Land and peoples of the Kasai; being a narrative of a two years' journey among the cannibals of the equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo

Introduction

I OUGHT to say a few words as to how the expedition I have attempted to describe in the following pages came to be undertaken, and why the task of describing its wanderings has fallen upon me.

In the summer of 1907 I was contemplating a journey in the Sahara Desert, a country with which I had some previous acquaintance, when the trouble between France and Morocco led the French Government to decide that the state of affairs in the Sahara was too unsettled to admit of its allowing travellers to wander there unescorted, and, there being already sufficient to occupy all the troops in that region, it felt itself unable to offer me any soldiers to accompany me. I was accordingly obhged to abandon my expedition, for which most of my preparations had been made. I was determined to go somewhere, however, and Mr. T. A. Joyce, of the British Museum, suggested that I should visit the Congo, in the natives of which country he was keenly interested. He introduced me to Mr. Emil Torday, the Hungarian traveller, with whom he had collaborated in the writing of numerous papers about the Congo natives for the publications of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Mr. Torday invited me to join him upon an expedition which he was about to undertake in the Kasai basin of the Congo Free State.

253330 vi INTRODUCTION

I at once agreed to accompany him, delighted at the opportunity of visiting equatorial Africa, and of seeing something of the life of its primitive inhabitants. Mr. Torday had already studied the peoples who dwell in the south-western portion of the Congo State around the Kwilu River, and he desired to make an ethnographical survey of the natives of the Kasai and Sankuru basins, at the same time making extensive collections for the ethnographical department of the British Museum, and, if possible, of visiting the hitherto unexplored country between the Kasai and its tributary the Loange, which is inhabited by the Tukongo, a people so hostile to the white man that their tract of country had never been traversed by a European.

The Kasai is the largest of those mighty waterways which form the tributaries of the Congo. Rising not far from the sources of the Zambezi, it flows northward into Congo territory, turning almost at right angles to the west at the point where it receives the waters of the Sankuru, and falling into the Congo about 140 miles above Stanley Pool. The Kasai is navigable for river steamers up to Wissmann Falls, above its confluence with the Lulua, and these vessels ply upon the Sankuru to a point a little above Lusambo. Upon one or two of the lesser streams of the district, such as the Kwilu (itself a great river), the Inzia, and the Lubefu, small steamers are employed. The trade of this country was in the hands of the Kasai Company, which has established numerous factories on the banks of the principal rivers and in the interior. As no coinage had in 1907 been introduced in

INTRODUCTION vii

the Kasai district, Mr. Torday knew that we should require very large quantities of trade goods, such as cloth, salt, iron bars, knives, &c., which passes for money among the natives, and in order to avoid the waste of money which would result if we purchased these commodities in Europe and then found many of them unsaleable in Africa, he approached the Kasai Company with the request that we might buy such goods as we required at the factories from the stock kept by the Company for the purchase of ivory and rubber. In this way we should be sure of obtaining the goods the people of each locality we visited really required. The Kasai Company kindly agreed to this proposal, and also consented to allow our baggage and the collections we were to make to be conveyed in their steamers. The Government of the Congo, which had been requested by the authorities of the British Museum to further the interests of our expedition, and which is ever ready to help forward the efforts of the scientist or sportsman, ;agreed to give us special facilities for collecting natural history specimens, and to allow the cases we addressed to the Museum to come out of the Congo ^mopened by the customs' officials. While Mr. Torday was busily engaged in making the arrangements necessary for our journey, Mr. Norman H. Hardy, a well-known painter of native life, offered to accompany us for the first six months of our journey, and as Mr. Torday was particularly anxious to secure reliable coloured pictures of the natives among whom he was to work, he gladly agreed to this suggestion, and Mr. Hardy became the third member of our party. While Mr. Torday was viii INTRODUCTION

making his investigations in the field, Mr. T. A. Joyce had been engaged upon library work in Europe, and they have collaborated in publishing the scientific results of the journey, some of which are not yet fully worked up, although their monograph on the Bushongo tribe has recently been published.

