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Updated: May 11, 2025
The Portuguese bowed with another flourish of his hat, seated himself in the stern-sheets of his boat, gave the word to his Krumen, and a few minutes later was on the wharf, walking toward his factory, into the open door of which he disappeared. "Come," thought I, "there is something afoot already.
'Accompanied by Prince John Coffee, heir to King Blay, three other chiefs, their servants, and my own party of Krumen, we left the town of Béin, Apollonia, to go up to the village in the bush called Essuá-tí.
A Swiss, M. Schneuvelly, acts as general superintendent, and he is assisted by two French ouvriers. The hands are chiefly Krumen. The style of working is decidedly 'loafy, and the pipe is touched at all hours and in all places. North of Abosu lies the Dahse concession, a square of 1,000 fathoms, to be worked by an Anglo-German company.
Moreover, Krumen are not hospitable. Masters and men, cast ashore upon a coast which they have visited for years to hire hands, are stripped, beaten, and even tortured by women as well as by men. The savages have evidently not learnt much by a century's intercourse with Europeans.
The Váy tribe, which holds the land, is useless; the rare new comers from America will work, but the older settlers will not; and there is hardly money enough to pay Krumen. On the Gold Coast there is no exceptional scarcity of population: under normal circumstances, the labour-market is sufficiently supplied, but a strain soon exhausts it.
The Krumen are no property of theirs, and they dare not interfere with them on shore; but owing to that little transaction in the celebrated Rubber Monopoly, the Liberians became possessed of some ready cash, which, with great foresight, they invested in two little gun-boats which enabled them to enforce their tax on the Krumen in their small canoes.
These Bassá tribes must not be confounded with their neighbours the Krumen; the languages are quite different, and the latter is of much harsher sound. There is no doubt of this being a good place for engaging labour, and it is hoped that in due time Bassá-hands, who work well, will be engaged for the Gold Coast mines.
I have referred at great length to the Krumen because of their importance, and also because they are the natives the white men have more to do with as servants than any other; but methods of getting on with them are not necessarily applicable to dealing with other forms of African labourers, such as plantation hands in the Congo Francais, Angola, and Cameroon.
These qualities are admirably developed in our headman, Toby Johnson, and his gang. I should not travel again with Krumen on the Gold Coast. Another of their remarkable characteristics is the fine union of the quarrelsome with the cowardly.
But the main points regarding Krumen are well enough known by old Coasters their willingness to work if well fed, and their habit of engaging for twelve-month terms of work and then returning to "We country."
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