The next morning, Joe Clay and the whole company from the Ann came ashore through the surf and were met by a great, thronging crowd of Grebo. For Clay it must have been a remarkable experience as he looked around and felt the pressure of African bodies—black men, women, and children—welcoming them and escorting them through Big Town to the place of the palaver. Leighton had been talking with Clay about bringing his family to Cape Palmas and serving as a kind of business manager, handling the secular affairs of the mission. So Clay must have looked around and wondered what it would be like to leave Savannah and First African Baptist behind and move to this place on the West Coast of Africa as a part of the Christian missionary movement. Here was a handsome landscape and a handsome people, a place far removed from Savannah’s slave markets and arrogant whites. Yet it was also a place where greegrees hung before every door, and the people, though clean and neat, must have seemed desperately poor to a free black who was a deacon and clerk at First African Baptist.29
Once again, Freeman was waiting on his stool as the newcomers were ushered into the shade of a tall tree. Shortly after they were seated, a drum began to beat to announce the arrival of the other kings. The crowd parted as Baphro, king of Grand Cavally, came striding forward and in a commanding style took his place in the circle. Leighton was not impressed with this new king; he found him a “coarse, stout man with a countenance rather morose and forbidding.” The young missionary, however, thought the king’s wife “a most beautiful woman.” She wore a piece of striped cloth that reached from her waist to her knees, and she had not less than a dozen brass rings around each ankle and an equal number of steel and ivory rings around each wrist.30
Whatever his first impressions, Leighton would learn to respect Baphro with his commanding ways and beautiful wife. The king, who was over six feet tall, spoke a Creole English with ease and was a savvy leader who knew how to deal with the European and American ship captains who sailed along the coast buying and selling. Baphro’s town was at the mouth of the Cavally River, about twenty miles east of Big Town, and it was large and prosperous, as it controlled much of the trade, especially the huge volume of locally grown rice coming down the river.31
Weah Bolio, or King Yellow Will, of Graway, whose town lay immediately east of the territory of Big Town, arrived next and entered the circle straining to match the dignity of Freeman and Baphro. Dressed in a blue broadcloth coat with metal buttons and white trousers that reached halfway down his jet black legs, he took his seat not far from the other kings. With the two kings came the headmen of various families and other Grebo dignitaries. They sat nearby, constituting what Leighton took to be something of a senate. The grand palaver was ready to begin.32
Simleh Ballah, Freeman’s interpreter, stood in the middle of the gathered circle. A stoutly built and robust man, Ballah knew as well as anyone in Big Town what was at stake in the palaver. He was a leader among his people and wore his Grebo identity on his face—the inner corners of his two upper teeth were filed away, and a blue line was tattooed from the root of his hairline along his nose down to his chin. His skin was very black and possessed the luster of one who washed and oiled his body daily. He was heart and body a Grebo, but he was also a Grebo who spoke English, a Grebo who lived in a Creole world connected by the highways of the Atlantic. As such, he was a man in the middle of two worlds, a man being asked to translate and to interpret each world to the other.33
Ballah cried three times “Bateo” (Listen) and three times the people said “Bate” (We listen). As silence descended on the gathering, Ballah spoke quietly with Freeman. He then turn to Hall: “King say, what you come for? King want your full, true word.” Hall answered that they wished to purchase land and settle a colony in their territory. He then enumerated the advantages the colony would bring the Grebo—trade, education, and defense. Freeman, in response, insisted that the Grebo would not sell their independence or their town or their right to their farms or their right to go to sea. Hall responded slowly, trying to use the Pidgin English that many understood—“We no want your town, you shall keep all, nor the land you cut for farm,” he said. “You keep your canoes, fish, trade with vessels as before.” But, he added, “when a ship comes, it comes to the governor and no captain must land goods except to the port officer.” Then came the question from Freeman: “What you pay for it?”34
The bargaining commenced in West African style with derisive laughter by both Freeman and Hall as amounts were proposed and dismissed. Finally, as the sun began to set, an agreement was reached. The Colonization Society would provide a wide variety of goods—from guns and tobacco to fishhooks and iron pots—that were valued at about $1,200. For the cost of two strong field hands in the Baltimore slave market, the society received approximately twenty square miles of West African territory.35
During the palaver Leighton had opportunities to talk with the kings about the proposed mission and the promise of establishing schools for the Grebo. He emphasized that the mission was not a part of the settlement, but would be for the benefit of the Grebo people. The kings were much pleased. The people, Leighton noted in his journal, had had enough contact with whites to appreciate the value of a Western education. The day after the palaver, Leighton picked out a beautiful spot for the mission some distance from the new settlement and not far from Big Town. Hall designated seven acres for the mission property, and the two men made arrangements to have the mission house erected that had been brought out from Baltimore, so that it would be ready when Leighton returned with Jane.36
In this way the palaver was settled and plans made for a mission station. A new colony—Maryland in Liberia—was ready to be established at Cape Palmas. Dr. Hall and his little band of settlers immediately began to unload the provisions that had been shipped from Baltimore. Coming ashore with their trunks and barrels and lumber and livestock were their visions of a new homeland—a place free from the burdens of a bitter past, a place in Mother Africa, a promised land flowing with milk and honey.37
TWO DAYS AFTER the palaver, Leighton, Clay, and Wynkoop sailed for Monrovia on board the Edgar, a schooner out of New York that was trading along the coast. The ship’s captain, Richard Lawlin, was very kind to them, and the voyage marked the beginning of a mutually respectful relationship between Lawlin and Leighton. The Edgar, however, had a tedious voyage up the coast—the winds were against them and frequently the currents were, too—but the delays provided opportunities for the travelers to observe the coast, to visit some of the towns, and to begin making careful notes about the environment and the cultures and activities of the costal peoples.
When they arrived in Monrovia they found that two of the missionaries had died of the fever—both had been in the country less than a year. Leighton and his two companions dined with the little cluster of missionaries who remained, some of whom had come in from outlying settlements. Trying to be upbeat, Leighton remarked that “the company was remarkably cheerful not withstanding sickness and death had invaded their ranks. I do not know any set of people more happy than a group of missionaries assembled together in a foreign land.”38
Leighton hoped to book passage quickly with Wynkoop and Clay on a ship returning to the United States, but they were frustrated and delayed for days by the absence of any returning vessel. They spent their time exploring the town and the nearby countryside and talking to as many settlers as they could in order to reach their own conclusions about the colonization project. Finally, after two weeks of waiting, they learned that a ship called the Jupiter, at Cape Mount north of Monrovia, would be leaving for the United States. Leighton chartered a little schooner, and they sailed north through a harrowing thunderstorm before they became becalmed close, they thought, to Cape Mount. Taking a canoe that was on board the schooner and two Kru men to paddle, the five men set off for the port. It turned out they were twelve miles from their destination, and it took all the skill of the Kru to get them through the crashing West African surf into the safety of the port.39
They had some time at the Cape before the Jupiter was to leave for New York—the captain was busy trading with the local Vai people. Leighton visited the native leader of the town, a man named Gomas. His father, a rich merchant, had sent him at an early age to England, where he had spent eight years in school. He had returned to his home country about twenty years before Leighton’s visit and, noted Leighton, had immediately “conformed to the habits of his countrymen,” entered the slave trade, and developed a lucrative business with Spanish and Portuguese slavers. Gomas told Leighton that he had recently abandoned the trade from principle. Leighton thought his change of heart was more likely a reflection of his own self-interest or of some necessity—Gomas was, Leighton noted, a great advocate of domestic slavery among the Vai and owned almost a hundred slaves himself.40
Leighton found Gomas to be a “tall, stout, fine looking man, not ostentatious, but graceful and dignified in his common deportment.” He had received a good education in England and spoke and wrote English with ease and grace. A number of his wives and children were sitting near him, and Leighton asked him how many wives he had. The question embarrassed Gomas—perhaps he wanted to present himself as a proper Englishman, or maybe such a question seemed intrusive and a reflection of poor manners among the Vai. At any rate, he avoided giving an answer. Then his chief wife came forward, and Leighton was stunned by her beauty. She was, he wrote in his journal, dressed more like Americans than any native woman he had yet seen on the coast. She seemed to “possess much of the ‘milk of human kindness.’” She had a fine meal prepared for Leighton and served it upon a beautiful china plate with a silver spoon.41
In this way Leighton ended his first experience of West Africa. Whatever else he had learned, he had learned that West Africans were not simply Africans after the manner of Western stereotypes, but many peoples with diverse cultures. Within those cultures were individuals with different histories and different personalities and different ways of responding to great changes—changes that had been sweeping over their lands for generations as ships traveling over ocean highways had arrived from far-off places.
DURING THE RETURN trip, Leighton and Wynkoop worked hard on a report they were writing for the American Board. They had both kept journals that they intended to submit to the board, but they also wanted to present a joint, confidential report on their findings in regard to the American settlements in Liberia. In particular, they want to give their evaluation of the colonization project and the possibilities of a mission adjacent to a colonial settlement. After long conversations together, Leighton wrote the report for the two of them.
They began by asking why there were such conflicting and contradictory accounts of the settlements. The primary cause, they wrote, was that different expectations shaped what people saw. Some visitors came with great expectations and found much to encourage them. Others came with lower expectations and found much to confirm their biases. With the colonists, however, it was a different manner. Leighton and Wynkoop had found, as they had talked with the residents of Monrovia, that those who came with exaggerated expectations had been greatly disappointed and often dissatisfied, while others, expecting much less, had often been energized and had soon prospered.
The real issue, however, for Leighton and Wynkoop was not with the settlers but with the colonization societies themselves. The deep hopes of the societies for the success of colonization had led their supporters to an unfair representation of things—they were concealing discouraging circumstances, magnifying small things into matters of great importance, and representing Liberia as if it had already reached what they hoped it would be in the future. Leighton and Wynkoop found the official reports of the American Colonization Society to be particularly misleading. They consequently “severely deprecated” the reports and speeches and regarded them as “unwarranted fraud” and the source “of more misery and heartburning disappointment in Liberia than can well be imagined.” What was needed was a more honest course so that potential emigrants might know what to expect—both the great challenges of colonization and the demanding opportunities that the settlements offered.42
For their part, Leighton and Wynkoop said that their own expectations had—not surprisingly—been largely confirmed by their first impressions and subsequent conversations with the colonists. Liberia’s prosperity was what they thought could be expected from a young colony. “It was certainly highly gratifying to our feelings on our arrival there to see men who a few years ago were wearing the galling yoke of servitude in a foreign land now the masters of respectable fortunes and enjoying freedom and comfort and every blessing that could be desired.” The founders of this colony, they said, “were men who were freed from the tyranny of slavery.” The very existence of the colony “at the present moment on the coast of Africa,” they said, was “an honorable tribute to the humanity of the age and its future prosperity.” But the colony had a double testimony—it was both a witness to “the philanthropy which gave it birth” and “a lasting monument of the atrocities and injustice which were once practiced on the benighted shores of Africa.” Leighton, as he wrote out the report, seemed clear about the atrocities of the international slave trade, the “galling yoke” of slavery, and “the tyranny of slavery” in the United States.43
The colony itself, however, faced many difficulties. Leighton and Wynkoop thought that while many of the settlers were industrious, active, and enterprising, many others were poor and destitute—their poverty the result of indolence, sometimes protracted sickness, and frequently both. But their poverty also came, Leighton and Wynkoop insisted, from “some kind of indefinable expectation of subsisting upon freedom, expecting all the provisions and luxuries of life without suitable exertions to procure them, and it is not till the pressing hand of poverty grinds them that they find out their mistake. Then their eyes are turned back to the fleshpots of America.” What Leighton and Wynkoop were wondering was how the recently freed slaves could be expected to suddenly internalize the disciplines needed for freedom and prosperity when the primary discipline they had experienced had been brutally imposed. The transition, they thought, from slavery to freedom was difficult, and it was difficult precisely because of the way slavery insinuated itself into the deep habits and dispositions of the enslaved. Some leaders of the colonists were soon to come to the same conclusion.44
Those who supported colonization had, from the first, said that it would be a powerful means for the evangelization of Africa, a beachhead for the spread of the Christian gospel into the interior of the continent. Leighton and Wynkoop now believed such expectations to be false and fanciful. The colonists were too preoccupied with their own struggles and affairs to give attention to the evangelization of the surrounding African peoples. Moreover, explorers and missionaries had been calling attention to the conflicts between colonists and indigenous peoples around the world. Using the white Dutch settlers in southern Africa as an example, Leighton and Wynkoop saw colonization as a worldwide threat to indigenous peoples and an impediment to the mission movement, regardless of the race of the settlers. They saw no reason not to expect conflicts to arise between the black settlers in Liberia and the Kru, Grebo, and other peoples of the area. There was, they thought, nothing so distinctive about the colonization of African Americans in Liberia that it would prevent black settlers from becoming powerful enemies of the Africans who lived around them.
Although Leighton and Wynkoop still supported the establishment of the mission at Cape Palmas, they did so with reservations and with the understanding that the Cape would be only a launching point for missionary efforts. “The more remote missionary operations are from settlements,” they concluded, “the better.” Leighton later lamented that he had not taken his own advice.45
Chapter Six
Fair Hope Among the Grebo
In April 1834, as the Jupiter moved to anchor in New York harbor, Leighton wrote eagerly to “My dearly beloved Jane.” With you, he confessed, “all my hopes of earthly happiness a
re associated.” You are “dear to me as ever,” he said: “Neither time, distance nor a multitude of cares have ever crowded thoughts of my dear Jane from my mind.” Leighton wrote Jane that he longed to be in Savannah to see her, but first he and Wynkoop had to go to Boston to deliver their reports to the officers of the American Board and give them their recommendations about the mission.1
Shortly after the three travelers came ashore, Leighton and Wynkoop said their goodbyes to Joe Clay, who was returning directly to Savannah. Clay took with him the only souvenir they had brought back—a small box of seashells gathered along the beaches of Cape Palmas. They all agreed there was nothing exceptional about the shells except their origin, but Clay’s family and friends in Savannah could hold the shells in their hands, feel the molding of their surfaces, and imagine the sounds of a faraway surf and a Grebo welcome as Clay told of his adventures in Africa. Leighton worried that Clay, by returning first to Savannah, would tell everyone about their experiences, leaving no new stories for Leighton to tell when he finally arrived in Savannah. But he was grateful that Clay had accompanied them and he had found him to be a good traveling companion and a good man. Leighton wrote the treasurer of the American Board and asked that Clay be paid the agreed $120 beyond his expenses.2
So Clay returned to Savannah and to his family, and word no doubt went out to many in the city’s African American community about what he had seen and heard in Africa. Clay had decided that Savannah was his home, and that he would not go out with his family as a settler or accept Leighton’s offer to join the mission and run its secular affairs. Rather, he would return to First African Baptist and to the familiar sights and sounds of Savannah with its tree-lined parks and rumbling wagons, its sweating stevedores and Gullah voices and the bitter cry of its slave markets. His visit to Liberia had apparently made clear to him that he was an American, an African American, and that he would cast his lot with the life and struggles of his people in Savannah.3
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