During the whole journey I carefully kept a personal diary, in which I described the country we passed through and the various adventures which befel us in our wanderings. Upon our return home several people suggested to me that I should write some account of the expedition which might prove of interest to the general reader, Mr. Torday was anxious that I should do this, for his own time would be too fully occupied in working up his scientific notes to allow him sufficient leisure for the writing of a book of travel.

When I returned to Europe, however, I was in a very bad state of health, for I had broken a bone in my right hand some nine months previously, which I had not been able to have set, and which necessitated my carrying my arm in a sling for a couple of months on reaching England, and also the frequent fevers of the equatorial forest and the period of starvation through which we passed during the latter part of 1908 had told seriously upon my constitution. I was accordingly unable to undertake any work for a considerable time after my return from Africa. This must be my excuse for publishing now a book relating to a journey which came to an end in 1909. I would ask my readers to be so kind as to remember that 1 make no pretensions to literary merits. I have for some years

INTRODUCTION ix

led the life of a wanderer, and it has been my good fortune to witness many strange scenes, to come in contact with many remarkable peoples, and to visit districts many of which have never hitherto been described in the English language. I only regret that I do not possess the literary skill necessary to do justice to them. Had there been any other member of our party who stayed with the expedition during the whole of its sojourn in Africa, doubtless the task of narrating our adventures would have been very much better fulfilled ; as it is, with Mr. Torday busily engaged in scientific work, and Mr. Hardy absent during the last part of our journey, I am the only person upon whom this task can devolve.

As my readers will observe, this book has no political motive ; it is intended merely to be a record^^our journey, and they will find in the following pages nothing about the atrocities which we hear have been perpetrated in many parts of the Congo. The reason for this is that we came across no brutality on the part of white men towards natives during our journey in the Kasai district. When I returned from Africa I made this statement to a representative of the Press, with the result that I aroused such indignation on the part of certain persons that I almost feel I ought to apologise for my misfortune in having no atrocities to describe. As my narrative will show, we lived_foi^_practi-_ cally two years in close ^'^nt?^*- with t^^ ny^fivpc^^-^^d we were fortunate enough to win the confidence of nearly all the peoples with whom we dwelt, but I was able to obtain no tales of atrocities from them. What goes on in parts of the Congo which I have never visited I am not in a position

X INTRODUCTION

to state ; I shall only deal with districts which I personally know.

Nor is it my intention to attempt to instruct the Belgians how to govern their new colony — it would take a far wiser head than mine to face the many problems by which they are confronted in the Congo — but I would like to say one word of warning. Let no one imagine that "any sort of man " will do to administer the black man's country, and that the negro regards every European as a great and wonderful personage. Far from it. The negro judges every white man on his merits, and no one can more quickly distinguish a gentleman from a scapegrace, or a strong man from a weak, than the primitive inhabitants of Central Africa. Let the Belgians, bearing this in mind, do their utmost to induce men of the best class to enter the Congo service, and the success of their colonial enterprise should be assured.

As my readers may very possibly wonder how we obtained a great deal of the information relating to tribal customs, &c., to which I shall allude, I may here give some idea of how Mr. Torday carried on his investigations. In the first place he never accepted an item of information concerning the natives imparted to him by a white man, but only recorded what was told to him by members of the tribe concerned. Secondly, he used always to select as his informants from among the natives men who had been as little as possible in contact with the European, and who were, therefore, still in a primitive state of culture themselves; very often he obtained his data from chiefs. Thirdly, a working knowledge of eight native languages

