By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  The travelers spent their first night at Grand Cavally near the mouth of the river. King Baphro provided them with lodging, but Leighton found himself sharing quarters with a Portuguese slaver employed by none other than Pedro Blanco. The man was trading rum for rice in order to secure provisions for Blanco’s slave ships—he told Leighton, to the missionary’s astonishment, that the ships numbered almost a hundred. Leighton was troubled by finding a slave trader at Grand Cavally, and the slaver himself must have been less than happy to find a well-known American missionary as his roommate for the night. “Our meeting,” Leighton noted, “was not very cordial.”3

  What was particularly distressing for Leighton was that Baphro was trading with the man. But Baphro was following an old practice. The European and American captains of slave ships had to keep their wretched captives alive during the long transatlantic passages, and the Grebo and other people along the coast had sold rice and various provisions to them for generations. The agricultural skill and prowess of Africans had consequently helped to fuel, in a bitter irony, the international slave trade. Moreover, by trading New England rum for Baphro’s rice, Leighton thought the slaver was inflicting curse upon curse. It all seemed a vicious circle, for the rum was addictive, and its widespread use, Leighton was convinced, led to a growing decadence, to sickness, and to the impoverishment of coastal communities. He talked to the man and tried to show him the wickedness of the business in which he was engaged, but to no avail—the rice was secured and the rum traded.4

  The next day, Leighton and his companions set off up the river in several large canoes. Baphro had recently concluded a treaty with the Pah that encouraged trade between the interior and the coast, and the travelers were hopeful that the treaty would help to ease their way into Pah country. Leighton also made clear that he was not interested in trade; thus, they avoided the hostility that greeted those trying to establish new trading patterns.

  About twenty miles from the coast, Leighton and his companions passed one of the most sacred places of the region—Haidee, the home of the “Grand Devil Oracle.” They found a group of pilgrims there who were from Cape Lahu, far to the south on the Ivory Coast—they had come, like ancient Greek pilgrims to Delphi, to hear from the priests and to learn the wisdom of the oracle. The pilgrims had brought sacrifices and offerings and heard a strange echo at the mouth of the Haidee cave as the priests spoke into the cave’s recesses and the echoing voice gave answers to their questions.5

  The travelers from Cape Palmas quickly passed this sacred place and its pilgrims and pushed up the river to Denah, the place where Leighton and Davis had been so warmly welcomed in 1836 by King Neh. Arriving in the evening, they found that the old king had lost his favorite wife, the one whom Leighton had so admired, and with whom the king had had such an affectionate and mutually respectful relationship. The grieving Neh was in great distress and even seemed to Leighton to be deranged. Neh’s once prosperous and happy home was now in great disarray and filled with melancholy, and Leighton felt the deep sadness of the scene.

  The travelers spent the night in Denah, but rather than linger for a day, as Leighton had intended, they left the old king and his town early the following morning. For the next several days, the travelers continued up the river, spending their nights in different villages and receiving everywhere an enthusiastic welcome.

  In one village they met a headman from Pah whose short stature, fine physique, and courtly manners convinced Leighton that the Pah were a people entirely distinct from those along the seacoast. Leighton had bowed to him as he ascended the hill to the village, and the Pah, Leighton noted in his journal, “returned the compliment with as much grace and ease as if he had spent all of his days in the most refined and polished society.” The encounter made Leighton more eager than ever to reach the Pah country, so they hurried on, leaving the river and turning north to travel through country where the people had never before seen a white man.6

  As the travelers approached a village or town, the people seemed astonished and with much commotion ran toward the strangers, leaping and shouting and impeding their way until Leighton stopped and turned toward them to satisfy their curiosity. As the travelers moved further away from the river, Davis and the other Grebo began to regale Leighton with Grebo stories and fables and to entertain themselves with Grebo jokes. Now, with his comrades, Davis was Mworeh Mah the Grebo, remembering and delighting in the traditions and culture of his people as he teased Leighton with the complex meaning of seemingly simple stories and amusing fables and the distinctive humor of Grebo jokes. Leighton enjoyed this part of the trip greatly and the glimpses it provided into deep parts of Grebo life. Later he wrote of the astonishing number of Grebo fables and their importance for the Grebo people.7

