Liberia: Description, History, ProblemsStarr, Frederick
History
Liberia: Description, History, Problems
Starr, Frederick
Liberia
No less difficult than the question of how to adjust the power of the
Government with the power of the chiefs is the problem of how to adjust
Liberian law and practice to native law and practice. According to their
constitution, Liberia must forever be without slavery. Still domestic
slavery flourishes in the interior. We have already indicated our
opinion that it is not a serious matter and that it may quite well be
left to regulate itself with time; still there is bound to be an outcry
on the part of outsiders in this matter. Liberia as a civilized and
Christian nation is legally monogamous; yet both among Mohammedans, Kru
and pagan interior tribes polygamy is common. Is it wise, is it possible
to extend the monogamous law of the Republic to the polygamous natives?
Cannibalism no doubt still exists among certain of the interior tribes;
if so, it will be long before the strong arm of the Government located
upon the coast can reach the practice. Among all these native tribes
there are methods of procedure and ordeals which have their value and
their place. Thus the sassy-wood ordeal is used not only in dealing with
witchcraft, but with a thousand other difficulties and misdemeanors;
personally I should consider it unwise to attempt to do away with such
native methods of control; they work more certainly than the legal
procedure of the civilized government can work. A wise policy will
probably lead to the gradual disappearance of these things with a
general advance in education and with a greater contact with the outside
world. There is always, however, the danger of these native practices
extending their influence upon the Christian populations in the outside
settlements. If the bush negro is polygamous, and the Americo-Liberian
is in constant contact with his polygamy, the legal monogamy of the
Government may become more difficult to maintain; if the sassy-wood
ordeal is repeatedly seen to be effective in the conviction of the truly
guilty, there will be a constant tendency to reproduce it for the
detection and discrimination of criminals among the civilized; if
domestic slavery is tolerable among the neighboring pagans, a feeling of
the harmlessness of some vicious system of apprenticeship may be
developed. These are real dangers, and while it probably is wise to
exercise a deal of tolerance toward native customs, it must be
constantly and carefully watched from this point of view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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