INTRODUCTION xi

enabled him almost always to dispense with the services of that very unsatisfactory person an interpreter, and also allowed him to pick up from the natives a lot of information and some legends which he was able to overhear when they were being related by the people among themselves, and not directly addressed to him. An acquaintance with Chikongo and Chituba, two bastard languages (both very easy to learn) which serve as a medium for trade between the various tribes, will perfectly well enable one to travel in the Kasai district unaccompanied by an interpreter speaking English or French, but a knowledge of the real languages of the tribes is essential to any one desiring to undertake serious ethnological researches, and this knowledge Mr. Torday possesses. A long study of the negro, a great liking for the primitive savage, and a keen insight into his character have endowed him with a way of gaining the confidence of the negroes, and of becoming popular with them, which enabled him to visit in safety places where a less experienced man might easily have been murdered, and to which must be attributed the success which Mr. Torday obtained in extracting much valuable information from the natives — information they would never have imparted to a man they did not both trust and like. As regards the results of our journey, I gather from the remarks made by scientists at the conclusion of Mr. Torday's lecture before the Royal Geographical Society in March, 19 lo, that they are considered satisfactory, while the collections made for the British Museum are very extensive. Unfortunately lack of space prevents the exhibition there of many of the articles collected, but any of my readers who care to look xii INTRODUCTION

in the Ethnographical Gallery may find some good specimens (a small part of the collection) of Bushongo wood-carving and embroidery to which I shall allude in my narrative.

I feel that I ought to say something about the photographs which illustrate my pages. With the exception of the picture of the statue facing page 209 (for which I am indebted to Mr. Joyce) and that of the buffalo head on page 248, they are all reproduced from our own negatives. Some of them, I know, lack clearness ; but if my readers will remember that the films were used in a terribly damp climate, that near to the Equator the rainy season continues practically the whole year round, and that for twenty consecutive months we lived under canvas and, accordingly, lacked favourable opportunities for developing our photographs, some allowance may be made for the shortcomings of certain of my illustrations. We took a large number of photographs, but unfortunately many of the most important of them (particularly of those taken in the forest) were ruined by the heat and damp of that most trying climate.

In bringing my introductory remarks to a close, I wish to thank the Directors of the Kasai Company for the facilities they gave us, to which allusion has been made, and also the many employees of that Company who showed us kindness during our journey ; the Belgian Government and those of its officials who speeded us on our way ; the Royal Geographical Society for permission to reproduce the map which illustrated Mr. Torday's lecture in the Geographical Journal for July 19 10; and all those natives

INTRODUCTION xiii

who received us well, and to whom we owe the information we collected, particularly Kwete Peshanga Kena, the king of the Bushongo, and Okitu, a Batetela chief. I would like, also, to offer my heartiest thanks to Mr. T. A. Joyce for being the cause of my joining the expedition, and to Mr. Hardy for the care he has taken to produce coloured pictures for this book. Lastly, let me express my gratitude to Mr. Torday for allowing me to accompany him, for the assistance he has given me in compiling my manuscript, and for his pleasant companionship during two eventful years, in the whole course of which we never had the semblance of a dispute.

M. W. HILTON-SIMPSON.

Contents

I. From the Coast to the Sankuru II. In the Batetela Country .

III. In a Bushongo Village

IV. With the Bankutu Cannibals .

III III

n8 i>

i8i

ILLUSTRATIONS

A Belle of the Mushenge ....

A Bushongo Elder

The Nyimi in his Ghost-dance

An Elder displaying a Statue ....

The Statue of Shamba Bolongongo (now in the British Museum)

Children at the Mushenge imitating a Bearded White Man

The Nyimi's Sons playing with our Firearms

Mikope and Mingi Bengela

A Bushongo Village near the Mushenge .

A Child from the Mission at Pana .

Bos Cafifer Simpsoni : a cow .

Bos Cafifer Simpsoni : our best bull .

Cutting up a Bufifalo at Pana .

A Hippopotamus from the Kwilu

A Bambala Girl playing a Nose Flute

A Bambala Boy playing an Ordinary Flute

The Friction Drum

Bambala Gambling

A Babunda Hut

Babunda Porters entering Athenes

The Kwilu Valley at Bondo .

A View from the Factory of Athenes

Crossing the Lubue

A Bapende Dance at Dumba .

