The West Indian Mission to West Africa: The Rio Pongas Mission, 1850-1963 by Bakary Gibba A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of History University of Toronto © Copyright by Bakary Gibba (2011) The West Indian Mission to West Africa: The Rio Pongas Mission, 1850-1963 Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Bakary Gibba Department of History, University of Toronto Abstract This thesis investigates the efforts of the West Indian Church to establish and run a fascinating Mission in an area of West Africa already influenced by Islam or traditional religion. It focuses mainly on the Pongas Mission’s efforts to spread the Gospel but also discusses its missionary hierarchy during the formative years in the Pongas Country between 1855 and 1863, and the period between 1863 and 1873, when efforts were made to consolidate the Mission under black control and supervision. Between 1873 and 1900 when additional Sierra Leonean assistants were hired, relations between them and African-descended West Indian missionaries, as well as between these missionaries and their Eurafrican host chiefs, deteriorated. More efforts were made to consolidate the Pongas Mission amidst greater financial difficulties and increased French influence and restrictive measures against it between 1860 and 1935. These followed an earlier prejudiced policy in the Mission that was strongly influenced by the hierarchical nature of nineteenth-century Barbadian society, which was abandoned only after successive deaths and resignations of white superintendents and the demonstrated ability of black pastors to independently run the Mission. Instrumentalism aided the conversion process and the increased flow of converts threatened both the traditional belief systems and social order of the Pongas Country, resulting in confrontation between the Mission and traditional religion worshippers, while the lack of more legitimate trade in the Pongas Country and allegations of black missionaries’ illicit sexual ii relations and illegal trading caused the downfall of John Henry A. Duport, the Mission’s first black Head Missionary. In the late 1800s, efforts to establish a self-supporting, self-generating, and self- propagating church together with initiatives toward African agency in the Pongas Country failed. However, it was French activities and eventual consolidation of their interests in the Pongas Country from 1890 and their demand that Mission schools teach in French, together with successful recruiting of Mission students by the Roman Catholics and Muslim clerics in Guinea, that finally crippled it. Thus, by 1935 when the Gambia-Pongas Bishopric was established in the hope of rescuing the Mission, this gender-biased Christian enterprise in West Africa was already a spent force. iii Acknowledgements In the Fall of 2000, I enrolled in a graduate history course on Post-Emancipation in the Caribbean at Toronto’s York University. Before the commencement of one of the lectures, I had an informal discussion with Professor David Trotman about what I was planning to write my doctoral dissertation on. I told him that it would be a continuation of the slave trade along the banks of The Gambia River between mid-fifteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries – an issue I wrote on to obtain my Master of Arts degree in history at the University of Toronto. Noting that it was a fascinating topic, Trotman highlighted that it is also one that many scholars already dealt with and perhaps I could contribute even more to themes in African history by conducting more research and writing about the efforts of West Indian missionaries of African descent in West Africa. Knowing that this is a topic that has been least fully written on, I took the challenge, and as they say, “the rest is history.” For the success of this work, I am grateful to my supervisors and committee members, Professors Martin A. Klein, Stephen Rockel and Melanie Newton for reading and commenting on chapter after chapter and generally offering helpful advice, as well as helpfully pointing me in the right direction of research literature that saved me several mistakes. Most importantly, I thank them for their assiduousness, understanding, patience and unwavering support as I struggled and continue to do so with my medical problems while writing this thesis. Also, my sincere gratitude goes to Moses Klein, Mrs. Suzanne Klein, and Ms. Ansuya Rockel for their support. Together with their husbands, Mrs. Klein and Ms. Rockel accorded me the most individual encouragement, moral and financial support in Toronto. I am also indebted and grateful to my colleague, Dr. Lansana Gberie who also read some of my chapters and offered new insights and directions. I would particularly like to thank Professor Thomas Mathien of the iv University of Toronto’s Transitional Year Programme (TYP) for kindly reading all the chapters and suggesting a number of improvements. Not only was Tom careful and efficient, he was also patient and good humored even under the severe duress caused by my impatience for his feedback. Of course none of these individuals