By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  After three months in England, Walker sailed for Boston, where he continued to speak on behalf of the Mpongwe and to warn against French aggression in the estuary. He met with Anderson and leaders of the American Board; visited Yale, Amherst, and Dartmouth and spoke with their students; met with local pastors; and spent time with the family of his dear Prudence. He even traveled by train, boat, and stage to far-off Wisconsin to see his family and other Vermonters who had settled frontier lands, which had their own history of bloody Indian Wars and of French, British, and American colonization. Everywhere he went, he once again told about the mission in Gabon, about the slave trade and the bitter role of New England rum and ships in the nefarious business, and about the aggression of the French. He also met and dined in Washington with George Bancroft and his family. Bancroft, the recently appointed secretary of the navy, was, Walker thought, “one of the most amiable men living,” and the secretary no doubt had his ears filled by the young missionary’s reports on the slave trade and French moves to control the estuary.21

  Walker, who continued to grieve the death of Prudence, found his visit with her family particularly painful. He was lonely, and his depression seemed to follow him wherever he went. He began to think of finding a wife who was committed to the church’s mission in faraway places and who would return with him to Baraka and to his work among the Mpongwe and Shékiani. After visiting his family in Wisconsin, he returned to New England, and there he met Zephiah Shumway. She and Prudence had been girlhood friends, and she shared Prudence’s commitment to missions. A rather plain young woman, she was kind and compassionate and ready to go beyond the valleys of her Vermont home. So when Walker began to talk to her about marriage, she said she was willing to go with him to Africa. She knew the dangers, and she knew the fate of her friend Prudence, whose grave was on a hillside at Cape Palmas. But the life of a missionary was a great adventure, too, and for Zephiah it was a high calling that involved the giving of self to a great purpose. She and Walker were engaged in August 1845 and married in October. They expected to sail for Gabon the next month.22

  But as they waited in New York for their passage, Rufus Anderson hurried from Boston to tell them of news he had just received from Leighton. The newlyweds, Anderson told them, must delay sailing. There had been “serious collisions between the French and natives of the Gaboon,” and the mission station at Baraka had been bombarded by a French warship and fired upon by French troops.23

  WHILE WALKER WAS traveling in Britain and the United States, the French began to put increased pressure on Glass and Toko to acknowledge French authority over the estuary. When persuasion had failed, and when what Leighton called French “sophistry” had been recognized and rejected by Glass and Toko, the French had established a naval blockade hoping to deny provisions to Glass’s Town. Any canoe or Mpongwe boat leaving the town was confiscated or sunk, and even the mission boat was seized when it was sent to bring a newly arrived and sick missionary, Albert Bushnell, back from Ozyunga. But the blockade did not bring compliance with French demands. Glass and Toko remained defiant and refused to raise the French flag according to a flag protocol insisted upon by the French. The frustrated and disdainful French—they called Toko a “bushman of no consequence”—decided that force was necessary.24

  As tensions grew, Leighton, in conversations with French naval officers, continued to insist on the neutrality of the mission. Since Glass’s Town was asserting its independence, and the mission was there at the invitation of the town’s leaders, Leighton said, he could not acknowledge French authority. If, however, the town agreed to accept French rule, or if the French took the town by force, the mission would “obey the powers that be.” He also told the French that he had been informed by Commodores Abbot and Tattnall—as well as other US naval officers—that in the case of hostilities, he should raise the American flag as an indication of the mission’s neutrality and to rely upon the US flag for protection. The French insisted he was not the political representative of the United States and had no right to raise the American flag; they simply dismissed the opinion of the US naval officers who had advised Leighton.25

  The French began their assault by firing blank cartridges toward the shore for several days. They evidently hoped that the sounds of shots would intimidate Toko and the old king and warn them of what was to follow if they did not concede to French demands. When this pyrrhic display failed, the French began a coordinated assault on the Mpongwe town. First they began an intermittent bombardment from ship cannons. But by the time the bombardment began, the people had already largely abandoned their homes and had fled to their plantations in the bush. The missionaries and their boarding students remained at Baraka and it soon came under attack. A thirty-two-pound shot crashed into the church, “where,” wrote Leighton, “the Commander had every reason to suppose that our school was assembled.”26

  Leighton immediately raised the American flag over the mission house where children and teachers and missionaries all huddled. “This,” he wrote, “if it had any effect at all, caused the fire to become more intense, and brought the balls still nearer to our dwelling.” He lowered the flag, thinking it might be “construed as an act of resistance,” but still the bombardment continued, with shells passing over the house—one shell landed in the yard in front of the mission house, throwing debris onto the porch and badly frightening those huddled inside. When the naval shelling finally stopped, a company of French marines landed on the beach, and African troops from Senegal approached the town by land. Then, in a coordinated attack, they stormed into the town, firing into the bamboo houses and up the hill into the yard and buildings at Baraka.27

  Fortunately, no one was killed or injured, either at Glass’s Town or in Baraka, and a serious diplomatic incident was narrowly avoided with the Americans. The French commander soon left the estuary, and the new commander made apologies to Leighton for the attack. US naval ships then arrived in the estuary. Their commanders received assurances from the French that the missionaries were welcome and that, indeed, the mission was seen as doing good. Leighton himself was reported to be held in high regard by the French as a man of integrity and goodwill. But Glass’s Town was now under French control, and the French could be safely generous in their assessments of Leighton and the mission.28

  Leighton was disappointed with the American response. He had hoped that the US naval commanders would take the Mpongwe’s resistance to the French seriously and listen carefully to Glass’s and Toko’s accounts of what had happened. He wrote Henry Bruce, commander of one of the American warships, “I regret that you do not feel authorized to benefit from the testimony of the natives.” That refusal, of course, lay close to the heart of Western power and arrogance—How could any proud white naval officer, French or American, on board a marvelous ship-of-war with all of its indicators of a superior civilization, possibly benefit from the testimony of Africans? What could a Mpongwe, a black man, possibly say that would make a white naval officer willing to risk breaking established protocols among Western nations?29

  Glass and Toko, however, remained defiant. They rejected the annual gifts of the French to Mpongwe leaders, for they knew the acceptance of such gifts would be regarded as an acknowledgment of French authority and legitimacy. The king and Toko were trying to maintain the independence and traditions of their people even as they realized that independence was now a thing of the past. Their traditional ways faced a steady assault not only from the French but also from their friends who had stood with them at Baraka. For those friends at Baraka—white and black Americans, Grebo and Fanti—were all laboring to transform the world of the Mpongwe, to lead them away from their old ways into a new world of Christian faith and life.30

  Chapter Eighteen

  Home Visit

  After the French bombardment and assertion of control over the estuary, life at Baraka returned to its more familiar routines. The Protestant mission, however, now had competition from a Catholic mission established near the Fr
ench fort and supported by the French authorities. While the Mpongwe watched and wondered, the missionaries of the two missions eyed one another across the gulf of their histories and their competing understandings of Christian faith and life. But when the Catholic missionaries also suffered the deadly fevers and other illnesses that hit the Protestant missions, both missions began to reach cautiously beyond their differences and to engage one another. Their common struggles and a commitment to civility allowed them—in spite of their deep animosities—to visit one another, to help one another in times of illness, and to cooperate as they both worked on understanding Mpongwe language and customs. Nevertheless, the animosities were real—the Protestants thought the Catholic rituals and religious images reflected a belief in magic not far from the fetishes of the Mpongwe. And the Catholics were amazed by the egalitarianism among the Protestant missionaries, who had no bishops or archbishops or pope. They made, Leighton wrote, “a vigorous effort to convince the people that we [Protestants] are not the true ministers of the Gospel.” But a kind of truce was established between them, and Leighton thought the truth would finally be known by its fruits. He hoped that the Protestant mission would be able to appeal to the witness of its life—the fruits of a Protestant faith—with confidence. And he prayed that life at Baraka and at the other stations and schools would not bring shame to the gospel they preached.1

  THE SCHOOL AT Baraka was full in 1845, and the little congregation received some recent converts, who were an encouragement to the missionaries. But the mission was badly understaffed. The James family had left earlier for furlough in the United States; Walker and his new bride were still waiting in New England for passage; and Wasa and Maria, badly homesick for their Grebo homeland, had returned to Cape Palmas to work for the Episcopal mission.2

  Even the arrival of a new missionary from the United States turned out to be a disappointment. Albert Bushnell, a rather frail man possessed by a nervous restlessness, had arrived shortly before the French attack on Baraka. Soon afterward he had married the widow Mrs. Stocken, and they had taken over the station at Ozyunga that had been left vacant by the death of Benjamin Griswold. Bushnell, however, had been hit hard by fever, and after he was finally able to get back to Baraka, the French had begun to fire on the mission. The whole experience had left him shaken, and he and his new wife soon left for a furlough in the United States. Leighton was troubled by Bushnell’s response to the trauma of the French attack and what he called “the extreme derangement” of Bushnell’s nerves. Leighton wondered if Bushnell had the emotional strength needed to face the demands of mission work in Africa. He later wrote Rufus Anderson that the young man needed to be carefully examined by a competent doctor to see if he should return to the estuary. Leighton had, he confided to Anderson, serious apprehensions that Bushnell suffered from hypochondria—apprehensions later shared by William Walker.3

  So Leighton and Jane found themselves at Baraka without the companionship of other white Protestant missionaries, not unlike their early years at Fair Hope. But mission friends were now nearby. The Fanti John Edwards and his Grebo wife were living and conducting school at George’s Town; George Coe and B. B. Wisner, both Greboes, were teaching nearby; and the Grebo Francis Allison and his Grebo wife, a former student of Jane’s at Fair Hope, were still at Tom Larsen’s Town across the estuary. They would soon return to Baraka, where Allison would take over the work of the printing press while B. V. R. James was away.4

  Leighton and Jane, however, felt their closest attachment to Mary Clealand and Josiah Dorsey. In many ways Jane looked on Mary as her child, or at least a student who occupied a bright and lively place within Jane’s quiet heart. When William Davis had brought Mary to Fair Hope in early 1836 to be educated at the mission, Jane had recently had a miscarriage, and then she had been in a great struggle with death as she had nursed a delirious Leighton back from an African grave. Mary had come into their lives as a gift to their hearts and as a beautiful young girl—vivacious, affectionate, and smart like her father. As the daughter of Davis and the niece of King Freeman, Mary was part of the most influential Grebo family at Big Town. And when she had sat on her father’s lap and quickly taught him the English alphabet, and had later encouraged him in his conversion to Christianity, she had become a shining example of mission hopes for Africa. It was no wonder that Jane and Leighton had such admiration and affection for her. And she apparently admired and loved them back. When the decision was made to leave Fair Hope for the new mission at Baraka, she gladly decided to go with them and join them in their work. Although she would return to Cape Palmas from time to time to see her father and family there, she had cast her lot with Jane and Leighton and the mission at Baraka.5

