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Liberty!: An American History (Seagull

Fifth Edition) (Vol. 2)
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 ★
For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005),
an accomplished artist who lived through most of
the twentieth century and into the ­twenty-​­first

★
 ★ C O N T E N TS ★

List of Maps, Tables, and Figures xii

About the Author xv
Preface xvi
Acknowledgments xxiii

“ W H AT
1 5 ★  I S F R E E D O M ? ” : R E C O N ST R U CT I O N ,
1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 564
The Meaning of Freedom 566 ★ Voices of Freedom From
Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson
(1865), and From A Sharecropping Contract (1866) ... 576 ★ The
Making of Radical Reconstruction 579 ★ Radical Reconstruction
in the South 590 ★ The Overthrow of Reconstruction 594

16 ★ A M E R I CA ’ S G I L D E D AG E , 1 8 7 0 – 1 8 9 0 603

The Second Industrial Revolution 605 ★ The Transformation of

the West 613 ★ Voices of Freedom From Speech of Chief Joseph
of the Nez Percé Indians, in Washington, D.C. (1879), and From Letter
by Saum Song Bo, American Missionary (October 1885) ... 622 ★
Politics in a Gilded Age 629 ★ Freedom in the Gilded Age 634
★ Labor and the Republic 639

FREEDOM’S
1 7 ★  B O U N DA R I E S , AT H O M E A N D A B R OA D ,
1890–1900 649

The Populist Challenge 651 ★ The Segregated South 659 ★

Redrawing the Boundaries 669 ★ Voices of Freedom From
Booker T. Washington, Address at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition (1895),
and From W. E. B. Du Bois, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”
(1903) ... 674 ★ Becoming a World Power 677

viii ★
18 ★ THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1900–1916 691

An Urban Age and a Consumer Society 694 ★ Varieties of

Progressivism 703 ★ Voices of Freedom From Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Women and Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell,
“The Workingman’s Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) ...
710 ★ The Politics of Progressivism 715 ★ The Progressive
Presidents 724

SAFE
1 9 ★  F O R D E M O C R ACY: T H E U N I T E D STAT E S A N D
WO R L D WA R I , 1 9 1 6 – 1 9 2 0 734
An Era of Intervention 737 ★ America and the Great War 742
★ The War at Home 746 ★ Who Is an American? 755 ★
Voices of Freedom From Woodrow Wilson, War Message to Congress
(1917), and From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before Sentencing
under the Espionage Act (1918) ... 756 ★ 1919 767

FROM
2 0 ★  B U S I N E S S C U LT U R E TO G R E AT D E P R E S S I O N :
T H E T W E N T I E S , 1 9 2 0 – 1 9 3 2 779
The Business of America 782 ★ Business and
Government 789 ★ Voices of Freedom From Lucian W. Parrish,
Speech in Congress on Immigration (1921), and From Majority Opinion,
Justice James C. McReynolds, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) ... 792 ★
The Birth of Civil Liberties 795 ★ The Culture Wars 799 ★
The Great Depression 810

21 ★ THE NEW DEAL, 1932–1940 818

The First New Deal 821 ★ The Grassroots Revolt 830 ★ The
Second New Deal 835 ★ A Reckoning with Liberty 838 ★
Voices of Freedom From Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat”
(1934), and From John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to
the Grapes of Wrath (1938) ... 842 ★ The Limits of Change 845 ★
A New Conception of America 852

FIGHTING
2 2 ★  F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : WO R L D WA R I I ,
1 9 4 1 – 1 9 4 5 861
Fighting World War II 864 ★ The Home Front 873
Visions of Postwar Freedom 880 ★ The American

C O N T E N T S ★ ix
 Dilemma 884 ★ Voices of Freedom From League of United Latin
American Citizens, “World War II and Mexican Americans” (1945), and
From Charles H. Wesley, “The Negro Has Always Wanted the Four
Freedoms,” in What the Negro Wants (1944) ... 888 ★ The End of
the War 898

THE
2 3 ★  U N I T E D STAT E S A N D T H E C O L D WA R ,
1 9 4 5 – 1 9 5 3 905
Origins of the Cold War 908 ★ The Cold War and the Idea
of Freedom 917 ★ The Truman Presidency 922 ★ The
Anticommunist Crusade 927 ★ Voices of Freedom From
Joseph R. McCarthy, Speech at Wheeling (1950), and From Margaret
Chase Smith, Speech in the Senate (1950) ... 936

24 ★ A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y, 1 9 5 3 – 1 9 6 0 940

