knowledge of the pure Negro law-form as found in the Oil Rivers, almost unaltered, and I think if you will carefully study that valuable book, Sarbar's Fanti Customary Law, you will also see that the State-form is identical in essence with that of the Oil Rivers—the House system.
The House is a collection of individuals; I should hesitate to call it a developed family. I cannot say it is a collection of human beings, because the very dogs and canoes and so on that belong to it are part of it in the eye of the law, and capable therefore alike of embroiling it and advancing its interests. These Houses are bound together into groups by the Long ju-ju proper to the so-called secret society, common to the groups of houses. The House itself is presided over by what is called, in white parlance, a king, and beneath him there are four classes of human beings in regular rank, that is to say, influence in council: firstly, the free relations of the king, if he be a free man himself, which is frequently not the case; if he be a slave, the free people of the family he is trustee for; secondly, the free small people who have placed themselves under the protection of the House, rendering it in return for the assistance and protection it affords them service on demand; the third and fourth classes are true slave classes, the higher one in rank being that called the Winnaboes or Trade boys, the lower the pull-away boys and the plantation hands.[1] The best point in it, as a system, is that it gives to the poorest boy who paddles an oil canoe a chance of becoming a king.
Property itself in West Africa, and as I have reason to believe from reports in other parts of tropical Africa that I
- ↑ See "Lecture on African Religion and Law," published by leave of the Hibbert Trustees in the National Review. September, 1897.
