1018 REPORT— 1898. 



and curious disregard of domestic ties. Their value as soldiers and general 

 intelligence. 



Necessity for a study of tLe frontier jjeople, and their history, in order to draw 

 correct conclusions as to their future status. 



TUESDAY, SEPTmiBER 13. 

 The following Papers were read : — 



1. The Laiv and Nature of Property among the Peoples of the 

 True Negro Stock. By Miss Mart H. Kingsley. 



The geographical distribution of the true Negro stock is a subject worthy of 

 the attention of ethnographers for several reasons. One is that among these 

 peoples we have the most highly developed form of native African culture ; 

 another is that in the matters of physical characteristics and mental characteristics 

 the true Negro differs greatly from the better known Bantu stock. A high per- 

 centage of error has at present been attained by the failure to recognise these 

 difi'erences, and thereby the work of Sir A. B. Ellis on the true Negi-o or Bastian 

 on the true Bantu has not yet been given its full scientific value. 



The distribution of the true Negro stock is masked in its fringe-regions by the 

 ability of the peoples of this stock to acquire ahen languages and culture. In the 

 northern fringe-regions of its distribution it is suffused with Berber culture and 

 Muhamedanism ; in its south-eastern and south by Bantu language and culture, 

 with a varying percentage of European adulteration along the sea coast from just 

 south of the Kiver Gambia down to the Rio du liey and Cameroon. But we have 

 fairly certain tests for the true Negro that are not masked by alien culture and 

 religion. 



They are — (a) the true Negro does not keep slaves in separate villages from 

 their owners ; {b) he leaves sanitary public affairs in the hands of Providence ;■ 

 (e) he has a regular military organisation with a separate war chief and peace 

 chief; (d) among the true Negro the cult of the Law God is far more developed 

 than among the Bantu ; (e) the true Negro does not have a female God as main 

 ruler of mundane affairs as the Bantu does. 



The best region to study the institutions of the true Negro is the region of the 

 Oil Rivers, where he has suffered least from alien adulterations. 



Property in West African culture exists in three kinds — (1) ancestral property 

 of the tribe, that connected with the ofEce of the headmanship, called among the true 

 Negroes the Stool, among the Bantu the Fjort; (2) family property, in which 

 every member of the family has a certain share, to which every member of the 

 family has to contribute, and on which every member has a claim ; (.3) private 

 property, that which is acquired or made by a man or woman by their personal 

 exertion over and above that made by them in co-operation with other members 

 of their family, which is family property, and that gained by gifts and that made in 

 trade by the exertion of superior trading ability. 



Each of these kinds of property is equally sacred in the eye of Native 

 Law. The only kind that can become another kind of property is the private. 

 This constantly merges into family property on the death of its individual owner. 

 Stool property and family property remain of their kind for ever and cannot be 

 alienated, though liable with all three kinds to meet debt. 



Wealth is divisible into — (a) the means by which property can be acquired 

 and developed ; to this division belong wives and slaves ; (h) property in power 

 over market rights, utensils, canoes, arras, furniture, trade goods, &c. It is in the 

 capacity to command these things that the wealth of a true Negro — man or 

 woman — consists, and it is by slaves and by relationship with influential people 

 that he can attain to it. 



Property is guarded by and exists under the law which is in the hearts of the 



