It was much easier to kill the authority of the chiefs than it is to give it back to them. Of course, there is one great chief, who wears a medal, and is in constant intercourse with the white men of Bula Matadi. He has plenty of authority—we think too much—and he uses it largely in getting a great crowd of wives and making it difficult for the young men to get any. Being rich, he can pay enormous prices for women, and demand the same. That is one of our grievances at the present time. It is our custom to pay for our wives to their fathers and guardians, and the present high prices and scarcity of brass rods are making it almost impossible for a young man to get a wife, and this leads to other bad palavers. We are very poor—poorer than ever, because the prices of food and other things are higher than before, and yet those who provide the food tax do not receive any more for what they supply. Nowadays our women have no heavy brass anklets, gaiters, or neck ornaments; we are often glad to sell the knives, which were our pride in the old days, for rods with which to settle our palavers. So, although we are better off in some ways since the changes came, we still have our troubles. We are but few and weak, and those who are stronger than we still oppress and tread us down. We are still slaves, and even if our slavery is a little less hard than of old, it is still slavery and still irksome to us and our children. CHAPTER X THINGS WE WANT TO KNOW My story is finished—The past and the present—Why are these things so?—The old days—Now we are white men’s slaves—How long will it last?—We are dying—Our only rest is death—How long, how long? White men of Europe, my story is finished. I have told you about the past, and the two kinds of slavery in which we have been bound; I have told you about the present, our constant work, the difficulty in which our chiefs find themselves placed, our inability to marry because of our poverty, our sickness, the desolation which broods over our villages, the lack of children to take the places of those who die. I think I have told you sufficient to show you that we are in need of pity and help. I want to ask you, white people of Europe, two questions. The first is, “Why are these things so?” Long ago, our fathers tell us and some of us can remember, there were no white people in our land; we lived alone and happily in our own way. True, there were feuds and fights, quarrels and bloodshed, and a kind of slavery, but the country was ours, the forest was ours in which to hunt, the river was ours in which to fish, the fruits of the forest and the produce of our gardens were ours to appease our hunger. We did not know anything about white men, nor did we wish to.