: Distribution of Negro Blood, Ancient and Modern]

Under this last mentioned solution of the Negro problems we may put theattempts at the segregation of Negroes and mulattoes in the United Statesand to some extent in the West Indies. Ostensibly this is "separation" ofthe races in society, civil rights, etc. In practice it is thesubordination of colored people of all grades under white tutelage, andtheir separation as far as possible from contact with civilization indwelling place, in education, and in public life. 

On the other hand the economic significance of the Negro to-day istremendous. Black Africa to-day exports annually nearly two hundredmillion dollars' worth of goods, and its economic development has scarcelybegun. The black West Indies export nearly one hundred million dollars'worth of goods; to this must be added the labor value of Negroes in SouthAfrica, Egypt, the West Indies, North, Central, and South America, wherethe result is blended in the common output of many races. The economicfoundation of the Negro problem can easily be seen to be a matter of manyhundreds of millions to-day, and ready to rise to the billions tomorrow. 

Such figures and facts give some slight idea of the economic meaning ofthe Negro to-day as a worker and industrial factor. "Tropical Africa andits peoples are being brought more irrevocably every year into the vortexof the economic influences that sway the western world. "[113]

What do Negroes themselves think of these their problems and the attitudeof the world toward them? First and most significant, they are thinking. There is as yet no great single centralizing of thought or unification ofopinion, but there are centers which are growing larger and larger andtouching edges. The most significant centers of this new thinking are, perhaps naturally, outside Africa and in America: in the United States andin the West Indies; this is followed by South Africa and West Africa andthen, more vaguely, by South America, with faint beginnings in EastCentral Africa, Nigeria, and the Sudan. 

The Pan-African movement when it comes will not, however, be merely anarrow racial propaganda. Already the more far-seeing Negroes sense thecoming unities: a unity of the working classes everywhere, a unity of thecolored races, a new unity of men. The proposed economic solution of theNegro problem in Africa and America has turned the thoughts of Negroestoward a realization of the fact that the modern white laborer of Europeand America has the key to the serfdom of black folk, in his support ofmilitarism and colonial expansion. He is beginning to say to theseworkingmen that, so long as black laborers are slaves, white laborerscannot be free. Already there are signs in South Africa and the UnitedStates of the beginning of understanding between the two classes. 

In a conscious sense of unity among colored races there is to-day only agrowing interest. There is slowly arising not only a curiously strongbrotherhood of Negro blood throughout the world, but the common cause ofthe darker races against the intolerable assumptions and insults ofEuropeans has already found expression. Most men in this world arecolored. A belief in humanity means a belief in colored men. The futureworld will, in all reasonable probability, be what colored men make it. Inorder for this colored world to come into its heritage, must the earthagain be drenched in the blood of fighting, snarling human beasts, or willReason and Good Will prevail? That such may be true, the character of theNegro race is the best and greatest hope; for in its normal condition itis at once the strongest and gentlest of the races of men: "Semper noviquid ex Africa!"

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Sir Harry Johnston estimates 135, 000, 000 Negroes, of whom 24, 591, 000live in America. See _Inter-Racial Problems_, p. 335. 

[111] The South African natives, in an appeal to the English Parliament, show in an astonishing way the confiscation of their land by the English. They say that in the Union of South Africa 1, 250, 000 whites own264, 000, 000 acres of land, while the 4, 500, 000 natives have only21, 000, 000 acres. On top of this the Union Parliament has passed a lawmaking even the future purchase of land by Negroes illegal save inrestricted areas!

[112] The traveler Glave writes in the _Century Magazine_ (LIII, 913):"Formerly [in the Congo Free State] an ordinary white man was merelycalled 'bwana' or 'Mzunga'; now the merest insect of a pale face earns thetitle of 'bwana Mkubwa' [big master]. "

[113] E. D. Morel, in the _Nineteenth Century_. 

