By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  Leighton preached a sermon before a large congregation of Mpongwe in which he tried to address the opposition directly. In the audience were many of the Mpongwe who had said that no Mpongwe should abandon or alter the traditions of the ancestors. He told them that they had already left some old traditions behind and had changed others. He pointed out how they had adopted new rituals from Cape Lopez south of the estuary, and had embraced new spirits and new fetishes from other places. Walker worried about the results of such an open attack upon their most cherished beliefs, but he later learned that the people had called Leighton’s sermon “truth and reason.” If they thought it “truth and reason,” that did not, however, lessen their opposition.14

  The missionaries were learning that much of the opposition was organized in secret societies, some of which were apparently part of ancient Mpongwe traditions and others of which reflected traditions and practices of the “bush people” around them and of slaves brought from deep in the interior. The Mbwiri—or Ombwiri—was a secret society among the men. It had political and economic functions and also played a central role in initiating young men through rites of passage into adulthood and into the traditions of the Mpongwe. When Indâ had come into town dressed in thick layers of plantain leaves and brandishing a sword after King Glass died, he was apparently a part of this secret society. “Mbwiri” was also the name of an ancestor spirit—Leighton thought it was a class or family of spirits—who was the author of everything mysterious or marvelous.15

  Indeed, ancestors seemed to inhabit every hill, every hidden place of the forest, every village and town, every house and heart. In trying to understand the nature and social sources of Mbwiri and related societies among “bush people,” Leighton noted that all the different peoples and clans had extraordinary regard for the elderly, which he thought naturally turned to a veneration of the dead. When a man died he was not divested of his power and influence and could be called upon for aid in times of conflict or trouble. Leighton knew that the bones of ancestors were kept in small boxes or reliquaries, which were often hidden away and frequently were of exquisite workmanship. The skulls of distinguished persons were especially valued and preserved with care. Often the skulls were taken out of their reliquaries and cradled in the arms of a grieving relative, who might sing lullaby-like songs while pouring into the ear of a revered parent or ancestor all the sorrows of a troubled heart. When a skull was cut from the corpse of an important man, it was sometimes hung in a way that the decomposing brain—the seat of wisdom—dripped upon chalk that could later be applied to a man’s forehead in order for him to absorb the wisdom of the ancestor. These ancestor spirits often spoke in dreams that, Leighton found, were received with “the most deferential attention.”16

  When young men entered the ranks of the secret Mbwiri society, they were consequently entering the world of their ancestors and of the people who had originally inhabited the land. Women, children, and slaves were strictly forbidden to see the secret rituals of the Mbwiri. Leighton thought that the Mbwiri and similar societies among surrounding peoples were intended to keep the women, children, and slaves in a state of subordination to Mpongwe men. When the missionaries saw the public aspects of the Mbwiri rituals, they saw singing, dancing, and behavior they regarded as especially repugnant—especially what they thought of as a kind of wanton sexuality. “The vileness of their songs and actions,” Walker thought, “are beyond description, and what must the hearts be from which they proceed.” But then, as often happened, such reflections made him think of home, and he wondered if “many in Christian lands, whose external morality is fair, are viler in heart than these dark minded people.”17

  On his part, Leighton thought that however much these beliefs and secret societies involved superstitions, they also exerted some positive influence on the character of the people. Although he was repulsed by some of the traditions and practices of the people, he recognized that they served a social function. They established a bond of affection between parent and child, taught the child to “look up to the parent not only as its earthly protector, but as a friend in the spirit-land,” and provided a lively impression that life extended beyond death.18

  Women had their own secret society—Njembe—a kind of parallel to the Mbwiri. It, too, involved rites of passage as young girls were initiated into its carefully guarded mysteries. Because the Njembe was feared by men for its knowledge of powerful magic and poisons, Leighton thought that the society provided some protection for women. But, more fundamentally, it provided an introduction for young girls into the traditions and secret ways of Mpongwe women. Long and elaborate ceremonies were involved—including the catching by hand of a snake that lived among tangled mangrove roots. Some ceremonies were public, but many were held in secret, often within a sacred circle that contained a cone-like mound in the middle.19

