Des rapports entre les moyens d’existence et l’organisation sociale de quelques peuples d’espèce cau

CHAP. 31: > Of the relations between the means of existence and the social organization of some peoples of the Caucasian species of the eastern part of Africa. — Of the kind of inequality that exists among these peoples. — Of the morals that determine their social state, and of those that are its consequences. — Of the morals of some negro peoples.

The peoples who inhabit the eastern and northern coasts of Africa, or rather, on the fringe of this continent, from the mountains where the Nile takes its source, between the eighth and tenth degree of north latitude, to the extremity of the kingdom of Morocco or the beginning of the Sahara desert, are generally classified among the peoples who belong to the Caucasian species, or are considered as being varieties of it. These peoples are not all equally well known to us; there are some who have barely been visited; but the little we know of these is sufficient to make us judge that they differ little from the peoples we know better, and who are placed in analogous circumstances.I have previously observed that, to judge the average temperature of a country, it is not enough to know the degree of latitude under which it is situated, but that one must also know the degree of elevation above sea level at which it is placed, and the position in which it finds itself relative to other lands. In America, for example, one can, while remaining between the tropics, have the advantages and disadvantages of all climates, from those offered by the torrid zone to those presented by the glacial zone. The climate is colder on the mountains that are under the equator than it is in the plains at the mouth of the Mississippi, under the thirtieth degree of north latitude. In the center of Europe, one can likewise pass from a temperate climate to a cold climate by going from north to south and by ascending into the mountains. The average temperature of the Alps in the valley of Chamonix, under the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, is colder than the average temperature of Holland at the mouth of the Rhine, near the fifty-second. The climate is also colder on the summit of the mountains of central Asia than on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where the waters that flow from these mountains go. We find in Africa phenomena similar to those presented by the other parts of the world; the Nile, like the Rhine, runs from south to north, and the average temperature of the point where it discharges, under the thirty-first degree of north latitude, is higher than that of the mountains where it takes its source, between the eighth and tenth of the same latitude. These mountains, according to one traveler, are as high as the Alps, and it appears that their summit is covered with eternal snows, although they are almost under the equinoctial line. It must be added that the peoples who inhabit their northern slope are bounded to the north and west by sandy deserts, and to the east by an unapproachable sea, and that they find themselves, consequently, without communications with any civilized nation. These are phenomena that must not be lost from sight when one researches the influence of places and climates: if, in these researches, one had no regard for the elevation and the position of the soil, one would fall into great and numerous errors.

The Gallas inhabit the mountains that run from east to west in Africa, and which divide this continent into two almost equal parts. They are situated under a cold climate, comparatively to the peoples of the same continent who live on the shores of the Red Sea or even the Mediterranean. They have not been observed in the interior of their country; but Bruce saw their king and their army in the service of the king of Abyssinia; and what he tells us of the physical constitution, the intelligence, and the morals of the principal chiefs of this nation, whom he successively observed, is sufficient to make us judge those he did not visit. If one were to judge a numerous and civilized people by a few individuals whom chance had brought one to meet, one would risk not always forming a very equitable judgment of it; but in judging, by their chiefs and by their armies, peoples who have not emerged from the state of barbarism, one almost always judges them by the elite of their population [110].

Bruce, in his capacity as a vassal of the king of Abyssinia and a soldier of his army, judged it suitable to pay a visit to the commander-in-chief of the Galla army, whom he names the leaper, and who was then in the country. He was a man, very tall and very thin; he had a pointed face, a long nose, small eyes, and excessively large ears. He never looked one in the face, never fixed his gaze on anything, but continually shifted his eyes from one object to another like hyenas. This man had the reputation of the most cruel and ruthless thief. He was occupied with the cares of his toilette at the moment he received Bruce's visit.

“He appeared to me,” says this traveler, “very embarrassed by my visit. I found him almost naked, for he had only a sort of rag around his loins. He had just bathed in the Kelti, and in truth I do not know why, since he was rubbing his arms and body with melted tallow. He had already put much tallow in his hair, and a man was occupied in braiding it for him with ox intestines, which, I believe, had never been cleaned. The leaper had, in addition, two turns of these intestines around his neck, one end of which hung on his chest, like those necklaces we call solitaires. Our conversation was neither long, nor interesting. I was suffocated by a horrible odor of blood and carrion [111].”

