West African studies

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                      [Illustration: SIRIMBA PLAYERS, CONGO.]




                             WEST AFRICAN STUDIES


                                      BY

                              MARY H. KINGSLEY

                     AUTHOR OF "TRAVELS IN WEST AFRICA"


                       _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS_


  LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

                                    1899

                           _All rights reserved_

                      RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED

                             LONDON AND BUNGAY.




                              TO MY BROTHER

                            MR. C.G. KINGSLEY

                     AND TO MY FRIEND WHO IS DEAD

                              THIS BOOK IS

                                Dedicated




                         PREFACE TO THE READER


I pray you who may come across this book to distinguish carefully
between the part of it written by others and that written by me.

Anything concerning West Africa written by M. le Comte C. de Cardi or
Mr. John Harford, of Bristol, does not require apology and explanation;
while anything written by me on this, or any subject, does. M. le Comte
de Cardi possesses an unrivalled knowledge of the natives of the Niger
Delta, gained, as all West Coasters know, by personal experience, and
gained in a way whereby he had to test the truth of his ideas about
these natives, not against things said concerning them in books, but
against the facts themselves, for years; and depending on the accuracy
of his knowledge was not a theory, but his own life and property. I have
always wished that men having this kind of first-hand, well-tested
knowledge regarding West Africa could be induced to publish it for the
benefit of students, and for the foundation of a true knowledge
concerning the natives of West Africa in the minds of the general
public, feeling assured that if we had this class of knowledge
available, the student of ethnology would be saved from many fantastic
theories, and the general public enabled to bring its influence to bear
in the cause of justice, instead of in the cause of fads. I need say
nothing more regarding Appendix I.; it is a mine of knowledge concerning
a highly developed set of natives of the true Negro stem, particularly
valuable because, during recent years, we have been singularly badly off
for information on the true Negro. It would not be too much to say that,
with the exception of the important series of works by the late Sir A.
B. Ellis, and a few others, so few that you can count them on the
fingers of one hand, and Dr. Freeman's _Ashanti and Jaman_, published
this year, we have practically had no reliable information on these, the
most important of the races of Africa, since the eighteenth century. The
general public have been dependent on the work of great East and Central
African geographical explorers, like Dr. Livingstone, Mr. H. M. Stanley,
Dr. Gregory, Mr. Scott Elliott, and Sir H. H. Johnston, men whose work
we cannot value too highly, and whom we cannot sufficiently admire; but
who, nevertheless, were not when describing Africans describing Negroes,
but that great mixture of races existing in Central and East Africa
whose main ingredient is Bantu. To argue from what you know about Bantus
when you are dealing with Negroes is about as safe and sound as to argue
from what you may know about Eastern Europeans when you are dealing with
Western Europeans. Nevertheless, this fallacious method has been
followed in the domain of ethnology and politics with, as might be
expected, bad results. I am, therefore, very proud at being permitted by
M. le Comte de Cardi to publish his statements on true Negroes; and I
need not say I have in no way altered them, and that he is in no way
responsible for any errors that there may be in the portions of this
book written by me.

Mr. John Harford, the man who first[1] opened up that still little-known
Qua Ibo river, another region of Negroes, also requires no apology. I am
confident that the quite unconscious picture of a West Coast trader's
life given by him in Appendix II. will do much to remove the fantastic
notions held concerning West Coast traders and the manner of life they
lead out there; and I am convinced that if the English public had more
of this sort of material it would recognise, as I, from a fairly
extensive knowledge of West Coast traders, have been forced to
recognise, that they are the class of white men out there who can be
trusted to manage West Africa.

I most sincerely wish that the whole of this book had been written by
such men as the authors of Appendices I.