Introduction
4.4. The Fon of Bali Nyonga Request for Missionaries
Although colonialists and missionaries had been operating in coastal Cameroon for more than four decades none ventured into the deeper hinterland. In 1884, the German born Eugen Zintgraff accompanied the explorer Chavanne to the lower Congo. He entered the service of the German Government in 1886. In 1886/87 he made some expeditions around the Wouri estuary, and established the Barombi [Kumba] station in January 1888.
He pushed his way further inland and arrived in Bali in 1889. Upon his arrival, Zintgraff was impressed to see Africans for the first time who looked him straight in the eyes. He was also impressed to meet "a welcoming and helpful crowd with palm wine and a hospitality we had not encountered elsewhere."31 What also made an impression on the explorer was to see about two thousand warriors with their Dane guns and spears upright waiting in perfect silence.
Fon Galega convinced the explorer to settle in Bali. Zintgraff accepted Galega's idea of establishing a station although he had his own motives. When he made his decision known to the Fon, it was decided that a station be constructed for him. The Fon and Zintgraff took an oath in the customary fashion with the killing of a goat and the rubbing of each other with cam wood. Galega and Zintgraff entered into a blood pact in which they licked each other's blood. The Fon told Zintgraff that Zintgraff came to his house like a little chicken and would have been killed if he as the Fon had so decided to; he told Zintgraff not to be afraid although people constantly advised him to kill the white man. He felt that "...it is better to obtain knowledge of the white and to have them as friends to our lasting benefit, than to take a short-lived advantage of them by robbery."32
In the same vein Galega told his subjects that they should not think that because the white man is small he is not to be feared. He told them that the leopard is small but the
Jonas N. Dah, Missionary Motivations and Mothods, p.6.
31 E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, pp.2-3
32 E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, p.6.
Galega entered the land as conqueror and continued to expand, yet he said, "War and force make people fear and empties the land, but land without people is like a bumt-out- fire."33 He aimed at becoming the chief arbiter of disputes and uniting the Grassfield fondoms. Zintgraaf intended to use Galega's plan to the advantage of the German colonial enterprise. He hoped to establish a commissionership in Bali whose major preoccupation was to be "...the regulation of Galega's leadership and the establishment of a general administration for the Grass fie Ids."34 Typical of European popular estimation of other people during that period Zintgraff saw Galega as
Indeed an African barbarian, honest when it suits him - as in his dealings with the whites, and a bandit when honesty does not suit his purpose, but he has worked out for himself the notion that all should be one.35
Zintgraff felt the Commission at Bali would serve four aims: Protection of European traders, missionaries or other types of incomers; security of the caravan route; justice among the natives; and unification of the divided villages under Galega.
Zintgraff signed a treaty with Galega in which the Fon transferred his powers to Zintgraff. In return Galega was to be recognized and protected as the paramount ruler of the surrounding/ondoms of the northern Cameroon hinterland36
Thus Bali became the first political colonial station in the Grassfield, and it was soon to become the first missionary station in the area. Due to the hostility of Bafut and Mankon to Zintgraff s emissaries, Bali allied with Zintgraff to fight them. About 180 Bali people were killed while Zintgraff lost four of his colleagues and the Bafut/Mankon alliance lost about 600 people. This aggravated hostilities by other fondoms of the area towards Bali and this was to have an effect on the missionary enterprise in the area. Zintgraff s plan was a venture in futility because the German Governor was indifferent because he felt Zintgraff s action was independent of the Cameroon Colonial Administration.
33 E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, p.23.
34 E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, p.23.
35 E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, p.23.
36 E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, p.22-23.
Not long after the Bafut/Mankon - Zintgraff/Bali battle there was an outbreak of a serious epidemic - dysentery. Galega in council suspected witchcraft and put people through the ordeal of drinking sasswood-poison in a bid to identify the guilty ones. This took the lives of many until Zintgraff upbraided the Fon for his folly. The Fon agreed with Zintgraff, accepted and supported his sanitary and medical measures, which involved a thorough clean-up campaign and the prohibition of in-door burials.37 The epidemic ceased and the white man's influence and popularity soared. He was made nkom and called Fombolingong [chief who pacifies].38
Zintgraff would very much have loved to build Bali into a veritable German military and political headquarters for the region, but fate was against him. He was on sick leave and died on his way home in December 1897. His blood brother Galega died in early 1901.
Galega was succeeded by his son whose throne name was Fonyonga II. The colonial administration recognized him as paramount ruler of thirty-one villages. He collected taxes for the administration from these villages with ten percent for himself. He also supplied the German plantations with labor, which he recruited from the villages. The work began by Galega had to be continued by his successor Fonyonga I. Ironically the benefits, which the Fon received in taxes, did not add up to the tributes these vassal villages had been paying to him in the past. The method, which he used in collecting the taxes and recruiting labor, caused unrest even among his own subjects. The treaty signed with Zintgraff, took away the power of life and death over these villages from the Fon.
The colonial administration soon felt that Fonyonga was becoming too powerful for them. They asked him to return the 2000 guns which Zintgraff gave him, which he did not do. The administration started encouraging the villages to gain their autonomy.
During his stay in Bali, Zintgraff tried to win Galega's interest in Christianity but the Fon was quite pragmatic and philosophical in his response, as we have already noted in chapter three.
E.M.Chilver, Zintgraff's Explorations in Bamenda, p. 32.
Ndifontah b. Nyamndi, The Bali Chamba of Cameroon, p.98.