The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921

Such are the conditions. Meanwhile, Mr. Seligmann continues, a "new Negro" has been rising. His growth was not started by the War, as some think, but accelerated by it, for it was inevitable that he should come into being. He ranges, in type, from the radical editors of The Messenger to the "new bourgeoisie" which has learned to fight back and die, if need be, for the sake of principle and justice. This is the type of Negro who, in spite of differences of opinion within the race itself, is gradually working his way toward leadership; and this is the Negro who now "faces America." "Newly emancipated from reliance upon any white savior, [he] stands ready to make his unique contribution to what may some time become American civilization."

What is to be his future? It is Mr. Seligmann's opinion and conclusion that his future lies largely with the forces of labor, among whom "color and the habits of thought which come from emphasizing color distinctions must be subordinated to the need for joint consideration of common difficulties." "It depends largely," too, "upon the emancipation of the American people from their newspapers" and upon whether or not they will demand and obtain "systematic information on matters concerning colored people and their relation to white people"; for a knowledge of the truth will set the nation free from the "color psychosis" under which it now labors.

That such a book as this should have been written is in itself an indication, let us hope, of the coming of the new day in racial relations toward which Mr. Seligmann points the way.

D. A. Lane, Jr.

NOTES

Houghton Mifflin & Company has published John Drinkwater's Lincoln, the World Emancipator. This is not a biography of Lincoln but rather a type representing the ideals of the American nation and at the same time the bonds which have attached the people of the United States to those of England.

In the Magazine of History for November-December 1917, there appeared an important letter of Abraham Lincoln to the Mayor of New York bearing upon a proposed celebration of the Union victories in the West during the Civil War.

The article entitled "Fifty Years of Negro Citizenship," by Dr. C. G. Woodson which appeared in the last number of The Journal of Negro History, is now being used as supplementary reading by the Senior Class of the Law School of Howard University. This article has been reprinted.

In the January number of The American Historical Review appeared a number of documents entitled: "General M. C. Meigs on the conduct of the Civil War." In that same number is an interesting article entitled: "A Confederate Diplomat at the Court of Napoleon III," by L. M. Sears.

The Associated Publishers, a firm recently organized to publish books bearing on the Negro will soon bring out Dr. C. G. Woodson's work on The Negro Church. This is an intensive treatise of the development of religion among the American Negroes. The leading topics discussed are: The Attitude of the Early Missionaries toward the Negro, the Dawn of the New Day, Pioneer Negro Preachers, The Independent Church Movement, The Growth of the Negro Church, The Situation in the South before the Civil War, Preachers of Versatile Genius in the North, The Civil War and the Church, Religious Education, The Call of Politics, The Statistics of the Negro Church and The Negro Church Socialized.

This same firm in the near future will publish also Dr. Woodson's long delayed text book to be entitled The Negro in Our History. Because of the many upheavals in the publishing world, it has been impossible to bring out this work at an earlier date but this firm promises the publication of it by next fall.

The Journal of Negro History

Vol. VI—July, 1921—No. 3

THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF ANCIENT NIGERIA

The opinion of the Western World toward Africa and Africans is in the process of a very slow, yet very tremendous, change. The distant yet ultimate development of this process will bring about a most important revolution in the world of modern thought. It will be marked by a complete reversal of the prevailing present-day evaluation of the history of a continent and of the accomplishments and possibilities of a great people.

To the lay mind of the modern world, Africa is a gigantic jungle of barbarians, bamboo and baboons, where Livingstone traveled, Rhodes prospected, and Roosevelt hunted. Furthermore, it is only within the last twenty-five years or more that even that learned group whose profession is the exposition and interpretation of human history has begun to modify its opinions in this connection.

An insight into the spirit of learned opinion regarding Africa and the Africans only a comparatively short time ago may be gained from the following article, which appeared in a Berlin journal in 1891.337 The article, in part, runs:

"With regard to its Negro population, Africa in contemporary opinion offers no historical enigma which calls for a solution, because from all the information supplied by our explorers and ethnologists, the history of civilization proper in the continent begins, as far as concerns its inhabitants, only with the Mohammedan invasion.

"Before the introduction of a genuine faith and a higher standard of culture by the Arabs, the nations had neither political organization nor, strictly speaking, any religion, nor any industrial development. None but the most primitive instincts determine the lives and conduct of the Negroes who lack every kind of ethical inspiration. Every judicial observer and critic of alleged African culture must once for all make up his mind to renounce the charm of poetry and wizardry of fairy lore, all those things which in other parts of the world remind us of a past fertile in legend and song; that is to say, must bid farewell to the attractions offered by the Beyond of History, by the hope of eventually realizing the tangible impalpable realm conjured up in the distance which time has veiled within its mists, and by the expectation of ultimately wresting some relics of antiquity every now and again from the lap of the earth.