The Golden Age 942 ★ The Eisenhower Era 957 ★ The

Freedom Movement 968 ★ Voices of Freedom From Martin
Luther King Jr., Speech at Montgomery, Alabama (December 5, 1955),
and From The Southern Manifesto (1956) ... 970 ★ The Election of
1960 979

25 ★ THE SIXTIES, 1960–1968 983

The Civil Rights Revolution 985 ★ The Kennedy Years 989

★ Lyndon Johnson’s Presidency 992 ★ The Changing Black
Movement 999 ★ Vietnam and the New Left 1002 ★
Voices of Freedom From Barry Goldwater, Speech at Republican
National Convention (1964), and From Statement of Purpose, National
Organization for Women (1966) ... 1010 ★ The New Movements and
the Rights Revolution 1014 ★ 1968 1024

26 ★ T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N S E RVAT I S M , 1 9 6 9 – 1 9 8 8 1030

President Nixon 1031 ★ Vietnam and Watergate 1039

★ The End of the Golden Age 1043 ★ The Rising Tide of
Conservatism 1052 ★ The Reagan Revolution 1058 ★ Voices
of Freedom From Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle (1971), and
From Richard E. Blakemore, Report on the Sagebrush Rebellion (1979)
... 1060

x ★ CONTENTS
 27 ★ F R O M T R I U M P H TO T R AG E DY, 1 9 8 9 – 2 0 0 1 1071

The ­Post–​­Cold War World 1073 ★ Globalization and Its

Discontents 1080 ★ Culture Wars 1086 ★ Voices of Freedom
From Bill Clinton, Speech on Signing of NAFTA (1993), and From Global
Exchange, Seattle, Declaration for Global Democracy (December 1999)
... 1088 ★ Impeachment and the Election of 2000 1102 ★ The
Attacks of September 11 1105

28 ★ A N E W C E N T U RY A N D N E W C R I S E S 1109

The War on Terror 1110 ★ An American Empire? 1113 ★

The Aftermath of September 11 at Home 1117 ★ The Winds
of Change 1120 ★ Voices of Freedom From Opinion of the
Court in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and From Barack Obama, Eulogy
at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (2015) ... 1130 ★
Obama in Office 1136 ★ The Obama Presidency 1141 ★
Freedom in the T
­ wenty-​­First Century 1150

Suggested Reading ­A-​­1
The Declaration of Independence (1776) ­A-23
The Constitution of the United States (1787) ­A-27
Glossary ­A-47
Credits ­A-81
Index ­A-83

C O N T E N T S ★ xi
★
L I ST O F M A P S , TA B L E S , ★
AND FIGURES
MAPS
C H A P T E R 15 C H A P T E R 19
The Barrow Plantation 570 The Panama Canal Zone 738
Sharecropping in the South, The United States in the Caribbean,
1880 575 1898–1941 740
Reconstruction in the South, Colonial Possessions, 1900 741
1867–1877 599 World War I: The Western Front 745
The Presidential Election of Prohibition, 1915: Counties and
1876 600 States That Banned Liquor before the
Eighteenth Amendment (Ratified
C H A P T E R 16 1919, Repealed 1933) 751
The Railroad Network, 1880 607 Europe in 1914 773
U.S. Steel: A Vertically Integrated Europe in 1919 774
Corporation 610
The Industrial West 619 C H A P T E R 21
Indian Reservations, ca. 1890 626 Columbia River Basin Project,
Political Stalemate, 1876–1892 631 1949 819
The Tennessee Valley Authority 827
C H A P T E R 17 The Dust Bowl, 1935–1940 828
Populist Strength, 1892 655
The Presidential Election of 1896 659 C H A P T E R 22

The ­Spanish-​­American War: The World War II in the Pacific,

Pacific 682 1941–1945 870
The ­Spanish-​­American War: The World War II in Europe,
Caribbean 682 1942–1945 872
American Empire, 1898 685 Wartime Army and Navy Bases and
Airfields 875
­Japanese-​­American Internment,
C H A P T E R 18
1942–1945 891
Socialist Towns and Cities,
1900–1920 705

xii ★
C H A P T E R 23 C H A P T E R 27
Cold War Europe, 1956 913 Eastern Europe after the Cold
The Korean War, 1950–1953 915 War 1075
Immigrant Populations in Cities and
States, 1900 and 2010 1090
CHAPTER 24
The Interstate Highway Origin of Largest Immigrant
System 948 Populations by State, 1910 and
2013 1093
The Presidential Election of
1960 980 The Presidential Election of
2000 1104
C H A P T E R 25
The Vietnam War, 1964–1975 1007 C H A P T E R 28
U.S. Presence in the Middle East,
1967–2015 1115
C H A P T E R 26
Center of Population, Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza
1790–2010 1034 Strip 1117
The Presidential Election of Percentage of Population Below the
1980 1058 Poverty Line, 2014 1141
The United States in the The Presidential Election of
Caribbean and Central America, 2012 1150
1954–2004 1067

