A land breeze carried them briskly through the long, rolling swells of the Atlantic and eased the heat as Leighton gazed at the passing coast. Here at last was Africa, a land that he had seen only in his mind’s eye as he had read books and pored over maps. Now the mainland stretched out before him, a place vast and to him unknown, a place said to be dangerous, but to Leighton a place calling out to his deepest commitments. A great continent, diverse and complex, was introducing itself to a young man who had grown up by the Black River not far from Boggy Gully. And the four settlers, they too gazed at the passing shoreline, and they no doubt wondered about this land that had previously existed for them only in remembered stories and their deepest hopes.
Early Monday morning, they came in sight of Cape Mesurado. In the distance they could see Monrovia tucked on the Cape’s landward side. They were, wrote Leighton, “not a little revived at the prospect of finding a resting place after so long and tedious a voyage.” A canoe came out with a pilot to guide them into the harbor. The pilot, they discovered, was a native of Cape Palmas, with the English name of Joe Wilson. He spoke the Pidgin English of the West African coast, and when he and Leighton found they shared a name, they gave each other, wrote Leighton, a hearty shake of the hand and soon became “decided friends.”7
The travelers crossed the harbor bar and landed, and for the first time in eight weeks they put their feet on solid ground. Leighton went immediately to visit the American missionaries and found them all sick with the African fever—including John Pinney, the colonization advocate who had been chased out of Columbia the previous summer. He was serving as both acting governor of the colony and as a Presbyterian missionary, but the fever had given him a terrific battering, and he had been able to do little in either capacity.
Leighton looked for Charles Henry, the former black leader at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, and found that he had died from the fever shortly after his arrival in Monrovia. But Henry’s colleague Charles Snetter, the black barber from Charleston, had survived and was there with his family. He and Leighton soon became reacquainted far from their South Carolina homes and laid the foundation for future work together. That evening, Leighton had dinner with a settler family he had first met in Savannah and learned about the troubles they had seen in the struggling young colony—especially the food shortages and the difficulties of making a living. Later Leighton returned to the sailboat and spent the night on board rather than expose himself to the deadly nighttime miasmas that were believed to be the cause of the fevers.8
The next day the Ann arrived—she had caught a breeze shortly after the departure of the little sailboat. While Hall began to recruit settlers to join the new colony at Cape Palmas, Leighton and Wynkoop, together with Joe Clay, began to explore the town. Clay was quite pleased with Monrovia, and he began to evaluate the colonization experiment carefully so he could give a full report on his return to Savannah and First African Baptist. They visited several schools established by missionaries and learned that the children of the settlers were doing remarkably well. Wynkoop observed that “there was as much vivacity and intelligence expressed on their countenances as among children of a different complexion.” Teachers told Leighton that some children had learned in the course of two or three years no less than six different native languages. Even if such reports were exaggerated, Leighton and Wynkoop were clearly impressed, and they would soon use such reports to counter dismissive white claims about blacks.9
As they visited various parts of the town during the next several days, they saw a number of Africans who were working as servants for the settlers—hauling, cleaning, cooking, and clearing land. Wynkoop thought that the Africans were “regarded by the colonists much in the same light as the coloured population in America are by the whites. They are employed as servants in their houses and for all the hard drudgery of business.” Hall later wrote that the settlers modeled their relationship to African servants after white masters and black slaves in the United States, resulting in “an imperious deportment on the part of the master or mistress and an obsequious subservancy on the part of the servant.” Hall saw African American settlers cuff and kick African servants, and some critics of colonization seized on such reports to claim that the settlers were treating the indigenous people no better than slaves. Not all Africans in Monrovia, however, were servants. Some were coming into town in long lines, carrying great bundles of camwood to trade to the settlers. The settlers, in turn, exported the wood to Europe and the United States for its rich red dye and for cabinet making, building links between the colony and distant markets.10