  On one occasion, when men were forbidden to be present, William Walker stumbled upon some of the women’s secret rites. The women were furious and, he wrote, “raised a great storm about my ears. They wanted plenty of money because they said I cursed Njembe.” They followed him home, beating with a stick the orĕga—a kind of crescent-shaped board used only in Njembe ceremonies. When Walker refused to pay their fine, they followed him the next day, singing a curse and saying he would die. Walker and the other missionaries dismissed the Njembe curses, but they knew its power in the life of Mpongwe women. They regarded the mysteries of Njembe as “more vile and polluting than civilized man can imagine,” especially because of what a missionary later called its “indecent ceremonies and phallic songs,” which often ridiculed specific men. Perhaps such ridicule was one of the defenses women had against male abuse, but the missionaries were convinced that even Mpongwe men “were overwhelmed with shame at the shamelessness of the women.”20

  Leighton knew that there was much that he and the other missionaries did not know or understand about these secret societies. They were, after all, secret, and they were also exceedingly complex and fluid, as the rituals and names of spirits from one clan or people overlapped and influenced the religious beliefs and practices of those around it. What he did know was that the secret societies were powerful means of transmitting and maintaining traditional beliefs and practices and of resisting the work of the missionaries in their attempts to convert the peoples around the estuary. Leighton later speculated, in pondering the influence and character of the societies, that perhaps there was a danger of looking too much at their dark side, at those aspects of the societies that seemed particularly impure, vicious, and dissolute to the missionaries. If so, he wondered—perhaps thinking of himself and his colleague William Walker—if it were a danger “into which the older missionaries are most likely to fall.”21

  So most of the Mpongwe resisted the appeals of the missionaries at Baraka, struggling to follow the ways of their ancestors even as their political and economic independence was being swallowed up by the French. And Toko, who refused to sell his birthright for a French gift, also resisted the appeals and challenges that flowed from Baraka. But even as he continued to make sacrifices at the graves of ancestors, and to call on fetish doctors to cure illnesses, and to believe in witchcraft, he was uneasy. He knew that changes, deep changes, were coming, and he could see the changes in the conversions of his children. Still, he persevered as he struggled between competing worlds. “He worships with sincere devotion the customs of his ancestors,” wrote Walker, “and every day breaks and changes them blindly because self rules.”22

  WHILE THE MISSIONARIES at Baraka struggled against the resistance of the Mpongwe, they continued to face the devastations and sorrows of African fevers. Those who came to the mission came knowing that the fevers awaited them and that the mission cemetery lay patiently waiting as well. Those who survived their first bout with the fevers found their joints aching, their ears buzzing from quinine, and, all too often, their bodies racked by recurrent fevers. But the fevers were not the only afflictions of such a tropical environment. Str
ange funguses appeared on their backs. Boils sometimes covered their bodies—William Walker and the Grebo teachers from Big Town were frequent sufferers. An ulcer ate up the ankle and life of a young Mpongwe student and convert. And among the parasites that could invade the body and leave a person weak and debilitated were worms—including hookworms, tapeworms, and, above all, guinea worms, which had to be slowly removed from an open wound over a period of several weeks as the worm was wound around a stick.23

  Five months after she returned with Leighton and Jane from the United States, Mrs. Griswold died after a short and violent attack of fever. She had survived when her first husband, Dr. A. E. Wilson, had died at Rock Town of the dysentery that was raging among the Grebo. And she had survived when her young husband Benjamin Griswold had succumbed to the fever at Ozyunga. So in early 1849, everyone at the mission thought she had passed through the necessary African seasoning to live without fear of a deadly attack . When the fever had struck, it had seemed to be the usual recurrent fever—debilitating for a while but ultimately not dangerous. Leighton had given her quinine and calomel, but she had suddenly grown worse. To the dismay of all, none of the familiar treatments learned over their years of fighting the fever had worked. She died quickly and quietly. Leighton was distraught. He felt inadequate to the task of caring for the sick, and he struggled with God’s purpose in taking one who, as he wrote, was “so cheerful, so energetic, so useful, so obliging,” one who had seemed to be the least likely among them to become the victim of disease. He wrote Rufus Anderson that her death was “one of those dispensations of Providence which cannot be explained; and we must be dumb before the Lord, until he himself shall be pleased to disclose to us the reason for the trying event.”24

