The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921

In addition to these objects of stoneware and glass, there were a large variety of terra cotta objects which range from the "simplest little pots and saucers to the most artistic shapes and portraits." To appreciate the real significance of these objects in view of the inability to see the originals themselves, one should make a special effort to see the drawings and photographs of these objects as contained in Frobenius's Der Afrika Sprach, or its English translation, The Voice of Africa. Accompanying these illustrations there are a few brief descriptions of the more important objects. There is, for instance, "a specimen which seems to be the mouth or collar of an urn. On its inner edge there is a mouth below, an ear on either side, and a pair of eyes.... It looks as if this might have been a portion of a tube which might have been put over a grave, through which offerings might have been made to the dead beneath."373 This explanation for the original purpose of this object is very plausible, as a study of the burial customs of various parts of Africa will show.

Frobenius is of the opinion that the dress of these ancient peoples "must have been very rich and handsome." A terra cotta truss brought to light by these excavations is described as showing a "noteworthy completeness. In the holes scattered on the breast plate and shoulder piece there were formerly inserted metal or iron pegs as ornaments. The end of the garment which is thrown over the shoulder is patterned like the old textures,"374 which Frobenius believed had reached a very high degree of development. "Among our terra cottas," continues Frobenius, "some may have served as pedestals for the heads or busts." He describes a peculiar "fragment belonging possibly to some sort of vessel; on one side is seen an owl, whose hooked beak is badly damaged; on the other a complete figure holding a weapon." Like the beautifully carved stone handle mentioned above, Frobenius testifies that this object also resembles the ancient Sudanese and Ethiopian god Bes,375 and hints of an ancient connection between these two countries.

Another object, not dug up in the cemetery, but in the town of Ilife proper, is a "fired," square thin plaque showing a crocodile in the shape of the letter S, so shaped that it seems to finish in a tightly bound head. The details are not easily seen, but the position of the legs seems to indicate that the beast is bound there with cords and is meant to seem fastened to the surface, with a sort of hood over the eyes ending in a string work and tassels as if in a cunningly made basket. Frobenius and his associates were of the opinion that this object is that of a tile which in ages past formed part of the decorative design of one of the ancient buildings.376

Passing over a list of similar objects, we finally come to the world-famed terra cotta heads. Like the other terra cotta objects, these are fully illustrated in the above-named work. They are of "infinite variety" and "every observer may well see that they are patently portraits." They represent many varieties of Central Africans, from the restricted minority group of prognathous flat-nosed, thick-lipped type of the coast to the more delicate and sharper featured types to which the majority of Africans belong. In other words, these terra cottas represent almost every African type suggesting, therefore, a civil life very cosmopolitan in character and the probable existence of a jus commercii as well as a jus connubii, which in turn argues well for the existence of a demogenic form of association of a very great age. Frobenius testifies that these heads are of "great beauty and amazing to those who inspect them." Commenting upon these terra cottas in general, he says: "I do not think that there can be the least doubt but that we are faced with a local form of art whose perfection is absolutely astounding," and commenting upon one particular head which he calls mia after the native term for it, he concludes that it "must be regarded as the most important object hitherto found on African ground and as the finest work of art so far discovered outside the narrow Nile valley, on the further side of the old Roman jurisdiction."377

We may now turn for a brief study of what is beyond all doubt the most important division of the whole group of African arts and crafts—the metal castings. As was mentioned in the Introduction, the conquest of the city of Benin by the British in 1897 opened up to the knowledge of the white world a hitherto unknown field of Negro art, "the productions of which," according to Ling Roth, "will hold their own among some of the finest specimens of antiquity or modern times."378 The excavations of Frobenius's expedition discovered in the heart of this part of Negro-land, aside from the terra cottas already described, metal works which are characterized as being "indeed like the finest Roman examples."379

The amount and variety of these works are tremendous and they have been carefully studied and reported upon by various writers. The following extracts, taken from the most noted among them, will give some idea of the nature and character of these objects. The chief feature of the personal ornaments, according to Ling Roth, is their variety. Another feature is their play upon patterns. For example, the same pattern which is seen in one bracelet is so adapted and reduced in another as to produce a very different effect. Spirals as a basis of design are not uncommon. "And they are often so twisted and interwoven that they produce quite a novel effect." Some of the bracelets are furnished with studs set with agate or coral. Some gold-plated ornaments have been found, among them a "bracelet formed by a double-headed snake grasping between its jaws a decapitated human head and a snake about four inches long." Ling Roth, commenting upon the workmanship of these smaller objects, says that generally speaking it is good, but "it is not as a rule equal to that of the large Benin metal workings; this is no doubt due to the greater difficulty presented by the smaller surfaces on which the artisans have had to work."380