MA PS ★ xiii
TA B L E S A N D F I G U R E S
C H A P T E R 16 C H A P T E R 25
Table 16.1 Indicators of Economic Figure 25.1 Percentage of Population
Change, 1870–1920 606 below Poverty Level, by Race,
1959–1969 998
C H A P T E R 17
Table 17.1 States with over 200 C H A P T E R 26
Lynchings, 1889–1918 668 Table 26.1 The Misery Index,
1970–1980 1045
C H A P T E R 18 Figure 26.1 Real Average Weekly
Table 18.1 Immigrants and Wages, 1955–1990 1046
Their Children as Percentage of
Population, Ten Major Cities, C H A P T E R 27
1920 698 Table 27.1 Immigration to the United
Table 18.2 Percentage of Women States, 1961–2010 1091
Workers in Various Occupations, Figure 27.1 Unemployment Rate by
1900–1920 700 Sex and Race, 1954–2000 1095
Figure 27.2 Women in the Paid
C H A P T E R 19 Workforce, 1940–2010 1101
Table 19.1 The Great
Migration 765
C H A P T E R 28
Figure 28.1 Portrait of a
C H A P T E R 20 Recession 1132
Table 20.1 Selected Annual
Immigration Quotas under the 1924
Immigration Act 804

C H A P T E R 21
Figure 21.1 Unemployment,
1925–1945 845

xiv ★ TABLES A N D F I G UR ES
 ★
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ★

E R I C F ONE R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia Univer-

sity, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he
focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and n ­ ineteenth-​­century
America. Professor Foner’s publications include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men:
The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolu-
tionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction:
America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and
Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Recon-
struction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize,
and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of Amer-
ican Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received
the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University.
His most recent books are The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and A ­ merican Slav-
ery, winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for His-
tory, and Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad,
winner of the New York Historical Society Book Prize.

★ xv
 ★
PREFACE ★

Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the

earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the
first decades of the ­twenty-​­first century. It offers students a clear, concise narra-
tive whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first four editions of Give Me
Liberty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of t­ wo-​­and
­four-​­year colleges and universities throughout the country. The c­ omments I
have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give
Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also
included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreci-
ate. These have ranged from corrections of typographical and factual errors
to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive treatment. In mak-
ing revisions for this Fifth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions into
account. I have also incorporated the findings and insights of new scholarship
that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Fifth Edition reflect my desire to
integrate the history of the American West and especially the regions known
as borderlands more fully into the narrative. In recent years these aspects of
American history have been thriving areas of research and scholarship. Of
course earlier editions of Give Me Liberty! have discussed these subjects, but
in this edition their treatment has been deepened and expanded. I have also
added notable works in these areas to many chapter bibliographies and lists of
websites.
The definition of the West has changed enormously in the course of Amer-
ican history. In the colonial period, the area beyond the ­Appalachians—​
present-​­
­ day Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Pennsylvania and New
York—​­constituted the West. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the
term referred to Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, and Mississippi. After the Civil
War, the West came to mean the area beyond the Mississippi River. Today, it
is sometimes used to refer mainly to the Pacific coast. But whatever its geo-
graphic locale, the West has been as much an idea as a ­place—​­an area beyond
the frontier of settlement that promised newcomers new kinds of freedom,
sometimes at the expense of the freedom of others, such as native inhabitants
and migrant laborers. In this edition we follow Americans as they constructed
their Wests, and debated the kinds of freedom they would enjoy there.

