The Negros in Negroland Review: Chapter III and IV: Human Skulls as Sacred Relics and Ornaments, and Blood-thirstiness and Barbarity of the Negroes in Negroland
I am continuing my series of posts about African history, here focusing on the negative with the collection Negros in Negroland.
As I said previously it is a collection of excerpts from the accounts of explorers and travellers in colonial Africa some of these include:
Lander's Travels in Africa
Canot's Twenty Years of an African Slaver
Freeman's Africa
Livingstone's Africa
Wilson's Africa
Murray's African Discoveries
Du Chaillu's Equitorial Africa
Ogilby's Africa
Valdez's Africa
and so forth...
Chapter III is a chapter entitled: Human Skulls as Sacred Relics and Ornaments in Negroland
Here it basically describes what the title says, as it was used by various kings to decorate his palace. I can give one example here:
"Permission to see the town was given, and we paid a visit to the Juju-house; a noisy crowd attempted to rush in after us; but a vigorous application of the guards drove them back. Masses of human skulls hang from the walls, and numerous rows of skulls cover the roof of a sort of altar. In front of this altar sat the Juju-man, having a footstool of human skulls. The Okrika had eaten the victims whose skulls decorate the Juju house. An old man who accompanied us spoke with evident gusto of the different cannibal feasts he had partaken of, and mentioned the parts of the body he had considered the sweetest." - Consul Charles Livingstone; at the Bight of Biafra.
It goes on to describe various instances of decorations with skulls usually of the losers in a battle or war. Sometimes even boys' skulls were taken to show "ferocity".
The second chapter which I believe gives more substance to mull over is called:
Blood-thirstiness and Barbarity of the Negroes in Negroland
It starts with this general description of cruelty to animals:
"there is apparently in this people a physical delight in cruelty to beast as well as man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the world is tame. In almost all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals fastened in some agonizing position. Poultry is the most common, because cheapest; they are tied by the legs head downwards tightly to wooden pillars, or lashed round the body, to a stake or a tree, where they remain till they fall in fragments. If a man be unwell, he hangs a live chicken round his throat, expecting that his pain will abstract from its sufferings. Goats are lashed head downwards tightly to wooden pillars, and are allowed to die a lingering death; even the harmless tortoise cannot escape impalement. Blood seems to be the favourite ornament for a man's face, as pattern-painting with some dark color like indigo is the proper decoration for a woman. At funerals numbers of poultry and goats are sacrificed for the benefit of the diseased, and the corpse is sprinkled with warm blood. The headless trunks are laid upon the body, and if the fowls flap up their wings, which they will do for some seconds after decapitation, it is a good omen for the deadman". - Hutchinson's Western Africa, Vol II., page 283.
Further on it describes in excruciating details how an ox had been cut open agonizing in pain, as the organs were being cooked on the fire before it even had a chance to die. Human butcheries are also mentioned from several sources. One example was a guide who's slave girl was too weary to walk with them, so he cut off her head, so she wouldn't become someone else's property.
Another quote recounts the story of Tembandumba:
"Tembandumba, the Amazonian and cannibal queen of Congo, commanded that all male children, all twins and all infants whose upper teeth appeared before their lower ones, should be killed by their own mothers. From their bodies an ointment should be made in the way she would show. The female children should be reared and instructed in war; and male prisoners, before being killed and eaten, should be used for purposes of procreation, so that there may be no future lack of female warriors. Having concluded her harangue, with the publication of other laws of mine importance, this young woman seized her child which was feeding at her breast, flung him into a mortar, and pounded him into a pulp. She flung this into a large earthen pot, adding roots, leaves, and oils, and made the whole into an ointment, with which she rubbed herself before all, telling them that this would render her invulnerable, and that now she could subdue the universe. Immediately her subjects, seized with a savage enthusiasm, massacred all of their male children, and immense quantities of this human ointment were made .... It is clear enough that Tembandumba wanted to found an empire of Amazons, such as we read of existing among the Scythians, in the forests of South America, and in Central Africa. She not only enjoined the massacre of male children, - she forbade the eating of women's flesh. But she had to conquer an instinct in order to carry out her views, she fought against nature and in time she was subdued" - Reade's Savage Africa, page 292.