is responsible for any mistakes or shortcomings that remain, and their help or contribution is more evident since some of them have reached different conclusions from mine. Also, the completion of this thesis would not have been possible without a great deal of support and help in one way or the other of various institutions and other individuals in Toronto (Canada), London and Oxford (England), and Serrekunda (The Gambia). I would like to thank the doctors, nurses and staff of Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital for continuing to carefully and efficiently deal with my medical problem. Most importantly, I am grateful to the University of Toronto’s Department of History for both moral and financial support in the form of the Carmen Brock Fellowship of which I was the first and three-time recipient. I would like to particularly thank the late Professor and philanthropist Peter Brock who donated money to set up this Fellowship on behalf of his late wife. I am also thanking Professors Eric Jennings, Nakanyike B. Musisi and Sean Hawkins and other faculty members and staff of both the History Department and School of Graduate Studies (SGS) for their support and patience. Professors Rona Abramovitch, Agi Lukacs, Maureen Fitzerald and other TYP staff and faculty provided both financial and moral support and I appreciate their generosity. I am also grateful to Jamang Touray, Mama Giyana, Amadou Kandeh, Ansumana Camara, Nuha Kijera, Mamadi Colley, Amidou Goudiaby, Denise Clarke, Collette Thompson, Asiatou Barry, Diyanatou Barry, Fatoumata Jallow {Yaa Sheriff}, Ramatoulie Jallow, Muna Askar, Siphilise Ndlovu (Pee), v Felicity Ndlovu, Candace Sidoruk, Linda Awuni and members of the Gambian-Canadian community in Toronto for their support and encouragement. While conducting research in London and Oxford, I enjoyed the admiration and support of Yama Kujabi, Makaddy Kujabi and their mother Ajatawo. Yama frequently provided me with weekend meals and accommodation while her mother washed and ironed my clothes. Alieu Gibba, Agi Gibba, Fatou Gibba, Omar Colley, Bakary Gibba, Nancy Badjie and Amie Njie also supported me in one way or another in London, and I am thankful to all of them. In Oxford, I took up residence at the North Oxford Overseas Centre (NOOC), enabling me to walk a short distance to Rhodes House Library (RHL), Oxford University where I conducted most of the research for this thesis and I am appreciative of that also. I am grateful to RHL and its staff for providing me access and permitting me to reproduce their primary materials for this thesis. I am particularly indebted to Allan Lodge who is now retired as one of the library’s staff but still took the time to correspond with me years later. My sincere thanks to my cousins - Lamin Gimuna Badjie in Germany, Karafa S. W. Badjie in the United States of America, Fatou Gibba and the Djité family in Paris (France), the late Baba Koli and Salifu Badiane in Montreal for their support and encouragement. Finally, I must thank my own family members who endured and sacrificed a lot during these years. I am particularly thankful to my two sons, Bakary Lemayan Gibba Jr. and Lamin Gim Gibba and their mothers, Isatou Tamba and Tuti Badjie respectively for their understanding, support, and allowing me the opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree. Sadly, Lamin passed away in 2007 at the tender age of five years. He is now in Heaven in the happy company of my late parents- Landing and Aja Binta, as well as my late brother Sheriff and sisters Mansata and Isatou (Kasari). Also deserving my thanks for their support are my other younger siblings, Saikou vi (Karafa ) in Germany, Modou in Spain, Omar (Kalmendo), Dodou, Ebrima (Tombong) and Meta all of who are currently residing in Serrekunda with their own families. Lastly, I am grateful to my best friends in Serrekunda – Cherno B. Jarju commonly known as C-Boy, Bakary M. A. Tamba, Mbemba Badjie commonly known as Papiya and Tijan Bojang for their support. These guys are my “eyes and ears” in The Gambia. vii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv List of Abbreviations x List of Maps and Figures xi Introduction 1 Literature Review 2 Proving their Critics Wrong 8 Methodology 11 Chapter Arrangement 14 Chapter 1: The Pongas Country: A Small Region in the Upper Guinea Coast of Africa 17 Historical Background of the Pongas Country 17 The Rio Pongo 35 The Susu of the Pongas Country 43 Conclusion 46 Chapter 2: Barbados: A Hierarchical Society in the Nineteenth Century British West Indies 48 Barbadian Society in the Nineteenth Century 48 The Conception and Birth of the Pongas Mission, 1843-1855 54 Conclusion 63 Chapter 3: Hierarchy in the Pongas Country: The West Indian Mission Under White Supervision, 1855-1863 65 The Formative Years of the Rio Pongas Mission, 1855-1863 65 The Nascent Fallangia Mission 73 Racism in the Pongas Mission, 1856-1863 74 Mission School at Fallangia 76 Languages of Instruction and Preaching 85 Indigenous Susu Religious System 90 The Process of Conversion and its Requirements 91 First “Converts” and their Motives 96 The St.