The moment when Bruce observed the king of the Gallas, named Gangoul, was when this prince showed himself in his greatest magnificence: it was in a solemn audience of reception, given to him by the king of Abyssinia. Gangoul was small, thin, all crooked, and appeared neither vigorous nor agile; he had a large head, very thin legs and thighs, in proportion to his body, and a yellow or livid complexion that seemed to announce poor health; he appeared to be about fifty years old. This monarch presented himself armed with a bad pike and a worse shield; he was mounted on a cow of medium size, but whose horns were enormous, and which had neither saddle nor harness. His royal costume corresponded to his equipage.

“His hair,” says Bruce, “was very long and interlaced with ox intestines, in such a way that one could not distinguish the hair from the intestines; and these singular braids fell half on his shoulders and half on his stomach. The Galla chief had in addition an intestine around his neck, and several others that girded his loins and served him as a belt. Gangoul's face and body were equally well anointed with butter, which dripped from all sides. An extreme confidence, an insolent superiority were painted on this prince's face; and, as the weather was extremely hot, before he was seen to appear, an odor of carrion announced his approach [112].”

Bruce does not give us a description of the army: he limits himself to representing it as a troop of savages who know how to make no distinction between friends and enemies; who pillage, demolish, or burn the houses of both with the same ferocity [113]; who, when they make themselves masters of a village, slaughter the women, the elderly, the children, reserving, among the women, only those from whom they can hope to have children, and whom they carry away as slaves [114]. But the description he gives us of the chiefs and their magnificence leaves us little to desire concerning the intellectual development and the moral perfection of the people. One would often form an exaggerated idea of a nation's happiness, if one judged it by the riches of its princes or its grandees; but one risks little in lowering its industry, by judging it by the kind of luxury that is particular to its king or its generals.

The peoples of Abyssinia, who live in the plains, are much less barbarous than those who live in the mountains; their intellectual faculties are more developed, and they are generally less ferocious. However, here, as on the western coast of the same continent, the population must be divided into two classes, each having particular morals: that of the men who cultivate the land to which they are attached, and that of the men who consume its products; for the Abyssinians are subject to the same regime as the negroes who live under the same latitude, but on the opposite coast: they are subjected to the feudal regime.

The whole country, including under this word the lands and the men who cultivate them, is considered by the grandees as their property; and the share of each is in proportion to the elevation of his rank. The king, as chief of the nobles, has the best part; the princesses have, after him, the most fertile lands, and probably also the best cultivators [115]. The distribution of lands belongs to the chief; if, therefore, it happens that a grandee loses his, as a result of some crime or otherwise, they return to the king, who disposes of them as he pleases [116]. A grandee can himself give his lands or his villages to another individual, and then the latter is held toward him by the same obligations by which he himself is held toward the king [117]. These obligations consist principally in rendering faith and homage to his suzerain, in accompanying him to war when he requires it, and in having himself followed moreover by a certain number of men [118]. If the king or a grandee has to exercise hospitality toward a personage they consider, they give him several villages, each of which is held to furnish him a part of the things he needs [119].

The person of the king is inviolable; consequently, the responsibility for his acts falls upon his ministers or his councilors. As head of the administration, he has a council formed of six grandees of the kingdom, all officers of his household: these are the colonels of his troops, the grand cupbearer, the keeper of the house of the lion (name of an apartment in the palace), and the keeper of the apartment of the royal banquets. Each of these councilors is required to give his opinion; but it is on the condition that it will always be the opinion of the prince; for, if it happens that he is of a contrary opinion, he is sent to prison. In order to leave the greatest liberty to the deliberations, the king does not appear at them; he keeps himself in a sort of closed box, at the end of the council table: if the majority makes known an opinion that is not his, it is the opinion of the minority that prevails [120].

The king is the head of justice; but, as he wishes it to be independent, he administers it himself only when he desires the accused to be acquitted. In his expeditions, he always has himself followed by six judges of his choice, whose judgments are executed the very instant they are rendered. Near the tribunal where these judges sit, there is a small window hidden by a curtain of green taffeta; it is behind this curtain that the king places himself. An officer whom one names the king's word, places himself near this curtain while the magistrates deliberate, and, when each of them has made known his opinion, he advances and communicates to them the will of the invisible monarch. If he says, The accused is guilty, and he will die, the judges pronounce the sentence on the spot, and the executioners carry it out [121]. The judges are there only to take upon themselves the hatred that results from the iniquity of the prince's judgments, and to give justice an air of independence.