Speaking of what he calls a curious class of objects, namely, the long armlets and leglets "so fashionable in West Africa," Ling Roth declares them to be "elegantly finished productions and good examples of Benin art.... They are provided with loops for hawk bills, which turn up everywhere in unexpected places through Benin metal work." In describing one such bracelet, which, however, is of modern make, he says that it is "interesting as exhibiting a conventionalized leopard's face on the top, as well as a European's face on the bottom, likewise developing into a form of ornament … the fertility in design is in all of these forms manifest indeed; it is a feature in the art of Benin natives which any of our jewelers might do well to copy."381

Passing to a consideration of some of the larger forms of metal casting, we have the following description by Ling Roth of a bronze vase "whose ornamentation consists of four mask-like faces in high relief, two plain and two ribbed, set alternately; above each of the ribbed masks there is a flat spiral on which rests an ornamental triangle on its apex. Between the heads are placed bands of very plain guilloche, each band consisting of alternate three or four rows each, above and below concentric circles of imitation (coral?) bead work, all in low relief, and helping to fill in the ground. The whole arrangement forms a combination of decidedly artistic effect. There is no enchasing or punching of any sort, nor is there much ornamentation, but what ornamentation there is, is designed in such a spirited manner as to produce a result which hardly can be surpassed by Europeans at the present day."382

As another example of this same sort of thing, we may take the description of another object, a curious metal casket brought to Europe by a member of the Punitive Expedition. In design, according to Ling Roth, this casket "is bold and artistic; the high relief of the bizarre face and the zigzag conventionalized serpents and tadpoles being well thrown up by enchasing of the ground work. The proportions are all good, and this is especially the case with an enchasing of the enclosed lines." Ling Roth says that the relief portions are somewhat roughly cast, and the enchasing sometimes irregular, but, "on the other hand," he continues, "the great variety of objects exhibited without any over-crowding, the general grouping, the tones background, the real beauty" of the major portion of the design show that the artist was "a man of considerable taste, judged not only as a Negro, but as a man of culture."383

Another object which Ling Roth mentions as being especially remarkable for its technique is that which he has ventured to call a sistrum. It consists of what appears to be two brass bell bodies, a larger and a smaller welded together at the tapering ends. On the face of the larger bell is represented the now well-known group of a king or chief with a sort of Persian head-dress, with a harpoon-like projection at the top. He is supported on both sides by similarly dressed individuals; somewhat above the level of his head the chief is flanked by two tablets, each upheld by a hand emerging from the background. The background is enchased with an elegant foliated design somewhat Bornean in character. The back of the bell, with a few exceptions, has a similar relief. After describing the smaller bell, which is of a somewhat different character, Ling Roth concluded with these rather significant remarks:

"Taken as a whole the Sistrum is an elegant piece of workmanship. The thoroughness of the details of execution is worthy of the Japanese, even the inaccessible and almost hidden portion of the smaller bell being enchased with a pattern."384

As excellent as are these types of castings, the finest works of these Negro sculptors were achieved, not in works of this character, but, according to critics like Dalton, Read, and Ling Roth, rather in works that are done in the round.385 Dalton, speaking of a bronze head of a Negro girl now in the British Museum, declares it to be "the most artistic and perfect of all the castings in the round." Ling Roth, speaking of the same head, declares it to be the "finest piece of cast bronze art obtained from Benin."

A find by Frobenius during his excavations at Ilife seems to support these conclusions. For of all the objects found by him at that site, his most important discovery he declares to be a bronze head, which he thinks is that of an ancient African god. The head wears a diadem with a staff. From the very tip of the diadem staff to the chin the object measures thirty-one and a quarter inches. "It is cast in what we call cere perdue, or hollow cast, and is indeed finely chased, suggesting the finest Roman examples. The setting of the lips, the shape of the ears, the contour of the face, all prove, if separately examined, the perfection of a work of true art, which the whole of it obviously is."386

Some attention may now be given to the method by which these objects were made and to the question of their age and origin. In a report before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in February, 1898,387 Mr. C. H. Read and Mr. O. M. Dalton described these objects as having been cast in moulds. They testified as to the difficulties attendant upon such methods in sculpture, announcing that they had "been overcome with the certainty and skill which only long practice of a familiar art could produce. This alone goes to prove that at whatever period the objects were made they were produced by a people long acquainted with the art of casting metals."388