xvi ★
 Borderlands is a more complex idea that has influenced much recent histor-
ical scholarship. Borders are lines dividing one country, region, or state from
another. Crossing them often means becoming subject to different laws and
customs, and enjoying different degrees of freedom. Borderlands are regions
that exist on both sides of borders. They are fluid areas where people of differ-
ent cultural and social backgrounds converge. At various points in American
history, shifting borders have opened new opportunities and closed off others
in the borderlands. Families living for decades or centuries in a region have
suddenly found themselves divided by a newly created border but still living
in a borderland that transcends the new division. This happened to Mexicans
in ­modern-​­day California, Arizona, and New Mexico, for example, in 1848,
when the treaty ending the ­Mexican-​­American War transferred the land that
would become those states from Mexico to the United States.
Borderlands exist within the United States as well as at the boundaries
with other countries. For example, in the period before the Civil War, the
region straddling the Ohio River contained cultural commonalities that in
some ways overrode the division there between free and slave states. The
borderlands idea also challenges simple accounts of national development in
which empires and colonies pave the way for territorial expansion and a future
transcontinental nation. It enables us, for example, to move beyond the catego-
ries of conquest and subjugation in understanding how Native Americans and
Europeans interacted over the early centuries of contact. This approach also
provides a way of understanding how the people of Mexico and the United
States interact today in the borderland region of the American Southwest,
where many families have members on both sides of the boundary between
the two countries.
Small changes relating to these themes may be found throughout the
book. The major additions seeking to illuminate the history of the West and of
borderlands are as follows:
Chapter 1 now introduces the idea of borderlands with a discussion of
the areas where European empires and Indian groups interacted and where
authority was fluid and fragile. Chapter 4 contains expanded treatment of
the part of the Spanish empire now comprising the borderlands United States
(Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida) and how Spain endea-
vored, with limited success, to consolidate its authority in these regions. In
Chapter 6, a new subsection, “The American Revolution as a Borderlands Con-
flict,” examines the impact on both Americans and Canadians of the creation,
because of American independence, of a new national boundary separating
what once had been two parts of the British empire. Chapter 8 continues this
theme with a discussion of the borderlands aspects of the War of 1812. Chap-
ter 9 discusses how a common culture came into being along the Ohio River

PRE FA C E ★ xvii
in the early nineteenth century despite the existence of slavery on one side
and free labor on the other. Chapter 13 expands the treatment of Texan inde-
pendence from Mexico by discussing its impact on both Anglo and Mexican
residents of this borderland region. Chapter 14 contains a new examination of
the Civil War in the American West.
In Chapter 16, I have expanded the section on the industrial west with new
discussions of logging and mining, and added a new subsection on the dis-
semination of a mythical image of the Wild West in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Chapter 17 contains an expanded discussion of Chinese immigrants in
the West and the battle over exclusion and citizenship, a debate that centered
on what kind of population should be allowed to inhabit the West and enjoy
the opportunities the region offered. Chapter 18 examines Progressivism,
countering conventional narratives that emphasize the origins of Progressive
political reforms in eastern cities by relating how many, from woman suffrage
to the initiative, referendum, and recall, emerged in Oregon, California, and
other western states. Chapter 20 expands the treatment of western agriculture
in the 1920s by highlighting the acceleration of agricultural mechanization
in the region and the agricultural depression that preceded the general eco-
nomic collapse of 1929 and after. In Chapter 22 we see the new employment
opportunities for M ­ exican-​­American women in the war production factories
that opened in the West. In Chapter 26, there is a new subsection on con-
servatism in the West and the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s and 1980s.
Chapter 27 returns to the borderlands theme by discussing the consequences
of the creation, in the 1990s, of a free trade zone connecting the two sides of
the M
­ exican-​­A merican border. And Chapters 27 and 28 now include expanded
discussions of the southwestern borderland as a site of an acrimonious battle
over ­immigration—​­legal and ­undocumented—​­involving the federal and
state governments, private vigilantes, and continuing waves of people trying
to cross into the United States. The contested borderland now extends many
miles into the United States north of the boundary between the two nations,
and southward well into Mexico and even Central America.
I have also added a number of new selections to Voices of Freedom, the
paired excerpts from primary documents in each chapter. Some of the new
documents reflect the stronger emphasis on the West and borderlands; oth-
ers seek to sharpen the juxtaposition of divergent concepts of freedom at par-
ticular moments in American history. And this edition contains many new
­images—​­paintings, broadsides, photographs, and ­others—​­related to these
themes, brought to life in a vibrant, ­f ull-​­color design.

Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one
hand, they tend to be remarkably ­future-​­oriented, dismissing events of even

xviii ★ PREFAC E
the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a burden
to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many
other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal
or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans
devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit histori-
cal museums and National Park Service historical sites in ­ever-​­increasing num-
bers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with all degrees of interest
that history does matter to them.
The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does
not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great
force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, [that] history is
literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of history
is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United
States, whose government is designed to rest on the consent of informed cit-
izens, knowledge of the past is e­ ssential—​­not only for those of us whose pro-
fession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be
sure, does not offer simple lessons or immediate answers to current questions.
Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the ten-
sions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us
what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge,
we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which
have ­not—​­essential information for the formulation of future public policy.
History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the
past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that
cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is constantly changing.
There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to
meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among themselves on basic ques-
tions like the causes of the Civil War or the reasons for the Great Depression.
Precisely because each generation asks different questions of the past, each
generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed
a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of
groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, A ­ frican-​­Americans,
working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from his-
torians. New ­subfields—​­social history, cultural history, and family history
among ­them—​­have taken their place alongside traditional political and dip-
lomatic history.
Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to pres-
ent an u ­ p-​­to-​­date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due
attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way
neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common.
It devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and economic history,