The kings of Abyssinia do not think that their ministers are always just or infallible: they suppose, on the contrary, that they are unjust, and that they are often mistaken; and as it is their duty to repair the injustice or the error, they admit the right of petition in its greatest latitude; there is not a single individual who cannot make his complaints heard by the monarch himself.

“There is,” says Bruce, “a very singular custom in Abyssinia; it is that the king's doors and windows must be incessantly besieged by people who cry, lament, and demand justice with loud cries, in all the different idioms of the empire, to be admitted into the monarch's presence and to put an end to the alleged wrongs of which they complain. In a country so badly governed and constantly exposed to all the misfortunes of war, one can well imagine that there is no lack of people who have just reasons to complain; but if, by chance, there are not enough of them, as, for example, in the height of the rainy season, when it is difficult to approach the capital and to stay outside, there is a band of wretches who are paid to cry and lament, as if they had been truly oppressed [122].”

The king leaving the care of the administration to his councilors, having justice rendered by magistrates, reserving for himself only the distribution of graces and favors, repulsing no one's claims, calling, on the contrary, around him all the individuals who have or believe they have complaints to make, he cannot be responsible for any injustice or any act of oppression. Also, of all maxims, the most incontestable and the most uncontested is the inviolability of his person; this maxim is so profoundly established in minds that, in the numerous civil wars that take place in this country, the king is respected in the midst of the combats; and that the chiefs of his rebellious subjects have him respectfully prayed not to expose himself in the battles, or at least to distinguish himself by the color of his horse or his clothing, so that one is not exposed to striking him, for lack of knowing him [123].

It is not only by virtue of a maxim of state that the person of the king is inviolable, it is so also by the effect of a religious ceremony; at his accession, says Bruce, olive oil is poured on his head, and, to make it penetrate his long hair, he rubs himself with his two hands rather indecently, and in much the same way as his soldiers rub their heads with butter [124].

To give his authority greater force, and to more easily overcome the resistance that his own subjects might oppose to him, the king has, near him, a body of foreign soldiers that he commands in person, and which is more or less numerous, according as he believes he has to overcome a more or less strong resistance. Some of the soldiers are sometimes taken from among the nationals; but the officers are invariably taken from foreign nations [125].

At the death of the king, his power passes to one of his children. No law or any custom transmits this power to one of them in preference to the others. The one among them who is either the strongest, or the best protected, or the least to be feared by the most powerful men, is the one to whom the royalty remains. It seems that, formerly, the choice belonged to the grandees, since today the election is reputed to be made by them, when in reality it is the prime minister who chooses.

The maxims of the state and the ceremonies of religion causing the person of the monarch to be considered sacred, the iniquitous or oppressive acts of which he is the author appearing to be done sometimes by his councilors, sometimes by the magistrates whose judgments he dictates, the acts of grace or favor appearing to be done, on the contrary, exclusively by him, the people consider him a kind of divinity or idol whose will they adore; and the grandees, who carefully maintain this kind of idolatry, dispute him among themselves as an instrument with the help of which they can with impunity oppress his worshipers.

The king has several wives, and consequently he can have a great number of children. To prevent the troubles that these children could cause, they are relegated to a castle situated on the summit of a mountain. There, they are taught to read and write; but, on all the rest, they are maintained in the most profound ignorance; for it is the interest of the grandees who must reign in the name of one of them [126]. At the death of their father, the most influential minister hastens to proclaim king the youngest or the most imbecilic: creator of the idol, he is, under its name, the master of the State [127].

The inviolability of the prince and the superstitious respect with which the grandees surround him in order to command more easily under his name, are useful to those who can seize him, just as the respect a people has for a false divinity is useful to the priests who pretend to serve it; but this inviolability and this respect profit the prince who is their object no more than the offerings received by his priests profited Apollo. The minister who has made himself master of the idol is above the vulgar superstitions; he sees in it only a useful instrument of his ambition, and treats it accordingly. Possessor of all the young princes, he shapes their intelligence in the manner most suitable to his own interests; he diverts the things consecrated for their maintenance, and sometimes reduces them to such misery that several die of thirst or hunger; if he has some reason to fear them, he has them secretly put to death [128].The minister has no more regard for the monarch himself: he diverts for his own profit the tributes that the peoples pay him; he furnishes him only what is necessary for his daily subsistence, treating him no better than the least private individual would treat his servants [129]; the monarch’s wives are sometimes treated in an even harsher manner; but, whatever the feelings inspired in the prince by the treatment to which his children and his wives are subjected, he dares not allow himself to manifest them [130]. The king, in his palace, adored by his subjects as a divinity, is, in a word, only the prisoner or slave of the grandees; he is only the instrument they employ for the oppression of his stupid worshipers [131].