  At the same time that Leighton was trying to care for Mrs. Griswold, he was being confronted with the many ailments of W. T. Wheeler, the young man who had also come with the Wilsons on their return to Baraka. Wheeler, staggered by the illnesses he saw around him, came to believe that he was suffering from dyspepsia, neuralgia, a disordered urinary tract, and possibly some irregularity in his heart. Leighton believed that Wheeler had quickly become a great hypochondriac; the new missionary, he wrote, was “forever tinkering upon his system” with different medical approaches. Wheeler refused to take quinine, saying he could not possibly bear the effects of tonic medicines. Walker, in his straightforward way, told him that in that case he could not live in such a tropical climate. So the mission quickly bundled Wheeler off on the first ship headed to New York and wrote euphemistically that his “constitution is not adapted to the missionary work in Africa.”25

  Leighton and Walker grieved deeply over those who were being buried in the Baraka cemetery, and they felt almost overwhelmed by the weight of caring for the sick. Walker in particular suffered great distress over the death of Zeniah. “I have not yet got rid of the feeling,” he wrote a friend in New England, “that I was responsible to the Board and the Church and the Mission and more than all to her friends for the death of my dear wife. You cannot imagine the unutterable agony I have endured from this feeling and often thought it would be a relief to me if I could cry out to them all and say, ‘I could not save her.’ . . . What a terrible name is this Africa. Are all who tread her soil forever to cry from the dust in agony of spirit? I fear that Bro. Wilson has much of that same feeling in regard to Mrs. Griswold’s death. Do find us a physician, or we shall die.” And Leighton wrote, “Send us a doctor,” and “let him be a man of promise and ability.”26 In the midst of such illnesses and sorrows the work of the mission continued. Walker and the newly arrived Ira and Jane Preston began stations far up the Como River among the Bakèlè. While Jane Preston opened a little English school, her husband astonished his colleagues with his language abilities. Leighton wrote Charles Hodges at Princeton that Preston was “the only missionary we have ever had who was gifted with a decided talent for language. In one year he made himself sufficiently acquainted both with the Mpongwe and [Bakèlè], to preach in either, and they are not very nearly related as dialects.” Both Walker and Preston were working hard on preparing a Bakèlè grammar that could be used for translations, in schools, and by future missionaries. And they were also watching the Fang, who were moving steadily toward the estuary—Preston was soon to become the first Westerner to study the Fang language.27

  At Baraka, Leighton and Jane were busy not only with their familiar responsibilities but with nursing the sick. Leighton continued his work on Mpongwe, translating portions of scripture and various religious tracts. He and Bushnell worked together on a translation of the Gospel of John. But what a challenge it was! How could they translate from the original Greek text into Mpongwe something more than a rigid, literal rendering of John? How could they help the Mpongwe catch in their own language a world and message that spoke of the Logos, of the Word made flesh? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth.” No less than translating such a message into English, translating it into Mpongwe was a daunting task. What were they to use for “λόγoσ” (Logos, or Word)? Should they use the Mpongwe word for “one word,” or should they use the Mpongwe word for “message”? Was there a Mpongwe word that had a suitable likeness for “λόγoσ” rather than a simple equivalent? Or, when the text declared, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,” were there special nuances or associations in Mpongwe that needed to be taken into account in rendering “the light” and “the darkness”? And how were they to take into account other dimensions of the text, such as its rhythm and the cadences that helped to shape the meaning of the text? Time and again they had to ponder such questions and ask Mpongwe helpers to explain and sometimes demonstrate what was meant by a particular word or phrase, or how those words and phrases were used in everyday conversation. Translation was a work of interpretation and creation as the missionaries and their Mpongwe helpers struggled together over a text. When the time came to have the gospel printed, Leighton wrote Anderson: “It will no doubt have its imperfections, but it will nevertheless be as good and correct as any we could prepare with our present knowledge of the language.”28

  Jane continued her work teaching and overseeing the work of the school. Jane Cooper—who seemed to have recovered from her attacks of hysteria and to be more stable—taught the girls. On one occasion she went with the Wilsons and Jane Preston to visit Josiah and Mary Clealand Dorsey at their school a few miles from Baraka. When they arrived, they found that about twenty Mpongwe elders had also come to see what the children were learning. Josiah examined the boys in English while Mary—who had become quite fluent in Mpongwe as well as English and her native Grebo—examined the girls in reading and spelling in Mpongwe. Then all the students recited in concert from the Mpongwe catechism that Leighton had written.

  All the visitors were impressed, and all were invited to stay for lunch at the Dorsey cottage. They went in together—Mpongwe elders, African American and Grebo teachers, and white American missionaries—and sat down together at a long table. Mary had overseen the preparation of the meal and the setting of the table. Roasted and boiled plantains were served together with yams, sweet potatoes, rice, and different kinds of fresh fish, besides salt beef and sea-biscuit from the mission store. The dinner was apparently a great success, with much enthusiasm for the various dishes and lively conversation. When the meal was over, two little boys quietly took away the plates and brought out coffee and roasted peanuts. Jane Preston thought that Mary had managed such a fine meal very well, especially with so many guests, and the young missionary felt that she needed to “take a lesson” from her in hospitality and hosting. Mrs. Wilson, she said, “came away quite proud of Mary. She said she did not think a Philadelphia lady could have managed it better.” Perhaps Mary’s Grebo father, William Davis, would have been proud of his daughter as well. She had certainly entered deeply into the world of Fair Hope and Baraka.2
9

  THE MISSION’S RELATIONSHIP with the French authorities was steadily improving during the late 1840s, although the missionaries had a deep dislike of much of French culture and an abhorrence of the decadence they saw in many of the French traders who were beginning to settle around the estuary. Still, the French and the missionaries visited one another regularly and sought to avoid any open conflict. Leighton and Jane welcomed into their home Paul Du Chaillu, the son of one of the traders. He studied English with them, and they hoped they would have a good influence on him. Years later, when he had become a famous explorer, he would remember them with affection. For their part, Leighton and Jane could not have imagined that one day a great mountain range in Gabon would bear the name of their young student—Massif du Chaillu—and that he would be the first Westerner to see a live njina and contribute mightily to the reputation of the gorilla as a ferocious monster of the jungle.30

  Toko remained the one Mpongwe leader who continued to resist the French. The French tried various strategies to get him to acknowledge their sovereignty over the Mpongwe—they invited him to official dinners, they offered him gifts, and they left presents at his house when he was away. Finally, their patience exhausted and their power in the estuary clearly established, they prepared to arrest the aging Toko on the charge that he refused to provide the French authorities with the names of those who had robbed an English trading house. Toko apparently thought that the traditional Mpongwe procedures should be used to handle the manner, and he had resisted French authority in the case. The French commander insisted that the French were in control and sent seventy armed men to take the old man and bring him to the jail at the blockhouse. Leighton was asked to help negotiate, and an extended palaver followed. Finally, Toko, apparently depressed by his confinement, gave the names and was released from jail. But to go free he had to sign an acknowledgment of French sovereignty. Leighton may have helped to persuade him to do so, since he had become convinced that French control of the estuary was the unavoidable reality that they all had to acknowledge. At any rate, the Mpongwe believed that Leighton had saved Glass’s Town and the other villages in the area from being destroyed by the French. So Toko surrendered to French power, but he did not surrender his heart and mind to Western ways and Christianity. He remained, much to Leighton’s sorrow, an unconverted Mpongwe.31