Hideous Customs.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 285, 28 July 1888, Page 5

Hideous Customs.

It is in West Africa that the persona ' customs ' still survive in all their "horror. Again and again an English trader or traveller has had to look on these ' customs,' but vhe horrors were never fully described until 1873, when the German mis-sionai-ies, Bounab, Ivuehue, and Ramseyer, were prisoners in Coomassie at the time of the native Crown Prince's death. As soon as he uas seen to be dying the executioners began to scour the streets for victims. When they caught anyone two of , them would come behind and each thrust a knife through the cheek, the blades passing over the tongue and a handle .sticking out on each side. This is to prevent the poor creature from ' swearing on the life of the King,' that is, swearing that if he dies the King must die too, in which case, instead of being killed, he would not only be spued, but ranked among the 'okra' courtiers, whose life depends upon that of the King, and who, killed when he dies, hold till his death places of trust and honour. Besides those thus caught, every chief had to offer a victim ; but the number was chiefly made up of slaves and prisoners of war. The wives — painted white and covered with gold ornaments — sat around the colHn, flapping off the flies. They were strangled at the funeral. So were six pages, who, similarly painted and adorned, sat by the dead man. They had known their fate some days before, but none x-an away save three wives of low bii Mi, who«e places were at once supplied by girls. For nine days the slaughter went on, the people fasting, with shaven heads and bodies painted red, but drinking all the more. And this death wake was to be repeated forty days after. When a King dies the victims are slain at the rate of two hundred a week for three months. But there have been 'greater customs ' than these. A King's mother died in 1816 ; her son slaughtered three thousand people, two thousand being prisoners just captured from the Faucis. To make up the tale, every big Ashantee town had to give up one hundred, every small town ten victims. A royal burial is in this wise : At the bottom of a huge grave are laid the heads of the slain ; on them the comn rests. Then just before the earth is thrown in one of the bystanders— a freeman, if of some rank so much the better — is suddenly clubbed, a gash made in the back of his neck, and he is rolled in upon the coffin. The idea is to send along with the crowd of slaves and prisoners someone who shall look after them as a ghostly ' major domo. ' For a king there remains yet another ' custom.' At the end of thirty moons the grave is opened, the royal bones fastened ogether with a gold wire, and the skeleton placed in a long building divided into cells, the doorways to which are hung with silk curtains. Then on his birthday the King of Ashantee goes early to the house of the royal dead. Every skeleton is taken from its richly-ornamented coffin, where it has lain surrounded by the thing which had been most pleasing to it in life, and is placed on a chair to welcome its visitoi*. As the King enters each cell with a meat and drink offeribg to the departed, the band plays the favourite melodies of that particular King, and, unawares, the royal visitor signs to the executioners, who have followed him, and an attendant is pierced through the cheek and killed, the King washing the skeleton in the warm blood. The same work goes on at the next cell, and so on, the fearful work going on far into the night. The band plays a signal as each victim is slaughtered. Two blasts of the horn mean ' death, death ;' three drum taps, ' cut it off ;' one beat from a big drum, 'the head has fallen.' The signal is taken up by other bands, and all through the city horn-blowing and drumming goes on unceasingly. The Ashantees always say of a drum, ' it speaks,' and every traveller admits that they manage to elicit from that unmanageable instrument a most varied range of sounds. The sounds form word?, the whole rhythm a sentence, readily understood by native listeners. Each chief has his own call, just as each Highland clan has its own battle tune. Of course, this constant killing makes the people callous to suffering and brutal to their prisoners. Their feeling in regard to death is not courage, but apathy. The spectators are as delighted at these I'evolting ' customs, ' as the Roman populace was at the gladiators' show. Now and them a victim is tortured. The missionaries watched one, who, besides the knives through his cheeks, had a couple of forks thrust into his back. He was then dragged before the Klner gashed all over the body, his arms cub off, and in this plight compelled to dance for the amusement of the royal savage.