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

There is no general history of the Negro race. Perhaps Sir Harry H. Johnston, in his various works on Africa, has come as near covering thesubject as any one writer, but his valuable books have puzzlinginconsistencies and inaccuracies. Keane's _Africa_ is a helpfulcompendium, despite the fact that whenever Keane discovers intelligence inan African he immediately discovers that its possessor is no "Negro. " Thearticles in the latest edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ are ofsome value, except the ridiculous article on the "Negro" by T. A. Joyce. Frobenius' newly published _Voice of Africa_ is broad-minded andinforming, and Brown's _Story of Africa and its Explorers_ brings togethermuch material in readable form. The compendiums by Keltie and White, andJohnston's _Opening up of Africa_ are the best among the shortertreatises. 

None of these authors write from the point of view of the Negro as a man, or with anything but incidental acknowledgment of the existence or valueof his history. We may, however, set down certain books under the varioussubjects which the chapters have treated. These books will consist of (1)standard works for wider reading and (2) special works on which the authorhas relied for his statements or which amplify his point of view. _Thelatter are starred_. 

THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF AFRICA

A. S. White: _The Development of Africa_, 2d ed. , 1892. 

Stanford's Compendium of Geography: _Africa_, by A. H. Keane, 2d ed. , 1904-7. 

E. Reclus: _Universal Geography_, Vols. X-XIII. 

RACIAL DIFFERENCES AND THE ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS OF NEGROES

J. Deniker: _The Races of Man_, etc. , New York, 1904. 

*J. Finot: _Race Prejudice_ (tr. By Wade-Evans), New York, 1907. 

*W. Z. Ripley: _The Races of Europe_, etc. , New York, 1899. 

*Jacques Loeb: in _The Crisis_, Vol. VIII, p. 84, Vol. IX, p. 92. 

*_Papers on Inter-Racial Problems Communicated to the First UniversalRaces Congress_, etc. (ed. By G. Spiller), 1911. 

*G. Sergi: _The Mediterranean Race_, etc. , London, 1901. 

*Franz Boas: _The Mind of Primitive Man_, New York, 1911. 

C. B. Davenport: _Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses_, 1913. 

EARLY MOVEMENTS OF THE NEGRO RACE

*Sir Harry H. Johnston: _The Opening up of Africa_ (Home UniversityLibrary). 

---- _A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races_, Cambridge, 1905. 

*G. W. Stowe: _The Native Races of South Africa_ (ed. By G. M. Theal), London, 1910. 

(Consult also Johnston's other works on Africa, and his article in Vol. XLIII of the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of GreatBritain and Ireland_; also _Inter-Racial Problems, and_ Deniker, notedabove. )

NEGRO IN ETHIOPIA AND EGYPT

(The works of Breasted and Petrie, Maspero, Budge and Newberry andGarstang are the standard books on Egypt. They mention the Negro, butincidentally and often slightingly. )

*A. F. Chamberlain: "The Contribution of the Negro to Human Civilization"(_Journal of Race Development_, Vol. I, April, 1911). 

T. E. S. Scholes: _Glimpses of the Ages_, etc. , London, 1905. 

W. H. Ferris: _The African Abroad_, etc. , 2 vols. , New Haven, 1913. 

E. A. W. Budge: _The Egyptian Sudan_, 2 vols. , 1907. 

*_Archeological Survey of Nubia_. 

*A. Thompson and D. Randal McIver: _The Ancient Races of the Thebaid_, 1905. 

ABYSSINIA

Job Ludolphus: _A New History of Ethiopia_ (tr. By Gent), London, 1682. 

W. S. Harris: _Highlands of Æthiopia_, 3 vols. , London, 1844. 

R. S. Whiteway: _The Portuguese Expedition to Abyssinia_ . . . As narrated byCastanhosa, etc. , 1902. 

THE NIGER RIVER AND ISLAM *F. L. Shaw (Lady Lugard): _A TropicalDependency_, etc. , London, 1906. 

(The reader may dismiss as worthless Lady Lugard's definition of "Negro. "Otherwise her book is excellent. )

*Es-Sa'di, Abderrahman Ben Abdallah, etc. , translated into French by O. Houdas, Paris, 1900. 

*F. DuBois: _Timbuktu the Mysterious_ (tr. By White), 1896. 

*W. D. Cooley: _The Negroland of the Arabs_, etc. , 1841. 

*H. Barth: _Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa_, etc. , 5vols. , 1857-58. 

*Ibn Batuta: _Travels_, etc. (tr. By Lee), 1829. 

*Leo Africanus: _The History and Description of Africa_, etc. (tr. ByPory, ed. By R. Brown), 3 vols. , 1896. 

*E. W. Blyden: _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_. 

*Leo Frobenius: _The Voice of Africa_ (tr. By Blind), 2 vols. , 1913. 

Mungo Park: _Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa_, 1799. 

THE NEGRO ON THE GUINEA COAST

*Leo Frobenius (as above). 

Sir Harry H. Johnston: _Liberia_, 2 vols. , New York, 1906. 

H. H. Foote: _Africa and the American Flag_, New York, 1859. 

T. H. T. McPherson: _A History of Liberia_, Baltimore, Johns HopkinsStudies. 

T. J. Alldridge: _A Transformed Colony_ (Sierra Leone), London, 1910. 

E. D. Morel: _Affairs of West Africa_, 1902. 

H. L. Roth: _Great Benin and Its Customs_, 1903. 

*F. Starr: _Liberia_, 1913. 

W. Jay: _An Inquiry_, etc. , 1835. 

*A. B. Ellis: _The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_, 1887. 

---- _The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, 1890. 

---- _The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, 1894. 

C. H. Read and O. M. Dalton: _Antiquities from the City of Benin_, etc. , 1899. 

*M. H. Kingsley: _West African Studies_, 2d. Ed. , 1904. 

*G. W. Ellis: _Negro Culture in West Africa_ (Vai-speaking peoples), 1914. 

THE CONGO VALLEY

*G. Schweinfurth: _The Heart of Africa_, Vol. II, 1873. 

*H. M. Stanley: _Through the Dark Continent_, 2 vols. , 1878. 

---- _In Darkest Africa_, 2 vols. , 1890. 

---- _The Congo_, etc. , 2 vols. , London, 1885. 

H. Von Wissman: _My Second Journey through Equatorial Africa_, 1891. 

*H. R. Fox-Bourne: _Civilization in Congoland_, 1903. 

Sir Harry H. Johnston: _George Grenfell and the Congo_, 2 vols. , London, 1908. 

*E. D. Morel: _Red Rubber_, London, 1906. 

THE NEGRO IN THE REGION OF THE GREAT LAKES

*Sir Harry H. Johnston: _The Uganda Protectorate_, 2d ed. , 2 vols. , 1904. 

---- _British Central Africa_, 1897. 

---- _The Nile Quest_, 1903. 

*D. Randal McIver: _Mediæval Rhodesia_, 1906. 

*_The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa_ (ed. By H. Waller), 1874. 

J. Dos Santos: _Ethiopia Oriental_ (Theal's _Records of South Africa_, Vol. VII). 

C. Peters: "Ophir and Punt in South Africa" (_African Society Journal_, Vol. I). 

De Barros: _De Asia_. 

R. Burton: _Lake Regions of Central Africa_, 1860. 

R. P. Ashe: _Chronicles of Uganda_, 1894. 

(See also Stanley's works, as above. )

THE NEGRO IN SOUTH AFRICA

*G. M. Theal: _History and Ethnography of South Africa of the Zambesi to1795_, 3 vols. , 1907-10. 

---- _History of South Africa since September, 1795_, 5 vols. , 1908. 

---- _Records of South Eastern Africa_, 9 vols. , 1898-1903. 

*J. Bryce: _Impressions of South Africa_, 1897. 

D. Livingstone: _Missionary Travels in South Africa_, 1857. 

*South African Native Affairs Commission, 1903-5, _Reports_, etc. , 5vols. , Cape Town, 1904-5. 

G. Lagden: _The Basutos_, London, 1909. 

J. Stewart: _Lovedale_, 1884. 

(See also Stowe, as above. )

ON NEGRO CIVILIZATION

J. Dowd: _The Negro Races_, 1907, 1914. 

*H. Gregoire: _An Inquiry concerning the Intellectual and Moral Facultiesand Literature of Negroes_, etc. (tr. By Warden), Brooklyn, 1810. 

C. Bücher: _Industrial Evolution_ (tr. By Wickett), New York, 1904. 

*Franz Boas: "The Real Race Problem" (_The Crisis_, December, 1910). 

---- _Commencement Address_ (Atlanta University Leaflet, No. 19). 

*F. Ratzel: _The History of Mankind_ (tr. By Butler), 3 vols. , 1904. 

C. Hayford: _Gold Coast Institutions_, 1903. 

A. B. Camphor: _Missionary Sketches and Folk Lore from Africa_, 1909. 

R. H. Nassau: _Fetishism in West Africa_, 1907. 

*William Schneider: _Die Culturfähigkeit des Negers_, Frankfort, 1885. 

*G. Schweinfurth: _Artes Africanae_, etc. , 1875. 

Duke of Mecklenburg: _From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile_ (Englishtr. ), Philadelphia, 1914. 

D. Crawford: _Thinking Black_. 

R. N. Cust: _Sketch of Modern Language of Africa_, 2 vols. , 1883. 

H. Chatelain: _The Folk Lore of Angola_. 

D. Kidd: _The Essential Kaffir_, 1904. 

---- _Savage Childhood_, 1906. 

---- _Kaffir Socialism and the Dawn of Individualism_, 1908. 

M. H. Tongue: _Bushman Paintings_, Oxford, 1909. 

(See also the works of A. B. Ellis, Miss Kingsley, Sir Harry H. Johnston, Frobenius, Stowe, Theal, and Ibn Batuta; and particularly Chamberlain'sarticle in the _Journal of Race Development_. )

THE SLAVE TRADE

T. K. Ingram: _History of Slavery and Serfdom_, London, 1895. (Same articlerevised in Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition. )

John R. Spears: The American Slave Trade, 1900. 

*T. F. Buxton: _The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy_, etc. , 1896. 

T. Clarkson: _History . . . Of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade_, etc. , 2 vols. , 1808. 

R. Drake: _Revelations of a Slave Smuggler_, New York, 1860. 

*_Report of the Lords of the Committee of Council_, etc. , London, 1789. 

*B. Mayer: _Captain Canot or Twenty Years of an African Slaver_, etc. , 1854. 

W. E. B. DuBois: _The suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the U. S. A. _, 1896. 

(See also Bryan Edwards' _West Indies_. )

THE WEST INDIES AND SOUTH AMERICA

Fletcher and Kidder: _Brazil and the Brazilians_, 1879. 

*Bryan Edwards: _History . . . Of the British West Indies_, 5 editions, Vols. II-V, 1793-1819. 

*Sir Harry H. Johnston: _The Negro in the New World_, 1910. 

T. G. Steward: _The Haitian Revolution_, 1791-1804, 1914. 

J. N. Leger: _Haiti_, etc. , 1907. 

J. Bryce: _South America_, etc. , 1912. 

*J. B. De Lacerda: "The Metis or Half-Breeds of Brazil" (_Inter-RacialProblems_, etc. )

A. K. Fiske: _History of the West Indies_, 1899. 

THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES

*_Walker's Appeal_, 1829. 

*G. W. Williams: _History of the Negro Race in America_, 1619-1880, 1882. 

B. G. Brawley: _A Short History of the American Negro_, 1913. 

B. T. Washington: _Up from Slavery_, 1901. 

---- _The Story of the Negro_, 2 vols. , 1909. 

*_The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_, 1912. 

*G. E. Stroud: _Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery_, etc. , 1827. 

_The Human Way_: Addresses on Race Problems at the Southern SociologicalCongress, Atlanta, 1913 (ed. By J. E. McCulloch). 

W. J. Simmons: _Men of Mark_, 1887. 

*J. R. Giddings: _The Exiles of Florida_, 1858. 

W. E. Nell: _The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution_, etc. , 1855. 

C. W. Chesnutt: _The Marrow of Tradition_, 1901. 

P. L. Dunbar: _Lyrics of Lowly Life_, 1896. 

*_Life and Times of Frederick Douglass_, revised edition, 1892. 

*H. E. Kreihbel: _Afro-American Folk Songs_, etc. , 1914. 

T. P. Fenner and others: _Cabin and Plantation Songs_, 3d ed. , 1901. 

W. F. Allen and others: _Slave Songs of the United States_, 1867. 

W. E. B. DuBois: "The Negro Race in the United States of America"(_Inter-Racial Problems_, etc. ). 

---- "The Economics of Negro Emancipation" (_Sociological Review_, October, 1911). 

---- _John Brown_. 

---- _The Philadelphia Negro_, 1899. 

W. E. B. DuBois: "Reconstruction and its Benefits" (_American HistoricalReview_, Vol. XV, No. 4). 

---- _editor_, The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, monthly, 1910. 

---- _editor_, The Atlanta University Studies: No. 1. _Mortality Among Negroes in Cities_, 1896. No. 2. _Social and Physical Conditions of Negroes in Cities_, 1897. No. 3. _Some Efforts of Negroes for Social Betterment_, 1898. No. 4. _The Negro in Business_, 1899. No. 5. _The College Bred Negro_, 1900. No. 6. _The Negro Common School_, 1901. No. 7. _The Negro Artisan_, 1902. No. 8. _The Negro Church_, 1903. No. 9. _Notes on Negro Crime_, 1904. No. 10. _A Select Bibliography of the Negro American_, 1905. No. 11. _Health and Physique of the Negro American_, 1906. No. 12. _Economic Co-operation among Negro Americans_, 1907. No. 13. _The Negro American Family_, 1908. No. 14. _Efforts for Social Betterment among Negro Americans_, 1909. No. 15. _The College Bred Negro American_, 1910. No. 16. _The Common School and the Negro American_, 1911. No. 17. _The Negro American Artisan_, 1912. No. 18. _Morals and Manners among Negro Americans_, 1913. 

*G. W. Cable: _The Silent South_, etc. , 1885. 

*J. R. Lynch: _The Facts of Reconstruction_, 1913. 

*J. T. Wilson: _The Black Phalanx_, 1897. 

William Goodell: _Slavery and Anti-Slavery_, 1852. 

G. S. Merriam: _The Negro and the Nation_, 1906. 

A. B. Hart: _The Southern South_, 1910. 

*G. Livermore: _An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of theFounders of the Republic on Negroes_, etc. , 1862. 

Hartshorn and Penniman: _An Era of Progress and Promise_, 1910 (profuselyillustrated). 

*James Brewster: _Sketches of Southern Mystery, Treason, and Murder_. 

Willcox and DuBois: _Negroes in the United States_ (United States Censusof 1900, Bulletin No. 8). 

THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO RACE

*J. S. Keltie: _The Partition of Africa_, 2d ed. , 1895. 

B. T. Washington: _The Future of the Negro_. 

W. E. B. DuBois: "The Future of the Negro Race in America" (_East and West_, Vol. II, No. 5). 

---- _Souls of Black Folk_, 1913. 

---- _Quest of the Silver Fleece_. 

Alexander Crummell: _The Future of Africa_, 2d ed. , 1862. 

*Casely Hayford: _Ethiopia Unbound_, 1911. 

Kelly Miller: _Out of the House of Bondage_, 1914. 

---- _Race Adjustment_, 1908. 

*J. Royce: _Race Questions_, etc. , 1908. 

*R. S. Baker: _Following the Color Line_, 1908. 

N. S. Shaler: _The Neighbor_. 

E. D. Morel: "Free Labor in Tropical Africa" (_Nineteenth Century andAfter_, 1914). 

(See also Finot, Boas, _Inter-Racial Problems_, and White's _Developmentof Africa_. )