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. For Part One click HERE.
PART FIVE – Horn recounted an incredible event he attended in Angola, which was not yet the name of the country, just a populated region. He and his subordinate Trade Agents were guests at a conjo – a performance of traveling entertainers called the Akowas.
Alfred praised the precision routines of the acrobats, sword-dancers, trick shooters and their colleagues. The Akowas displayed excellent stagecraft and made Horn and his men gasp in awe as the performers pretended to shoot each other through with arrows, complete with seeming penetration, only for the finale to present all of them getting up just fine for the audience to see.
The next day, Trader Horn and his aides were making contracts with the tribe for the trade in wood, large canoes, dried fish and farina. One of Alfred’s indigenous employees was a son of a Camma chief and engaged him in further conversation about the Izoga – the Holy Person hidden from common view several villages back. Continue reading
JANUARY 1910 – James Larkin Pearson, poet and newspaper man, carried on the Fool Killer tradition from 1910 to 1917, then again from 1919 into the 1920s. Pearson’s fellow North Carolinian Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans had written the Fool Killer Letters of the 19th Century so it’s appropriate that another Tar Heel continue the lore for so many years of the 20th Century.
Pearson’s Fool-Killer was the mascot of the entire publication, which was merely 4-6 pages anyway, not simply the supposed author of letters regarding his body count of “fools.” Think of this Fool Killer (I prefer no hyphen) as the written word equivalent of Puck (1876-1918), the political cartoon mascot of the humor magazine of the same name.
*** Frederick Cook, who, the previous December, had seen his claim to have reached the North Pole ruled invalid and possibly fraudulent by the University of Copenhagen. (The Fool Killer was unable to locate Cook, however.)
PART TWENTY: In a surprising development Balladeer’s Blog was contacted by THE actual Fool Killer. Using Jimmy Neutron-level science I determined that this correspondent was indeed the actual supernatural figure who had been at large in America since the 1830s. 
Coming to you as I wander in search of fools to kill, as usual a murder of crows following in my wake to feast upon the ample corpses I leave behind me in my travels.
PART FOUR – We pick up this time with Trader Horn’s reflection on how the British and German firms in Africa dominated the European trade in ivory and rubber, while France was a distant third. There were whispers that the French (whom Horn referred to far more insultingly than he ever referred to the indigenous Africans) were strategizing about using their Colonial Governments to limit the success of Great Britain and the German Empire wherever they could. 
Previously I examined Joel Chandler Harris’ 1902 story Flingin’ Jim And His Fool-Killer, set in Georgia in October of 1872, plus Ridgway Hill’s Facts for the Fool-Killer, set in and around Buffalo, NY in 1909. 
Here is my usual post-completion collection of chapter links, in this case for The Villon Legend. 
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. 
If he had, one possible source would be the Fool Killer figure from Melungeon folklore in East Tennessee and other Appalachian areas. Or, since we have no way of checking exact dates, Evans’ darkly satirical tales may have influenced the existing Melungeon lore since Melungeons at the time were scattered from Tennessee to North Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia. 
PART TWO – Aboard the S.S. Angola, the teenaged Alfred Horn approached Africa on his first assignment as a Trade Agent for the firm of Hatson & Cookson, whose business operated from Bonny Brass to Old Calabar and up the Niger River as well as coastal ports along Cameroon. 
Over five years ago Balladeer’s Blog began a detailed look at the neglected folklore surrounding the Fool Killer figure. It’s been a while since I left off and I’m about to dive back in. There are so many new readers here that I’m posting a recap of the very first Fool Killer item from the 1850s. Next time I’ll resume where I left off – in 1913. 
Balladeer’s Blog kicks off a multi-part examination of the neglected 1800s folk figure called the Fool Killer. I will cover the various stories featuring the Fool Killer and the different ways the character was used by the authors. If I ever examine the related character called the Rascal Whaler it will be in a separate series of blog posts. 
However, since Evans was all about the written word, he used the Fool Killer as a much more active figure. Evans’ Fool Killer – claiming Jesse Holmes as his real name – roamed North Carolina and Virginia (which at the time still consisted of what would become West Virginia) looking for fools to kill with a club/ walking stick he always carried with him. The character would then send letters to Editor Evans explaining why he had chosen victims, defending his actions with puckish commentary. 
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