IN DARKEST AFRICA
Stanley's Trip into Africa as Seen by Natives
Nyangkundi, Territory of Irumu, Province of Stanleyville,
Belgian Congo—October 23-27, 1941
The history of white exploration of inner Africa has been exclusively written by the white man himself. The black African, in such accounts, plays the role of a patient porter or foot soldier when upon the explorer's side, and of a clever thief or hostile warrior when on the opposite side.
With conquest, friendly and hostile savages merge into law-abiding natives. In Africa as little is known today of what the black man thought about the white man's coming as is known in the United States about how the American pioneers seemed to the Indians.
Diaries, journals and memoirs of white explorers remain in printed texts. But Africa's version, compounded of word-of-mouth testimony of its natives, a version which in some cases differs deeply from those of the white man, remains alive only as long as do the old men who witnessed the happenings in question.
When Africa's patriarchs, whose memory is sharp and clear because it is independent of book learning, pass away their histories become tales for evening campfires that grow distorted as each narrator adds his dime's worth of embroidery.
In an attempt to rescue at least a single important chapter of the African story from oblivion before it is too late, your correspondent traveled to the little-visited country between the Congo and the Nile. Here Henry M. Stanley, explorer of the last century, met and overcame the warriors of King Mazamboni, the fierce tribe of Undussumas, in the most critical struggle of his career.
The rolling green farmland where the battle was fought lies almost at the absolute center of Africa, on a 4200-foot plateau abounding in elephant and antelope. The plateau, the continent's heart, is the home of the “duckbill women” who uglified themselves against the danger of being sold as slaves to the Arabs by placing enormous plates in their upper lips. They are frequently seen even today.
On the western side of the plateau, which Stanley approached from the darkness of the great equatorial forest, tiny rivulets begin their 2000-mile journey to empty into the Atlantic Ocean below the equator. On the plateau's eastern edge, hundreds of small waterfalls facing British Uganda tumble to the almost uninhabited, swampy, hot shores of Lake Albert.
Although the plateau gives the Undussumas crops of bananas, tapioca and corn as abundant as in Stanley's time, only a single white farmer dwells here now.
On December 6, 1887, near what is today the frontier village of Irumu, Stanley joyfully emerged from the misty shadows of the equatorial jungle where he had known famine, theft and petty harassment by the natives. He had been forced to abandon many of his followers at a “starvation camp” by the junction of the Ituri and Epulu, upper tributaries of the Congo.
The last tongues of forest emerge directly upon the Undussumas' plateau, and the British-born, American-naturalized explorer believed that he had hardly a forty-mile journey ahead. This was about five days' march for his heavily burdened column—numbering 171, plus four white men—to the plateau's brow 2000 feet above Lake Albert's marshy and humid shores.
Hundreds of the same Undussumas this writer has been interviewing blocked Stanley's way. Shouting imprecations, they sent flights of spears and arrows from the lower heights of the mountain chain paralleling the trail across the plateau. They brought Stanley's column to a standstill and compelled it to give battle.
The region, almost uninhabited except for the natives' battlefield along the Talolo stream—known to Stanley only as the “Tributary Ituri”—naturally is unmarked. When further opened the region will become as familiar as a California trail. Stanley, after his armed victory, showed that the plateau was the safest trans-African route between the Congo and Nile basins.
In 1938 two Belgian officials, Lieutenant Fernand Depotre, former administrator at Irumu, and Raoul Dufour, the late provincial governor of Stanleyville, found two Undussumas who said they had seen Stanley's battle. But until the present trip by your correspondent, there had been no attempt either to map the battleground or to record the testimony of the scant surviving warriors.
In interviewing tribesmen who witnessed the Stanley battle he had the help of William Deans of Alameda, California, the young missionary representing the station of the Plymouth Brethren that lies directly on Stanley's route. Deans, despite his boyish appearance, has lived twelve years in inner Africa.