Kangala ....

Bapende Boys wearing Masks

XIX

222 222 226 226

244 244 248 250

XX ILLUSTRATIONS

A Bakongo Village, photographed from the top of its

Stockade

A View of the Unknown Country from Kangala

Carving a Wooden Cup at Insashi .

The Chief of Insashi calling for Canoes

Gandu, Son of the Chief of Kanenenke

Removing a Lady's Eyelashes

Bakongo of Kenge looking at our Doll

The Clock-work Elephant

A Badjok Camp at Makasu

Bashilele Hunters .

Our Porters from the Kwilu

Interior of a Bashilele Village

Chapter I

We left England on October i, 1907, and proceeded to Matadi by a vessel belonging to the Compagnie Beige Maritime du Congo. A journey to the mouth of the Congo by one of the three-weekly mail steamers from Antwerp is not one that would be undertaken solely for amusement ; a few hours at La Palice (the port of La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay), Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, Dakar in Senegal, Sierra Leone, and sometimes at Grand Bassam on the French Ivory Coast, are the only breaks in the monotony of a twenty-one days' voyage, which in itself cannot be expected to be particularly cheerful when one remembers that the majority of the passengers are going out to spend three years' service as officials or employees of trading companies in one of the most unhealthy climates of the world. As a rule, I believe, the voyage to the Congo is not marked by any particular incident, while the monotony of the journey home is only broken by the temporary gloom cast by the all too frequent burials at sea. Our own journey to Matadi was devoid of any kind of interest, and the days dragged on with painful slowness until, long before any land had appeared in sight, the muddy appearance of our bath water informed us that we were approaching the mouth of the Congo. The great volume of water issuing from the river discolours the sea for many miles, and I am told that the water is quite drinkable at a very considerable distance from land.

There are four ports at which the steamers call in the estuary of the Congo — Banana Point, Boma, Noki, and Matadi. At the first of these our vessel stopped to unload a quantity of cargo for the Dutch House, the oldest of the Congo trading firms, and we spent an hour or two ashore, mainly with the object of exercising the two fox terriers we had brought with us from Europe, exploring the narrow strip of land projecting southwards from the right bank of the river in the form of the fruit from which it takes its name, washed on the one side by the waters of the Congo and on the other by Atlantic surf. There is little to see at Banana, the place consisting solely of the residences of one or two officials, the establishment of the Dutch House, and a sanatorium, whither patients are sent from Boma and Matadi to be braced up by sea air after severe attacks of fever, though the number of mangrove swamps which intersect the narrow promontory do not give it exactly the appearance of a health resort.

At Boma, situated about fifty-five miles further up the river on the right bank, there is more to be seen, but our time was too much occupied in visiting various officials upon business connected with our journey to allow us to take more than a cursory glance at the capital of the Independent State of the Congo, with its shops, its bungalows, and its little steam tramway, emblems of civilisation that we were soon to leave far behind us.

There were formalities to be gone through before we could land our baggage and stores in the country and proceed upon our journey. We had to visit the offices of the Etat Civile, where we filled up "matriculation" forms dealing with our ages, occupations, and dates of our parents' birth, and other such matters of great interest to the authorities, and this done we called upon the Vice Governor- General, Monsieur Fuchs, acting in place of the Baron Wahis, who was in Europe. Monsieur Fuchs received us most kindly ; he had already been requested from Brussels to do all in his power to help forward our plans, and he readily consented to allow us to introduce into the country sundry prohibited articles, such as arms for an escort, and promised to do his best for us in the matter of granting us permission to shoot game all the year round, to hunt in the reserves, and to shoot elephants. He also told us that, should the necessity arise, we should be provided with an escort of troops, and he informed us that he would issue an order to all the officials in the district of Lualaba-Kasai requesting them to render us all the assistance in their power. The result of our interview with Monsieur Fuchs was that we obtained facilities for collecting natural history specimens which the game laws would otherwise have closed to us, and also our mission was officially recognised by the Government, and we were thus saved endless annoying delays which might have arisen later on if any up-country official had chosen to have doubts as to our bona fides.