PRE FA C E ★ xix
and to their interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and
prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary people who make up
American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of characters, from Thomas
Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to
former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after
the Civil War.
Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed
knowledge of American history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the
complexities of the subject without overwhelming them with excessive
detail. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape
to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the Amer-
ican experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of
American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personal-
ities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory
survey course.
Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, have long been central
to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the
nineteenth century and especially the era of the Civil War and Reconstruc-
tion (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation
apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the for-
mer slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that
attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of different
groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of making sense
of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that
the same is true for American history as a whole.
No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individ-
uals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our political language,
­f reedom—​­or liberty, with which it is almost always used i­ nterchangeably—​­is
deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of everyday
life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inal-
ienable rights; the Constitution announces its purpose as securing liberty’s
blessings. The United States fought the Civil War to bring about a new birth of
freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the
Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles,
liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burn-
ing draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the
right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red, or yellow,” wrote the
educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of
the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’”
The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be misleading.
Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging d ­ efinition.

xx ★ PREFACE
Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disa-
greements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revolution,
the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea
of f­reedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy
greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in
congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket
lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.
Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a reality
and a mythic ­ideal—​­a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery
for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the
heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For
others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great
sacrifice.
Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have
been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social
conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of freedom that
determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed
over time.
In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was primar-
ily a set of rights enjoyed in public a­ ctivity—​­the right of a community to be
governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individu-
als to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the
nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identified with each person’s
opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twenti-
eth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps
the dominant understanding of freedom. This development was encouraged
by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace (a development that
receives considerable attention in Give Me Liberty!), which offered Americans
an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires.
During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom,
the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from
attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and
more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the mean-
ing of freedom.
A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social conditions
necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions
and relationships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and
for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic
autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the independent small p ­ roducer—​
­the farmer, skilled craftsman, or ­shopkeeper—​­who did not have to depend on
another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new

PRE FA C E ★ xxi
conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the
Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate d ­ ecision-​­making) in the
Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently,
the ability to enjoy mass consumption within a market economy.
The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have
inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although
founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the
United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of free-
dom. N ­ on-​­whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white
Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Americans
has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, and
class and in other ways.
Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has frequently
been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nineteenth century,
expanding freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of f­reedom—​
­slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of ­women—​­for others.
By the same token, it has been through battles at the ­boundaries—​­the efforts
of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater f­ reedom—​­that the
meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept
extended into new realms.
Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by
the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a uni-
versal birthright owes much both to abolitionists who sought to extend the
blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full
recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law
without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom,
arose from the antislavery struggle and the Civil War and was reinvigorated
by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom
movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and ­birth-​
­control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make
civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans.
Although concentrating on events within the United States, Give Me Lib-
erty! also situates American history in the context of developments in other
parts of the world. Many of the forces that shaped American history, including
the international migration of peoples, the development of slavery, the spread
of democracy, and the expansion of capitalism, were worldwide processes not
confined to the United States. Today, American ideas, culture, and economic
and military power exert unprecedented influence throughout the world. But
beginning with the earliest days of settlement, when European empires com-
peted to colonize North America and enrich themselves from its trade, Ameri-
can history cannot be understood in isolation from its global setting.

xxii ★ PREFACE
 Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At var-
ious times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the powerless and
as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our culture together
and exposes the contradictions between what America claims to be and what
it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual pro-
gress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Went-
worth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.”
Though freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened,
for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after
the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was
said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
In the early ­twenty-​­first century, freedom continues to play a central role
in American political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals
and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who
seek to secure American freedom at home and export it abroad. I hope that
Give Me Liberty! will offer beginning students a clear account of the course of
American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as
varied, contentious, and e­ ver-​­changing as America itself.

