Mary Slessor: Letters 1–10

Dear Mr Partridge

Here I am already meddling with your affairs. Twenty free men & chiefs came here on Sunday from Ibiaku Itam. I met them, with the Itu Chief yesterday, & gave a hearing, & sympathy, & etc, to their story, & as the result, I found that the nearest way to help them was to send them to you, & ask you to take them under your wing & give them any guidance & help you think best.

Their story is briefly this. From five years or so ago, Calabar & Creek Town Section, sent & asked them to make market with them. After long parleying, in which all the work & clearing & etc. was to be done by the Ibibios several of them agreed, & opened trade. Very many feared Calabar, & were not willing to go with their produce, but some did – notably the man Udo Nsook. Things went on with palavers [Note 1] manifold, till the Aro Expedition set out, when Calabar called them to meet with the White Man – Major Sampson I’m sure, for he left my house in Creek Town then, to go to them. – Palavers which went the length of killing happened. Calabar were the Judges & the Rulers in every thing. However, all these were passed by & finished, & they are forgotten & no mention is to be made of them any more. But another section of Ibibio (I think across the Creek from them) from Ibiaku [Nduan?], made friends with Calabar, & told tales about them to the White Man, & they would not let them tell the White Man their story, with the result that the White Man fired their town & killed a number of people, notably their Head Chief, & took his body, & buried it instead of giving it to them for burial rites, so that they have no strength any more now without their head, to cope with any enemy. But this is also past, & they made no palaver, nor do they wish to hold any resentment in their hearts toward any one for any thing past. What brought them here, is that the other day, when the White Man came back, they too said “let bygones be bygones,” but they proposed *that* *they* *& those Ibibios* *who made friends with Calabar*, *& told lies*, *or tales on them,* *so* *that* *at* *their* *word* *their* *chief* *got* *his* *death*, **are** **to** **be** **in** **one** **Court**, & that, **till** the White Man, whom they promised should come & *live* at Ikpa or in their district came, they were at the mercy of those their enemies, & their enemies’ friends – the Calabar.

So, in order to meet their case, *if* *it* *commend itself to you*, could you not meet with Mr Maxwell & in order & gain the confidence & obedience of those people, & to make them our allies instead of our enemies, try to put it thus. If you cannot have separate Courts –––– of course that cd. only be till the arrival of the White Man ––– *give* *the* *two* *sections* **strong** *Mbiam* [Note 2], “that if the one side, went with deceit, & told lies on the other, to the White Man, or to Calabar Judges, let Mbiam treat with them,” etc. etc. “If one side or the other knew, or sent, or in any way sought the hurt of the other, or revenge for past palavers,” etc. etc.“let Mbiam judge between them” etc.etc. And then warn Ete Eka, & Makara Obon, or any other Efik Judge, that no favour is to be shown to either side because of past doings. That would let them know that a surveillance will be kept on their dealings. What do you think? It is the Conciliation of the peoples in a right & just way, which is my *only* motive, as you know, & by a patient hearing you will *win* them. After you hear, be as just as you like, & as severe, only *shew* *them* *the* *reason* *patiently*, & you have got the shortest cut to your destination.

I have heard from Mr Maxwell surely enough & strongly enough, that, that very Ibiaku Itam is the place he should choose in Ibibio for my farming project. If I could help towards a consolidation of British rule by living & mixing among them, I should like to try, but I don’t see the way yet, & the boats go there from the Calabar side, not from this. Hence I may not get there till I have been at Aro Chuku. How I should like to go with these men to see you, & see your people & Country, but I darent, I don’t feel fit for the long walk, & I have an engagement up the Creek on Thursday first.

I trust you are fit & liking your work. All success be with you in your undertaking.

With kindest regards I am

Yours sincerely

Mary M. Slessor

These men say they never had palaver with the White Man. They gave up their guns & they will hail the White Man’s coming to them, so that they may have peace & safety & justice. It is the Calabar they fear.

MMS

I had no fewer than 4 white visitors yest. in the morning & one in the afternoon. Quite gay Eh?

MMS

Dear Mr Partridge,

Had you only come just now, it would have been fine!! We are just from service & have a good bit of an interval, But from 3.30. to 5. o/c it is the service & Sunday School, & they are all on my hand, so I’m reluctantly obliged to say, will not another hour suit you? If I only were at home, I shd. at once say, Here is my chance, & put an extra bite in the pot, & lay an extra plate, & have the privilege of your company for the evening, but here are 3 infants, & a small crowd in my one shanty, & they are usually most musical in the evening, & we get dinner as best we can. Cant you come before the Service? Or would it be too late for your road after 5.o/c? Or are you to be here over tomorrow?

See if you can keep out those hours of service, & choose someone else.

Have you got my letter of belated thanks? If not, let me thank you now, & offer you my warmest congratulations. Trusting you are well, & with best regards

I am yours sincerely

M. M. Slessor

[on scrap of paper attached to letter by 3 stamp hinges]

Thanks very much.

The wind is on, & the boy must run.