Having paid our visits to the officials, we partook of tea with Mrs. Underwood, the wife of Messrs. Hatton and Cookson's agent at Boma. Mr. Underwood, who has recently died upon his return to Europe, had, 1 think, resided on the Congo longer than any other white man. He was there before the Congo State was founded, and, except for brief periods of leave in Europe, remained there until just before his death in 1910. This gentleman was to arrange for the shipment to England of the many packages for the Museum which we hoped to send down to the coast, and his firm had kindly consented to act as our bankers (for banks did not then exist in the Congo, though I understand one is now to be established), so we had a good deal of business to transact with him before going on board the Bruxellesville for the night.

Our ship left Boma at dawn on the following day, so we had little or no time to inspect the town. Shortly after leaving the mouth of the Congo, the woods which had clothed the banks, particularly on the south or Portuguese shore, gave place to open, grassy plains, sparsely studded with trees, and low hills began to appear, which, as one draws near to Noki, rise to a considerable height and extend eastwards to the vicinity of Stanley Pool. Noki is a small Portuguese post on the left bank of the river, from which runs a road to San Salvador, an important town in the interior of Angola, and all the mail steamers call there, but as landing has to be effected in boats, and the place possesses nothing of interest, passengers usually remain on board

The Congo at Matadi

A sTKKKT IN Mai while cargo is discharged. Between Noki and Matadi, the first Congolese post on the left bank of the river, the scenery is extremely fine. The Congo makes a sharp turn to the left at this point, and the stream, flowing through a deep ravine between ranges of rocky hills, is so strong that the bend in the river is known as the Devil's Cauldron. Foam-crested waves break the surface of the waters, and only by hugging the southern shore can small steamers make headway against the current. The port of Matadi, or " The Stones," is built, as its name implies, among the rocks on the left bank of the river. It lies just below the cataracts which render the lower Congo impossible for navigation, and just above the frontier between Angola and the Belgian Congo. At Matadi commences the railway to Stanley Pool, so all the merchandise intended for the interior is unloaded there, and there all the produce of the Congo State is shipped. It is a most unprepossessing place. Intensely hot, owing to its rocky surroundings, it is too much enclosed by hills to receive any cooling breezes from the sea, and there are few trees about the place to afford shelter from the scorching rays of the tropical sun. We were compelled to spend three days at Matadi in order to see to the registration of our guns and rifles, all of which have to be stamped with a Government mark by which they could be identified should we, in defiance of the law, sell them to the natives, and to pass our stores through the customs. We had brought with us several cases of whisky and brandy, sufficient to last us as medical comforts for the whole of our two years' journey. We had had to obtain at Boma special permission to bring this quantity of alcohol into Congolese territory, for the importation of spirits is very strictly limited, each white man being allowed to receive but three litres of alcohol per month, with the double object of checking excessive drinking among the white residents of the interior, and of preventing strong drink from becoming an article of exchange in trading with the natives. At Matadi these regulations do not hold good, and the natives can purchase wine, &c., at the various stores, for in such close proximity to Portuguese territory, where no such regulations exist, it would be quite impossible to prevent the native from obtaining liquor if he required it.

At Matadi we engaged the only "boy," or personal servant, whom we intended to take with us from the coast, for Torday had determined to recruit our servants from among the uncivilised and simple-minded natives whose country we were to visit, and to have only one or two experienced *' boys," who could turn this raw material into useful servants. We found a native of Loango, by name Balo, who was willing to accompany us. For some reason or other, we gave this man the name of Jones, and Jones he remained until he left us in January 1909. He spoke a little French and a word or two of English in addition to the Chikongo dialect, which is the lingua franca of the Lower Congo, and we found him an invaluable servant during the early part of our journey.