A C K N OW L E D G M E N TS
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that
every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is
especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over
more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable historians on
whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list
at the end of the book offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of histor-
ical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically,
however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who generously read portions
of this work and ­offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions:

Joel Benson, Northwest Missouri State University

Lori Bramson, Clark College
Tonia Compton, Columbia College
Adam Costanzo, Texas A&M University
Carl Creasman Jr., Valencia College
Blake Ellis, Lone Star ­College–​­CyFair
Carla Falkner, Northeast Mississippi Community College
Van Forsyth, Clark College

A C KN O W L E D G ME N T S ★ xxiii
Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis
Michael Harkins, Harper College
Sandra Harvey, Lone Star ­College–​­CyFair
Robert Hines, Palo Alto College
Traci Hodgson, Chemeketa Community College
Tamora Hoskisson, Salt Lake Community College
William Jackson, Salt Lake Community College
Alfred H. Jones, State College of Florida
David Kiracofe, Tidewater Community College
Brad Lookingbill, Columbia College
Jennifer Macias, Salt Lake Community College
Thomas Massey, Cape Fear Community College
Derek Maxfield, Genesee Community College
Marianne McKnight, Salt Lake Community College
Jonson Miller, Drexel University
Ted Moore, Salt Lake Community College
Robert Pierce, Foothills College
Ernst Pinjing, Minot State University
Harvey N. Plaunt, El Paso Community College
Steve Porter, University of Cincinnati
John Putman, San Diego State University
R. Lynn Rainard, Tidewater Community College
Nicole Ribianszky, Georgia Gwinnett College
Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana U ­ niversity—​­Purdue University Indianapolis
John Shaw, Portland Community College
Danielle Swiontek, Santa Barbara Community College
Richard Trimble, Ocean County College
Alan Vangroll, Central Texas College
Eddie Weller, San Jacinto College
Andrew Wiese, San Diego State University
Matthew Zembo, Hudson Valley Community College

I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University

Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American his-
tory; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for
improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of
the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the
history of the environment.
I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia University’s
Department of History who helped with this project. For this edition, Michael

xxiv ★ ACKNOW LED G M EN TS

“Mookie” Kidackel offered invaluable assistance in gathering ­material related
to borderlands and Western history. For previous editions, Theresa Ventura
assisted in locating material for new sections placing American history in a
global context, April Holm did the same for new coverage of the history of
American religion and debates over religious freedom, James Delbourgo con-
ducted research for the chapters on the colonial era, and Beverly Gage did the
same for the twentieth century. In addition, Daniel Freund provided a­ ll-​­around
research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also
want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brink­ley for offer-
ing advice and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. I am also
grateful to students who, while using the textbook, pointed out to me errors or
omissions that I have corrected in this edition: Jordan Farr, Chris Jendry, Rafi
Metz, Samuel ­Phillips-​­Cooper, Richard Sereyko, and David Whittle.
Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History
Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources
for the study of American history. Thanks also to the instructors who helped
build our robust digital resource and ancillary package. The new InQuizitive
for History was developed by Tonia M. Compton (Columbia College), Matt
Zembo (Hudson Valley Community College), Jodie Steeley (Merced Commu-
nity College District), Bill Polasky (Stillman Valley High School), and Ken
Adler (Spring Valley High School). Our new History Skills Tutorials were
created by Geri Hastings. The Coursepack was thoroughly updated by Beth
Hunter (University of Alabama at Birmingham). Allison Faber (Texas A&M
University) and Ben Williams (Texas A&M University) revised the Lecture
PowerPoint slides. And our Test Bank and Instructor’s Manual were revised to
include new questions authored by Robert O’Brien (Lone Star C ­ ollege–​­CyFair
and Tamora M. Hoskisson (Salt Lake Community College).
At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal ­editor—​­patient,
encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank
Steve’s editorial assistants, Travis Carr and Kelly Rafey, and associate edi-
tor, Scott Sugarman, for their indispensable and always cheerful help on all
aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Bob Byrne for their careful copy­
editing and proofreading work; Stephanie Romeo and Fay Torresyap for their
resourceful attention to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and
­Chin-​­Yee Lai for their refinements of the book design; Leah Clark, Tiani Ken-
nedy, and Debra M ­ orton-​­Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fifth Edi-
tion; Jennifer Barnhardt for keeping the many threads of the project aligned
and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book
production; Laura Wilk for orchestrating the rich media package that accom-
panies the textbook; Jessica ­Brannon-​­Wranowsky for the terrific new web

AC KN O W L E D G ME N T S ★ xxv
quizzes and outlines; Sarah England Bartley, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright
for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping
establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and
Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, ­employee-​­owned
publisher dedicated to excellence in its work.
Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies
alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales
and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say
that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from
the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For
this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations pre-
sented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length
can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at
[email protected].
My greatest debt, as always, is to my ­family—​­my wife, Lynn Garafola,
for her g­ ood-​­natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that con-
sumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria,
who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was written and
offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and
grammar.