MMS

Dear Mr Partridge

What a fraud you are!! Here is you with a record like this of observation & research; & half the letters of the alphabet running after your name & you speaking as if you were the merest beginner, & the most common place of mortals in the protectorate!! Well, it is better to hear “Friend go up Higher” any day, than to begin to take the lowest room. I don’t know whether to praise most your modesty or your industry. Fancy having a piece of work like this over & above doing a D Cs [Note 1] work! – & in a new District too. You have been so thorough too. It is not slip shod work, & it is so fair, without being fulsome, to every thing & person in the Protectorate. The natives have seldom had an interpreter so absolutely truthful, & free from prejudice.

It is so seldom that one sees anything from this Coast that is not embroidered. Your narrative from beginning to end is faithful to the life, minus the imagination which even the D.Cs love to weave around their yarns, and tell on the spot. I wish you had let your self go a little though in regard to nature, in vegetation etc.. Colouring, and the mystery, or mysticism or whatever you wd. call it, of the forest. I am sure you have had times when the bush with its myriad voices has called you, & you have not felt her monotonous, and tiresome. The spell of it is very strong on me sometimes, then there are the sunrises & sunsets, the face of the river & etc! Waiting you to give them voice for some of us in the next volume, when it will not only be the Govt. official, but the artist working.

Here is a new baby!!!! “Up like a rocket and down like a stick!

Duke Town 12^th April 1905

I had begun at Itu, then destroyed that & began again at Aro Chuku, here is the next installment in Calabar, to which I have come on account of Presbytery. I do not know what I had in mind to say here, but I see I have not yet thanked you for your very kind remembrance of me in sending me a copy of your book. I assure you I feel quite proud as well as grateful for this mark of your esteem, & I trust I shall be able to justify your good opinion of me thus so practically shewn. It is such a pleasure to meet a man who cares for more than the small talk & the inanities of conventional life out here, & specially to find one in sympathy with his surroundings, & I trust you will give me the pleasure of doing any thing I can do at any time to serve you. I seldom get any thing written without interruption, & at night when I cd. do it, there is no accomodation for any thing in our crowded domicile except to lie down & read in bed. However if I can get time to answer – or to *try* to answer your questions in a former letter, I shall do so. Meanwhile with many thanks & great appreciation I am, with all kind regards & congratulations

Yours most sincerely

Mary M. Slessor

Dear Mr Partridge

I ran over for an hour this morning, & have picked up a palaver. A witch doctor from Ibibio, called Nmo, was consulted by a woman here named Iquo as to what was making her sick. The Dr Nmo said, “nothing is doing you, but one woman, a fair woman mbufo – among you is making you ill, she has put medicine in your food.“ I said, “What shd. she do that for? I never had a palaver with her.” He said “If you do not take care, she will kill you”. “So I came home & told my husband, who is husband to us both, & he began on her, & she began on me, & so I was so vexed, I was to eat the Poison Bean [Note 1] & *prove* that I did not ask about the woman. I put my rods [Note 2] down & asked him what ailed me, & if he cd. give me medicine, & he answered “me so”.

So the policeman came with the woman & the bean, & wished to do something, I forbad him saying he wd. have to get a warrant from you to take the witch doctor.

Mr Darby says he has the Bean, & the Woman is his neighbour.

[The following is appended in a different hand]

Dr Sir

The village of Use [Uada?] have not been coming in very well, but have sent John Brown in today.

Yours

C. Darby

Dear Mr Partridge

I am glad to have your note, & shall be here as far as I know, as it is the 2 days Court needs me. I’m sorry for you, for I don’t know how you can do all this tramping.

I gave your boy a note, but while drinking he has let the wind or the stream take it away. He wd. be having a bath too I daresay. So if another book turns up you will know the reason. There was nothing it the note.

With kindest regards

Yours very sincerely

M. M. Slessor

Dear Mr Partridge

It seems like years since I saw you. You came through the town one day, & I ran out to give my Comps. etc, but you had turned the other way down the hill, so I stood rather stupid before the Crowd which were eagerly & noisily discussing the great event. You were no doubt travel stained & tired enough & you have had more bother I hear, & will be tired –E–R still. Well, well! its all in the days work I suppose, & calmer days will soon come.

I have been to Ikot Obon. I have had decided news since I wrote to you, or saw you, that Itu is taken over by our Church, & is to have a proper house & equipment as a medical Station. So I am quite free to turn my thoughts & time to another sphere into which they may enter by & bye. Hence at your recommendation I went to see the new route to Ibibio. Thanks to you the road is in very good order for the wet season, & the Old Man at Ikot Obon gave us a very hearty, indeed, an affectionate welcome. I said very little to them, told them I had long promised to go to Ntit Obio to begin work, but on your advice, & anticipating the developments of Govt. & commerce, I thought your advice was most practical, & meant to take it. They were very pleased, & said they wd. like nothing better than to know Gods words & have “Book” & etc.etc. & they gave me a dash [Note 1]. I told them the Ground & the place altogether was good, & they shewed me their water supply, which is the usual African thing.

