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LIST OF MAPS, TABLES, AND FIGURES
MAPS
CHAPTER 1
The First Americans 4
Native Ways of Life, ca. 1500 8
The Old World on the Eve of American Colonization, ca. 1500 15
Voyages of Discovery 19
Early Spanish Conquests and Explorations in the New World 30
The New World—New France and New Netherland, ca. 1650 39
CHAPTER 2
English Settlement in the Chesapeake, ca. 1640 57
English Settlement in New England, ca. 1640 74
CHAPTER 3
Eastern North America in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries 92
European Settlement and Ethnic Diversity on the Atlantic Coast of North America, 1760 115
CHAPTER 4
Atlantic Trading Routes 136
The Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, 1460–1770 138
European Empires in North America, ca. 1750 166
Eastern North America after the Peace of Paris, 1763 173
CHAPTER 5
The Revolutionary War in New England and the Middle States, 1775–1781 209
The Revolutionary War in the South, 1775–1781 212
North America, 1783 213
CHAPTER 6
Loyalism in the American Revolution 235
CHAPTER 7
Western Lands, 1782–1802 256
Western Ordinances, 1784–1787 259
Ratification of the Constitution 271
Indian Tribes, 1795 283
CHAPTER 8
The Presidential Election of 1800 306
The Louisiana Purchase 312
The War of 1812 321
CHAPTER 9
The Market Revolution: Roads and Canals, 1840 331
The Market Revolution: Western Settlement, 1800–1820 334
The Market Revolution: The Spread of Cotton Cultivation, 1820–1840 337
Major Cities, 1840 340
Cotton Mills, 1820s 341
CHAPTER 10
The Missouri Compromise, 1820 377
The Americas, 1830 380
The Presidential Election of 1828 386
Indian Removals, 1830–1840 395
CHAPTER 11
Slave Population, 1860 409
Size of Slaveholdings, 1860 414
Distribution of Free Blacks, 1860 423
Major Crops of the South, 1860 425
Slave Resistance in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World 433
CHAPTER 12
Utopian Communities, Mid-Nineteenth Century 444
CHAPTER 13
The Trans-Mississippi West, 1830s–1840s 479
The Mexican War, 1846–1848 483
Gold-Rush California 486
Continental Expansion through 1853 489
The Compromise of 1850 492
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854 495
The Railroad Network, 1850s 497
The Presidential Election of 1856 500
The Presidential Election of 1860 510
CHAPTER 14
The Secession of Southern States, 1860–1861 522
The Civil War in the East, 1861–1862 526
The Civil War in the West, 1861–1862 527
The Emancipation Proclamation 532
The Civil War in the Western Territories, 1862–1864 542
The Civil War, 1863 554
The Civil War, Late 1864–1865 559
CHAPTER 15
The Barrow Plantation 569
Sharecropping in the South, 1880 573
Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877 599
The Presidential Election of 1876 600
Tables and Figures
CHAPTER 1
Table 1.1 Estimated Regional Populations: The Americas, ca. 1500 21
Table 1.2 Estimated Regional Populations: The World, ca. 1500 23
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Origins and Status of Migrants to British North American Colonies, 1700–1775 113
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Slave Population as Percentage of Total Population of Original Thirteen Colonies,
1770 143
CHAPTER 7
Table 7.1 Total Population and Black Population of the United States, 1790 284
CHAPTER 9
Table 9.1 Population Growth of Selected Western States, 1810–1850 335
Table 9.2 Total Number of Immigrants by Five-Year Period 344
Figure 9.1 Sources of Immigration, 1850 345
CHAPTER 11
Table 11.1 Growth of the Slave Population 410
Table 11.2 Slaveholding, 1850 411
Table 11.3 Free Black Population, 1860 422
CHAPTER 14
Figure 14.1 Resources for War: Union versus Confederacy 523
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ERIC FONER is DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, where he
earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and
Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publications include
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom
Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy;
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Freedom; and
Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Reconstruction won the
Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has
served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical
Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia
University. His most recent books are The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,
winner of the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes and the Pulitzer Prize for History, Gateway to Freedom:
The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, winner of the New York Historical Society Book
Prize, and The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.
PREFACE
Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the earliest days of
European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decades of the twenty-first century.
It offers students a clear, concise narrative whose central theme is the changing contours of
American freedom.