  The travelers, following a beautiful stream, entered a forest of enormous trees and climbed mountains whose grand vistas reminded Leighton of the Catskills he had seen as a college student. After several days of travel, they finally reached Grabbo, the head town of the Yabo people. They immediately noticed that the town lacked the neatness of the earlier towns they had passed through, and that the people did not flock around them or give them a warm welcome. More ominous still, the entrance to the town was marked by human skulls, and they remembered that they had been told that the Yabo were cannibals. Leighton had not been alarmed by this report, since it was a common ploy for those on the coast and along the river to say this about inland villages. Eager to keep their trading privileges with the interior, traders spread the rumors of cannibalism in an effort to frighten anyone seeking contacts that bypassed established trading patterns. However, as Leighton entered the town and looked around Grabbo at the hanging skulls—what he called “trophies of their skill and power”—he saw evidence of their cruelty and ferocity, and confirmation, he believed, of the reports of their cannibalism.8

  Leighton gave presents to the Yabo and told the people he was a man of God and not a trader; they seemed pleased and gave the travelers a house for the night. As the tired travelers sought refuge in the house, the people came crowding around so that Leighton and the others felt almost suffocated, as if the circulation of air was cut off in the stifling heat. Then, in midst of this crowd, Leighton and several others were struck by “bilious fever,” with severe diarrhea and nausea. The palaver drums began to beat and a noisy assembly was convened that lasted through the night. The next morning Leighton was extremely weak; at one point he collapsed under a tree. People pushed close to see the strange white man, and Leighton, thinking that he would die there, fell asleep. For a while it appeared the Yabo would not let the travelers leave, but finally, through the efforts of Davis and a man sent along by Baphro, and because of their fear of the Pah, they allowed them to depart.

  Now began an excruciating trip back toward the river. The afflicted could walk only a short distance before they collapsed, and only with great difficulty did they arouse themselves to stumble forward. They took several wrong turns but eventually reached a friendly village, where they rested and tried to recuperate. During the next few days, with the help of other villages and with Davis’s leadership, they struggled on, and finally they made their way back to the river. Davis, after some hard negotiations, secured canoes for the trip down river to Grand Cavally, and from there they made their way along the beach to Fair Hope and Harper.

  Leighton came away from the trip feeling that their lives had been providentially saved, but their failure to reach Pah country and the painful difficulties they had encountered meant that hopes for a station deep in the interior had to be put aside. They needed to find, he concluded, some new place along the coast, away from the influence of the colonial authorities in Harper.9

  LEIGHTON WAS INCREASINGLY convinced that the mission must do more than think about alternatives to Cape Palmas—specific plans needed to be made to leave Fair Hope and to establish the mission in a new location. Wars between colonists and Africans in other parts of Liberia were, he thought, a warning of what was to
come at Cape Palmas. Almost from the beginning of the settlement at Monrovia, there had been warfare between the colonists and the surrounding peoples, and tension seemed always in the air. Moreover, Leighton was chafing at the assertions of authority by Russwurm, and he worried about the hostility some settlers felt toward Fair Hope, because of the mission’s work among the Grebo, and especially toward those Grebo who had become Christians. The hostility toward William Davis was particularly intense.10