In discovering the surviving Undussuma veterans, Deans and the writer gained the support of Prince Lifungula, leader of the four clans making up the Babira race, of which the Undussumas are a single branch. Prince Lifungula, himself an Undussuma whose name means “door-lock,” has for eight years held the office that Stanley's enemy, King Mazamboni, did when his scouts brought the first word that the jungle, always thought to be exclusively inhabited by pygmies, was disgorging white men and Arabs.
Prince Lifungula, son of Mazamboni's successor, is due to receive the same title of king from the Belgian government as soon as he attains a greater age. Already he enjoys full regal powers.
Before the journey to the battlefield, Prince Lifungula received Deans and the writer in the round, triple-doored building, with earthen floor and thatched roof, supported by timbers, which is the Babiras' tribal council house.
After the missionary explained our errand it developed that Prince Lifungula, a Roman Catholic convert, could speak a few words in French. The audience was informal. The prince wore only a single loose white tunic. His place was inside a small, half-circular, knee-high enclosure resembling a dais, upon the same level as the dirt floor. The Americans sat across the room, against the opposite wall.
Reposing in a low-slung canvas chair, showing his sharply-filed front teeth in frequent smiles, Prince Lifungula readily consented to the expedition through his territory. He promised to round up tribesmen known to have fought Stanley.
Prince Lifungula's aides displayed to the guests one of the heavy wicker shields woven in black and brown that the Undussumas who rushed Stanley carried. Eventually Prince Lifungula showed the Americans a spirally-carved horn of a waterbuck that sounded the charge into battle, terrifying Stanley's Arabs.
As our intention of rendering the native story of the battle became understood, the prince grew captivated with the idea and eventually offered to accompany the expedition. His offer was gladly accepted.
To compare H. M. Stanley's own account with the African version of what occurred when warriors blocked his way between the great equatorial forest and Lake Albert, your correspondent has traced roughly the explorer's route. From jungle near the present village of Irumu, Stanley advanced twenty miles across open elephant-grass country, dotted with conical grass huts, to the battleground.
Comparing native accounts with what appears in Stanley's book, In Darkest Africa, it seems today that his expedition was threatened with extermination if the Undussumas had carried out their intentions. But these tribesmen were never able to muster sufficient rifle fire seriously to jeopardize Stanley's safety.
Stanley indirectly admits this by stating that only one Arab was injured during the four-day engagement. Both Stanley's account and illustrations in the original edition of his book suggest fighting at close quarters across Talolo stream. But such fighting never occurred, according to stories obtained by the writer from Undussuma warriors who actually participated in that battle.
Moreover, there exists another discrepancy. Your correspondent possesses carefully checked, first-hand African versions of this battle, certainly the most critical of Stanley's career. If these are believable, the heavy slaughter among the Undussuma suggested—but not statistically estimated—in Stanley's account ranks as the work of adventurous rather than accurate reporting.
Without detracting in any way from Stanley's genius and courage, one must match the African measure of his military prowess against his own.
“As soon as we discovered that the white man had sticks that could k
ill at a much greater distance than our spears we ran away as fast as possible,” several woolly-haired, elderly Undussumas unabashedly told your correspondent through his translator, the American missionary Deans. The Undussumas' sovereign, Prince Lifungula, was present to ensure the accuracy of the narrative.
The Undussumas unanimously agree with Stanley's story that they were able to halt the explorer's column, place it under siege and prevent its breaking camp. Without any prompting or suggestions the aged braves corroborated that on the third day of the siege they attacked Stanley anew and fought all day, being stopped only by Stanley's troops setting fire to their villages.
Like his earlier errand of rescuing Dr. Livingstone, Stanley's purpose in crossing the Undussumas' plateau was one of relief. Eventually his expedition laid the political lines for the conflicting African imperialisms which lie beneath today's Anglo-German struggle.
A committee of private Britons shared expenses with the Egyptian government in sending Stanley to save the German pioneer called Emin Pasha. The Khedive of Egypt had dispatched Emin Pasha into the central African province of Equatoria with the title of governor, in order to protect the upper waters of the Nile from falling into non-Egyptian hands.