I am extremely gratified by the response to the first five editions of Give Me Liberty!, which have
been used in survey courses at many hundreds of two- and four-year colleges and universities
throughout the country. The comments I have received from instructors and students encourage me
to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also
included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged
from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that needed more
extensive treatment. In making revisions for this Sixth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions
into account. I have also incorporated the findings and insights of new scholarship that has appeared
since the original edition was written.

The most significant changes in this Sixth Edition involve heightened emphasis on a question as old
as the republic and as current as today’s newspapers: Who is an American?

Difference and commonality are both intrinsic parts of the American experience. Our national creed
emphasizes democracy and freedom as universal rights, but these rights have frequently been limited
to particular groups of people. The United States has long prided itself on being an “asylum for
mankind,” as Thomas Paine put it in Common Sense, his great pamphlet calling for American
independence. Yet we as a people have long been divided by clashing definitions of “Americanness.”
The first Naturalization Act, adopted in 1790, limited the right to become a citizen when immigrating
from abroad to white persons. And the right to vote was long denied to many Americans because of
race, gender, property holding, a criminal record, or other reasons. Today, in debates over
immigration and voting rights, the question of “Who is an American?” continues to roil our society.

In a nation resting, rhetorically at least, on the ideal of equality, the boundaries of inclusion and
exclusion take on extreme significance. The greater the rights of American citizenship, the more
important the definition of belonging. Groups like African-Americans and women, shut out from full
equality from the beginning of the nation’s history, have struggled to gain recognition as full and
equal members of the society. The definition of citizenship itself and the rights that come with it
have been subject to intense debate throughout American history. And the cry of “second-class
citizenship” has provided a powerful language of social protest for those who feel themselves
excluded. To be sure, not all groups have made demands for inclusion. In the colonial era and for
much of the history of the American nation, many Native Americans have demanded recognition of
their own national sovereignty.

There is stronger coverage of this theme throughout the book, and it is reinforced by a new primary-
source feature, “Who Is an American?” The sixteen such features, distributed fairly evenly through
the text, address the nature of American identity, the definition of citizenship, and controversies over
inclusion and exclusion. These documents range from J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s reflections
on Americanness toward the end of the War of Independence and the Declaration of Sentiments of
the Seneca Falls Convention to Frederick Douglass’s great speech of 1869 in defense of Chinese
immigration, “The Composite Nation,” and Mary Church Terrell’s poignant complaint about being
treated as a stranger in her own country.

In the body of the text itself, the major additions that illuminate the history of this theme are as
follows:

Chapter 3 contains a new discussion of the formation in colonial America of a British identity linked
to a sense of difference from “others”—French and Spanish Catholics, Africans, and Native
Americans. Chapter 4 discusses the development of a pan-Indian identity transcending the traditional
rivalries between separate Native American nations. In Chapter 7, I have added an examination of
how the U.S. Constitution deals with citizenship and how the lack of a clear definition made
disagreement about its boundaries inevitable. A new subsection in Chapter 12 deals with claims by
African-Americans before the Civil War to “birthright citizenship,” the principle that anyone born in
the country, regardless of race, national origin, or other characteristics, is entitled to full and equal
citizenship. Chapter 15 expands the existing discussion of the constitutional amendments of the
Reconstruction era to examine how they redrew the definition and boundaries of American
citizenship.

In Chapter 17, I have expanded the section on the movement to restrict immigration. Chapter 18
contains a new discussion of Theodore Roosevelt’s understanding of “Americanism” and whom it
excluded. Chapter 19 examines the “science” of eugenics, which proposed various ways to
“improve” the quality of the American population. Chapter 23 contains a new subsection on how the
Cold War and the effort to root out “subversion” affected definitions of loyalty, disloyalty, and
American identity. Immigration reform during the administration of Ronald Reagan receives
additional attention in Chapter 26. Finally, Chapter 28 discusses the heated debates over immigration
that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016, and how his administration in its first two years addressed
the issue.

