_ PROVERBS ABOUT WOMEN
The last two tales I have cited were gathered among the Bornu people in the Soudan. In Burton's _Wit and Wisdom from West Africa_ we find a few proverbs about women that are current in the same region.
"If a woman speaks two words, take one and leave
the other." "Whatever be thy intimacy, never give
thy heart to a woman." "If thou givest thy heart
to a woman, she will kill thee." "If a man tells
his secrets to his wife, she will bring him
into the way of Satan." "A woman never brings a
man into the right way." "Men who listen to what
women say, are counted as women."
It is significant that in the four hundred and fifty-five pages of Burton's book, which includes over four hundred proverbs and tales, there are only half a dozen brief references to women, and those are sneers.
AFRICAN AMAZONS
As I have had occasion to remark before, African women lack the finer feminine qualities, both bodily and mental, wherefore even if an African man were able to feel sentimental love he could not find an object to bestow it on. An incident related by Du Chaillu (_Ashango Land_, 187) illustrates the martial side of African femininity. A married man named Mayolo had called another man's wife toward him. His own wife, hearing of this, got jealous, told him the other must be his sweetheart, and rushed out to seek her rival. A battle ensued:
"Women's fights in this country always begin by their
throwing off their _dengui_--that is, stripping
themselves entirely naked. The challenger having thus
denuded herself, her enemy showed pluck and answered
the challenge by promptly doing the same; so that the
two elegant figures immediately went at it literally
tooth and nail, for they fought like cats, and between
the rounds reviled each other in language the most
filthy that could possibly be uttered. Mayolo being
asleep in his house, and no one seeming ready to
interfere, I went myself and separated the two furies."
In Dahomey, as everybody knows, the bellicose possibilities of the African woman have been utilized in forming bands of Amazons which are described as "the flower of the army." They are made up of female captives and other women, wear special uniforms, and in battle are credited with even greater ferocity than the men. These women are Amazons not of their own accord but by order of the king. But in other parts of Africa there is reason to believe that bands of self-constituted female warriors have existed at various times. Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the time of Julius Caesar, says that on the western coast of Libya (Africa) there used to live a people governed by women, who carried on wars and the government, the men being obliged to do domestic work and take care of the children. In our time Livingstone found in the villages of the Bechuanas and Banyas that men were often badly treated by the women, and the eminent German anthropologist Bastian says(_S.S._, 178) that in "the Soudan the power of the women banded together for mutual protection is so great that men are often put under ban and obliged to emigrate." Mungo Park described the curious bugaboo(_mumbo-jumbo_)by means of which the Mandingo negroes used to keep their rebellious women in subjection. According to Bastian, associations for keeping women in subjection are common among men along the whole African West Coast. The women, too, have their associations, and at their meetings compare notes on the meanness and cruelty of their husbands. Now it is easy to conceive that among tribes where many of the men have been killed off in wars the women, being in a great majority, may, for a time at least, turn the tables on the men, assume their weapons and make them realize how it feels to be the "inferior sex." For this reason Bastian sees no occasion to share the modern disposition to regard all the Amazon legends as myths. _