Among Congo Cannibals – Experiences, Impressions, and Adventures During A Thirty Years’ Sojourn Amongst the Boloki and Other Congo Tribes With A Description of Their Curious Habits, Customs Religion & Laws. With 54 Illustrations & A Map.
London, Seeley, Service & Co. Limited, 1913. 15 cm x 22.5 cm. Frontispiece, 352 pages. 40 illustrations including frontispiece. Fold-out map at rear showing “Among Congo Cannibals.” Hardcover [publisher’s original teal cloth] with lettering on spine and pictorial on front board. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Crack to gutter between pastedown and front endpaper at heel of spine. Binding still firm and strong and square. Lightly tanned throughout and dust-toned edges from age. Unmarked interior.
Includes, for example, the following: Settling at Monsemble / Arts and Crafts and Native Industry / Social Life and Organization / Marriage and Child-Bearing / Native Games and Pastimes / Native Laws, Crimes and Ordeals / Mythology and Folk Lore / Hunting / Religious Beliefs / The Boloki World of Spirits / Taboos and Curses / Death and Burial / Native Diseases and Their Treatment / Appendix -On the Boloki Verb – The Boloki Method of Counting – On the Health of White Men on the Congo etc.
″The object of the author throughout these pages has been to give an account of his experiences among the Boloki (or Bangala), and a description of the manners, manners, habits, customs, etc., of this interesting people amidst whom he lived in closest intimacy as a missionary. The author went to the Congo in 1881, hence his residence in what has been aptly called “Darkest Africa” covers a period of thirty years – fifteen of which were spent in other parts of the Congo, and fifteen amongst the Boloki people. These pages, however, are not a record of missionary life and work, but a description of primitive life and native organizations, of African mythology, superstition, and witchcraft, and of barbarities that are the natural outcome of the native’s view of life….
The author has no particular anthropological axe to grind, but has tried to give in plain language what he has seen and heard, leaving to the reader the pleasure of forming his own theories. The reader of these pages may rest assured that nothing is exaggerated or overcoloured. Had the writer wished he could have described the appalling corruption of native morals, the lack of innocency even among the very young, the absence of virtue among the women, and the bestiality existing among the men. One often felt the need of a moral bath to cleanse away the filth. An intimate knowledge of the natives impresses one with this fact: that the golden age has not yet dawned for them; and that the unsophisticated savage living a dolce far niente existence in happy surroundings has not yet been discovered on the Congo.” (p.9-10)
The author devotes some ink to the sufferings of “the poor, oppressed and downtrodden natives of the Congo” under Belgian rule. “We missionaries are neither ashamed nor repentant, and never will be, of the humanitarian part we played in bringing to light the enormities that came to our notice. We had given up home, the comforts of civilization and, rightly or wrongly, we had devoted our lives to the amelioration of the natives, and we could not as men, as Englishmen, as Christian men, stand by and see those natives, for whom we had given up all, slowly oppressed to death for the sake of a clique of men in Europe who were in a hurry to get rich (p.24-25)
″What the Congo needs is a Government not seeking to enrich itself to-day, but with visions of a colony the inhabitants of which, in days to come, shall rise up and call it blessed.” Trade, and education are also keys for “uplifting, civilizing, and Christianizing” the Congolese. “We shall then see a people not cursing the white man, but blessing him; not cringing before the white master in grovelling fear and hearts bursting with hatred, but standing erect as God intends man to stand; and not downtrodden and oppressed, their lives a misery to them, but free and happy with the joy of life pulsating through their veins.” (p.26)
Accounts of first-hand accounts of cannibalism and the ‘mwila ndalku’ funeral ritual, whereby the still very-much-alive wives were buried with their deceased husbands, give this book a lurid sensationalism. Polygamy, and the “great immorality” it causes, is also discussed in passages that would have blanched or blushed the faces of sensitive readers. “Among the Congo languages there is no proper word for virgin, for there was not in the old days a pure girl above the age of five.” (p.136)
Weeks describes the legal customs, medicine and religious practices, myths and spiritual beliefs of the natives. Fetishism, the reader is told, “holds a more important place in the life and thought of the native…. In obedience to fetish taboo and custom they exhibit a devotion and persistency worthy of a better cause; in subjection to the demands of their witch-doctors they cut themselves, deny themselves many kinds of pleasant food, and pay heavy fees, even to the impoverishment of themselves and families.” (p.251)
But the native “never worships his fetishes: he exhorts them to do his bidding… if they fail in their purpose, they will be consigned to the rubbish heap, or left neglected on some shelf in his house. The native lives and moves, so he believes, surrounded by evil spirits which, on account of their own malignant natures or at the instigation of his enemies, are constantly trying to work him harm, and the only means known to him of counteracting the evil, or of appeasing the malignant power, is the medicine man with his powerful fetishes, charms and ceremonies.” (p.252) But for all the spiritualism, Weeks, the missionary, nonetheless concludes that “[t]heologically speaking, the Congo natives are utterly void of religion, for they neither worship the Supreme Being nor their fetishes as representing a deity.” (p.260)
Taboos, witchcraft, white and black magic are discussed at great length in his fascinating book.
John Henry Weeks (1861-1924) was a British missionary, anthropologist and African explorer. From 1882 to 1912 he lived in the Congo.
Weeks was a corresponding member of the Anthropological Institute and the Folk-Lore Society.
He is an important witness and chronicler of the colonial exploitation by the Belgians under King Leopold II.
His main work, Among Congo Cannibals, describes his adventures, experiences and impressions in the midst of Boloki and other Congo tribes and describes peculiarities, customs, religion and laws.
His works on the Bakongo from the lower Congo and the Bangala are also considered ethnological classics. (Wikipedia)
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