Eric Foner
New York City
July 2016

xxvi ★ ACKNOW LED G M EN TS

★ G I V E M E L I B E RT Y ! D I G I TA L ★
R E S O U R C E S F O R ST U D E N TS
A N D I N ST R U CTO R S
W. W. Norton offers a robust digital package to support teaching and learning
with Give Me Liberty! These resources are designed to make students more effec-
tive textbook readers, while at the same time developing their critical thinking
and history skills.

RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS

All resources are available through digital.wwnorton.com/givemeliberty5sv2
with the access card at the front of this text.

N O RTO N I N Q U I Z I T I V E F O R H I STO RY
Norton InQuizitive for history is an adaptive quizzing tool that improves stu-
dents’ understanding of the themes and objectives from each chapter, while
honing their ­critical-​­analysis skills with primary source, image, and map anal-
ysis questions. Students receive personalized quiz questions with detailed,
guiding feedback on the topics in which they need the most help, while the
engaging, gamelike elements motivate them as they learn.
H I STO RY S K I L LS T U TO R I A LS
The History Skills Tutorials feature three ­modules—​­Images, Documents, and
­Maps—​­to support students’ development of the key skills needed for the his-
tory course. These tutorials feature videos of Eric Foner modeling the analysis
process, followed by interactive questions that will challenge students to apply
what they have learned.

ST U D E N T S I T E
The free and e­ asy-​­to-​­use Student Site offers additional resources for students
to use outside of class. Resources include interactive iMaps from each chapter,
author videos, and a comprehensive Online Reader with a collection of histori-
cal longer works, primary sources,
novellas, and biographies.

EBOOK
Free and included with new cop-
ies of the text, the Norton Ebook
Reader provides an enhanced
reading experience that works on
all computers and mobile devices.
Features include intuitive highlighting, ­note-​­taking, and bookmarking as well
as ­pop-​­up definitions and enlargeable maps and art. Direct links to InQuizitive
also appear in each chapter. Instructors can focus student reading by sharing
notes with their classes, including embedded images and video. Reports on
student and ­class-​­wide access and time on task allow instructors to monitor
­student reading and engagement.
RESOURCES FOR INSTRUCTORS
All resources are available through www.wwnorton.com/instructors.

N O RTO N C O U R S E PAC KS
Easily add ­high-​­quality digital media to your online, hybrid, or lecture ­course—​
­all at no cost to students. Norton’s Coursepacks work within your existing
Learning Management System and are ready to use and easy to customize. The
coursepack offers a diverse collection of assignable and assessable resources:
Primary Source Exercises, Guided Reading Exercises, Review Quizzes, U.S.
History Tours powered by Google Earth, Flashcards, Map Exercises, and all
of the resources from the Student Site.

N O RTO N A M E R I CA N H I STO RY D I G I TA L A R C H I V E
The Digital Archive offers roughly 2,000 additional primary source images,
audio, and video files spanning American history that can be used in assign-
ments and lecture presentations.

T E ST BA N K
The Test Bank is authored by Rob-
ert O’Brien, Lone Star ­ College–​
­CyFair, and Tamora M. Hoskisson,
Salt Lake City Community Col-
lege, and contains more than
4,000 ­multiple-​­choice, true/false,
­short-​­answer, and essay questions.
I N ST R U CTO R ’ S M A N UA L
The Instructor’s Manual contains detailed Chapter Summaries, Chapter Out-
lines, Suggested Discussion Questions, and Supplemental Web, Visual, and
Print Resources.

L E CT U R E A N D A RT P OW E R P O I N T S L I D E S
The Lecture PowerPoint sets authored by Allison Faber, Texas A&M University,
and Ben Williams, Texas A&M University, combine chapter review, art, and maps.
 GIVE M E
LIBERTY!
★ AN AMERICAN HISTORY ★

S E AGU L L F I F T H E DI T ION

Volume 2: From 1865

 ★ CHAPTER 15 ★

“ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ”:
RECONSTRUCTION
1865–1877

FOCUS QUESTIONS
• What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the
postwar South?

• What were the sources, goals, and competing visions for Reconstruction?

• What were the social and political effects of Radical Reconstruction in the
South?

• What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment
of Reconstruction?

O
n the evening of January 12, 1865, less than a month after Union forces
captured Savannah, Georgia, twenty leaders of the city’s black com-
munity gathered for a discussion with General William T. Sherman
and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Mostly Baptist and Methodist minis-
ters, the group included several men who within a few years would assume
prominent positions during the era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil
War. Ulysses S. Houston, pastor of the city’s Third African Baptist Church, and
James Porter, an episcopal religious leader who had operated a secret school for
black children before the war, in a few years would win election to the Georgia

564 ★
legislature. James D. Lynch, who had been
born free in Baltimore and educated in New
Hampshire, went on to serve as secretary of
• CHRONOLOGY •
state of Mississippi. 1865 Special Field Order 15
The conversation revealed that the black
Freedmen’s Bureau
leaders brought out of slavery a clear defini- ­established
tion of freedom. Asked what he understood Lincoln assassinated;
by slavery, Garrison Frazier, a Baptist minister Andrew Johnson becomes
president
chosen as the group’s spokesman, responded
that it meant one person’s “receiving by irre- 1865– Presidential Reconstruction
1867 Black Codes
sistible power the work of another man, and
1866 Civil Rights Bill
not by his consent.” Freedom he defined as
“placing us where we could reap the fruit of Ku Klux Klan established

our own labor, and take care of ourselves.” The 1867 Reconstruction Act of 1867
way to accomplish this was “to have land, and Tenure of Office Act
turn it and till it by our own labor.” Frazier in- 1867– Radical Reconstruction
sisted that blacks possessed “sufficient intelli- 1877 of 1867
gence” to maintain themselves in freedom 1868 Impeachment and trial of
President Johnson
and enjoy the equal protection of the laws.
Sherman’s meeting with the black leaders Fourteenth Amendment
ratified
foreshadowed some of the radical changes
1869 Inauguration of
that would take place during the era known
Ulysses S. Grant
as Reconstruction (meaning, literally, the re-
Women’s rights
building of the shattered nation). In the years ­organization splits into
following the Civil War, former slaves and two groups
their white allies, North and South, would 1870 Hiram Revels, first
seek to redefine the meaning and bound- black U.S. senator

aries of American freedom. Previously an Fifteenth Amendment

­ratified
entitlement of whites, freedom would be
expanded to include black Americans. The 1870– Enforcement Acts
1871
laws and Constitution would be rewritten
1872 Liberal Republicans
to guarantee A ­ frican-​­Americans, for the first ­established
time in the nation’s history, recognition as
1873 Colfax Massacre
citizens and equality before the law. Black
Slaughterhouse Cases
men would be granted the right to vote,
National economic
ushering in a ­period of interracial democ-
­depression begins
racy throughout the South. Black schools,
1876 United States v. Cruikshank
churches, and other institutions would flour-
1877 Bargain of 1877
ish, l­aying the foundation for the modern
­African-​­American community. Many of the •        •
advances of Reconstruction would prove

“W H AT I S FREEDO M ? ”: R E C O N S T R U C T I O N ★ 565
temporary, swept away during a campaign of violence in the South and the
North’s retreat from the ideal of equality. But Reconstruction laid the founda-
tion for future struggles to extend freedom to all Americans.
All this, however, lay in the future in January 1865. Four days after the meet-
ing, Sherman responded to the black delegation by issuing Special Field Order
15. This set aside the Sea Islands and a large area along the South Carolina and
Georgia coasts for the settlement of black families on f­ orty-​­acre plots of land.
He also offered them b ­ roken-​­down mules that the army could no longer use.
In Sherman’s order lay the origins of the phrase “forty acres and a mule,” that
would reverberate across the South in the next few years. By June, some 40,000
freed slaves had been settled on “Sherman land.” Among the emancipated
slaves, Sherman’s order raised hopes that the end of slavery would be accompa-
nied by the economic independence that they, like other Americans, believed
essential to genuine freedom.

THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

With the end of the Civil War, declared an Illinois congressman in 1865, the
United States was a “new nation,” for the first time “wholly free.” The destruc-
tion of slavery, however, made the definition of freedom the central question on
the nation’s agenda. “What is freedom?” asked Congressman James A. Garfield
in 1865. “Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? If this is all, then freedom
is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion.” Did freedom mean simply the absence
of slavery, or did it imply other rights for the former slaves, and if so, which
ones: equal civil rights, the vote, ownership of property? During Reconstruc-
tion, freedom became a terrain of conflict, its substance open to different, often
contradictory interpretations. Out of the conflict over the meaning of freedom
arose new kinds of relations between black and white southerners, and a new
definition of the rights of all Americans.

Blacks and the Meaning of Freedom

­ frican-​­Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experiences
A
as slaves and their observation of the free society around them. To begin with,
freedom meant escaping the numerous injustices of s­ lavery—​­punishment by
the lash, the separation of families, denial of access to education, the sexual
exploitation of black women by their ­owners—​­and sharing in the rights and
opportunities of American citizens. “If I cannot do like a white man,” Henry
Adams, an emancipated slave in Louisiana, told his former master in 1865, “I
am not free.”

566 ★ CHAPTER 15 “W hat I s Fr eedom ? ”: Re c o n s t r u c t i o n

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN