ISO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
respected. He is merely a more dependent member of the com- munity. Thus a " trade boy " slave on the west coast is obliged only to pay a fixed amount to his master, and he may in prosper- ous times acquire a good deal of wealth for himself. He may then purchase other slaves, and when he has become powerful even free men will place themselves under his protection, and he will thus become a " king." Even during the last decade, of the three most powerful chieftains in the Oil River region, two were slaves. The fact that a man may be "king" and slave at the same time is certainly unprecedented in any other civilization, which of itself shows that the African institution of slavery can in no way be classed with that of Rome or of the southern states. We shall revert to this matter later on in our discussion of the slave-trade the dark and terrible side of the institution in Africa.
A lack of social fellow-feeling, an absence of every vestige of patriotism, is shown by the readiness with which negroes allow themselves to be used to fight against their neighbors. The Arab slave-raiders never lack men to fight their battles; for, though their Hamite troops may refuse to attack the bands of another trader, the negroes are always ready for a savage onset, even upon men of very nearly their own flesh and blood. The terrible cus- tom of cannibalism, too, can be explained only by taking into account this absence of a feeling of common humanity. Canni- balistic feasts are usually accompanied by religious frenzy or the fury of war; but this is not always the case. There are thrifty tribes which, in the words of De Cardi, "tap their older people on the head, smoke-dry them, then break them up into small bits, which are rolled into balls and laid away for future use in the family stew." It is remarkable that some tribes, like the Mom- buttu, which are distinctly advanced in industrial civilization, are the most voracious among the cannibals; thus the greediness of the Sandeh has earned them, among their neighbors, the sug- gestive nickname of Niam-niam. In the presence of whites these cannibals are, however, generally anxious to conceal their peculiar practice, and when Schweinfurth visited the realm of King
