The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-13

aohs ruled in Egypt-the same frail huts
inhabited by the same dusky people, pur-
suing with similar utensils and Identical
weapons. each their only round of domes-
tic happiness and MISUNDERSTANDING
loye-making and savage warfare-women
hoeing the ground and preparing food,
while their husbands fished on the broad,
calm rivers or hunted through the dark,
impenetrable forests.
The land, too, is the same: no single
record of the past, no solitary memorial of
the ages that have blindly staggered into
the tomb of time, mark its surface.
Nature has stepped calmly, with un-
changed features, through the long years,
spreading thick mantle of deep forest
over the dark bosom of Africa, which pulls
ates silently and forever in the 40 !, of the
great streams yelling up from its hidden
heart.
Domestic slavery has existed no doubt
since Esau sold his birthright to Jacob,
and on the Congo today we have the
strange sight of one brother selling an
other
The elder brother is the Efunni or chief
of his younger brethren, and must be con-
suited by them and treated with Difference
| until they reach years of discretion-a
| themse elves of wives.
Fathers and mothers don't count. I
| have known case where a strong-minded
member of certain family sold off all the
| relatives he could lay his hands on, until
| at length, moved by one common fear, the
| scattering survivors of the clan gathered
| together from the outlying districts and
| put the head of the family Che had OBJ
| tanned that height by success in sales of
senior claimants) up to public auction.
He was knocked down for quite small
sum, and SO he went to join the great ma
| jority-of his relatives.
Petty theft, when detected, renders the
| culprit liable to be sold as a slave by the
| person robbed.
If the theft be peculiarly revolving
| one, such as by breaking into a hut, to
| rob the absent owner of the slowly &C
| cumulating pile of cloth that was to have
been the means of purchasing unto him.
self wife, then justice may not deem her.
self righted until the offender has been
| done to death.
Burying alive after the limbs have been
| all broken, leaving the head only above
| ground. is favorite punishment for a
crime of such magnitude.
Possibly because so common for the
staggering, boasting freeman of today,
| to be the bondsman of tomorrow, African
domestic slavery entails for its victims
few of the horrors usually associated with
| it in the public mind at home.
The kongo slave, owned by the most ex-
acting of masters, would open his eyes in
horror and amazement at the lot of the So
called free toilers in the east end of Lon
don, or elsewhere through the worlds
great centers of civilization. Should he
work for his master he must be paid, even
as free worker would be-he cannot be
forced to perform mental duties at his
owners will. His servitude consists in
the fact that where his master lives, there
he must dwell also, and if fighting is to be
lNy,n x1,,II 80 III
state, he must by swelling his lords train
add to its strength OF Importance.
His wife is his-his children his-though
always slaves-possibly his wives, for he
| may be clever and active, and by keen
trading have amassed more wealth than
his chief possesses; and it is no uncom-
mon spectacle in lower Kongo village to
openly exhibited authority entirely in the
hands of one of his slaves.
By far the most important native per-
sonage from Stanley pool to the Atlantic
ocean is Makito, of Ngombe, not only in
actual wealth of ivory and of European
| goods amassed by its sale to traders, but
in men, guns and personal influence.
His village is large and well built, his
own house of substantial European planks,
the only one of its kind possessed by a
| Congo native save that of the king of San
| Salvador-and when Makito sallies forth
to fight neighboring potentates tremble in
| their shoes--or would do If they owned
| shoes.
Two miles from Makito's town resides
| if he is not yet dead-the frail. half-blind
old chief OF the Ngombe district, Lutete-
comparatively unknown. exercising but
little influence outside his immediate
family circle-attending rarely a native
market to learn how the world joys along
| without him, or to gather among the
newsmongers the latest exploit of the
mighty Makito. Yonder trembling old
| man, who crawls out of his hut to sit in
| the dust at Lutete's door-and claps his
hands in token of allegiance as the chief
emerges from the hut to seat himself on
| the leopard mat in the shade of the over
hanging eayes-yonder old man, the
bowed servitor of Lutete, is the father of
Makito, who thus by all Congo law owes
homage and service to his master, Lutete.
And so in the sunshine and still calm of
the burning African noon the hereditary
chiefo of Ngombe, surrounded by the stray
Cling huts of his wives and dependents,
sits on his door mat and judges the
weighty question of whether his plantains
are sufficiently boiled or if his latest wife
cook has put enough pepper pods into his
moomba broth of fish and beans-and the
fowls hover round on agile legs to await
their turn at the fragmentary remnants of
the meal-while a lean pariah or two shifts
broods the sleepy silence of an unutterable
laziness and impotentiality to move the
world of men who surround this incarnate
conception of roi fdineant.
As the heavy eyelids close over the
sleepy eyes and Lutete sinks into his daily
after dinner nap, q column of smoke rises
up over that distant hilltop across the
valley-its crown of palm trees is blotted
out by the rolling cloud that grows
denser and denser flames tighten
through it-though at this distance the
eye so stepped in sweltering sunshine can
scarce decide if those red, shifting patches
be flames indeed.
Soon the palm trees show out against
the clearing horizon. and the flames may
now be seen racing and pouring through
the long grass across the neighboring
plateau, and by evening a blackened patch
on which the smouldering trees stand up
bare and shriveled. alone marks where in
the morning had nestled mid its palms
the pretty village of Nkondo-burnt as
Nundo and half a score of others had
been to appease the wrath of the slave
Makitol ROGER EASEMENT,
Transport Agent Congo Free State.