as
classed as domestic service and assigned to the women for performance. The
wife, bought with a price at the time of marriage, was virtually a slave;
her husband her master. Now one woman might keep her husband and children
in but moderate comfort. Two or more could perform the family tasks much
better. Thus a man who could pay the customary price would be inclined to
add a second wife, whom the first would probably welcome as a lightener of
her burdens. Polygamy prevailed almost everywhere.

Slavery, too, was generally prevalent except among the few tribes who
gained their chief sustenance from hunting. Along with polygamy, it perhaps
originated, if it ever had a distinct beginning, from the desire to lighten
and improve the domestic service. [3] Persons became slaves through
capture, debt or malfeasance, or through the inheritance of the status.
While the ownership was absolute in the eyes of the law and captives
were often treated with great cruelty, slaves born in the locality were
generally regarded as members of their owner's family and were shown much
consideration. In the millet zone where there was much work to be done the
slaveholdings were in many cases very large and the control relatively
stringent; but in the banana districts an easy-going schedule prevailed for
all. One of the chief hardships of the slaves was the liability of being
put to death at their master's funeral in order that their spirits might
continue in his service. In such case it was customary on the Gold Coast
to give the victim notice of his approaching death by suddenly thrusting a
knife through each cheek with the blades crossing in his mouth so that he
might not curse his master before he died. With his hands tied behind him
he would then be led to the ceremonial slaughter. The Africans were in
general eager traders in slaves as well as other goods, even before the
time when the transatlantic trade, by giving excessive stimulus to raiding
and trading, transformed the native economy and deranged the social order.

[Footnote 3: Slavery among the Africans and other primitive peoples has
been elaborately discussed by H.J. Nieboer, _Slavery as an Industrial
System: Ethnological Researches_ (The Hague, 1900).]

Apart from a few great towns such as Coomassee and Benin, life in Guinea
was wholly on a village basis, each community dwelling in its own clearing
and having very slight intercourse with its neighbors. Politically each
village was