At last all our preparations had been completed and we were free to depart by the next train for Leopoldville. We were only able to take with us a comparatively small amount of personal baggage owing to the high rate of charges for excess baggage on the railway, fifty centimes being charged for every kilogramme over the thirty kilos allowed to each first-class passenger ; we therefore arranged for our stores and other heavy baggage to be sent on to us as early as possible by goods train, for we should not need either food-stuffs or camp equipment during the ten days or so we intended to stay on the shores of Stanley Pool. These charges for freight as well as the first-class fare of £S may sound exorbitant for a journey of only about two hundred and forty miles, but it must be remembered that the railway was enormously expensive to build owing to the mountainous character of the country through which it passes, and travelling at the present rates, high as they are, is far cheaper than was the case before the line was completed, when everything had to be carried up from Matadi by native porters. The cost in life when making the railway was enormous — it is said that every kilometre cost one white man's life and every metre the life of a native-f-but the existence of the line has prevented many a death. In the old days the journey on foot to Stanley Pool took a heavy toll of the white men destined for the far interior. The newly appointed State agent or trader's employee had to march for three weary weeks across a rough and hilly country just after his arrival in Africa, before he had learned to take care of his health in the treacherous Congo climate.

He would toil breathless and perspiring to the summit of a hill, and there, in his ignorance, sit down to rest and enjoy the freshness of the breeze, with the result that in many cases he never reached the Pool. Had these hills been situated in the far interior they would have been much less deadly, but lying at the very commencement of the up-country journey they were a veritable death-trap to the inexperienced traveller. The cataracts of the Congo, which render the existence of a railway necessary, are, I presume, too extensive and the volume of water which pours down them far too great to admit of the possibility of engineering skill being able ever to open the whole river to navigation. What a change could be wrought in the opening up of the country if only steamers could ply between Matadi and the Pool ! At present every vessel intended for use on the Upper Congo and its mighty tributaries has to be conveyed in small sections at great expense up the railway and fitted together at Leopoldville or Kinshasa, the result being that the cost of even a very small steamer has become enormous by the time it is ready to be used ; and at present the possession of a steamer is a necessity to any individual or company desiring to trade in the vicinity of the great waterways, for transport upon State vessels is very costly ; accordingly, so much capital is required to start a commercial enterprise in the interior as to put such undertakings quite beyond the reach of the small company or individual trader. But it is not the object of this book to discuss questions relating to the trade in the Congo, so I will return to the narrative of our journey.

The travelling on the Congo railway is by no means luxurious, the train consisting of one first-class carriage capable of seating twelve persons in chairs, placed six on each side of the vehicle, one second-class carriage with open sides suggestive of a cattle truck and filled to overflowing with natives attired in every caricature of European dress, and a baggage van. But any one who has not previously taken the journey can soon forget the discomfort and stuffy heat of the railway carriage as he gazes upon the fine scenery through which he passes or marvels at the triumphs of engineering which the line represents. Shortly after leaving Matadi the train ascends a steep gradient and runs along a narrow ledge, cut out of the hill-side, overhanging the precipitous valley of the Congo, through which the mighty river rushes, turbulent and foam-flecked, from the cataracts to the sea. But one sees little of the Congo from the train, for soon the line leaves the river-side, keeping to the south of the valley, and winds in and out among rocky hills or passes through mile upon mile of dense woodland, a foretaste of the impenetrable fastnesses of the equatorial forest ; and only when one reaches the shores of Stanley Pool does one return to the banks of the Congo. The night is spent at Thysville, named after Colonel Thys, the engineer who built the railway. There, there is a very decent hotel, maintained by the railway company, where passengers dine and sleep in comfort. But when once Thysville is passed the traveller has left hotels behind him, for he will find none at Leopoldville or beyond. Thysville lies high, and the night air there is chilly ; in fact it strikes one as intensely cold when returning home after a long stay in the great heat of the interior, and in the early mornings as a rule the surrounding hills are obscured by a damp mist which gives the place a distinctly unhealthy appearance. The climate, however.