If, taking advantage of the discontent that tyranny produces everywhere, an ambitious man succeeds in inciting a part of the population to revolt, he is careful not to attack opinions that must serve as the basis of his power; on the contrary, he manifests for the royal person the same respect as the vulgar, certain that, if he succeeds in making himself master of it, this respect will constitute the greatest part of his strength against his enemies [132].

The inhabitants of this country, perhaps with a view to preventing the troubles that the election of a chief would cause, have made the crown hereditary; the ambitious therefore do not foment troubles there to dispute it; but they foment them ceaselessly to dispute the possession of the one who wears it. If the minister who possesses him suspects a province of wanting to revolt, he orders that everything there be instantly put to fire and blood. Everything that the flames can reach is burned; the inhabitants are exterminated down to the last one [133]. For his part, the ambitious man who aspires to become minister uses reprisals against the provinces faithful to the possessor of the royal person. He has all the dwellings set on fire; he has all the inhabitants massacred without distinction of sex or age. If, on one side or the other, a few individuals are spared, it is only the women who have enough freshness or youth to ignite the passions of the victors, and they become their slaves [134].

When the minister who possesses the idol remains the victor, he has the vanquished perish in tortures, as guilty of treason and revolt against the royal majesty. When, on the contrary, it is the aspiring minister who is victorious, he has the partisans of the vanquished minister put to death, as guilty of having supported the oppressor of their king. The tortures in use, in such circumstances, are of three kinds: they consist in crucifying the condemned, flaying them alive, or gouging out their eyes and then abandoning them in the fields, where they are devoured by wild beasts [135]. The corpses of the condemned are ordinarily exposed in the public squares of the capital, and rarely buried.

“The streets of Gondar,” says Bruce, “are paved with the members of these wretches, who attract so many ferocious animals there during the night that it is very dangerous to go out. The dogs often seize some members which they immediately carry into the courtyards and apartments to be able to devour them with more security, which never failed to revolt me; but they returned so often that I was finally obliged to leave them a clear field [136].”

The hyenas and other carnivorous animals remain masters of the city until the moment day begins to break; but then an officer of the king, or rather of the minister, arms himself with a great whip, places himself before the palace gate, and cracks it with such force that he puts the wild beasts to flight: it is the signal that announces to the inhabitants that the royal person is about to rise and render justice [137], that is, to prepare for the wild beasts that have just been chased away the prey for the following night.

The first prerogative of a minister or of the grandees, possessors of the king, is to demand from the peoples who have remained faithful or been subjugated all the taxes they are able to pay; they share the product of these taxes among themselves according to the degree of their influence. The burden is so heavy that it barely leaves the men who work the most the means to sustain their existence. In some provinces, one sees women, their faces shriveled, wrinkled by the sun, wandering in the fields in the heat of the sun with one or two children tied to their backs, and gathering the seeds of wild rushes to make a kind of bread [138].

If the taxes established in a general manner do not take from all individuals all the resources they possess, they are reached by particular extortions. Bruce, having visited the house of a prime minister who was considered severe, but not unjust, found it filled with victims of his avidity.

“Upon arriving there,” he says, “I thought I was entering the most horrible prison; for one saw there, laden with irons, both in the house and all around it, more than three hundred wretches, some of whom had been there for twenty years and from whom one only wanted to extort money. What was most deplorable was that, after these unfortunates had had the money demanded of them counted out, they were not given their liberty. Most were even enclosed in iron cages, and treated like wild beasts [139].”

Whatever the violence and cruelties to which the ministers and grandees resort, the king is little touched by them, even when he is a witness. Brutalized by the kind of education given to him by the grandees who surround him, accustomed to considering himself a being of a superior species, and sheltered, by his inviolability, from the calamities that weigh upon his subjects, he regards with the most profound indifference evils that cannot reach him. Bruce, a witness to the cruelties that were committed every day during his stay in Abyssinia, was keenly affected by them; the king having asked him if he was ill, he replied that he could not bear the odious spectacles of which he was a witness.

“Although the monarch,” continues the traveler, “strove to maintain an air of gravity, he could hardly keep from laughing at the account of a misfortune that he regarded as a very small thing [140].”

This prince was a good king in Abyssinia [141].

Enjoying no legal protection, the peoples of this country are very vindictive, and always carry vengeance to excess; one of their maxims is to always kill the individual they offend, for fear that he might find a way to avenge himself [142]. Hatreds exist from village to village as from individual to individual: the cultivators sow and plow only with weapons in hand; when the time of harvest arrives, they do it only after having fought for it and having remained masters of the battlefield [143]. The cruelties exercised upon these peoples accustom them to exercising similar ones themselves, and they inflict them upon animals. They devour them, in a way, alive: in their expeditions, they take oxen with them, and eat raw slices from them, while avoiding attacking the parts essential to life [144]. It appears that the Jewish people had the same custom [145].

Punishments being arbitrary, everyone is obliged to affect the sentiments and opinions that suit the strongest; dissimulation and perfidy are vices one encounters in all classes: these vices, says Bruce, are as natural to them as the breath they breathe [146].

The king can take as many wives as he deems suitable; and when a woman pleases him, his minister delivers her to him, without even taking the trouble to consult her. Polygamy is not in use only for the prince; it is so for all who have the desire and the power to possess several women, and consequently for all the grandees. The women are not secluded, and their morals are so dissolute that, according to Bruce, each woman appears to be common to all men. The sentiment of jealousy appears as foreign to this people as to most of the islanders of the great Ocean [147].

In one of the frontier towns, the inhabitants, under the protection of the prime minister, conduct a trade that consists in selling or buying children. The individuals who want to sell their own children or those they have stolen or bought from others, bring them to Dixan, and there they find Moors who receive them and go to sell them in more distant countries. Men or women who are lured there by surprise are also sold there. The individuals who engage most actively in this trade are the priests of the province of Tigré, and those from the vicinity of Mount Damo [148]. The Abyssinians claim to profess the Christian religion.

The devastations that are consequences of the wars stirred up by the avidity, tyranny, and ambition of the grandees; the exhaustion produced by immoderate taxes and ceaselessly recurring extortions; finally, the wars that exist between villages, cause the cultivation of the land to be abandoned, and produce frequent famines. Entire populations are then carried off, and they leave behind them no other traces of their miseries and their sufferings than the bones that whiten the earth [149]. Thus, provinces are imperceptibly converted into deserts; the lands, left without cultivation, produce only wild grasses; one no longer encounters any other dwellings than a few miserable huts hidden in remote places, and placed at great distances from one another; finally, one sees wandering here and there a small number of individuals resembling skeletons, gathering seeds of grasses destined to make the bread that must sustain their miserable existence [150].

Between the Gallas and the Abyssinians, who occupy the southern part of the Nile basin, and the Egyptians, who occupy its northern part, there exist peoples of a different species, who appear to have advanced from the center of Africa. These peoples belong to the Ethiopian species, and profess the Muslim religion; they are the peoples of Sennar, Kordofan, and Darfur; they are a little further from the equator, but for the most part inhabit a less elevated country than that of the Gallas and that of the Abyssinians. These peoples are all subject to a similar government, and appear, by their customs, to have made themselves masters of the country by conquest. Their governments are military: the kings are the distributors of the lands, and the share that each obtains is in proportion to the rank he has in the army. The superior officers have their domains cultivated by slaves, or give them to vassals who pay them a tribute for them. The kings demand a tenth of the revenues of the lands they distribute, and they have ministers to take care of it. Their authority is hereditary [151]. In Sennar, when the king’s eldest son accedes to the throne, all his brothers are put to death, unless they save themselves by flight [152].

The women of Sennar are considered only as slaves; their husbands sell them, even when they are mothers of families, and those of the king are no better treated than those of the last of his subjects [153]. The two sexes lead a very licentious life, and drunkenness leads to serious disorders. The theft and sale of children are very common in this State, and contribute to its depopulation. Industry is so little advanced that the inhabitants know how to cross the river only by swimming or on the backs of oxen [154]. Their principal trade, before their subjugation by the Turks, consisted in the sale of slaves they took in war. The morals of these peoples have, moreover, been little observed. They conceive of no other pleasures than to possess women and to eat according to their appetite [155].

The Egyptians are, of all the peoples of Africa, the one that has excited the most lively curiosity. As this people is one of the most ancient in the annals of civilization, there is none that has experienced more vicissitudes, and that, in the same space of time, offers to the moral sciences a greater number of experiments. In no country has despotism taken more varied forms; in none has it been so easy to observe its nature and its results.