St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1895-06-29
DAHoMEY AND IT'S PEOPLE.
Facts Obtained BY the French Commls.
sioner Of Sclentinc Research.

Facts Obtained BY the French Commis
| siOner of Scientific Research.
NJ. Edouard Foa, . commissioner o
| scientific research, who accompanied
the French expedition in Dahomey
from 1891 to 1894, has recently pub
lished book giving some results o
his observations in the kingdom of Be
hanzin. The Frenchman divides Da
honey into four zones: that OF the
coast, which is narrow and produce lit
tie or nothing: that of the verdant
plains, which further in the interior
are covered with great palm forests
that of the hill country, and that In
cluding the first spurs of the Kong
mountains. The second Of these is the
only one really known to Europeans
There is iron in the third zone, oil de.
posits are suspected in the second. and
there is reason to believe from the
nearness of the fourth zone to gold
producing Ashantee, that it contains
gold.
Dahomey has been for two centuries
an absolute monarchy, where the king
has power of life and death; where all
the subjects are his slaves and all the
land belongs to him; where the houses
are his, and his tax gatherers seize a
part Of every harvest to provide food
for the king" There are four classes
or castles, and no man may step over
class lines. These classes are the
chiefs, who hold from the king abso.
lutte power over their vassals; the
medicine men, who rule all by the
power OF superstition; the so-called
free men, not euslaved of any but the
king. and the domestic slaves. living
in the families of their owners.
No chief marries outside his class.
There are about three women
to one man in Dahomey and mar.
riage is of course, polygamous. Few
of the ordinary inha bitants have more
than three wives, but the medicine
men have dozen, tho chiefs twenty or
thirty, and the king thirty or forty.
No man marries . woman of his own
blood. The men are extremely lazy.
and the wives do most of the work.
When too old to work a woman must
starve, unless her children are we'll
disposed toward her. Old age usually
means starvation in Dahomey, for no
body saves lest the king seize the saw
ings and the thrifty man lose his labor.
A Danomeyan is content, with two
days rations in the house, to sleep and
smoke half the day upon a mat, and
hunger alone stirs him to action. The
harvest is gathered irregularly. and
much is left to rot on the ground. The
idea of thrift i unknown to the Da-
homeyan.
Dahomey's ruin dates from the decay
of the slave trade. When twenty thou.
sand slaves were brought to America
every year the king Of Dahomey and
his chiefs were great slave catchers,
and the king grew rich by the traffic.
Even as late as 1890 slave cargoes were
sent from one of the ports Of Dahomey.
but the trade long before ceased to be
very profitable. The kings have always
been brutal despots, and the people
have been trained rs warriors. 1t was
by war upon other tribes that slaves
lea. The amazons of Dahomey origi-
mated, according to NJ. Foa, in the
fears of former king, whose subjects
threatened to slay him. His recourse
was to arm captive young women from
other nations, and the practice of main
tanning an army of women has contin-
ued 10 this day.
NJ. Foa explains that it is not the
practice in Dahomey, and probably
never was, as has SO often been as
serted. to sacrifice the kings subjects
indiscriminately in memory of dead
sovereigns. The persons sacrificed
were captives and subjects condemned
to death for crime. The number used
to be three hundred or four hundred
upon each occasion. Now it is not
more than twenty. 1t became fewer
as the conquests Of the nation were
fewer. Nevertheless, the people of Da-
honey live in . perpetual state of ter
ror. and the hypocrisy Of which Eu-
ropeans accuse them is the natural
outcome of a state of society in which
man must be careful to conceal his
feelings and his acts lest they offend
authority. The Dahomeysn is, how
ever. peculiarly callous in the matter
of the moral sense. There are
no beggars, because no Da-
homeyan gives anything for moth
ing. The people are without pity, and
children grow up unrestraiued in all
things SO far as their parents are con-
cerned. Whites are regarded as nat
ural enemies, and are deceived, ca
-olhoI TIE n~HS~A Srt~~.
prefers are merely spies upon Euro
pean traders. Nevertheless the Da-
homeyan never shows anger toward
the white. but maintains an outward
air of calm and insensibility. He is
little impressed with the religion of
the white man because it is too strict
in its moral requirements, but the
Mohammedans have made many con-
verts.
Notwithstanding the low state of
agriculture there are two harvests .
year, and the country has some crude
largely of palm prod
ucts. Goods are not sold from
house to house, but are taken to the
markets held in the large towns. Here
twenty thousand persons often come
together upon market day. The ma
tives, when Europeans first frequented
their markets. dealt unsuspiciously
with the white men, but learning that
they were making enormous profits,
took to keeping back part of their
products from the markets and thus
raising prices. At the markets on the
coast there is telegraphic communica-
ton with Europe, and both natives and
whites deal with European price cur
rents in their hands. Native taste in
the matter of goods is peculiar. Cloths
must be gay and cheap. The quantity
Of alcohol consumed is enormous, and
the natives buy freely = pomade of
beef fat scented with vanilla Accor-
dions also sell well. When , Da-
homeyan coming to market has in
hand other business than selling
his goods, .he leaves the latter
in charge of straw fetch
and goes OF with the certain
ty that nothing will b stolen.
The white traders approach these
articles. and. knowing
the market price. make trade. The