  Mary and Josiah Dorsey had known one another at Cape Palmas but became better acquainted as they visited together at Baraka. Dorsey had been born a slave in Maryland and freed by his owner in order to immigrate to Cape Palmas. Shortly after Dorsey’s arrival at the Cape in late 1836, Leighton had hired him to help with the school at Fair Hope; at the same time, Dorsey would receive some additional education. In 1838, he had become the American Board’s teacher at Rock Town, and when Leighton and Griswold had sailed in 1842 looking for a new mission location, he had gone with them. By 1844, he was established as the teacher at Duka’s Town far up the Remboué River, where he soon became fluent in Mpongwe. He made, however, regular trips back to Baraka, where he and Mary saw one another. By 1846, they had known each other for years, but now Mary was in her late teens and he in his mid-thirties, and they were clearly in love. Leighton married them in the little mission church, and they were soon settled in a comfortable bamboo home and conducting school at Prince Glass’s Town a short distance from Baraka. In 1848 Mary gave birth to a little boy, whom they named William Leighton Dorsey. So a young Grebo woman and a freed African American immigrant to Maryland in Liberia named their first child after his Grebo grandfather William Davis from Big Town and after their friend and mentor Leighton Wilson from Pine Grove. Other children followed, and all would have important roles to play in the early history of the church in Gabon.6

  WALKER AND HIS young bride—he called her Zeniah—were finally able to sail with Captain Lawlin for Gabon in early September 1846. B. V. R. James and his family were with them, although they had decided not to return to Gabon. The news of the French attacks and of the bombardment of Baraka had been deeply distressing to them, and James had accepted a call by the Presbyterian Mission Board to teach and manage a school in Monrovia. When they arrived in Monrovia, they moved into a handsome two-story stone house—it had bedrooms for visiting missionaries, a room they called “Captain Lawlin’s Room,” and a piazza that ran along the front of the second story, where they could sit in the evenings and watch the comings and goings in the little town.7

  Margaret was no doubt glad to get away from the paternalistic eyes of Leighton and Jane and to claim her own respectable place in Monrovian society. Before long she was entertaining many visitors and overseeing a prosperous household with the watchful eye of a careful matron. Catherine lived her own quiet life with them, under the shadow of her mother and stepfather, giving herself to her teaching in the Presbyterian school and contributing to its growing reputation as the best in Liberia. For his part, James began to identify himself as a settler, a Liberian patriot. He abandoned the antagonism toward colonization that he had earlier shared with Leighton, and in a few years he was elected the clerk of the Liberian senate. The Wilson and James families, however, did not end their close relationship. During the coming years, regular correspondence flowed between the families, and extended hospitality and mutual affection were shared.8

  After leaving the James family in Monrovia and conducting his business there, Captain Lawlin sailed for Cape Palmas, with William Walker and his bride once again aboard. When Lawlin anchored off the cape, William went ashore. He was filled with conflicting emotions as the ship’s boat neared the land. The Cape, he thought, looked like home, but it was a home of
hard memories. He called on Governor Russwurm and had a pleasant visit—the old animosities apparently put aside. But Walker was depressed by what he found as he walked the streets of Harper and visited in Big Town. War between the Grebo and the settlers had only been narrowly avoided a few years earlier by the intervention of Commodore Matthew Perry and his Africa Squadron, and deep tensions and animosities were being held in check only by the diplomatic skills of Russwurm and King Freeman. The Episcopal mission, it was true, was doing good work, but the African fevers had been unrelenting as they did their own destructive work among the missionaries. Some missionaries had died, and others were largely incapacitated. The mission, like Baraka, was badly understaffed. Walker returned to the ship in a melancholy mood.9

  The next day, he and Zeniah went ashore through the rolling surf. As the wind and the surging power of the waves lifted the ship’s boat and carried it toward the shore, Walker pointed out to his young wife the outlines of Harper and Big Town and the little island where the Grebo left their dead. Back to the right they could see the hilltop where once there had been a mission station called Fair Hope. They visited the Episcopal mission, and Zeniah saw the mission and its cemetery firsthand and saw on the faces of the missionaries the effects of the fevers. Walker met with old friends and saw former students among the Grebo, then went by himself out to Fair Hope, where, he wrote, “I spent my first nine months in Africa. But how changed the place! Everything looked desolate.” The tall New Englander walked out to the little mission cemetery past the graves of David and Helen White, who had died so shortly after their arrival, and stood by the grave of Prudence.10