The German pasha had been marooned for five years upon the borders of Lake Albert, adjacent to the Undussuma country, with a few hundred Egyptian officers and soldiers and some 5000 camp followers. The German was serving under the Khedive on the same basis as the more famous British General Gordon. But Gordon's massacre at Khartoum in January, 1885, by the fanatical Sudanese followers of the Mahdist leader, Mahomet Ali, cut off the German governor's only way of escape through the Nile Valley to Egypt.
The year before Stanley set forth, the cornered German pasha sent the British a secret note offering to leave the Khedive's service and surrender the African basin of the Nile to the British flag. The British published the note before sending Stanley to the German's rescue, with the result that, discredited, Emin feared more to emerge from the heart of Africa than to remain.
Stanley's defeat of the Undussumas, like Kitchener's taking of Khartoum, paved the avenue toward today's British hegemony over the sources of the Nile, and it resulted in control of the Egyptian cornerstone of Middle East strategy.
Had Stanley been unable to vanquish the Undussumas, reach Emin and persuade him to leave the upper waters of the Nile by way of Zanzibar, the Germans instead of the British might have gained control of the Nile.
As our party traveled single file along a muddy footpath through a green tunnel of tall elephant grass our guide, Prince Lifungula, sent out runners to bring in from outlying villages the old men who had participated in or witnessed the four-day encounter between Stanley's forces and the Undussumas.
For a while we followed Stanley's own trail through the valley that Stanley's account said was the scene of his hottest engagement. The valley was dotted with villages of round and conical thatched huts precisely as in Stanley's day, and the blue smoke of numerous brushfires lay cloudy in the ravines.
Circling around behind Mount Nyangkundi (“Mountain of Love”), which slopes about 1500 feet above the 4200-foot plateau, we finally veered upward along an old tribal path on the mountainside.
It was when 300 dancing and yelling Undussumas, “shaking their flashing weapons, gesturing with spear and shield,” came running along this path that Stanley recognized that he would have to fight to reach Lake Albert. Eventually, the explorer found himself surrounded. The Undussumas at the right, toward the mountain, and others on the left, toward the Talolo stream, harassed his march. He was finally forced to encamp on a spur of the 120-foot hill of Nzerakum.
As our party reached the foot of Nzerakum, Prince Lifungula halted the column. He then commandeered the furniture of a grass hut—consisting of two folding camp chairs. Porters carried these up the summit of Nzerakum after us. It was considered necessary that Missionary Deans and the writer, while hearing native history, should have formal seats. Stanley wrote of the position: “Fifty rifles could hold a camp here against 1,000.”
As the old warriors arrived, toiling up the steep slope with perspiration showing through their kinky, whitening hair, Deans acted as interpreter to put the writer's questions to Prince Lifungula. Stanley never was referred to by name but as Bula Matari, meaning “Breaker of Stones,” the title the explorer gained when he used dynamite to blast his way through the lower Congo portages.
The warriors, although averaging seventy years of age, showed no trace of senility. Most were attired in castoff European trousers and shirts befitting an important occasion. One was clad simply in a tunic of blue cloth. Despite a broiling sun, several had donned patched and dilapidated topcoats—their ultra-formal attire. They had slender, erect figures and replied to questions calmly and positively.
The first to tell the battle story was Gayomba, the grizzled ancient in the blue tunic, whose name means “They Are Talking.” Gayomba held up his hand, palm outward, at eye level. When asked his age at the time, he indicated that he was about seventeen. Stanley mentions first noticing the natives in Talolo Valley between one and three in the afternoon, but Gayomba said: “Our frontier guards first saw the Breaker of Stones shortly after dawn, and we kept his party under observation throughout the morning. The border watchmen saw him as soon as he crossed the river and emerged from the forest where the Bambutis (pygmies) live. The guards sent runners to warn King Mazamboni in the royal village over there.”