Other revisions, not directly related to the “Who Is an American?” theme, include a reorganization of
the chapter on the Gilded Age (16) to give it greater clarity, a new subsection in Chapter 17
discussing the political and philosophical school known as pragmatism, and significant changes in
Chapter 26 to take advantage of recent scholarship on modern conservatism. The final chapter (28)
has been updated to discuss the election of 2016 and the first two years of the administration of
Donald Trump. I have also added a number of new selections to Voices of Freedom to sharpen the
juxtaposition of divergent concepts of freedom at particular moments in American history. And this
edition contains many new images—paintings, photographs, broadsides, lithographs, and others.

Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be
remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and
sometimes seeing history as a burden to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other
hand, like many other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or
group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy
to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service
historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will convince readers with all
degrees of interest that history does matter to them.

The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even
principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it
within us, . . . [that] history is literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the force of
history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose
government is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential
—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone.
History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or immediate answers to current questions.
Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and
aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to
be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked
and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy.

History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed
collection of facts, or a group of interpretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of
history is constantly changing. There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites
history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among themselves on basic questions like the
causes of the Civil War or the reasons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each generation
asks different questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty
years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of
groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-Americans, working people, and
others, have received unprecedented attention from historians. New subfields—social history,
cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional
political and diplomatic history.

Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to present an up-to-date and inclusive
account of the American past, paying due attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans
while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It
devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and economic history, and to their
interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many
groups of ordinary people who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of
characters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt
to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War.

Aimed at an audience of undergraduate students with little or no detailed knowledge of American

history, Give Me Liberty! guides readers through the complexities of the subject without
overwhelming them with excessive detail. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text
gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American
experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998),
although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to
the structure of the introductory survey course.

Freedom, and the battles to define its meaning, have long been central to my own scholarship and
undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of the Civil
War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation
apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all
Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of
freedom and the struggles of different groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way
of making sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the
same is true for American history as a whole.

No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than
freedom. The central term in our political language, freedom—or liberty, with which it is almost
always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of
everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the
Constitution announces its purpose as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the Civil
War to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War Ⅱ for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War
to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles, liberty
caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running
away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black,
red, or yellow,” wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the
land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’ ”

The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be misleading. Freedom is not a fixed,
timeless category with a single unchanging definition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in
part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American
Revolution, the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom. So
too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of
freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on
plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.

Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a reality and a mythic ideal—a
living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what
some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely
analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice.

Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have been critical in American
history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3)
the boundaries of freedom that determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have
changed over time.

In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was primarily a set of rights enjoyed in
public activity—the right of a community to be governed by laws to which its representatives had
consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In
the nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identified with each person’s opportunity to
develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public
and private life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom. This development was
encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace (a development that receives
considerable attention in Give Me Liberty!), which offered Americans an unprecedented array of
goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history
of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from
attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life
have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom.

A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social conditions necessary to allow
freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions and relationships best encourage individual
freedom? In the colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on
economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the independent small producer—the farmer,
skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper—who did not have to depend on another person for his livelihood.
As the industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty
of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision-making) in the
Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy
mass consumption within a market economy.

The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have inspired some of the most
intense struggles in American history. Although founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement
of all humanity, the United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of
freedom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white Americans. The belief
in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Americans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit
freedom by race, gender, and class and in other ways.

Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has frequently been linked to another’s
servitude. In the colonial era and nineteenth century, expanding freedom for many Americans rested
on the lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for
others. By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts of racial
minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of
freedom have been deepened and the concept extended into new realms.

Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded
groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birthright owes much both to abolitionists
who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full
recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law without regard to race,
which became a central element of American freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and the
Civil War and was reinvigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the
“freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birth-control
advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make civil liberties an essential element
of freedom for all Americans.