Their report continues: "The method by which the objects were produced can only be that known as cere perdue process. By no other is it conceivable that so much extravagant relief and elaborately undercut detail could be represented with success. The process may be described in a very few words. The model is first made in wax, and every part of its surface is then covered with fine clay; the whole work is then hidden in a mass of clay. An outlet is then made for the wax to escape, and the mass is then heated until the wax has melted out, leaving, of course, a mould of exactly the design of the wax in the original state. The metal is then poured in and fills every hollow space left by the wax." Read and Dalton, as well as Ling Roth, testify that when casting objects in the round, or any object for that matter, where there was considerable internal bulk or projections, a core of sand was used as a base and the wax and clay respectively placed over this. This method, aside from insuring lightness, also saved considerable metal. Ling Roth, in this connection, points out that "the ancient Etruscans and Greeks made their castings solid without any sand core, while the Beni were evidently adept in the superior method practiced by the ancient Egyptians."389 Read and Dalton likewise conclude that "this cere perdue process is that by which many of the finest Italian bronzes of the best period were produced."390 Thus it is that we find the Negroes of West Africa, as Dalton concludes, "using with familiarity and success a complicated method which satisfied the fastidious eye of the best artists of the Italian Rennaissance."391

Such, then, is an abbreviated account of the arts and crafts which have been discovered in a restricted part of West Africa during the last generation. Whether the results be considered large or small, it should be remembered that they represent the outcome of but a small amount of scientific investigation, only one expedition of scientific qualifications having so far operated in these parts. What the future holds or may bring forth yet remains to be seen.

There has been, and still is, considerable difference of opinion regarding the origin and antiquity of the culture which these objects represent. Some hold it to be of great age and of a more or less indigenous origin, while others are of the opinion that it is comparatively modern and that it was introduced, some say, by the Arabs and Mohammedans, while others believe it was brought by the Portuguese, at varying dates down to and including the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Dealing with the latter view first, one hardly considers it unfair to say that there has never been any serious evidence for such opinion. The main reason for ascribing this culture to the Arab or Portuguese origin was due, on the one hand, to a failure to study seriously the culture itself, and, on the other hand, a kind of a priori conception of the very limited potentialities of Negro peoples. Basing their opinion upon the popular conception that the Negro represented the lowest form of human development, it was thought by early critics of the culture that the Negro could not have produced objects of art capable of holding their own among the highest forms of human creations; and so in the exigencies of the situation the theories of Arab or Portuguese origin were brought to the fore. The advance of ethnological science during the last generation, the serious study of the Benin objects in an objective sense, and finally the results of Frobenius's Expedition, all combined, have not only weakened the theories of a modern Arab and Portuguese origin, but have practically destroyed them altogether.

Let us take a summary view of some of this evidence against these theories. In the first place, there might be mentioned the changing opinion regarding the supposed mental difference between so-called cultured and primitive peoples. As a result of many scientific studies, and some scientific expeditions both in Africa and Oceania, it is now practically the belief in scientific circles that there is no potential difference in quality of mind of the various races or of widely differentiated cultural groups. This removes at the outset the belief heretofore held as to the inherent limited capacity of the Negro peoples. According to this modern point of view, then, the objects above described could have been created by native blacks of Central Africa.

As a next step, Ling Roth has pointed out that as there is hardly a traveler from Africa who has not recorded the art of iron smelting among the Negro or Bantu tribes, "we may accept as a fact that the art of smelting iron is a very old one in Africa." Not only does the recent evidence point out that iron smelting per se was an old and widespread practice in Africa, but, in addition, reports a similar method of metal working as discovered in the Benin country to have been in vogue in other and widely separated parts of Africa. For example, Bowditch392 describes a method of casting on the Volta River, where a wood core was used instead of sand, while Robinson393 states that at Kano "there are on sale swords, spears and many other objects made of native wrought iron. The article desired is first formed in wax and from this clay model is made into which the molten iron can be poured."394

This, it would seem, reduces considerably the need for postulating modern influence so far as the method is concerned. And even if modern influence were responsible, it could hardly have been Arab or Portuguese, for up to date no such objects as above described have been found among the ruins of the Islamic civilization. And on the other hand, as Ling Roth has said, "we are still quite in the dark as to the existence of any such high-class art in the Iberian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century; and we know that there was not much of this art in the rest of Europe."395 The only serious evidence, if even it might be so called, which was ever advanced as indicating Portuguese origin for this art was the fact that on some of the plaques from Benin there were found Portuguese heads or figures. But this, instead of indicating a Portuguese origin, gives, when carefully studied, reasonable evidence to the contrary.

