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This social and industrial state of the Yorubas formerly spread and wielded great influence. We find Yoruba reaching out and subduing states like Nupe toward the northward. But the industrial democracy and city autonomy of Yoruba lent itself indifferently to conquest, and the state fell eventually a victim to the fanatical Fula Mohammedans and was made a part of the modern sultanate of Gando.
The ant-nests were those of Yoruba and the Mendi country; not the tall, steepled edifices built by the termites with yellow clay, as in Eastern Africa, but an eruption of blue-black, hard-dried mud and mucus, resembling the miniature pagodas, policeman's lanterns, mushrooms, or umbrellas one or two feet high, here single, there double, common in Ashanti and Congo-land.
In Yoruba the thing is managed a little differently. If the king fails to observe the customs of the country, a messenger, without speaking a word, shows him his child's foot. The king knows what that means. He takes poison and goes to sleep." The old Prussians acknowledged as their supreme lord a ruler who governed them in the name of the gods, and was known as "God's Mouth."
The second attempt at empire building began in the southeast, but the same Bantu hordes, pressing now slowly, now fiercely, from the congested center of the continent, gradually overthrew this state and erected on its ruins a series of smaller and more transient kingdoms. The third attempt at state building arose on the Guinea coast in Benin and Yoruba.
Among the ancient Scandinavians and Germans it was frequent. Nowhere does it appear on so large a scale as in Mexico; and it existed also in Peru. In Africa it was practiced to a frightful extent in Ashantiland and Dahomiland and more guardedly in Yoruba. In early times indeed it seems to have been slaves and captives taken in war that were commonly sacrificed.
He did his thinking in English, but he was a Yoruba negro, and the race type had remained the same throughout his generations. The American does not consider little matters of descent, though by this time he ought to know all about "damnable heredity." As a general rule he keeps himself very far from the negro, and says things about him that are not pretty.
Nothing but the prospect of growing rich rapidly would persuade a white man, unless he were a missionary, to live in any of those countries, and a European woman was almost unknown there. One of the first white women to risk the dangers of the Yoruba climate was Anna Hinderer, to whom belongs the honour of being the first of her colour to visit Ibadan.
Black queens have often ruled African tribes. Among the Ba-Lolo, we are told, women take part in public assemblies where all-important questions are discussed. The system of educating children among such tribes as the Yoruba is worthy of emulation by many more civilized peoples. Close knit with the family and social organization comes the religious life of the Negro.
On the confines of the Yoruba country existed a beautiful village which had hitherto escaped the ravages of the relentless slave-hunting foe. It was situated on the banks of a rapid stream, which gave freshness to the air, and fertility to the neighbouring plantations.
The Sudanese cities were influenced from the desert and the Mediterranean, and form nuclei of larger surrounding monarchial states. The Yoruba cities, on the other hand, remained comparatively autonomous organizations down to modern times, and their relative importance changed from time to time without developing an imperialistic idea or subordinating the group to one overpowering city.
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