Leighton wrote Jane that many Africans lived in the vicinity of Monrovia and that most of them spoke some English. He thought that he had an easier time understanding them than many of the missionaries and other whites because he had grown up hearing the language of Southern slaves—their vocabulary, intonations, and grammar. What he was discovering was an Atlantic Creole that linked West Africa to the voices he had known since his youth by the Black River and Boggy Gully, and that he had heard echoing through the streets of Charleston and Savannah and in the Gullah settlement at Fair Hope.11
One day, Leighton had an interview with a Mandingo man who said he had been at the Cape for several weeks to learn about Christianity. Leighton later reported that he was a handsome and impressive person—six feet four, slender, with a light copper complexion. He wore a tobe—a long, straight piece of blue cotton cloth draped around his body and tied at the left shoulder. A Muslim, he could read and write Arabic with ease. He carried an Arabic Bible with him, often referring to it as he made inquiries about Christianity. But he also wore around his neck two greegrees, African fetishes or charms, most likely intended to protect him from harm. For Leighton, this mixing of different religious practices and beliefs was perplexing. He thought of religion as a coherent and systematic set of beliefs and the practices they enjoined—like the catechism he had been taught as a child. Now, however, during his first week on the African coast, he was encountering a different understanding of religion. It wasn’t just that the Africans had a different system of belief, but that the nature of religion itself seemed different. Indeed, the whole idea of religion, as Leighton understood it, seemed alien to the languages of the surrounding peoples that he was beginning to explore. “It will be extremely difficult to communicate any ideas on the subject of religion through any of them,” he noted.12
In the years ahead, Leighton would have to contend with an understanding of religion that was fluid and rooted in individual practices, and that allowed Africans to add new beliefs and practices onto old ones. The Mandingo Muslim reading from the Bible and wearing African greegrees provided a hint of the challenge that lay before him. The young missionary had, he believed, a call—a vocation—to proclaim the Christian gospel that he had learned and internalized in a home across the Atlantic at Pine Grove, in the meetinghouse at Mt. Zion, and in the classroom in Columbia. As he was now beginning to realize, this meant trying to persuade Africans not only that the gospel was true, but also that it was exclusive, that it demanded the abandonment of many of the deeply held beliefs and practices of their people.13
Yet, as Leighton became more familiar with the land and its people, he would learn that Africans who became Christians did not give up being Africans but brought with them into their new faith a deep continuity with their religious past. Perhaps ironically, years later Leighton discovered within himself the difficulty of abandoning the deeply held beliefs and practices of his own people—the whites who lived near the Black River or who moved with grace and pride among the elegant homes and churches of Charleston and Savannah.14
On his last day in Monrovia, Leighton saw a man coming in from the bush whom he quickly identified as a “fetish priest.” An animal skin, Leighton wrote, “decorated with sea shells sat upon his head and tumbled over his forehead and down onto his shoulders.” Around his neck were long strings of beads and around his wrists and ankles were rings of ir
on and ivory. A long tail reached toward the ground with a bell on its end that made a loud dinging sound at each step, and around his waist he wore only a narrow strip of cloth. He had a war horn under one arm and carried a long iron spear in his hand, which he struck forcefully upon the ground as he walked into town. While Leighton found his dress “singular and ludicrous,” he immediately perceived that the man carried himself erect with great dignity and with a sense of self-confidence. In a remarkable encounter, Leighton approached the man and began to examine minutely what Leighton called “his articles of ornament.” This examination gave the man great offense. “He resented my curiosity,” Leighton confessed, “by taking hold of the sleeve of my coat and twisting it with an air of contempt.” In this way the missionary and the “Fetish Priest” examined and confronted one another across the great cultural divide that separated their worlds. Leighton, far from Charleston or Savannah or his Black River home, had to learn quickly to be more circumspect and prudent as he sought to engage proud and independent Africans and to learn something of their world. He was beginning to discover that it is not easy to comprehend the interior life of other peoples, and that Africans “naturally shun the scrutiny of white men.”15
THE ANN PREPARED to leave for Cape Palmas a week after it had arrived in Monrovia. Dr. Hall had persuaded thirty settlers in Monrovia to join the little Cape Palmas colony, and they came crowding onto the already crowded ship. With them came George McGill, the merchant and Methodist minister recently returned from his recruiting visit to Baltimore. As an experienced African trader, he was going along to help Hall negotiate with the Grebo, who had a large town at the Cape. McGill brought his assistant, the Grebo Joe Wilson, the same who had acted as the pilot for Hall and Leighton. As a Grebo who spoke a little English, he was to serve as a translator.16
They weighed anchor and sailed south along the coast. On the first day, they passed a Spanish slaver headed for Cuba with its frightened cargo. Soon they would pass others. Wynkoop noted that Africans sold slaves to the Spanish. Some slavers, he found, left goods with an African trader on the promise of being supplied with slaves on a return trip. Others opened a store at a carefully selected location in order to buy slaves as soon as they were brought by African traders from the interior. So as the colonists, free African Americans, sailed south toward a new home, they watched slave ships sail toward a Middle Passage with men, women, and children destined for a Cuban slave market and the brutal labor of sugar plantations.17
Several Kru, natives of this part of the coast and intrepid sailors, were on board the Ann. A broad, bluish-green mark extended from the peaks of their foreheads down to the tips of their noses. Around their waists they wore cloth that reached to their knees, and around their necks they hung greegrees. They used a variety of materials and shapes for their greegrees—antelope horns filled with secret ingredients; handsomely prepared cloths covered with beads and cowry shells and tied so as to hold powerful contents; and small leather bags containing hair and fingernail clippings or some other mixture prepared by a greegree man. The Kru told Leighton and Wynkoop that the greegrees were worn to prevent illness and to protect the wearer from danger. One Kru explained: “Me wear him, me no get sick; me no fall overboard, no slave man snatch me.”18
Leighton talked with the Kru about the greegrees and tried to persuade them that the charms provided no protection, but they were unimpressed. Leighton, however, was impressed by the men—“Every visitor to this coast must be struck with their appearance and their character,” he wrote. “They are of ordinary size—stand very erect—quick and graceful in their movements and exhibit a most extraordinary development of muscles.” He thought they had “fine faces—their foreheads are high and large—their countenances are always animated and very intelligent for uncultivated men.” He was amazed by their skill as watermen and noted that they had an intimate knowledge of all the bars and harbors along the coast. Leighton was to see much of the Kru during the coming years. They were present along the coast all the way to Angola, and they were eagerly sought by European and American captains for their seamanship.19
The Ann passed numerous towns and villages as they sailed close to the coast. The travelers had a good view of Bassa Cove and could see a small struggling American colony not far from a slave factory. At Garroway, they saw a beautiful native town surrounded by a substantial barricade. And at Fishtown, another handsome native town, they sailed slowly past a broad tranquil bay, where they saw, spreading inland, beautiful fields of grass covered with flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, with rows of majestic palms standing in strong relief against the eastern sky.20
Finally, nine days out from Monrovia, they anchored about twelve miles from Cape Palmas. Hall sent Joe Wilson ashore that evening to inform the king of the local Grebo of the impending arrival of the Ann and of the proposed purchase of land for a colony. When Wilson arrived late in the night, the town was “all dark,” he later told Hall and Leighton, “all still—no man go about.” He went to the house of Pah Nemah—or King Freeman, as he was called by English speakers—and woke him. “What news?” Freeman asked. “Me come in Merica ship—me bring Merica man to look Cape Palmas—spose he like, and King say yes. Merican man den set down.” “You speak true?” the king asked. “Yes true,” Wilson replied.21
Already, no doubt, some news had reached Freeman of the approach of the Ann. The ship had been besieged for miles along the coast with eager Grebo traders who had come out in their canoes to offer rice and palm oil, chickens, and fish for some European or American goods. Freeman was certainly familiar with European and American traders, who often plied the coast with their ships filled with the products of distant lands—cloth, rum, guns, iron bars, and various tools and household items. The Grebo were themselves skilled traders; they bought goods from the visiting ships not only for their own use but also for trade with interior tribes. Moreover, the Grebo were—like their Kru relatives—noted seamen, who had been traveling great distances along the coast in Western ships. They had had opportunities to learn something of the ways of white men, with their seemingly inexhaustible wealth and their ability to build and navigate large ships and produce great quantities of tobacco and rum and guns and iron pots and kettles and fishhooks and spoons and cloth of various kinds and colors. But Freeman must have also known that the American settlements around Monrovia had brought trouble and disputes and even warfare.22
Whatever he thought of Joe Wilson’s report, Freeman was not the one to make a decision about a proposed colony, even if he carried the title “king” among English speakers. Grebo society was more of a democracy than a monarchy, and any important decision had to be approved by a palaver, a deliberative assembly of the Grebo men. So Freeman thought about the impending negotiations and sent Wilson back to the Ann to invite the newcomers ashore.23
Early the next morning, Joe Wilson returned to the ship and its anxiously waiting passengers. Hall took him down into the cabin, where he took his seat without saying a word, and, as Leighton noted, “it was impossible to judge from his countenance whether he had favorable or unfavorable news to communicate.” Hall asked him, “What news?” Wilson replied, “Very good news,” and told how he had gone in the night to the Grebo town and how he told the king about how the Americans were looking for a place to settle. “What did the king say?” asked Hall. “He very glad,” said Wilson. He “say you must come look at the place you self, if you like um, you can sit down dere.” So the Ann weighed anchor and was soon under way. That evening, they anchored quite near the Cape and fired four guns as a signal that they had come to live among them. Leighton found the harbor to be beautiful, with its long Cape extending almost a mile into the Atlantic. He could see a large Grebo town, Gbenelu or Big Town, at the juncture of the Cape with the mainland.24
The next morning, Hall, McGill, Wynkoop, and Leighton went ashore in the ship’s boat, escorted by a canoe to pilot them over the bar. As they approached the shore, they were astonished by the number of
people who could be seen crowding every vantage point. Naked boys lined the beach for a considerable distance. Men, women, and children covered the brow of a hill, and a great crowd was assembled at the place of landing. The boat stranded not far from shore, and immediately men plunged into the surf and carried the travelers ashore on their backs. They formed a little procession and a man with a staff went before each newcomer to clear the way. The great crowd swayed with what seemed to Leighton the most “heartfelt joy,” and the noise of their welcome, together with the clanging of the bells and the iron rings worn around Grebo wrists and ankles, was almost deafening to the little company from the Ann.25
The procession entered Big Town and wound its way through narrow streets before spilling out into a kind of town square. Freeman, sitting on a stool with a small striped umbrella held over his head, was waiting for them. The crowd pressed around the travelers, cutting off almost any flow of air, making it difficult to breathe and almost intolerably hot. Dashes—gifts—were exchanged, and the visitors took their seats on sturdy Grebo stools.26
Leighton was immediately impressed by the king. He was, Leighton wrote, “a fine looking man—very stout and fleshy—dignified, modest and sensible in his appearance.” He wore a common black hat with a red cap underneath. A striped cloth fastened around his waist extended down to his knees. A string of beads hung around his neck, and he had iron rings around his wrists and ankles. His wives stood behind him, and to his left sat Simleh Ballah, the king’s interpreter, and Joe Wilson, the interpreter for the newcomers.27
Hall explained that he wished to buy land for a colony. Freeman expressed a willingness to sell, but said he needed to bring the kings and people from two neighboring towns into the negotiations. So they quickly agreed to meet the next day, and Freeman sent word to the nearby kings to come to Big Town for a grand palaver.28
By the Rivers of Water Page 11
