Page:The slave trade in the congo basin 1890.djvu/33



SOME BARBAROUS CUSTOMS

I remember one execution which took place, the details of which I learned afterwards. It was to celebrate the death of a chief who had been drowned while on a trading expedition. As soon as the news of his death was brought to the village, several of his slaves were tied hand and foot and lashed down into the bottom of a canoe. The canoe was then towed out to the middle of the river at night; holes were bored in it, and it was allowed to sink with its human freight. When we are able to prohibit the terrible loss of life which the children of today are compelled constantly to witness, more humane feelings may develop themselves, and surrounded by healthy influences they will, unspoiled by at least open exhibitions of cruelty, grow into a far nobler generation.

Natives suffering at the hands of the slave traders have repeatedly asked me to help them. At Malinga, where human flesh was offered me for sale, the assembled chiefs voted me several tusks of ivory if I would live among them and defend them against the Lufembé, and enable them to resist the persecutions they were exposed to from the neighboring tribes, who were continually making raids into their districts, capturing their people. They said:

"We are being starved to death. We can make no plantations, because when our women visit them they are caught, killed, and eaten by the crafty Lufembé, who are constantly prowling around and taking away any stragglers they may see."

One old chief, Isekiaka, told me that already from time to time twelve of his women had been stolen from him, and several of his children. Indeed, so wretched is the condition of the people on the upper reaches of the Malinga that numbers of them have been driven by the Lufembé from their plantations on the mainland, and are actually compelled to live on the river in miserable huts, the floors of which are supported on piles. From these dwellings they suspend their nets, and as the river is full of fish, they subsist almost entirely on the produce of their hauls. This has given rise to a curious state of things;