Note 20 — Chapter II · Conflict between Matriarchate and Patriarchate.

Similar conditions are still met with in Camerun and in other parts of Western Africa. A German naval surgeon who studied the land and people from his own observations sends us the following information: “Among a great many tribes the right of inheritance is founded on maternity. Paternity is a matter of indifference, only children of the same mother consider one another brothers and sisters. A man does not will his property to his own children, but to his sisters’ children, his nephews and nieces, who can be shown to be his nearest blood relations. A chief of the Way tribe explained to me in broken English: ‘My sister and I surely are blood relations, for we are children of the same mother. My sister again surely is the blood relation of her son. So her son is my heir, and when I die he will be king of my town.’ ‘And your father?’ I asked. ‘I do not know what that is, my father,’ he replied. When I then went on to ask him whether he had no children of his own, he was convulsed with laughter and replied that with them not men but only women had children. I can assure you,” our informant goes on to say, “that even the heir of King Bell in Camerun is not his son, but his nephew. The children of Bell, many of whom are being trained in German cities, are but the children of his wives, while their fathers are unknown. One of them I might lay claim to myself.”—How are the people who deny the existence of maternal law impressed by this description of present-day conditions?! Our informant is a keen observer who goes to the bottom of things. But few who live among these savages do so. Therefore we are given such false descriptions of the alleged “immorality” of the natives.