The Arkansaw traveler., 1888-05-05
Why They Fought Stanley.

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 Why They Fought Stanley.
 New York Sun.
 During Stanley's first great trip down the Congo, his little party for hundreds of miles heard almost con- stantly the thunder of the big war drums. At many bend of the river they saw the canoes of the natives pushing out from the shore filled with bowling savages bent on the de- struction of the little band who wished for nothing so much as to glide peacefully down stream to sea. It is not always easy to fathom the exact motives that inspire the acts of uncivilized people, and now that the whites are we'll established on the Congo, some of them have inquired with great interest of the natives what they thought of Stanley when he first appeared to them, and why they gave him such an unfriendly re- ception. A conversation that the Rev. M. Bentley had with native of Bolobo on this subject, while ago, gives an interesting insight into the workings of the savage mind.
 "Why did the Bayansi attack the white manp" MT. Bentley asked.
 "Oh, we did not attack him, but we meant to. We had heard from far up the river that one of the strange white men we had never seen, who made the cloth our traders brought us, was coming down the river. We heard that everybody above us had gone out to fight him just for the glory of winning a vic- tory over this wonderful kind of men. Do you think we could be behind the rest2 Why, we would have been the laughing stock of the whole river if we had not at least shown that we dared to go out and fight him. When we went to trade in friendly towns and joined in the dance all the girls would have laughed at us and sung how their braves had gone out to fight the great white man while the Bayansi ran away and hid like women. We could not miss such chance to show that we were brave men, too.
 "So we filled our biggest canoes with men, and hid behind the long point above our town. We waited there, and by and by we saw the mans canoes far up the river. All our assegais and lances were sharp, and we intended to make good fight. Down came the white men, and we were just getting ready to push out from the shore, when, much to our surprise, he turned the prows of his canoes toward the opposite shore, just a little above us, and soon he landed on the other side of the river.
 "We thought we would watch him awhile and see what happened. There were hundreds of us, and we were all looking through the grass to see what the white man did. We saw his men mingling with the tribe on the other shore. By and by some of our friends over the river came across. They told us the white man was a good fellow, and that he wanted to be friends, and that he was buying lots of food, for which he was giving beads and brass wire and many won- derful things.
 "That was too much for us. Every man rushed to the village, and soon we had several canoes loaded with plaintain, cassava pudding, fowls and other things, and over we went to trade. We got good prices for our food, and SO you see we didn't fight after all."
 It will be rembered that Stanley mentioned this very tribe at Bolobo as among the first who sold him food and gave him a friendly reception after he had run the gauntlet of scores of hostile villages. Perhaps he never knew how narrowly he escaped hav- ing battle with the people of Bol- obo, who, as it turned out, became his very good friends. When Stanley went back to the Congo one of the first stations he established above Stanley Pool was at Bolobo. The story this native told very likely ex- plains the persistency of the attacks upon Stanley all the way from Stan- ley Falls to Bolobo, about 600 miles. Cs-