By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  Jane and Leighton, however, saw their work as an invitation to the Grebo—an attempt to persuade them to change their beliefs about the causes of sickness and death, suffering and sorrows. And they thought their work was also an invitation to the Grebo to experience and practice a new freedom. They believed that the Christian gospel freed people from the constant fears that the missionaries saw lurking everywhere—behind greegree posts at the entrances to towns, hanging with greegrees over doorways, and suspended like heavy weights around the necks of the people. Leighton wondered if the fetishes, rather than making the people feel more secure, did not make them feel a deeper insecurity. “A man,” he said, “must be careful whose company he keeps, what path he walks, whose house he enters, on what stool he seats himself, where he sleeps. He knows not what moment he may place his foot or lay his hand upon some invisible engine of mischief, or by what means the seeds of death may be implanted in his constitution.” He and Jane believed that Christian faith could free the Grebo—as they believed and hoped it had freed them—from the fears that surrounded death and the reluctant trip to the island of the dead.18

  Moreover, for this young couple from South Carolina and Georgia, Africans, for all their differences and distinctive ways, were not, finally, a wholly other people, different from other humans, especially those of European ancestry. They were, rather, as fully human and as fully capable as any other people; they held within them the potential to reject their fetishes as unreal, and to acknowledge their own agency in what was happening to them and around them. This belief in the full humanity of the Africans, this belief which had led Leighton and Jane to Cape Palmas, deepened as they sat on the piazza and talked with Freeman and Simleh Ballah and taught Grebo children and walked into Big Town and visited in Grebo homes and observed Grebo life. They believed that these men, women, and children were fully able to claim what Leighton and Jane believed to be “the glorious liberty of the children of God.” And so the young couple went about their missionary labors at Fair Hope, studying the Grebo language and teaching the Grebo children and preaching the Christian gospel, while the surf rolled and thundered nearby and while, in Big Town, the people went about their traditional ways.19

  THE WORLD OF THE Grebo and the world of the missionaries collided at many places, but they collided most dramatically when a Grebo died an unexpected death or when there seemed to the Grebo to be sinister forces at work in some area of their common life. Not long after Leighton and Jane returned from their visit to Rock Town, several men were accused of crimes, had to undergo the “sassy wood ordeal” to determine if they were guilty or innocent, and had died from its consequences. Each had been forced to drink great quantities of “red water,” a decoction from the sassy wood bark. If the accused vomited freely and suffered no serious injury, he was pronounced innocent. Each of the three men, however, had suffered vertigo, fallen down in great pain, and lost control of his bowls. His guilt thus proven, a general howl of indignation had sounded. The assembled crowd had mocked him, pelted him with stones, spit upon him, and then pulled him about by his heels until he died in great humiliation and anguish.20

  Shortly after these men had been executed, Leighton and Jane learned that another man had been accused of poisoning a neighbor—an act the Grebo regarded as a form of witchcraft—and was being required to undergo the same ordeal to determine if he was guilty or innocent. Friends of the man came to Leighton and pleaded with him to intervene, for they apparently were learning that both the missionaries and the colonial authorities regarded the ordeal with abhorrence. Leighton went to a road leading out of Big Town, where the ordeal was to take place, and found the scene appalling. People were lined up on both sides of the road, and the sassy wood was piled in the middle, beside the mortar in which it was to be pounded. The accused sat alone and had grown almost white with fear. His anguish grew more intense moment by moment as the people began to laugh at him and to show their indifference at what was about to happen to him. Leighton began to entreat and remonstrate with the people, trying to make them acknowledge that such a trial was arbitrary and cruel. But they resisted his appeals and felt he was intruding into their affairs. A fetish priest then came toward Leighton with angry looks and menacing gestures and told him to go away. But Leighton was not intimidated and looked him steadily in the face, and after a short time, the priest turned around and walked back into the crowd. Leighton continued to remonstrate, and then he bent down and gave the accused man his hand to show his support. Suddenly, the mood of the people changed, and they gave what Leighton called “a hearty assent” to his “taking the man.” Leighton evidently thought that by bringing the authority and self-confidence of a white missionary to the encounter he had been able to stare down the priest and change the mood of the crowd. But what he apparently did not realize at the time was that when he had taken the hand of the accused, he was enacting a part of the Grebo ritual that allowed the man to go free. For the Grebo, Leighton was assuming responsibility for the man and could be required to pay heavy damages.21

  So Leighton took the man to Fair Hope and made a place for him there, and from then on, Leighton said, the man regarded him “as the best friend he has in the world.” And Leighton wrote up the whole episode and sent it to Rufus Anderson, who published the story in the Missionary Herald. In this way the rescued man became part of a missionary narrative about life in distant lands where missionaries were portrayed as taking brave stands against the barbaric practices of those called “benighted natives.”22

  WHILE LEIGHTON AND Jane were learning about the world of the Grebo and going about their missionary labors, Dr. Hall was preparing to return to Baltimore. He had suffered regular attacks of fever during his first months at the Cape and had written Latrobe that he needed to return home at an earlier date than originally anticipated. Latrobe had to scramble to find someone quickly. He was relieved when a young white Baltimore dentist, Oliver Holmes, agreed to go out as an agent of the Maryland Colonization Society and temporary governor of the colony.

  Holmes proved to be a terrible choice and just the opposite of Hall in background and character. He had no experience in West Africa, was impetuous and immature, lacked the skills needed for negotiating with ship captains and African kings, and was generally disdainful of both the settlers and the Grebo. He was also very fond of rum, an item the Baltimore board had banned from the colony.23

  At the same time came news that the colony’s secretary and storekeeper, James M. Thomson, had received an appointment from the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church to establish a mission station with a school at the Cape. Thomson, who had originally gone out as a settler to Monrovia, had been Hall’s most capable assistant, but he eagerly accepted the new appointment and began an Episcopal mission several miles from Fair Hope. In this way the leadership of the colony was suddenly removed, leaving the colonists alarmed and the Grebo perplexed.24

  To make matters worse, Hall did not leave immediately, but, after turning over the affairs of the colony to Holmes, continued to make important decisions. On a quick trip to Monrovia, Hall secured the Charleston barber Charles Snetter to replace Thomson, promising Snetter a fine salary. He said Snetter could stay in a room in the agent’s house with Holmes until he was able to secure his own housing. Hall wrote Latrobe that Snetter was “possessed of sterling honesty, cool and undaunted courage, profound sagacity, and the warmest Patriotism.” Leighton was delighted with his old friend’s appointment, but he was troubled by what he saw as a growing disorder within the colony.25

  Hall finally left for Baltimore in the early spring of 1836, taking Simleh Ballah with him. Ballah was to negotiate with the Maryland board a code of laws for the Grebo. From the first the board had insisted that their colony would be a means of civilizing the Africans—and preparing a Western code of law for the Grebo seemed a reasonable way to encourage the process. Wanting to do what they could to get the Grebo to accept the code, and thinking it wise to have some immed
iate Grebo response to what they were proposing, the board invited Ballah to join them in Baltimore. He went as “the king’s mouth”—he would speak on behalf of Freeman and help the board understand the ways of the Grebo—but his going meant that Freeman lost his translator for a while. Not only that, but Leighton lost his teacher of Grebo, and the settlers and the Grebo lost a person skilled in negotiating their differences. Leighton sent a note to Anderson saying that Ballah was “the most favorable specimen of the native character that could be selected from this place both for appearance and sagacity,” and asking that if he visited Boston, for Anderson to treat him with special kindness.26

  THE DEPARTURE OF Hall and Ballah for Baltimore led to the immediate escalation of tension between the colonists and the Grebo. Hall, with his long experience in West Africa, understood the Grebo better than anyone who was left in Harper. Ballah, for his part, was not only Freeman’s translator, but also his counselor, helping him understand the ways of the settlers. Their absence from the Cape meant that both the colonists and the Grebo had lost skilled diplomats. What made matters even more difficult was the new governor—Holmes had no knowledge of Grebo ways, and his contempt for the settlers was apparent to all.

  Two weeks after Hall’s departure, Holmes cut off trade with the Grebo in retaliation for their constant pilfering—digging up cassava in settler gardens, taking any tool left unguarded for a few minutes, stealing plates and supplies out of settler houses. Holmes’s action was rash—Hall had been having a series of negotiations with Freeman about the matter—but the problem was real. Even Fair Hope had become a target. Leighton had thought that the enthusiasm of the people for the school would protect the mission from petty theft, but he was mistaken. “They hold,” he wrote Anderson, “our effects to be as good game as anybody else’s.” It was difficult, he thought, for anyone not familiar with the Grebo to form any idea of their expertness in pilfering. No matter how vigilant a person might be, no matter what precautions a settler or missionary might take, Leighton found that where a Grebo was, there your property was in jeopardy. Leighton quoted what Dr. Hall had told Freeman: “If Merica man no look sharp, country man steal he chair from under him.”27

  Still, Holmes’s decision to break off of trade was rash, and he found it necessary to prepare for war. He had the colony’s cannons moved and trained on Big Town. The settlers supported his action—even though they knew that Holmes had only contempt for them—for here at last it seemed something was to be done about the Grebo and their constant pilfering. Moreover, the settlers were increasingly repulsed by what they regarded as the savage ways of the Grebo—they were beginning to think of the Grebo as people beneath the civilized colonists from the United States. They would soon be sending a message to the Maryland board insisting that the Grebo were “Savages”; the Grebo, they said, “thirsts for our blood.”28

  Freeman was eager to negotiate and called for a palaver to settle the colonists’ complaints. He had been the primary advocate for selling land to the colonists, understood the trade advantages that the colony brought to the Grebo, and believed that the mission school and Grebo contacts with the settlers held the promise of bringing some of the power and wealth to his people that he had seen in the ships that sailed to the Cape. But Freeman insisted that the Grebo also had their complaints. The colonists were intruding on Grebo lands and were violating the original agreement that had been reached with Dr. Hall. The settlers were not to invade Grebo farmland, and they were doing just that.29

  The Grebo complaints about the settlers’ appropriation of their land emerged, in part at least, from the very different techniques they and the settlers used for cultivating the land. After farming some cleared land, the Grebo would leave it fallow for several years before returning to farm the land again. For the Grebo, this fallow land was farmland, but for the settlers it was empty land. The settlers were not naive—they knew the land was being left fallow—but because the land was empty, it was, they insisted, fair game for them to take.

  Adding to the tension were different understandings of land ownership. Leighton later explained what he learned from the Grebo about their understanding of land. For the Grebo, he wrote, an individual could appropriate land only for temporary purposes. Land was common property, and any man could use as much of it as he needed, but he could not sell any land. It was true, Leighton noted, that the whole community, by the common consent of the men, could sell any portion of its common property to a stranger for the purpose of erecting a trading post, or a garden, or a farm. But even then, even when the transaction was subjected to a written contract, the transaction was simply an agreement that allowed a stranger to live among the Grebo and to enjoy the rights of Grebo society. The Grebo assumed that the land would revert to them, as a matter of course, should the stranger die or leave their country.30

  Such different interpretations of the original treaty and of the meaning of landownership meant years of conflict between the American settlers and the Grebo. In this first conflict, Holmes was adamant and uncompromising in the palaver, and Freeman knew the cannons were aimed at Big Town. So the Grebo, feeling angry and betrayed, ceded the disputed land, but the pilfering did not stop.31

  To make matters worse, in the midst of these negotiations Holmes began to show an open antagonism toward Snetter. He gave Snetter only navy bread to eat and some coffee to drink, and Snetter had to go to Fair Hope to eat regularly with Leighton and Jane. Leighton remonstrated with Holmes and said his actions sprang from “an unreasonable and unhallowed prejudice,” but his strictures did no good, and the antagonism between the men grew more public and more troubling. Snetter became a member of the newly formed church at Fair Hope, and Leighton wrote to Latrobe in his defense. He noted that Holmes was trying to slander Snetter, but that the colonists held Snetter in much higher regard than the white agent. Echoing Dr. Hall’s earlier evaluation of the Charleston barber, Leighton wrote: “I give it to you as an opinion founded upon a long and thorough acquaintance with Mr. Snetter that he is the crown of the American population in Africa. Nor do I think it possible for you to have added a more valuable member to your colony.” And he added a note about Snetter’s former patron in Charleston, Thomas Grimké, the brother of the two abolitionists Sara and Angelina Grimké: “If Thomas Grimké were alive he would listen with astonishment to any serious charge made against Mr. S for he enjoyed for many years a place in that worthy man’s confidence and affection next to that of his own family.”32

  So tension grew in the colony not only between the settlers and the Grebo, but also between Holmes and Snetter, and the governor’s disdain for the colonists was becoming blatantly obvious. Leighton found all of these developments distressing and became increasingly apprehensive about what was happening in Harper.33

  BEFORE ALL OF these tensions erupted into open confrontations, Leighton and Jane had been making plans for the emancipation of the Bayard slaves. Early in the spring of 1836, Leighton wrote Nicholas Bayard and said that the time had come to free those who lived in the settlement on Hutchinson Island. In that letter, he recommended the Maryland colony as the best place for those who wished to come to West Africa. He subsequently wrote Latrobe that he and Jane were anxious that the soon-to-be emancipated slaves should make their new home at Harper. He confessed that he did not know how many of them would be willing to leave Savannah behind and choose a new life in a far country. But he and Jane wanted them to have a choice, and they wanted to prepare the way for them if they chose the little colony on an African cape. In this way, wheels were finally beginning to turn that would lead to the emancipation of Paul and the other Bayard slaves who lived by the waters of the Savannah.34

  LEIGHTON HAD WRITTEN to Nicholas while he was still optimistic about what he saw happening with the colonists. But as the tensions with the Grebo grew, so, too, did Leighton’s concerns. The Maryland board wrote asking him to give his honest evaluation of what was happening at Harper. Although he would later write the board about the nee
d for decisive leadership by the colonial governor, he now responded to the board’s request by once again emphasizing the need for immigrants who could sustain themselves in the demanding context of a new colony. Before he and Stephen Wynkoop had left on their exploratory trip in 1833, Leighton had written Jane saying that he did not think all blacks were suited to be colonists. What was needed were enterprising colonists who could face the hardships of providing their own food, housing, and clothing in a new environment. This conclusion had been reinforced when he and Wynkoop had visited Monrovia. They had reported to the mission board in Boston that they had seen settlers who were prospering in their new home, but they had also seen many who were in deep poverty, who were wracked by diseases, and who were struggling to support themselves. Leighton and Wynkoop had accused the colonization societies of being so eager to get settlers that they had deceived people, discounting the hardships and dangers they would face in a new colony.35

  Now, in the summer of 1836, Leighton responded by insisting once again that the most critical issue was the selection of immigrants. He wrote that the challenges of a new colony at the Cape were real, and that to meet those challenges, settlers needed to have “steady, sober, industrious habits.” The board needed to be honest with prospective settlers about the difficulties that lay ahead of them. The Maryland board, he said, had simply sent anyone who wished to go or could be persuaded to go out as settlers. Consequently, a significant number of settlers had become a burden to the colony, making demands on its meager resources. Leighton was articulating a concern that future leaders of the colony would express over and over again—care must be given in the choice of settlers so that they would aid in the development of Maryland in Liberia and not be a burden.36