Although concentrating on events within the United States, Give Me Liberty! also situates American
history in the context of developments in other parts of the world. Many of the forces that shaped
American history, including the international migration of peoples, the development of slavery, the
spread of democracy, and the expansion of capitalism, were worldwide processes not confined to the
United States. Today, American ideas, culture, and economic and military power exert
unprecedented influence throughout the world. But beginning with the earliest days of settlement,
when European empires competed to colonize North America and enrich themselves from its trade,
American history cannot be understood in isolation from its global setting.

Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history,
it has served as the rallying cry of the powerless and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom
helps to bind our culture together and exposes the contradictions between what America claims to be
and what it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward
greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil
War, “revolutions may go backward.” Though freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away.
This happened, for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after the
Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth
century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role in American political and
social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic
globalization to those who seek to secure American freedom at home and export it abroad. I hope
that Give Me Liberty! will offer beginning students a clear account of the course of American history,
and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied, contentious, and ever-changing as
America itself. And I hope that it also enables students to understand the connections between past
and current events, the historical context and antecedents of the social, political, cultural, and
economic issues that the American people confront today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that every writer builds on
the research and writing of previous scholars. This is especially true of a textbook that covers the
entire American experience, over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable
historians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list at the
end of the book offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has
influenced and informed this book. More specifically, however, I wish to thank the following
scholars, who offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions after generously reading
portions of this work, or using it in their classes.

Jennifer Hudson Allen, Brookhaven College

Joel Benson, Northwest Missouri State University

Lori Bramson, Clark College

Andrea Brinton-Sanches, Cedar Valley College

Monica L. Butler, Motlow State Community College

Tonia Compton, Columbia College

Adam Costanzo, Texas A&M University

Carl Creasman Jr., Valencia College

Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College

Richard Driver, Northwest Vista College

Laura Dunn, Eastern Florida State College

Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Blake Ellis, Lone Star College–CyFair

Carla Falkner, Northeast Mississippi Community College

Robert Glen Findley, Odessa College

Amy L. Fluker, University of Mississippi

Van Forsyth, Clark College

Yvonne Frear, San Jacinto College

Beverly Gage, Yale University

Michael A. Gonzalez, El Paso Community College

Aram Goudsouzian, University of Memphis

Michael Harkins, Harper College

Peter D. Haro, San Diego City College

Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–CyFair

Robert Hines, Palo Alto College

Traci Hodgson, Chemeketa Community College

Tamora Hoskisson, Salt Lake Community College

William Jackson, Salt Lake Community College

Alfred H. Jones, State College of Florida

Junko Isono Kato, Waseda University

David Kiracofe, Tidewater Community College

Jeremy Lehman, McLennan Community College

Brad Lookingbill, Columbia College

Jennifer Macias, Salt Lake Community College

Scott P. Marler, University of Memphis

Thomas Massey, Cape Fear Community College

Derek Maxfield, Genesee Community College

Lisa McGirr, Harvard University

Marianne McKnight, Salt Lake Community College

Jonson Miller, Drexel University

Ted Moore, Salt Lake Community College

Laura Murphy, Dutchess Community College

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, University of Southern California

Christopher Phelps, University of Nottingham

Robert Pierce, Foothills College

Ernst Pinjing, Minot State University

Harvey N. Plaunt, El Paso Community College

Steve Porter, University of Cincinnati

John Putman, San Diego State University

R. Lynn Rainard, Tidewater Community College, Chesapeake Campus

Janet Rankin, Sierra College

Nicole Ribianszky, Georgia Gwinnett College

Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis

Anderson Rouse, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Horacio Salinas Jr., Laredo Community College

John Shaw, Portland Community College

Christina Snyder, Pennsylvania State University

Wendy Soltz, Purdue University Fort Wayne

Danielle Swiontek, Santa Barbara Community College

Chris Tingle, Northwest Mississippi Community College

Richard M. Trimble, Ocean County College

Alan Vangroll, Central Texas College

Karine Walther, Georgetown University

Eddie Weller, San Jacinto College

Ashli White, Miami University

Andrew Wiese, San Diego State University

Matthew Zembo, Hudson Valley Community College

I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University Department of History: Pablo

Piccato, for his advice on Latin American history; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made
many suggestions for improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of
the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the history of the
environment.

I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia University’s Department of History
who helped with this project. For this edition, Michael “Mookie” Kideckel offered invaluable
assistance in gathering material related to borderlands and Western history for the Fifth Edition and
on citizenship and identity for the current one. For previous editions, Theresa Ventura assisted in
locating material for new sections placing American history in a global context, April Holm did the
same for new coverage of the history of American religion and debates over religious freedom,
James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era, and Beverly Gage did the
same for the twentieth century. In addition, Daniel Freund provided all-around research assistance.
Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth
Blackmar and the late Alan Brinkley for offering advice and encouragement throughout the writing
of this book. I am also grateful to the numerous students who, while using the textbook, pointed out
to me errors or omissions that I have corrected.

Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History Project, whose website,
History Matters, lists innumerable online resources for the study of American history. Thanks also to
the instructors who helped build our robust digital resource and ancillary package. InQuizitive for
History was revised by Cornelia Lambert (University of North Georgia), Jodie Steeley (Fresno City
College), Jen Murray (Oklahoma State University), and Joel Tannenbaum (Community College of
Philadelphia). The Coursepack Quizzes and Instructor’s Manual were thoroughly updated by Jason
Newman (Cosumnes River College). Allison Faber (Texas A&M University) revised the Lecture
PowerPoint slides. And our Test Bank was revised to include new questions authored by Robert
O’Brien (Lone Star College–CyFair), Emily Pecora, and Carolina Zumaglini, with accuracy
checking help from Matt Zembo (Hudson Valley Community College) and Jim Dudlo (Brookhaven
College).

At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor—patient, encouraging, and always
ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank Steve’s assistant editor Lily Gellman for her
indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Mary
Kanable for their careful copyediting and proofreading work; Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri
for their resourceful attention to the illustrations program; Leah Clark, Ted Szczepanski, and Debra
Morton-Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Sixth Edition; Jennifer Barnhardt for keeping
the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency
and care in book production; Carson Russell for orchestrating the rich media package that
accompanies the textbook and his colleagues Sarah Rose Aquilina and Alexandra Malakhoff; Sarah
England Bartley, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and
their hard work in helping establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby
Harrington, and Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned
publisher dedicated to excellence in its work.

Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies alter the language and content
of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I
can honestly say that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from the
usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For this I thank them, while I
accept full responsibility for the interpretations presented and for any errors the book may contain.
Since no book of this length can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me
corrections at [email protected].

My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola, for her good-natured support
while I was preoccupied by a project that consumed more than its fair share of my time and energy,
and my daughter, Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter of the First Edition as
it was written, for a modest payment, and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s
clarity, logic, and grammar.
Eric Foner

New York City

March 2019
GIVE ME LIBERTY! DIGITAL RESOURCES
FOR STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS
W. W. Norton offers a robust digital package to support teaching and learning with Give Me Liberty!
These resources are designed to make students more effective textbook readers, while at the same
time developing their critical thinking and history skills.
RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS
All resources are available through digital.wwnorton.com/givemeliberty6seagullv1 with the access
card at the front of this text.

NORTON INQUIZITIVE

InQuizitive is Norton’s award-winning adaptive learning tool that enhances students’ understanding
of the key big-picture themes and objectives from each chapter using a series of highly visual and
gamelike activities. The new Sixth Edition includes over 20 percent new or revised questions,
including primary source document excerpts, maps and historical images from the text, interactive
visual content, and new “Who Is an American?” videos featuring Eric Foner.

HISTORY SKILLS TUTORIALS

The History Skills Tutorials are interactive, online modules that provide students a framework for
analyzing primary source documents, images, and maps. New to the Sixth Edition is a fourth tutorial,
Analyzing Secondary Sources. All tutorials begin with author videos modeling the analysis process
followed by interactive assessments that challenge students to apply what they have learned.
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 CHAPTER 1
A NEW WORLD
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN