What
elevating influence could there be in the Colonial Church for these
children of Nature, who were annually reinforcing Church and Colony at a
frightful pace with heathenism? Twenty or thirty tribes of pagans were
imported at the rate of twenty thousand living heads per annum, turned
loose and mixed together, with a sense of original wrong and continual
cruelty rankling amid their crude and wild emotions, and prized
especially for their alleged deficiency of soul, and animal ability to
perform unwholesome labor. Slavery never wore so black a face. The
only refining element was the admixture of superior tribes, a piece of
good-fortune for the colony, which the planter endeavored as far as
possible to miss by distributing the fresh cargoes according to their
native characters. A fresh Eboe was put under the tutelage of a
naturalized Eboe, a Jolof with a Jolof, and so on: their depressed and
unhealthy condition upon landing, and their ignorance of the Creole
dialect, rendered this expedient.[J]
[Footnote H: Sometimes Fetichism furnished a legend which Catholicism,
in its best estate, would not despise. Here is one that belongs to
the Akwapim country, which lies north of Akkra, and is tributary to
Ashantee. "They say that Odomankama created all things. He created the
earth, the trees, stones, and men. He showed men what they ought to eat,
and also said to them, 'Whenever anybody does anything that is lovely,
think about it, and do it also, only do not let your eye grow red' (that
is, inflamed, lustful).
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80