15. JLW to RA, 23 January 1843, ABCFM and CTS.
16. JBW to RA, 1 April 1843, ABCFM.
17. Quotations: JLW to RA, 26 February 1838, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 23 January 1843, ABCFM. See also “Report on Slavery,” The Liberator, 30 September 1842, 154.
18. Quotations: on JLW being called a “man stealer,” JLW to JBW, 25 February 1843, CTS; from JBW, JBW to RA, 1 April 1843, ABCFM; from JLW, JLW to RA, 23 January 1843, ABCFM and CTS; JLW to RA, 23 January 1843, ABCFM and CTS. For the difficulty of emancipation in South Carolina after Denmark Vesey’s attempted revolt, see Lacy K. Ford, Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South (Oxford, 2009), 196.
19. JLW to RA, 23 January 1843, ABCFM and CTS.
20. Quotations: ibid. The letter was published in a number of newspapers. See, for example, “Rev. J. L. Wilson’s Letter,” in Emancipator and Free American, 8 October 1843.
21. Quotations: JLW to William Wilson, 17 July 1843, CTS.
22. S. E. Wilson to JLW, 19 July 1847, copy in ABCFM. For Jessie’s marriage, see Chapter 23.
Chapter Fourteen: Toko and the Waterwitch
1. JLW to JBW, letters bundled together from 21 May 1842 to 19 June 1842, CTS.
2. Ibid. See also “Journal of Benjamin Griswold,” 16 July 1842, ABCFM.
3. JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS. For the technical term “Big Men” in anthropology, see Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, WI, 1990), 73–74. For King Glass, see K. David Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast to 1875 (Oxford, 1975), esp. 31; Henry H. Bucher, Jr., “The Village of Glass and Western Intrusion: An Mpongwe Response to the American and French Presence in the Gabon Estuary, 1842–1845,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, no. 3 (1973): 363–400, esp. 376. For Dr. McDowell’s sketches of Toko and Yanaway, see JLW to JBW, 23–25 June 1842, ABCFM; JLW to [?] Treat, 24 September 1847, ABCFM. Yanaway was later given the name DuSausa.
4. Quotations: Benjamin Griswold to RA, 18 July 1842, ABCFM.
5. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS. On Glass’s Town, see Bucher, “The Village of Glass,” 382.
6. Quotation: “Journal of Benjamin Griswold,” 16 July 1842, ABCFM. For JLW’s description of the king, see JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS. For King William, or Denis, see Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 30–31, 49, 90–92.
7. “Journal of Benjamin Griswold,” 16 July 1842, ABCFM; JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS. Cf. Jeremy Rich’s description of this encounter and its implications for understanding Mpongwe culture. See Jeremy Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary (Lincoln, NE, 2007), 22–23.
8. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS.
9. Quotation: “Journal of Benjamin Griswold,” 26 June 1842, ABCFM. JLW’s account of the visit to the barracoon was published in American, British, and French newspapers. See Henry Hale Bucher, Jr., “The Mpongwe of the Gabon Estuary: A History to 1860” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1977), 226.
10. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS.
11. Quotation: J. Leighton Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” Missionary Herald, June 1843, 234. For Toko’s role in the estuary during the 1840s and 1850s, see Bucher, “The Village of Glass,” esp. 376–377; David E. Gardinier, Historical Dictionary of Gabon (Metuchen, NJ, 1981), 186; Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 56, 96–106; WWD, 16 April–22 June 1847, WHS.
12. Quotations: J. Leighton Wilson, Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects (New York, 1856), 294. See also JLW to JBW, 20 July 1842, CTS; Benjamin Griswold to RA, 22 June 1842, ABCFM.
13. Quotation: Wilson, Western Africa, 294–295.
14. Quotation: ibid., 382–384.
15. Ibid. See also, for Toko as a storyteller, WWD, 9 February 1843, WHS. For Gabonese folktales, see Robert Hamill Nassau, Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore Tales (London, 1914). For an evaluation of collections of Gabonese folklore, see Henry H. Bucher, Jr., “Mpongwe Origins: Historiographical Perspectives,” History in Africa 2 (1975): 88.
16. JLW to JBW, 20 June 1842, CTS. Cf. for use of plantains, Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 24–25, 27–35; Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 61–62.
17. Quotation: WWD, 3 March 1843, WHS. For Toko’s knowledge of Western merchants and politics, see Wilson, Western Africa, 294.
18. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 7 August 1842, CTS. On mission schools, see David E. Gardinier, “The Schools of the American Protestant Mission in Gabon (1842–1870),” Revue Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer 75, no. 2 (1988): 177; WWD, 17 October 1847, WHS; WWD, 20 September 1868, WHS.
19. Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 234.
20. For the Waterwitch, see ibid.; JLW to JBW, 8 July 1842, CTS; WWD, 23 March 1843, WHS. Cf. also a detailed description of sailing in a Mpongwe boat, JLW to JBW, 7 August 1842, CTS. For JLW’s adventure on the Waterwitch, see JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS; Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 234.
21. Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 234; JLW to JBW, 7 August 1842, CTS; Gardinier, Historical Dictionary of Gabon, 108–109; Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 50–51.
22. Quotation: Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 235.
23. Ibid., 234–236. It was not uncommon for Africans to be sold into slavery by other Africans because of debts. See, for example, Toyin Falola and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Pawnship in Africa: Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective (Boulder, 1994); Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK, 2000), esp. 188–189; Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 7, 27–28; Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 56–58; Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 155. For an overview of the developing historiography of slavery and Africa, see the dated but still helpful review article by William Gervase Clarence-Smith, “The Dynamics of the African Slave Trade,” Africa 64, no. 2 (1994): 275–286.
24. Quotations: Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 237.
25. Ibid., 237–238. For musical instruments from the interior of Gabon, see, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit in New York, Alisa Lagamma, ed., Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary (New Haven, CT, 2007), 52–53.
26. Quotations: Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 237. Cf. Lagamma, Eternal Ancestors, fig. 60, 103. For European and European American images of healthy, vigorous interior peoples in contrast to the supposedly weak and degenerate maritime peoples of the African coast, see K David Patterson, “The Vanishing Mpongwe: European Contact and Demographic Change in the Gabon River,” Journal of African History 16, no. 2 (1975): 217–238, esp. 221. For the movement of the Fang, see ibid.; Christopher Chamberlin, “The Migration of the Fang into Central Gabon During the Nineteenth Century: A New Interpretation,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 11 (1978): 429–456; James Fernandez, Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (Princeton, NJ, 1982), 29–41; John Manning Cinnamon, “The Long March of the Fang: Anthropology and History in Equatorial Africa” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1998); Kairn Klieman, “Of Ancestors and Earth Spirits: New Approaches for Interpreting Central African Politics, Religion, and Art,” in Lagamma, Eternal Ancestors, 40–42, 57–58.
27. Quotation: Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,”239–240. For early smelting sites for iron in Gabon, see Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, 58–60.
28. Quotation: Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” 239–240.
29. Quotation: ibid. For the issues surrounding JLW’s use of the English word “devil,” see Lamin Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, 2nd ed. (New York, 2009), esp. 191–228; V. Y. Mudimbe, “The Power of Speech,” in The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington, IN, 1988), 44–97; Birgit Meyer, “Confessions of Satanic Riches
in Christian Ghana,” Africa 65 (1995): 236–255; Rosalind I. J. Hackett, “African Religions: Images and I-Glasses,” Religion 20 (1990): 303–309; Dmitri van den Bersselaar, “Creating ‘Union Ibo’: Missionaries and the Igbo Language,” Africa 67, no. 2 (1997): 273–295.
30. Quotations: Wilson, Western Africa, 391. For the “African devil” on stilts, cf. images from Musée D’Ethnographie Genève, Le Gabon de Fernand Grébert, 1913–1932 (Geneva, Switzerland, 2003), 169, 214. See also André Raponda-Walker and Roger Sillans, Rites et Croyances des Peuples du Gabon (Libreville, Gabon, 2005), 16–28.
31. Cf. Walter H. Sangree, Age, Prayer and Politics in Tiriki, Kenya (London, 1966), esp. 164; Richard Gray, “Christianity and Concepts of Evil in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Black Christians and White Missionaries (New Haven, CT, 1990), 99–117; J. D. Y. Peel, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington, IN, 2000), 259–265; Philip Jenkins, “Good and Evil,” in The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (Oxford, 2006), 98–127.
32. For the sale of the Waterwitch to the Spanish slave trader, see WWD, 23 March 1843, WHS. William Walker estimated that Toko received the equivalent of $700 for the boat.
33. See Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” Missionary Herald, June 1843.
34. For JLW’s reports being read regularly to slaves, see Eleventh Annual Report of the Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, in Liberty County, Georgia (Savannah, GA, 1846), 9.
Chapter Fifteen: A Sophisticated, Hospitable, and Heathen People
1. JLW to JBW, 15 March 1843, CTS.
2. “Report of the Gaboon Mission to Prudential Committee,” 28 December 1843, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 15 July 1843, ABCFM.
3. JLW to RA, 15 July 1843, ABCFM.
4. For Jane Cooper, see WWD, July–November 1842, WHS; JLW to RA, 17 September 1850, ABCFM; David E. Gardinier, “The Schools of the American Protestant Mission in Gabon (1842–1870),” Revue Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer 75, no. 2 (1988): 168–184. For Francis Allison, see Francis Allison to RA, 26 March 1843, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 15 July 1843, ABCFM; “Report of the Gaboon Mission to Prudential Committee,” 28 December 1843, ABCFM.
5. WWD, July–November 1843, WHS.
6. Quotation: JBR to JHBL, 26 June 1843, MSCS.
7. For a vivid description of the requirements for safely sailing into the estuary and of the appearance of the surrounding landscape, see T. Edward Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, 3rd ed. (Oxford, UK, 1966 [1819]), 423–424. See also JLW to “Dear Father,” 30 June 1843, SCL; WWD, 11 July 1843, WHS; JLW to RA, 15 July 1843, ABCFM.
8. JLW to “Dear Father,” 30 June 1843, SCL; WWD, 11 July 1843, WHS; JLW to RA, 15 July 1843, ABCFM. Cf. Mrs. J. S. Preston, Gaboon Stories (New York, 1872), 11. For descriptions of Mpongwe dress, see JLW to JBW, 25 June 1842, CTS. Cf. also Jeremy Rich, “Civilized Attire: Refashioning Tastes and Social Status in the Gabon Estuary, c. 1870–1914,” Cultural and Social History 2 (2005): 189–213.
9. For descriptions of Glass’s Town, see Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, 422–425; JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS; WWD, December 1842, WHS; Preston, Gaboon Stories, 16–17; Henry H. Bucher, Jr., “The Village of Glass and Western Intrusion: An Mpongwe Response to the American and French Presence in the Gabon Estuary, 1842–1845,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, no. 3 (1973): 363–400.
10. Quotation: WWD, 13 February 1843, WHS. For JLW’s estimate of the number of slaves owned by Glass, see Jeremy Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary (Lincoln, NE, 2007), 7–8.
11. David E. Gardinier, Historical Dictionary of Gabon (Metuchen, NJ, 1981), 109; K. David Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast to 1875 (Oxford, 1975), 31.
12. Quotation: Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 14. For Mpongwe as middlemen in the slave trade, see JLW to JBW, 7 August 1842, CTS; Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 1–67; Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 6–8, 27–28; Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, WI, 1990), 204–207. For the character of Mpongwe slavery, see Bucher, “The Village of Glass,” 374; K. David Patterson, “The Vanishing Mpongwe: European Contact and Demographic Change in the Gabon River,” Journal of African History 16, no. 2 (1975): 217–238.
13. JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS; JLW to JBW, 29 July 1842, CTS. Cf. David E. Gardinier, “The American Board (1842–1870) and Presbyterian Board (1870–1892) Missions in Northern Gabon and African Responses,” Africana Journal 17 (1998): 215.
14. Preston, Gaboon Stories, 18–19; WWD, 21 March 1844, WHS.
15. JLW to JBW, 7 August 1842, CTS; WWD, 10 April 1842, WHS; Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 6–9. Cf. Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 68–89. For US ships and the slave trade, see David Eltis, “The U.S. Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1644–1867: An Assessment,” Civil War History 54, no. 4 (December 2008), 347–380.
16. WWD, 19 December 1842, WHS; WWD, 26 December 1842, WHS; JLW to “Dear Father, Mother, Brothers and Sisters,” 23 September 1846, SCL. See also Preston, Gaboon Stories, 14; Paul B. DuChaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (London, 1861), 4.
17. Quotation: WWD, 11 July 1843, WHS. For other comments by Walker, see WWD, 21 July 1843, WHS.
18. Quotations: JLW to JBW, 15 January 1843, CTS; WWD, 27 July 1843, WHS.
19. WWD, 18 January 1843, WHS; WWD, 27 July 1843, WHS.
20. For JLW’s trips up and down the West African coast, see J. Leighton Wilson, “Journal of J. Leighton Wilson on a Missionary Tour to Western Africa,” January–March 1843, ABCFM; JLW to JBW, 11 March 1843, CTS; JLW to RA, 14 April 1843, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 25 November 1843, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 25 April 1839, ABCFM; JBW to “Family,” 22 September 1841, SCL; JLW to RA, 7 April 1842, ABCFM. For the origin of the Mpongwe and of their name, see Henry H. Bucher, Jr., “Mpongwe Origins: Historiographical Perspectives,” History in Africa 2 (1975): 59–89.
21. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS.
22. Quotation: J. Leighton Wilson, Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects (New York, 1856), 252. See also ibid., 292–293.
23. WW to the Prudential Committee, 28 December 1843, ABCFM; Benjamin Griswold, “Journal of Benjamin Griswold,” 26 June 1842, ABCFM. For European reports on the sophistication of the Mpongwe, see Bucher, “The Village of Glass,” 371; Patterson, “The Vanishing Mpongwe,” 221–222.
24. Quotation: WW to the Prudential Committee, 28 December 1843, ABCFM.
25. Quotation: ibid. For Râgombe as the leader of the Ndiwa clan of the Mpongwe near the end of the seventeenth century, see Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 7; David E. Gardinier, “The American Board (1842–1870) and Presbyterian Board (1870–1892), 220.
26. Quotations: JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS; WW to the Prudential Committee, 28 December 1843, ABCFM. See also Wilson, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Wilson,” Missionary Herald, June 1843, 233. Cf. Patterson, “The Vanishing Mpongwe,” 221–223; Patterson, The Northern Gabon Coast, 12–13.
27. Quotation: Wilson, Western Africa, 341. For mission strategy, see “Annual Report,” Missionary Herald, January 1835, 14; “Annual Report,” Missionary Herald, January 1837, 30. Rufus Anderson of the ABCFM and Henry Venn, executive of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, are most often associated with the “three-self” mission strategy—self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-governing. Missionaries were to lay the foundation for such an indigenous church through preaching and teaching and were to have authority only until an indigenous leadership was in place. See C. P. Williams, The Ideal of the Self-Governing Church: A Study in Victorian Missionary Strategy (Leiden, 1990).
28. In order to help meet the demands of missionary work, the American Board developed what it called “The Social Principle.” In this approach, isolated missionaries were brought together to a central mission station for mutual encouragement and for opportunitie
s to address any simmering disputes. See Missionary Herald, January 1825, 12. For salaries of Walker and James, see J. Leighton Wilson, “Schedule of Funds for the West African Mission,” 2 December 1843, ABCFM. For confidence in providence and hope for the future conversion of Africa, see, for example, WWD, 6 June 1849, WHS. Cf. the missionary hymn “God Is Working His Purpose Out,” by Arthur C. Ainger, written for his students at Eton, UK, in 1894.
29. “Report of the Gaboon Mission to Prudential Committee,” 28 December 1843, ABCFM; JLW to RA, 15 July 1843, ABCFM; BVRJ to RA, 9 January 1844, ABCFM; Gardinier, “The Schools of the American Protestant Mission in Gabon,” 172.
30. Missionaries of the ABCFM Gaboon Mission, A Grammar of the Mpongwe Language, with Vocabularies (New York, 1847), vi–vii.
31. For the schedule and curriculum of the school, see JLW to JBW, 15 January 1843, CTS; WWD, 24 September 1847, WHS; Paul B. DuChaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (London, 1861), 28–29; Gardinier, “The Schools of the American Protestant Mission in Gabon.” For developments in the school later in the nineteenth century, see Robert Hamill Nassau, Tales Out of School (Philadelphia, 1911).
32. WWD, 14 December 1846, WHS; JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS. Cf. Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 86–90.
33. Wilson, Western Africa, 243–244.
34. Quotation: JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS. This lack of enthusiasm is said to be the reaction to “bâton de manioc” by many Europeans in Libreville today. E-mail correspondence with Mary Coultier, 12 August 2011. Cf. Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 24.
35. For the hiring of a young boy to secure fish, see JLW to JBW, 23 June 1842, CTS. For preparation of fish, see Rich, A Workman Is Worthy of His Meat, 26. Cf. Nassau, Tales Out of School, 33, 37, 65. For a leopard taking a goat at Baraka, see, for example, WWD, 7 June 1861, WHS. For goat being barbecued and served, see JLW to JBW, 18 July 1842, CTS; “Western Africa,” Missionary Herald, June 1843, 231. For a sample of the variety and beauty of “légumes et fruits indigènes,” and for “importés,” see the sketches in Musée D’Ethnographie Genève, Le Gabon de Fernand Grébert, 1913–1932 (Geneva, 2003), 109–110.
By the Rivers of Water Page 60