  Davis’s conversion and admission into the church had been a long process. When he first came to Fair Hope in 1835, he had already had some exposure to Christianity in Sierra Leone, where he had lived for several years. He spoke the Pidgin English of African traders on the coast and believed in the importance of education as the source of white power. As soon as Jane had opened her school, he had placed his daughter, Mary Clealand, under Jane’s care. He had himself become a star student of Leighton’s and had played, as Freeman’s influential brother, an important role in the ongoing negotiations between settlers, Grebo, and the mission. With Freeman and Simleh Ballah, he had been a frequent dinner guest at Fair Hope, and he had become Leighton’s primary teacher of Grebo and interpreter of Grebo culture. Most days he had opportunities to observe life at the mission and to watch Leighton and Jane as they went about their work. He was also frequently present for their times of prayer and Bible reading, and he, along with Freeman, was regularly a part of the congregation that gathered at Fair Hope on Sundays to hear Leighton preach. In the early days, he was, with Ballah, a translator of Leighton’s sermons.11

  At first, Leighton had been reluctant to preach often, because he feared he might not be understood, given his poor grasp of the language, and also his concern that the translator would convey the wrong message. But as he grew more confident in his use of the language and learned to trust Davis’s translations, he began to preach more regularly. It was a demanding task. The Grebo were not passive, but asked hard questions of the preacher. Early in his preaching Leighton reported that some old men, evidently leaders among the Grebo, asked him to address what he called “the evidences of the authenticity of the Bible and the circumstances and manner of its communication to mankind.” Sometimes there was open opposition to his preaching, but mainly there were questions about the strange message Leighton was delivering. Leighton believed that there was a natural repugnance in the human heart to the message of the gospel, and that the repugnance was as much among the Grebo as anywhere else, but he was encouraged by the “open-heartedness and cordiality” of the Grebo and what he regarded as the spirituality that marked their understanding of the world.12

  Leighton had no power to coerce Davis or other Grebo into becoming Christian. Indeed, if he had had such power, its use, or the use of bribery, would have betrayed his fundamental convictions about the nature of conversion. As a Calvinist, he had worried as a young man in Charleston about the depth and sincerity of his own conversion. “Outward signs”—daily Bible reading, prayer, and regular church attendance—were not enough. What was needed was an inward experience that produced outward signs of faithfulness. Sincerity and authenticity, Leighton believed, were the marks of such an inward experience and of true conversion, and this was what he looked for in the Grebo. Such marks could not be administered in a ritual—to think, as Catholics were said to think, that baptizing a person would make that person a Christian was for Leighton nothing less than a belief in magic. But conversion, he was convinced, was also more than a warm feeling in the heart—although it was certainly that. Nor was it simply a public confession of Christian faith—although it was certainly that as well. For Leighton, conversion was finally and completely an act of a gracious God. It was not a matter of simply making up one’s mind to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior—Who, he wondered, could do that with the human will so entangled with selfishness and sin? Nor was conversion simply believing certain doctrines, as if it were only a matter of intellectual assent to a creed. No, for Leighton, conversion came as a mysterious and wonderful gift of God. What else, he thought, could change the dispositions and inclinations of the human heart? To be sure, one had to hear the gospel preached and to know the gospel story as a prelude to receiving the gift of conversion. And that preaching and that teaching was what the mission was about—and so Leighton and Jane and James and the other Christians at the mission attempted to do their part even as they prayed for the outpouring of God’s Spirit upon the Grebo in a gift of conversion. “We preach the Gospel,” wrote Leighton, “plainly and faithfully to them, and rely entirely upon the grace of God for any success which we may be permitted to realize.”13

  A question remained, however: How was the little church at Fair Hope—it had been organized with Leighton as its pastor—to know if Davis had been converted and was ready to be baptized and admitted into its fellowship? In 1837, Leighton had written his family at Pine Grove about Davis. “He is attentive to religious instruction,” he wrote, “but has not as yet given evidence of a renovated heart.” And if the providence of God was a mystery, so, too, was the human heart. Who could know the interior life of another, or discover sincerity and authenticity by probing another’s soul? Only God knew what was in a person’s heart. Leighton was too well aware of the deceitfulness of his own heart, and he daily sought self-knowledge through prayer and Bible reading in his struggles against his own illusions and self-deceptions. Moreover, he was acutely aware of how difficult it was for him to know anything about the inner life of a Grebo, with all of the great differences that separated their world from his. “The interior life of the people,” he later wrote, “their moral, social, civil, and religious condition, as well as their peculiar notions and customs, have always been a sealed book to the rest of the world.” All of this meant that the church at Fair Hope, with Leighton as its pastor, could only look at William Davis’s life—at the performance of his sincerity—to test the authenticity of his conversion and decide about his application for church membership. Did the outward signs of Davis’s life, they asked, bear the marks of an inward sincerity? A trial period of many months was required in which the church tried to discern if the Lord had really touched his heart and given him the gift of conversion. But of course, during the testing period, what Leighton was looking for were patterns of piety and behavior that European and American Protestants had long expected among the converted.14

  A lot was being asked of Davis in his conversion. He was Freeman’s brother and one of the most respected leaders among the Grebo of Big Town. He had to give up the protection of the fetishes and abandon many of the basic assumptions of Grebo life—a belief in divination and witchcraft and their accompanying convictions about what caused pain or death; a Grebo understanding of time in which the spirits of the dead mingled with the living and the souls of the dead often inhabited the bodies of animals; and the rituals of the Grebo, such as funerals and the sassy wood ordeal, which united the Grebo in a coherent community. His deepest assumptions, his dispositions and inclinations nurtured since his childhood in Big Town, were being challenged, and he was being invited to change his world and much of the way he understood himself and others.15

  But Davis apparently had discovered much that attracted him to Christianity. His own experience and his own perspectives played important roles in his conversion. He knew, like many a European and American, how to be skeptical toward traditional beliefs, and he found in Christianity new, more satisfactory answers to questions presented by ordinary life at Cape Palmas, perhaps especially the causes of sickness and death. Christianity promised him a freedom from the fear of malevolent powers. It placed him in a new narrative that was rooted in the biblical stories and that had him moving from birth, to life, to death, to resurrection and eternal life with God. He came to confess that Jesus was his friend, and if he was to walk with his friend, Davis understood, he was to live a life of love and service.16

  No doubt part of what attracted him to Christianity was his close observation of Leighton and Jane and the other C
hristians at Fair Hope. In spite of all of their weaknesses and failures, Leighton, in particular, must have seemed to him more powerful than the fetish priests, and conversion most likely seemed a move toward what whites called “civilization” and the power it possessed. Still, why did he become a Christian when so many other Grebo did not? What made him, during the coming years, seek to live out his life as a Grebo Christian, a Grebo follower of Jesus?17

  Whatever the answer, what was clear was that he did not stop being Mworeh Mah, a Grebo, when he became a Christian. Even as he struggled to leave behind specific aspects of Grebo life, he also carried with him many of the traditions and much of the world of the Grebo. He had, after all, grown up in Big Town. His earliest memories were marked by life in his father’s compound with his father’s wives. He, no less than his brother, Freeman, knew the daily routines of Grebo life—the way the women went for water early in the morning, how they stirred the fires, swept the floors, and prepared rice and various stews. He knew what was required to prepare Grebo fields for planting, how to harvest rice and cassava, and how to protect cattle and goats from a marauding leopard. His memories and sense of himself were intertwined with the history and culture of his people—the meaning of palaver drums, the intricacies of Grebo political organization, who was related to whom, and what the relationships meant in Grebo society. Moreover, the specific landscape of Cape Palmas had insinuated itself into his most elemental senses—the constant, distant sound of the surf; the smell of dry thatch; the texture of boiled cassava; and the way palms bent and their fronds rattled when the wind came hard off the ocean. This particular place on the high banks of Cape Palmas, with its view of things seen and unseen; this world, with its sounds, scents, and tastes, its hopes and fears—this place and this world, these home voices, continued to live and rumble deep within him. He was a Grebo Christian and not a Christian who had been raised in Savannah or near the waters of the Black River. And while he carried with him into Christianity part of the world of Grebo religion—particularly a quest for protection against natural and spiritual enemies—what he most clearly and obviously wanted to carry with him into his new faith were his four Grebo wives.18