Let us make a brief study of one of these objects. An object described by Ling Roth396 as the "head of the staff or wand of offices" may be used as an illustration. The design is "that of a leopard supporting a column on its back. The uppermost portion of this staff head consists of a band of engraved basket work patterns with grained open ground. This is followed by a band of fish-scale patterns ornamented at the lower corners of contact pinched indents. On this band there is an upper series of ornaments in relief. The upper series consists of four faces; that on the front being probably that of a Negro and that on the back that of a European. Both faces are boldly and clearly executed, while the two faces on either side are of Europeans, both of them flat and poorly executed, and in profile with the mouth curiously twisted into the full face. The European figures on either side of the leopard in their flatness and general crudeness are quite out of keeping with the rest of the work. "Yet," he says, "one cannot help admiring the boldness with which the leopard has been modelled, or the firmness with which its claws grasp the ground; while the vigorous way in which the tail is made to support the back of the column should be remarked. Equally admirable are the suitable proportions of the bands of ornament. The upper band is thoroughly subdued so that the faces next to it are brought more prominently into relief."

It is evident that in every feature, excepting the European faces, this object is obviously the product of a master. How, then, are we to account for the crude and archaic appearance of the European figures? It would seem either that it was done purposely out of disrespect for the European or else it was the result of an unfamiliarity with the subject on the part of the artist. If the African artist had been indebted to the European for his apprenticeship, it is highly improbable that either of the conditions present here would have been likely to occur.

In this same connection a statement by Ling Roth testifies that "the Beni almost invariably give their fellow Africans sturdy lower limbs while they do not do so invariably to Europeans. The latter of a certain type are made to stand on well planted feet, while such Europeans as are in any way about to use their guns have their legs bent and puny."

That the work of the African artist, when dealing with Europeans, was necessarily of an inferior grade must not be assumed to be the rule, however, though it does seem from the evidence that there is more unaccountable archaicness in objects of this character than in any others. Ling Roth, speaking in this same connection, calls attention to the fact that Benin was not discovered by the Portuguese until about 1472, and that by the middle of the sixteenth century (e.g., 1550) we have an almost perfect figure of a European, presumably made by a native. "It is inconceivable," he concludes, "that an introduced art could have developed at so rapid a rate that in seventy years, probably less, for this art would hardly have been introduced the first day, such a high pitch of excellence could have been attained by the natives."

If the Portuguese theory is untenable, the Arabic or Islamic theory is equally, if not more, unacceptable. In the first place, as has already been pointed out, Arabic or Islamic art shows absolutely nothing in art approaching objects of the Benin type. Furthermore, Islam itself did not appear in Central Africa until the eleventh century, and then only in the northern and western parts of the Sudan. And it was, moreover, not until the fourteenth century that it made itself a real part of the life of the northern country, and not until the eighteenth that its influence spread into Yorubaland. And then its influence was only felt in the back country.397

Furthermore, according to Frobenius and Ling Roth, respectively, both the Ilifian region and the Benin territory remain until the present-day non-Mohammedan in character. This would seem to indicate Islamic influence in those countries where most of these objects above described were found has been necessarily very slight; yet such a culture as the above objects represent was unquestionably a very integral part of the life of the country and could not possibly have been due to such an influence. Furthermore, if additional evidence were needed to disprove the theory, it might be cited that it is a well-known fact that one of the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith is the proscription of the representation of the human form in its art in any whatsoever. And since the height of the material side of this culture was reached in this kind of art, it appears doubtful that this culture could have arisen from such a source.

It would seem, therefore, that this culture at least antedates the coming of the Portuguese and the Arab influence in this part of West Africa. To state definitely its place of origin, or the exact date of its origin, is at present, however, impossible, because of the relatively small amount of scientific work and study carried out in this part of the Continent. But in spite of this sufficient evidence is already available to warrant the opinion on the part of all the critics previously referred to that this culture is essentially African in origin and very, very old. Frobenius is convinced that it is at least pre-classical and pre-Christian in its beginning.

Such, then, and until now, is the character of the material culture of this restricted spot of Black Africa. What the future will bring let the future tell, but of this let the present be convinced: that at least this part of Black Africa is not "beyond the reach of interest in the history of the world; always in a state of apathy asleep to progress and dreaming its day away." And of this may the present be ever sure that Black Africa is not "a continent which has no mystery, nor history!"

William Leo Hansberry.

THE NEGRO IN BRITISH SOUTH AFRICA. 398

It was in the United States Senate, during the summer of 1919, that there was in progress a debate concerning the ratification of the Treaty of Peace with Germany and the consequent ratification of the covenant of the League of Nations. Speaking to this question the words of Senator William Edgar Borah of Idaho were, in substance, these: "The President of the United States has said that if we fail to ratify the covenant of the League of Nations we will 'break the heart of the world.' … But, sir, failure to ratify this covenant will not break the heart of China, which constitutes a third of the world; it will not break the heart of India; it will not break the hearts of the natives of the South African Republics."