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"When they [the first European navigators of the end of the Middle Ages] arrived in the Gulf of Guinea and landed
at Vaida, the captains were astonished to find the streets well cared for, bordered for several leagues in length by two rows
of trees; for many days they passed through a country of magnificent fields, a country inhabited by men clad in brilliant
costumes, the stuff of which they had woven themselves! More to the South in the Kingdom of Congo, a swarming crowd dressed
in silk and velvet; great states well ordered, and even to the smallest details, powerful sovereigns, rich industries, --
civilized to the marrow of their
bones. And the condition of the countries on the eastern coasts -- Mozambique,
for example -- was quite the same.
"What was revealed by the navigators of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries
furnishes
an absolute proof that Negro Africa, which extended south of the desert zone of the Sahara,
was in full efflorescence which the European conquistadors annihilated as far as they progressed. For the new country of America needed slaves, and Africa had them to offer, hundreds,
thousands, whole cargoes of slaves. However, the slave trade was never an affair which meant a perfectly easy conscience,
and it exacted a justification; hence one made of the Negro a half-animal, an article of merchandise. And in the same way
the notion of fetish (Portuguese feticeiro) was invented as a symbol of
African religion. As for me, I have seen
in no part of Africa the Negroes worshipping a fetish. The
idea of the 'barbarous Negro' is a European invention which has consequently prevailed
in Europe until the beginning of this century.
"What these old captains recounted, these chiefs of expeditions
-- Delbes, Marchais, Pigafetta, and all the others, what they recounted is true. It can be verified. In the old Royal Kunstkammer
of Dresden, in the Weydemann colection of Ulm, in many another 'cabinet of curiosities' of
Europe, we still find West African collections dating from this epoch. Marvellous plush velvets
of an extreme softness, made of the tenderest leaves of a certain kind of banana plant; stuffs soft and supple, brilliant
and delicate, like silks, woven with the fiber of a raffia, well prepared; powerful javelins with points encrusted with copper
in the most elegant fashion; bows so graceful in form and so beautifully ornamented that they would do honor to any museum
of arms whatsoever; calabashes decorated with the greatest taste; sculpture in ivory and wood of which the work shows a very
great deal of application and style.
"And all that came from countries of the African periphery, delivered over after
that to slave merchants, . . .
"But when the pioneers of the last century pierced this zone of 'European civilization'
and the wall of protection which had, for the time being raised behind it -- the wall of protection of the Negro still 'intact'
--they found everywhere the same marvels which the captains had found on the coast.
"In 1906 when I penetrated
into the territory of Kassai-Sankuru, I found still, villages of which the principle streets were bordered on each side, for
leagues, with rows of palm trees, and of which the houses, decorated each one in charming fashion, were works of art as well.
"No
man who did not carry sumptuous arms of iron or copper, with inlaid blades and handles covered with serpent skin. Everywhere
velvets and silken stuffs. Each cup, each pipe, each spoon was an object of art perfectly worthy to be compared to the creations
of the Roman European style. But all this was only the particularly tender and iridescent bloom which adorns a ripe and marvelous
fruit; the gestures, the manners, the moral code of the entire people, from the little child to the old man, although they
remained within absolutely natural limits, were imprinted with dignity and grace, in the families of the princes and the rich
as in the vassals and slaves. .
I know of no northern people who can be compared with these primitives for unity of civilization. And
the peaceful beauty was carried away by the floods. And the peaceful beauty was carried
away by the floods.
"But many men had this experience: the explorers who left the savage and warrior plateau
of the East and South and the North to descend into the plains of the Congo, of Lake Victoria, of the Ubangi: men such as
Speke and Grant, Livingstone, Cameron, Stanley, Schweinfurt, Junker, de Brazza-- all of them -- made the same statements:
they came from countries dominated by the rigid laws of the African Ares, and from then on they penetrated into the countries
where peace reigned, and joy in adornment and in beauty; countries of old civilizations, of ancient styles, of harmonious
styles.
"The revelations of fifteenth and seventeenth century navigators
furnish us with certain proof that Negro
Africa, which extended
south of the Sahara desert zone, was still in full bloom, in the
full
brilliance of harmonious and well-formed civilizations. In
the last century the superstition ruled that all high culture
of
Africa came from Islam. Since then we have learned much, and
we
know today that the beautiful
turbans and clothes of the Sudanese folk were already used in Africa before Muhammad was even born or before
Ethiopian culture reached inner Africa. Since then we have learned that the peculiar organization of the Sudanese states existed
long before Islam and that all of the art of building and education, of city organization and handwork in Negro Africa, were
thousands of years older than those of Middle Europe.
"Thus in the Sudan old real African warm-blooded culture existed
and could be found in Equatorial Africa, where neither Ethiopian
thought, Hamitic blood, or European civilization had drawn the
pattern. Everywhere when we examine this ancient culture it bears
the same impression. In the great museums -- Trocadero,
British
Museum, in Belgium, Italy, Holland,
and Germany -- everywhere we
see the
same spirit, the same character, the same nature. All of
these separate pieces unite themselves to the same expression
and
build a picture equally impressive as that of a collection of the
art of Asia.
The striking beauty of the cloth, the fantastic beauty
of the drawing and the sculpture, the glory of the ivory weapons,
the
collection of fairy tales equal to the Thousand and One nights,
the Chinese novels, and the Indian philosophy.
"In
comparison with such spiritual accomplishments the impression
of the African spirit is easily seen. It is stronger in its
folds,
simpler in its richness. Every weapon is simple and practical, not
only in form but fantasy. Every line of
carving is simple and strong.
There is nothing that makes a clearer impression of strength, and all
that streams out
of the fire and the hut, the sweat and the grease-
treated hides and the animal dung. Everything is practical, strong,
workmanly. This is the character of the African style. When one
approaches it with full understanding, one immediately
realizes
that this impression rules all Africa. It expresses itself in the
activity
of all Negro people even in their sculpture. It speaks out
of their dances and their masks; out of the understanding of
their
religious life, just as out of the reality of their living, their
state building, and their conception of fate.
It lives in their
fables, their fairy stories, their wise sayings and their myths.
And once we are forced to this
conclusion, then the Egyptian comes
into the comparison. For this discovered culture form of Negro Africa
has
the same peculiarity.
Leo Frobenius
Histoire de la Civilisation Africaine
translated
by Back and Ermoat
Paris: Gallimard, 1936
6th edition page 56
in
W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
The
World and Africa:
An inquiry into the part which Africa has played in world history
New York: Viking Press, 1946
pp. 79, 156
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