, 1888-10-10
woMgN,s RIeHTs IN AFRICA.
The Ladies of the Akona Tribe Bring
Their Husbands to Terms.

The Ladies' of the Akona Tribe Bring
Their Husbands to Terms.
Mr.. PAUL., who lived for some time in
the CAMERON region, West Africa, tells
of a highly successful woman's rights
movement a while ago in the Akona tribe,
illustrating the fact that when women
unanimously assert them in savage lands,
as well as elsewhere, they are a great
power in the community. In that be-
nighted region women are n~et-sHPpesed
to have any rights. When a girl is 10 or
IA years old she is sold to anybody who
has property enough to pay the price her
father asks for her, and thereafter she
works like a slave for her board and
lodging and is subject to all the caprices
of her lord and master. Ever the bonds.
men in the community have more priv
ileges than the free women, and some of
them in time are able to support rather
extensive harems of their own.
1t happened that there were some strong
minded women among the Akona people,
and they lifted up their voices in public
places in favor of some radical social re-
forms that would make the lot of woman
kind rather more endurable. They were
jeered at, as women reformers have been
in some other lands, and were advised by
the superior sex to keep on digging in the
fields and pounding manioc root and
thank fortune that their lot was not less
tolerable. Reform was evidently not to
be secured by any amount of feminine
protest, and so these strong minded
women put their long heads together and
decided upon radical and far reaching
measures.
The tribe is a small one. Nearly all the
adult females in it enlisted under the BAN
ner of women's rights. One day there was
an enormous connection in that little
community. 1t was almost wholly con-
fined to the male population, the fact
being that there was hardly q woman there
to share the excitement. The mothers
and wives, in q most unexpected and
heartless manner, had suddenly dropped
their implements of drudgery, and with
their children in arms and manageable
daughters had HE'D them through the
forests to the territory of another tribe,
where, at a distance of eight or ten miles
from their own garden patches, they were
prepared to open negotiations with the
lordly chapel they had left behind them.
They knew beforehand that they would
meet with a hospitable reception in the
tribe with which they took refuge. 1t
happened that this tribe was larger than
the Akona, and did not like them very
well, and it tickled them half to death to
see the pickle in which the Akona men
suddenly found themselves. The women
set themselves to work earning their
daily bread, and waited without a bit of
Impotence for an embassy from home. 1t
was not long before the embassy put in an
appearance.
The Akona tribe was of the opinion that
they could not continue in business
without the female members thereof, and
they wanted the women to come home.
The particularly strong minded spokes-
man of the refugees said she was glad to
learn at last that the women of their
tribe were regarded as a desirable ele-
ment of the Akona people. AS the women
had taken care of all the men, it was evil
dent they were able to take care Of them
selves, and they hadn't the slightest in
tention of going home except on certain
important conditions, which she specified.
Then the embassy went home to consult
the chief men, who, as their harems were
the largest, were the greatest sufferers by
the flight of the fair sex.
The women stipulated that they would
come back if q considerable part of the
agricultural duties of the community
were in future turned over to the slaves,
if the mothers were permitted to nave
something to say about the disposal of
their daughters, and if several other con-
ditions were complied with. 1t did not
take longffor the gentlemen of Akona to
decide what to do. A day or two later
the women went back in high feather,
having achieved a complete victory, and
they have been treated very well ever
since.-New York Sun.