So I said, I could not say any thing more definite than that, or tell them any plans till I saw you, as it was at your earnest desire to have them brought out of ignorance & lawlessness that I had thought of them. But when you came, I shd. hear your advice & then wd. come & close with choice of a place.

As to the Ground. [There wasnt a soul at Use. They were either at the farm or the road making,] & before reaching that village there were few places except with deep gulleys on either side, which never presuppose health. The mists rising are most unhealthy, & they breed mosquitoes. But right in the middle of the road to Ikot Obon, 15 minutes from Use, & 15 minutes from Ikot Obon, there is a lovely hill part, which had a good surface of high land, & the slope does not decend to a great depth, then again nearer Use a little, & back from the road on the left going towards the beach, there is a farmed knoll, a fine looking site for a farm school.

These two places impressed themselves on my mind. However there may be many more, or they might not like us to choose. They might want to shew us some places, but of course, all this is subject to what you think, & to where you intend to concentrate the work of your Court. I shd. not like to go far from the Court house, for the children in the wet season, & tho’ I wish to be near enough to keep into close touch with the inhabitants – do not wish a womans School to be right on the highway, or on their fence line. I wd. also try to make this the first of a chain of stations going further in, so that there could by & bye, be rest houses like yours, where a native boy cd stay & carry on small elementary schools. I have promised those Ikot Obon people a small boy, whom they promised to take care of, who shall be a sort of *test* for me, of their appreciation of schools. But I said I shd. see you first, to all of which they willingly agreed. So I shall wait for your coming, or to hear from you where I can meet you in order to developments.

I had a letter from the H.C.s [Note 2] Office asking if I shd. take the Vice Presidentship, & I answered in the affirmative. He also said, “It is proposed to transfer the Court to Ikot Obon,” & the old man tells me the Court house which you spoke to him of at Itu is countermanded so I expect you mean to transfer earlier. Well, all labour here, can be got with greater ease during the wet season, so before it is *too* wet, & the ground soft, I shd begin my building at Ikot Obon, as the Dr will be out in the autumn I expect, to take over Itu. & Mrs Wright only promised to hold Okoyon till next March. & I shd. like to have something definite to shew before then. I trust you are well, & not overtired.

With kindest regards,

I am Yours Sincerely

Mary M. Slessor

Excuse this scrawl. Ive been surrounded by the children at lessons all the time.

MMS

Dear Mr Partridge,

Chief Ekpo Adiaha says that both of these men belong to the Itu Court, therefore they belong to you, & so I ask you to read the enclosed [Note1] which I had written to the D.C. [Note 2] at Oyo, thinking they were residing in his district.

With all excuses for transgressing on your time, I am Yours most faithfully,

M. M. Slessor

My half sister was given by my father to Ndo Ekandem Esi Ifa to wife, say 10 years ago. She was perhaps over a year with him when she developed the “sleeping sickness”. Her husband not being able to get her cured, sent for us to take her home, & we took her & did all we could to get the sickness done, but could not. We took her to Oku, & when they failed, we took her to Ofot. When they failed, we cd. do no more, we took her home & she stayed there until she died of that sickness.

When she died her sister, with whom she died, sent to tell the husband to “Come & bury your wife, she is dead.” He neither came, nor did he send any thing to put in the grave, so her sister made the funeral.

Then when the white man began to come to our country, Ndo Ekandem began to ask me for his marriage dowry. We cried , Oh ! You come for the marriage portion of a dead woman ?? Did we kill her? or did we take her from you her husband? We never heard that a man came to get the gifts he gave his wife & her parents when she died. Had she died in your house, would you not have cried over her, & helped to bury her, even if she had no children for you? & you come for a dead woman’s Marriage Portion!! However as the dowry he gave was 7 goats, we gave the 7 goats, but told him that his gifts of chop [Note 1]or rum or other things ought not to be mentioned, they insulted our dead kinswoman.

Then he came back just now & said we must give him 3 goats more + 400 rods [Note 2], or 620 rods for his other gifts he gave for his wife. We never heard of giving such things for the dead, & we refused, so he took out a summons & the Police came with Ndo Ekandem & gave me the summons, & chained me & took me to the house of Ita Abasi the Interpreter at Oyo, who did not take my case to the Court, told me told me to go home & bring the 620 rods, or 400 rods & 3 goats, & I have got my palaver [Note 3] put into English at Itu, so that you the white man can hear it, & ask if ever any tribe gave the marriage gifts a husband gave to a dead wife. We never took her home. He sent her away, & we did all we knew for her but she never recovered nor did she ever get her intellectual faculties back, so that she cd go to anyone.

Will you hear and consider this our cry to you our Master, Nyun [Note 4] Oh I beg your pardon – and consider this our cry, for we do not hear what you say. I cannot hear your interpreter speak to you.

I am your humble servant

Ndo Ansa

The son of Ndo Ibok, who is a sick man and cannot therefore act for his late daughter.

A true translation.

M. M. Slessor

[The following is written in a different hand]
Ndaw – Ansa of Itamm – Ebokk or Itamm – Okritamm.

C.O.

1.7.5.