This story is true she was ruler of the Jagas in what is now Angola.
Tembandumba, from The Uncivilized Races of Men in All Countries of the World. Wood 1871.
It then follows with a description of old women that were taken in the slave hunt, being too cumbersome so then they were killed with a club in the back of the head.
A Negro chieftain listening to his oracle killed his two year old son, and raped his own mother, and various other vile acts of cruelty are described. There was another story of a chief murdering his own people with knives, and raping his villages women.
It then concluded with a long description of a festival of sacrifice and horrible violence, as women and men flung infants around, murdered prisoners, etc. A quote from the passage gives us what the author's impression was (important part highlighted):
"By degrees, the warriors dropped in around their chieftain. A palaver-house, immediately in front of my quarters, was the general rendezvous; and scarcely a bzishmzan appeared without the body of some maimed and bleeding victim. The mangled but living captives were tumbled on a heap in the centre, and soon, every avenue to the square was crowded with exulting savages. Rum was brought forth in abundance for the chiefs. Presently, slowly approaching from a distance, I heard the drums, horns, and war-bells; and, in less than fifteen minutes, a procession of women, whose naked limbs were smeared with chalk and ochre, poured into the palaver-house to join the beastly rites. Each of these devils was armed with a knife, and bore in her hand some cannibal trophy. Jen-ken's wife,-a corpulent wench of forty-five!-dragged along the ground, by a single limb, the
In my wanderings in African forests, I have often seen the tiger pounce upon its prey, and with instinctive thirst, satiate its appetite for blood and abandon the drained corpse; but these African negresses were neither as decent nor as merciful as the beast of the wilderness. Their malignant pleasure seemed to consist in the invention of tortures, that would agonize but not slay. There was a devilish spell in the tragic scene that fascinated my eyes to the spot. A slow, lingering, tormenting mutilation was practiced on the living, as well as on the dead; and in every instance the brutality of the women exceeded that of the men. I cannot picture the hellish joy with which they passed from body to body, digging out eyes, wrenching off lips, tearing the ears, and slicing the flesh from the quivering bones; while the queen of the harpies crept amid the butchery, gathering the brains from each severed skull as a dainty dish for the approaching feast!
After the last victim yielded his life, it did not require long to kindle a fire, produce the requisite utensils, and fill the air with human flesh. Yet, before the various messes were half broiled, every mouth was tearing the delicate morsels with shouts of joy, denoting the combined satisfaction of revenge and appetite! In the midst of this appalling scene, I heard a fresh cry of exultation, as a pole was borne into the apartment, on which was impaled the living body of conquered chieftain's wife. A hole was quickly dug, the stave planted, and fagots supplied; but before a fire could be kindled, the wretched woman was dead, so that the barbarians were defeated in their hellish scheme of burning her alive.
I do not know of how long these brutalities lasted, for I remember very little of this last attempt, except that the bushmen packed in plantain leaves whatever flesh was left from the orgy, to be conveyed to their friends in the forest. This was the first time it had been my lot to behold the most savage development of African nature under the stimulus of war. The butchery made me sick, dizzy, paraplyzed. I sank on the earth benumbed with stupor; nor was I aroused till nightfall, when my Kroomen bore me to the conqueror's town, and negotiated our redemption for the value of twenty slaves." Canot's Twenty Years of an African Slaver, pages 384-386.
This occurred somewhere near Monrovia in Liberia on the African West coast.
About the work in question:
"It is the year 1826, 30 years after the American Revolution boldly stated that all men are created equal, but this first-hand account of Theodore Canot, an Italian adventurer paints a much darker picture of the times. Brantz Mayer’s 1854 work, “Captain Canot; Twenty Years of an African Slaver” vividly describes his friend’s grizzly profession; providing a historical document unmatched in detail and accuracy. Captain Canot becomes notorious in the Americas and West Africa as a ferocious slave trader who acquired slaves through both capture and as plunder from other vessels. He represented a new age of the slave trade, a post-revolution day when slavery and race had becomes so deeply intertwined."
Source:
https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/4896
So we have here more butcheries from sub-Saharan Africa. Various sources describe the propensity of sub-Saharan Africans towards extreme barbarity and delight in cruelty. There doesn't seem to be too much I can find in modern books about such content.
As I said previously it is a collection of excerpts from the accounts of explorers and travellers in colonial Africa some of these include:
Lander's Travels in Africa
Canot's Twenty Years of an African Slaver
Freeman's Africa
Livingstone's Africa
Wilson's Africa
Murray's African Discoveries
Du Chaillu's Equitorial Africa
Ogilby's Africa
Valdez's Africa
and so forth...
Chapter III is a chapter entitled: Human Skulls as Sacred Relics and Ornaments in Negroland
Here it basically describes what the title says, as it was used by various kings to decorate his palace. I can give one example here:
"Permission to see the town was given, and we paid a visit to the Juju-house; a noisy crowd attempted to rush in after us; but a vigorous application of the guards drove them back. Masses of human skulls hang from the walls, and numerous rows of skulls cover the roof of a sort of altar. In front of this altar sat the Juju-man, having a footstool of human skulls. The Okrika had eaten the victims whose skulls decorate the Juju house. An old man who accompanied us spoke with evident gusto of the different cannibal feasts he had partaken of, and mentioned the parts of the body he had considered the sweetest." - Consul Charles Livingstone; at the Bight of Biafra.
It goes on to describe various instances of decorations with skulls usually of the losers in a battle or war. Sometimes even boys' skulls were taken to show "ferocity".
The second chapter which I believe gives more substance to mull over is called:
Blood-thirstiness and Barbarity of the Negroes in Negroland
It starts with this general description of cruelty to animals:
"there is apparently in this people a physical delight in cruelty to beast as well as man. The sight of suffering seems to bring them an enjoyment without which the world is tame. In almost all the towns on the Oil Rivers, you see dead or dying animals fastened in some agonizing position. Poultry is the most common, because cheapest; they are tied by the legs head downwards tightly to wooden pillars, or lashed round the body, to a stake or a tree, where they remain till they fall in fragments. If a man be unwell, he hangs a live chicken round his throat, expecting that his pain will abstract from its sufferings. Goats are lashed head downwards tightly to wooden pillars, and are allowed to die a lingering death; even the harmless tortoise cannot escape impalement. Blood seems to be the favourite ornament for a man's face, as pattern-painting with some dark color like indigo is the proper decoration for a woman. At funerals numbers of poultry and goats are sacrificed for the benefit of the diseased, and the corpse is sprinkled with warm blood. The headless trunks are laid upon the body, and if the fowls flap up their wings, which they will do for some seconds after decapitation, it is a good omen for the deadman". - Hutchinson's Western Africa, Vol II., page 283.
Further on it describes in excruciating details how an ox had been cut open agonizing in pain, as the organs were being cooked on the fire before it even had a chance to die. Human butcheries are also mentioned from several sources. One example was a guide who's slave girl was too weary to walk with them, so he cut off her head, so she wouldn't become someone else's property.
Another quote recounts the story of Tembandumba:
"Tembandumba, the Amazonian and cannibal queen of Congo, commanded that all male children, all twins and all infants whose upper teeth appeared before their lower ones, should be killed by their own mothers. From their bodies an ointment should be made in the way she would show. The female children should be reared and instructed in war; and male prisoners, before being killed and eaten, should be used for purposes of procreation, so that there may be no future lack of female warriors. Having concluded her harangue, with the publication of other laws of mine importance, this young woman seized her child which was feeding at her breast, flung him into a mortar, and pounded him into a pulp. She flung this into a large earthen pot, adding roots, leaves, and oils, and made the whole into an ointment, with which she rubbed herself before all, telling them that this would render her invulnerable, and that now she could subdue the universe. Immediately her subjects, seized with a savage enthusiasm, massacred all of their male children, and immense quantities of this human ointment were made .... It is clear enough that Tembandumba wanted to found an empire of Amazons, such as we read of existing among the Scythians, in the forests of South America, and in Central Africa. She not only enjoined the massacre of male children, - she forbade the eating of women's flesh. But she had to conquer an instinct in order to carry out her views, she fought against nature and in time she was subdued" - Reade's Savage Africa, page 292.
This story is true she was ruler of the Jagas in what is now Angola.
Tembandumba, from The Uncivilized Races of Men in All Countries of the World. Wood 1871.
It then follows with a description of old women that were taken in the slave hunt, being too cumbersome so then they were killed with a club in the back of the head.
A Negro chieftain listening to his oracle killed his two year old son, and raped his own mother, and various other vile acts of cruelty are described. There was another story of a chief murdering his own people with knives, and raping his villages women.
It then concluded with a long description of a festival of sacrifice and horrible violence, as women and men flung infants around, murdered prisoners, etc. A quote from the passage gives us what the author's impression was (important part highlighted):
"By degrees, the warriors dropped in around their chieftain. A palaver-house, immediately in front of my quarters, was the general rendezvous; and scarcely a bzishmzan appeared without the body of some maimed and bleeding victim. The mangled but living captives were tumbled on a heap in the centre, and soon, every avenue to the square was crowded with exulting savages. Rum was brought forth in abundance for the chiefs. Presently, slowly approaching from a distance, I heard the drums, horns, and war-bells; and, in less than fifteen minutes, a procession of women, whose naked limbs were smeared with chalk and ochre, poured into the palaver-house to join the beastly rites. Each of these devils was armed with a knife, and bore in her hand some cannibal trophy. Jen-ken's wife,-a corpulent wench of forty-five!-dragged along the ground, by a single limb, the
slimy corpse of an infant ripped alive from its mother's womb. As her eyes met those of her husband the two fiends yelled forth a shout of mutual joy, while the lifeless babe was tossed in the air and caught as it descended on the point of a spear. Then came the refreshment, in the shape of rum, powder, and blood, which was quaffed by the brutes till they reeled off, with linked hands, in a wild dance around the pile of victims. As the women leaped and sang, the men applauded and encouraged. Soon, the ring was broken, and, with a yell, each female leaped on the body of a wounded prisoner and commenced the final sacrifice with the mockery of lascivious embraces!
After the last victim yielded his life, it did not require long to kindle a fire, produce the requisite utensils, and fill the air with human flesh. Yet, before the various messes were half broiled, every mouth was tearing the delicate morsels with shouts of joy, denoting the combined satisfaction of revenge and appetite! In the midst of this appalling scene, I heard a fresh cry of exultation, as a pole was borne into the apartment, on which was impaled the living body of conquered chieftain's wife. A hole was quickly dug, the stave planted, and fagots supplied; but before a fire could be kindled, the wretched woman was dead, so that the barbarians were defeated in their hellish scheme of burning her alive.
I do not know of how long these brutalities lasted, for I remember very little of this last attempt, except that the bushmen packed in plantain leaves whatever flesh was left from the orgy, to be conveyed to their friends in the forest. This was the first time it had been my lot to behold the most savage development of African nature under the stimulus of war. The butchery made me sick, dizzy, paraplyzed. I sank on the earth benumbed with stupor; nor was I aroused till nightfall, when my Kroomen bore me to the conqueror's town, and negotiated our redemption for the value of twenty slaves." Canot's Twenty Years of an African Slaver, pages 384-386.
This occurred somewhere near Monrovia in Liberia on the African West coast.
About the work in question:
"It is the year 1826, 30 years after the American Revolution boldly stated that all men are created equal, but this first-hand account of Theodore Canot, an Italian adventurer paints a much darker picture of the times. Brantz Mayer’s 1854 work, “Captain Canot; Twenty Years of an African Slaver” vividly describes his friend’s grizzly profession; providing a historical document unmatched in detail and accuracy. Captain Canot becomes notorious in the Americas and West Africa as a ferocious slave trader who acquired slaves through both capture and as plunder from other vessels. He represented a new age of the slave trade, a post-revolution day when slavery and race had becomes so deeply intertwined."
Source:
https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/4896
So we have here more butcheries from sub-Saharan Africa. Various sources describe the propensity of sub-Saharan Africans towards extreme barbarity and delight in cruelty. There doesn't seem to be too much I can find in modern books about such content.
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