"If the soil of Africa is turned up today by the colonist's plough share, no ancient weapon will lie in the furrow; if the virgin soil be cut by a canal, its excavation will reveal no ancient tomb; and if the ax effects a clearing in the primeval forest, it will nowhere ring upon the foundations of an old world palace. Africa is poorer in record history than can be imagined. 'Black Africa' is a continent which has no mystery, nor history!"

But now this view of Black Africa and its peoples so widespread and well established a generation ago is being slowly dissipated and a new and revolutionary view of the mysterious contents is building itself in its stead. The facts and forces bringing about this great change fall into three main classes; they are of an historical, archaeological and ethnological character.

The real beginning of this change of opinion may be said to date from the capture of the old African city of Benin by the British military forces in the year 1897. The economic and political aspects of the incident do not concern us here, but from an anthropological point of view it proved to be one of the most important incidents of the nineteenth century. For as Ling Roth,338 the noted traveler and ethnologist, has said, "the taking of Benin City opened up to us the knowledge of the existence of hitherto unknown African craft, the productions of which will hold their own among some of the best specimens of antiquity of modern times."

Many of these objects of art were carried away from Benin by the members of the invading expedition to Europe, where they created a profound impression and astounding surprise in scientific circles throughout the continent. C. H. Read, in a paper before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, on the "Art of Benin City," the year following their discovery, says: "It need scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find."339

Just about this time, and continuing down to the present day, a number of Oriental scholars began to bring out modern language translations of the works of numerous Arab writers bearing upon African history—chief among them being the works of El Bekri, Ibn Batuta and Ibn Khaldoun. The most important, however, at least from one angle, was a translation of the Tarikh es Sudan, or The History of the Sudan, which is not the work of an Arab at all, but the joint work of several Sudanese blacks. In its original form it was written both in Arabic and in the Songhay languages. The book was translated into French by M. Houdas, the eminent French professor of the Oriental School of Languages of Paris.

"The book," says Lugard,340 "is a wonderful document, the narrative of which deals mainly with the modern history of the Songhay Empire, relating the rise of this black civilization there in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and its decadence up to the middle of the seventeenth century.... But it is not merely an authentic narrative. It is for the unconscious light which it sheds upon the life, manners, politics and literature of the country that it is valuable. Above all, it possesses the crowning quality displayed usually in creative poetry alone, of presenting a vivid mind picture of the character of the men with whom it deals. It has been called the 'Epic of the Sudan.' It lacks the charm of form, but in all else the description is well merited. Its pages are a treasure house of information for the careful student, and the volume may be read many times without extracting from it more than a small part of all that it contains."

Barth, who obtained some fragments of an Arabic copy when he was on his way to Timbuctoo, goes so far as to say that the book forms "one of the most important additions that the present age has made to the history of mankind."341 Like the unknown culture which the Benin bronzes revealed, the translation of these documents brought to the attention of the learned and academic circles of the Western World, in a more available form, surprising accounts of the sometime existence of powerful and age-old kingdoms and empires in the heart of Black Africa, which hitherto had scarcely been suspected.

Following close upon this was the cursory but illuminating report of Une mission archeologique au Sudan francais, headed by the soldier-ethnologist, Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes. The report, Le Plateau Central Nigirien, Paris, 1907, brought to Europe much valuable information bearing upon the past cultures of the practically unknown Nigerian plateau regions.

Passing over a few very important ethnological studies bearing for the most part upon present-day cultures, we come last of all to what is in the truest sense of the word the wonderful and astounding revelations regarding the pre-historic culture of an ancient Negro race on the West Coast of Africa. These revelations were brought to light as the result of the publications by Leo Frobenius of his Der Afrika Sprach in Berlin in 1913.342 This was a popular account of the experiences and findings of the German Inner African Exploration Expedition during its travels in the Nigerian area for the years 1910-1912. As important as are the ethnological and archaeological finds of this expedition, which will be considered further on, one of its most significant features was its bold advocacy and support of an idea which has been hesitantly advanced in a few circles ever since the study of the Benin bronzes and the Nubian monuments, namely, the existence of a genuinely superior type of culture in Central Africa in pre-classical and pre-Christian times.

Such, then, by way of introduction is the nature of the sources from which comes the influence which is slowly and haltingly, yet surely, bringing about the change in current opinion regarding "Black Africa" as is evidenced by the timely but hitherto unsuccessful effort of Harvard University to treat the records of the African peoples scientifically in keeping with the standard set in the first volume of the Varia Africana. This paper, however, as may be inferred from its title, does not undertake to survey the facts covering the whole field, but restricts itself to materials of a more or less archaeological character, that is, to the architecture, tombs and the arts and crafts of a small section of this ancient land.

There are two reasons for approaching this whole subject in this way. First, the materials and facts herewith considered are in the main of a tangible and undisputed character; and, secondly, it is the study of architecture and the arts and crafts of this particular locality that has been the premier force in changing the old opinion of the world towards Africa. Let us then turn now for a somewhat detailed study of these materials.

As has been said in the introduction, it was the revelation incident to the taking of Benin by the British that marks the real beginning of a serious and scientific interest in the past cultures of Central Africa. The incident started a movement of both a forward and a backward reach. On the one hand, it led to subsequent searchings which ultimately resulted in the finding of additional evidences of culture in that territory, as well as to a reconsideration of the value of the reports of the travelers and adventurers on the West Coast from the fifteenth century on.343 The combined result has been the bringing to light of objects and evidences of achievement which place the ancient and medieval African on a plane with, and in many cases above, his contemporaries in Europe and America.

The reports of earlier adventurers and travelers in the Benin territory previous to the British conquest gave us pictures of towns and buildings which, all things considered, are of no mean order, and which reflect the existence of a social and cultural development of a very long standing. The earliest recorded description of Benin City, according to Ling Roth,344 is that of an old Dutch chronicler who wrote as "D. R." and whose works first appeared in Germany in 1604. His description is as follows:

"At first the town seems very large; when one enters it one comes at once into a broad street which appears to be seven or eight times broader than the Warme street in Amsterdam; this extends straight out, and when one has walked a quarter of an hour along it, he still does not see the end of the street.... At the gate at which one enters there is a very high bulwark, very thick and strongly made, with a very deep, broad ditch, but it was dry and full of high trees. This ditch extends a good way, but we do not know whether it extends around the town or not. That gate is a well-made gate, made of wood, to be shut according to their methods, and watch is always kept there. Outside this gate there is a large suburb.... One sees a great many lanes and streets on both sides, which also extend far and straight, but one can not see the end of them on account of their great extent.

"The houses in this town stand in good order, one close to the other, like houses in Holland. Houses in which well-to-do people, such as gentlemen, dwell, have two or three steps to go up, and in front have an ante-court where one may sit, which court or gallery is cleaned every morning by their servants, and straw mats spread for sitting on. Their rooms or apartments with (the court) are four square, having a roof all round, which, however, does not join in the middle, but is left open, so that the wind, rain and daylight may enter. In these houses they live and eat, but they have specially built little houses for cooking, as well as other huts and rooms.... The king's court is very large, being many square places within, surrounded by courts wherein watch is always kept. This king's court is so large that the end is not to be seen, and when one thinks he has come to the end, one sees through a gateway other places or courts, and one sees many, many stables."

Another description of Benin which seems to corroborate this former description, and which was itself substantiated by later and more recent reports, appeared in a book345 published by one Dapper, a Dutchman, in Amsterdam in 1668. It seems that Dapper himself was never at Benin, but received most of his information about the country from the writings of a Sam Blomert, who, Dapper says, lived for many years in Africa.346 As Ling Roth points out, subsequent reports and the recent finds seem to bear out the truth of his account.

According to Dapper,

"the town comprising the queen's court is about five or six [Dutch] miles in circumference, or, leaving out the court, three miles inside the gates. It is protected at one side by a wall ten feet high, made of double stockades of big trees tied to each other by cross beams, fastened crosswise and stuffed up with red clay solidly put together.... The town possesses several gates, eight or nine feet in height, and five feet in width, with doors made of a single piece of timber hanging, or turning on a peg like the peasants' fences here in this country. [Holland.]

"The king's court is square and stands at the right-hand side as one enters the town by the gate of Gotton, and is certainly as large as the town of Harlem, and entirely surrounded by a special wall like that which encircles the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses and apartments for courtiers and comprises beautiful long and square galleries about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam, but one larger than another, resting on wooden pillars from top to bottom, covered with cast copper on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles, and are kept very clean. Most palaces and houses are covered with palm leaves instead of square pieces of wood [shingles], and every roof is decorated with a small turret, ending in a small point on which birds are standing, these birds being cast in copper, and having outspread wings cleverly made after living models.

"The town has thirty very straight and broad streets, each of them about one hundred and twenty feet wide or about as wide as the Heeren or Keezersgracht [canals] at Amsterdam from one row of houses to the other, from which branch out many side streets, also broad, but less so than the main streets.

"The houses are built alongside the street in good order, the one close to the other as here in this country [Holland], adorned with gables and steps and roofs made of palm or banana leaves, or leaves from other trees; they are not higher than a 'stadie,' but usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms, which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected, and they can make and keep them as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storys are made of the same sort of clay; moreover, every house is provided with a well for a supply of fresh water."

Before going any further with this description, it may be well to state that the description of the nature and character of the finish of the walls given here is substantiated by accounts of travelers in these parts as late as the end of the nineteenth century. Captain Boisragon, one of the two survivors of the ill-fated white expedition to Benin in 1897, in comparing the houses of Benin with those of another nearby city, says that "the chief of Gwatto's house was very much superior; the walls, which were very thick, being polished till they were nearly as smooth and shiny as glass."347 Mr. Cyrl Punch, who traveled in Yorubaland in the eighties of the nineteenth century, gives us a hint of the widespread practice of this sort of wall polishing even so late as forty-five years ago, and furnishes us with a very interesting account of how the polished effect was produced. "For giving a high polish to the clay walls in Yorubaland," says Punch, "the leaves of the Moringa pterygosperinia are mashed up and rubbed over the clay." Of a certain house in the town Brohemi he continues to say that "the walls were better polished than any in Benin. They were like marble."348

In comparing the earlier descriptions of Benin and other African cities in this general area with the descriptions of later writers, an important fact stands out, namely, that these cities had already reached their highest point of development before the coming of the white man; for in a description of Benin by another Dutchman, Nyendall, which appeared in 1704, we read the following: "Formerly the buildings in this village were very thick and very close together, and in a manner it was over-populated, which is yet visible from the ruins of the half remaining houses; but at present the houses stand like poor men's corn, widely apart from each other." His description otherwise is very similar to those previously given, yet his account does bring out an additional point which is worthy of note, namely, the reason for the use of clay in building. "The houses are large and handsome," he writes, "with clay walls; for there is not a stone in the whole country as large as a man's fist."349 In the same connection, Legraing, who visited Benin in 1787, also hints at the reason for the extensive use of clay and wood as the principal structural materials. Around Benin, according to this observer, "the vestiges of an old earthen wall are still to be seen; the wall could hardly have been built of any other material, as we did not see a single stone in the whole journey up."350

The recent reports by Leo Frobenius on his findings further up into the interior, aside from giving us a picture of present-day conditions of cities which he believes to date back to pre-classical and pre-Christian times, also show the absence or scarcity of durable producing materials. But, most important of all, the report indicates the grandeur of African cities in ancient times. In discussing the buildings in the present-day city of Ilife, which he believes was the capital or center of an ancient African theocracy, he says: "There can be no doubt that the entire plan and style of architecture gives the city of Ilife a pleasantly dignified character. If, however, I am to summarize all the life and activities of this city of palms and divinities, I cannot, indeed, speak of anything great and sublime, because that lies buried too deep beneath the soil and debris of centuries, yet I can say that it has a dreamy respectability."

But speaking specifically upon the building which now serves as the palace of the great religious headman of Yorubaland, he says: "The edifice rests upon foundations not of sun dried, but of fine burnt brick." Taken as a whole, the present-day structure conveys "the impression of grandeur in decay." "Such," he says, "is a sketch of the city whose effect is heightened by the noble ruins of the palace of this Holiness and the consciousness of its traditional past."351

We may now turn for a brief consideration of those strange and most interesting structures of the Sudan, the tombs of their ancient dead. All through the Sudan, and especially in Nigeria, are to be found great conical dome-shaped structures of baked clay ranging in size from sixteen feet in height and sixty-six feet in basal diameter to seventy feet in height and two hundred and twenty feet in basal diameter.352 These structures were first mentioned by Lieutenant Louis Desplaynes in his report of Une Mission archeologique au Sudan francais,353 but the first close study of these tombs was made by Frobenius in 1911. Frobenius tells us that these tombs are of three main types: first, a small size; second, an intermediate size; and third, a large size. This last type, he tells us, was an extraordinary large construction, averaging about seventy feet in height and six hundred and fifty to seven hundred feet in basal circumference. The external structure is connected with an underground structure composed of a number of subterranean chambers and compartments, extending in every direction of the compass, sufficient to accommodate the remains of a great number of notables and royal personages.

Frobenius states, regarding one of these subterranean chambers which he explored, that it contained a dome which was paneled and strengthened with wood from the borassus palm and the whole plastered with a sort of prepared clay.354 Frobenius also believes that the external parts of the tombs, that is, the mound proper—was made layer by layer. Each layer of clay was first thoroughly worked, moulded, and baked. This process was repeated time and time again, until the mound was completed.