Gayomba pointed to a site about half a mile from the hilltops beyond the curving Talolo.
Asked whether he knew which was Stanley, Gayomba said: “Not then, but later I learned to recognize him because he wore a curved visor under his helmet shaped like a half moon.”
Asked whether he fought, Gayomba said: “No, because I was considered immature. But I did not run away with the old men, women and children either. I stayed with the warriors on Mount Nyangkundi and watched.”
Shown pictures in Stanley's book for the first time, the Undussumas remarked sharply: “The battle tunic looks like cloth but our warriors wear only leather. Furthermore, our tunics come only below the hips, never to the knees.”
Stanley treats with skepticism, in his account of the battle, the excuse that King Mazamboni gave after his defeat, that he personally had never wanted nor participated in the battle.
According, however, to what was volunteered to your correspondent by Dadumbi (translated “We Have Departed for Good”), Mazamboni's nephew by his royal brother Singoma, the King unceremoniously gathered his regal robes about him and scurried high into the mountains at the first tidings of the “Stone Breaker's” arrival. Dadumbi, whose appearance today belies his sixty-odd years, accompanied his royal uncle. Dadumbi was then a boy about twelve.
Dadumbi said: “The reason Mazamboni fled was that the Breaker of Stones sent messages ahead demanding that the King of the country come to see him because he wanted to palaver. Mazamboni feared that Bula Matari really meant to capture him as a hostage or to murder him. So the King left the situation in the hands of sub-chiefs and climbed to the forest Bubongo on the mountain, where he hid with the old men, women and children.”
Dadumbi related this hitherto unrecorded evasion by King Mazamboni, who is one of the most prominent figures in Stanley's memoirs, without a blush for his uncle's cowardice. “All Mazamboni said was: ‘This white man shall never look upon my face.’”
An agreement achieved by Stanley with his foe under the shadow of Mount Nyangkundi, in almost the exact geographical center of Africa, remains respected in this day of broken pacts. It was a compact etched in a blood ritual.
Stanley was represented by an Arab subaltern; King Mazamboni by the father of Bungamuzi, one of a coterie of veterans whose testimony to your correspondent tends to amend the explorer's chronicle of his battle here in early December, 1887.
The two deputy treaty makers each took a knife and made three cuts on the other's body—between eyebrows, between breastbones and on one
wrist. Then each took a fresh baked potato, rubbed it in his own blood and gave it to the other to eat.
That sealed the peace.
Only a handful of Undussuma tribesmen remain of those who witnessed or participated in Stanley's last and hardest battle in his trans-African trek. From these the writer heard it was almost a bloodless skirmish. He heard also of the dissent in their ranks when the first white man they had ever seen appeared from the depths of the equatorial forest, leading white-clad Arabs armed with American rifles.
Their testimony was intoned upon the site of that battle in tribal language.
“When King Mazamboni fled into the mountains and evaded his royal responsibilities, his younger chieftains decided to make war,” these elderly warriors told your correspondent. Asked who were their chiefs—not mentioned in Stanley's account—the aged braves said they were led by Kembarani (whose name means “Fighter”), Mapero (“Little Man”), and Mbulangba (“Left Behind”).
Were any relatives of those three chieftains present?
A man, apparently in his fifties, stepped forward and announced himself as Ledjiabo, “Scout with Far Vision.”
“I am Mbulangba's son but I did not notice much fighting because I was too busy drinking the milk at my mother's breast,” said Ledjiabo, provoking a roar of laughter from the surrounding Undussumas.
Then a very old man stepped forward. His name was Bungamuzi, “Lost His Home.” He was asked why the Undussumas refused to allow Stanley passage as the other tribes had done. “The runners sent back by the frontier guards all agreed that the enemy's numbers were few,” explained Bungamuzi. “When we saw the column coming across the valley in exposed country, we knew that we had many more warriors than they had. We did not even bother with the war dance. We said to ourselves, ‘This task will be easy. We shall annihilate them.’”
Weller's War Page 16