TRADER HORN (1927) PART THREE

Balladeer’s Blog continues reviewing the 1927 book Trader Horn, the quasi-autobiographical account of the British Trade Agent Alfred Aloysius Horn’s adventures in Africa during the late 1800s. The partially factual book spawned multiple movies. For Part One click HERE.

PART THREE – Trader Horn’s skills at bartering and deal-making with the indigenous people grew as he acquired more and more experience. His account always expressed his awe at the high populations of animal life throughout the region in the 1870s-1880s.

Gorillas were plentiful enough to live in what Horn and his fellow Trade Agents called colonies. It was from observing gorillas that humans had learned to break open the huge water vines to drink the water inside. Alfred was always grateful for the way this practice allowed one to make one’s water supply last longer on extended journeys through the jungle. The water from the vines was clean enough to avoid dysentery, too.

For a time, the region was rife with tales about sightings of cryptids called colocambas, the supposed midget offspring of gorillas who mated with smaller primates. Efforts were made to track and see such animals first-hand, but eventually it was all dismissed as tall tales. 

During business dealings along the Muni River in Guinea and Gabon, a Trade Agent got involved in a personal fight with an indigenous person and shot them to death. The Spanish Colonial authorities had the agent arrested and thrown into a hellish prison where he soon died from the conditions.

That incident inspired a man named Carlisle, one of the most prosperous traders in the region, to cut off all trade with the Spanish and withdraw from the Muni River to another location. Horn and others were happy to fill the void left by the departure of Carlisle’s firm.

Alfred Horn claimed that at some point while doing business for his employers Hatson & Cookson along the Muni he acquired the nickname River-Hawk. He did not elaborate on why in a rare bit of close-mouthed behavior from him.

In Gabon, Trader Horn developed a reasonably close business relationship with Pipi, the medicine man of a tribe ruled by his brother Chief Ritigo. Alfred described various procedures carried out by Pipi.

One of them involved using a knife to do a quick penetration of the skin of a patient suffering from one of those odd insects or worms that can take up residence under the skin, as seen on cable programs like Monsters Inside Me. Others ranged from pharmaceutical concoctions which could cure eye problems to powders and poultices for skin ailments.

Horn consistently stated he learned to trust the native doctors over his trading firm’s European physicians. Those Europeans would look down on and dismiss the indigenous medicos, but Alfred bluntly noted that many of the Euro-doctors’ patients tended to get worse or die.

On the other hand, those cared for by the native physicians, who had centuries of cultural experience with jungle diseases, fared far better. The Trade Agent attributed his survival during a few decades in the region of Africa called “the white man’s coffin” to the treatments he received from indigenous physicians, who were too often insulted as “witch doctors” by other European traders.

The most elite of the native medical practitioners were the doctors of the Ivilis along the Ogowe River. From his time doing business among the Ivilis, Horn claimed their doctors could even cure leprosy, but this seems like it may be one of Alfred’s embellishments or misunderstandings.   

Ivili doctors aka ojangas did cure him personally of West Coast Fever, Horn maintained, and he never fell victim to it again. He also stated that he sometimes received gunshot wounds during battles when one of his trading expeditions got caught in the middle of inter-tribal warfare. The ojangas had the best pain-killers and other treatments, especially when it came to avoiding post-treatment infections.

NOTE: Again, I will point out that reading Trader Horn is a mixed bag. It should go without saying that Alfred sometimes expresses sentiments that a 21st Century reader will dislike, but he just as often portrays an attitude toward the indigenous peoples and animal welfare that was far ahead of his time.

At any rate, the Trade Agent added other items to his inventory from the Ivili, like nyondos (wild onions), red bananas and wild coffee.

FOR THE NEXT PART CLICK HERE.