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Some Aspects of Dahomean Ethnology1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Melville J. Herskovits
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The civilization of Dahomey is based upon an agricultural economy. No matter what the rank of a Dahomean or what his trade, he must know how to cultivate the soil, and he will have his fields. As in all West Africa, clearing the land and hoeing it in preparation for the actual planting is the work of men. Planting itself is carried out by both men and women, and after the planting has been finished, the care of the growing crops is in the hands of the women. Women play quite as active a role in the economic life of Dahomey as do men, for it is not only their work to care for and harvest the crops, but in the Dahomean organization of markets, it is they who buy and sell. Since money earned by a woman is her own, and it is possible for those who are successful in the market-place to acquire wealth independently, there exists a class of ‘free’ women whose freedom extends to their economic life, and also to their relations with the male sex. This gives rise to the institution of women who play the role ordinarily assumed by men as heads of families, and who become titular ‘husbands’ to their ‘wives’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 1932 , pp. 266 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1932

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References

page 267 note 1 The phonetic system employed in this paper for Dahomean terms is essentially that given in Professor Westermann's Study of the Ewe Language, pp. 1-3 and 14-16. In Fõ, however, there are two unvoiced velar fricatives, hence in this paper h is the lighter, x the heavier of these. Fõ is a tonal language, but diacritical marks are not given in this paper.

page 267 note 2 Cf. Les Civilisations Négro-Africaines, chapter V, the section entitled ‘Le régime foncier’, especially pp. 100-2.

page 268 note 1 It must be noted, however, that in the case of royalty and those associated with royalty (chiefs and other officials), funeral ceremonies are under the control of a special Dokpwegā, who has nothing to do with the direction of men in communal labour.

page 269 note 1 For an amusing illustration of how early this patterning of Dahomean life is accomplished, read the account by Le Hérissé of the manner in which a group of young boys working at the Residency at Abomey voluntarily organized themselves into a little Dokpwe (though Le Hérissé does not employ this designation). This volume (A. Le Hérissé, L'Ancien Royaume du Dahomey, Paris, 1911) is the best published account of Dahomean culture available.

page 270 note 1 Cf. Le Hérissé, chaps. IV and X.

page 271 note 1 Cf. Le Hérissé, op. cit. passim. For a vivid contemporary account of the monarchy and its ceremonials by an unusually careful observer, the volume entitled Dahomey as it is; Being a Narrative of Eight Months’ Residence in that Country… by Skertchly, J. A. (London, 1874)Google Scholar should be consulted; and also Sir Burton's, R. F.A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, vols. iii and iv of the Memorial Edition of Burton's works, London, 1893.Google Scholar

page 272 note 1 For detailed discussion of this point, see Herskovits, M. J., ‘Population Statistics in the Kingdom of Dahomey’, Human Biology, vol. iv, no. 2, May 1932.Google Scholar

page 274 note 1 No single phase of Dahomean culture, not even the investigation of human sacrifice, met with such resistance to disclosing the beliefs held as the investigation of the names and mythological origins of these sibs. I count it fortunate that towards the end of our stay our Dahomean friends had sufficient confidence in us to speak on this subject. Without a grounding in the culture of the Bush Negroes of Surinam, however, and the identification by the Dahomean informants of obscure names of deities with those of Dutch Guiana this information would not have been made available.

page 274 note 2 One may on this point refer to Delafosse's Les Civilisations Négro-Africaines, pp. 10-11.

page 274 note 3 See on this point H. Labouret's criticism of Delafosse's position, in his preface to the English translation of Delafosse's works, Negroes of Africa, p. xv.

page 274 note 4 This exception is in the case of a sib whose members are enjoined to eat the flesh of the pig, their mythological founder.

page 275 note 1 Cf. in this connexion the discussion of the categories of primitive thought in J. H. Driberg's The Savage as he really is, especially p. 32.

page 276 note 1 It was in this connexion that one of the most significant results of this field-trip, so far as relations between New World and African Negroes are concerned, came out. Not only are sacrifices made during these annual customs for the ghosts of those whose names are remembered, but food is also given at a special altar for the spirits of those who were sent into slavery and their descendants, as well as others whose names are no longer known, and New World countries are named to recall the family dead.

page 277 note 1 It is especially in the Nesuxwe that we find the Tohosu, the powerful river-spirits who are greatly feared by Dahomeans, and who, in the flesh, are represented by those who at birth show anomalies in their physical form.

page 277 note 2 As, e.g., that of the Ashanti, reported by R. S. Rattray in Ashanti, pp. 24-8.

page 278 note 1 Control of the children is the basis of Le Hérissé's division of marriage-types, pp. 202-11. He gives, however, only a few of the ways in which a marriage may be made.

page 286 note 1 See H. Labouret and P. Rivet, Le Royaume d'Arda et son Évangélisation au XVIIe sièle (t. vii, Travaux et Mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie).

page 286 note 2 Myths given by priests who do not belong to the Mawu-Lisa cult state that Mawu is androgynous.

page 288 note 1 Spieth, J., Die Ewe-Stämme, 1906Google Scholar, and Die Religionen der Eweer in Süd-Togo, 1911.Google Scholar Those familiar with these works will recognize the names of a number of deities mentioned in this paper as occurring in Togoland.

page 288 note 2 Westermann, D., ‘Ein Bericht uber den Yehwekultus der Ewe’, Mitt. d. Sem. f. orient. Sprachen, vol. xxxiii (1930).Google Scholar

page 289 note 1 Supra, pp. 275 ff.

page 290 note 1 Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo, pp. 189-225.

page 290 note 2 For details regarding the Fa cult and for the configurations of the sixteen Du, see Hérissé, Le, op. cit., pp. 139–47Google Scholar, and Spieth, , op. cit., pp. 189–225.Google Scholar

page 295 note 1 I suspect that this concept of a monkey-like being as a source of charms is another widely spread West-African belief. Thus in Ashanti I was told that the mmoatia, termed ‘fairies’ by Rattray (Religion and Art in Ashanti, pp. 25 ff.), are monkey-like creatures who give charms to hunters. Similarly, among the Surinam Bush-Negroes, where the term for a charm is obia, I was told, ‘If you dream of monkeys, it is obia.’

page 295 note 2 Spieth, Die Religion der Eweer in Süd-Togo, Part IV, ‘Die religiösen Geheimbunde’, pp. 172-89, and Westermann, op. cit., passim.

page 296 note 1 In the western Ewe dialects, ‘small-pox’ is sakpata, not sagbata, and ‘charm’ is bo, not gbo.—EDITOR.