Page 6 - Works of Art from Benin-Nigeria- West Africa

IV Introduction.

the utmost rashness. Almost unarmed, neglecting all ordinary precautions, contrary to
the advice of the neighbouring chiefs, and with the express prohibition of the King
marched into an ambuscade which had been
of Benin to advance, they straight
for them in the forest on each side of the road, and as their revolvers were
prepared
locked up in their boxes at the time, they were massacred to a man with the
and Mr. Locke, who, after suffering the utmost
exception of two, Captain Boisragon
to the British settlements on the coast to tell the tale.
hardships, escaped
Within five weeks after the occurrence, a punitive expedition entered Benin, on
18th January, 1897, and took the town. The king fled, but was afterwards brought
back and made to humiliate himself before his conquerers, and his territory annexed
to the British crown.
The was found in a terrible state of bloodshed and disorder, saturated with
city
the blood of human sacrifices offered up to their Juju, or religious rites and customs,
"
for which the place had. long been recognised as the city of blood."
What may be hereafter the advantages to trade resulting from this expedition
it is difficult to say, but the point of chief interest in connection with the subject
of this paper was the discovery, mostly in the king's compound arid the Juju houses,
of numerous works of art in brass, bronze, and ivory, which, as before stated, were

mentioned by the Dutchman, Van Nyendaeel, as having been constructed by the
of Benin in 1700.
people
These antiquities were brought away by the members of the punitive expedition
and sold in London and elsewhere. Little or no account of them could be given by
the natives, and as the expedition was as usual unaccompanied by any scientific
with the of matters of historic and
explorer charged duty making inquiries upon
antiquarian interest, no reliable information about them could be obtained. They
were found buried and covered with blood, some of them having been used amongst
the apparatus of their Juju sacrifices.
A good collection of these antiquities, through the agency of Mr. Charles Read,

F.S.A., has found its way into the British Museum; others no doubt have fallen into
the hands of persons whose chief interest in them has been as relics of a sensational
and bloody episode, but their real value consists in their representing a phase of art
and rather an advanced stage of which there is no actual record, although
no doubt we cannot be far wrong in attributing it to European influence, probably
that of the Portuguese some time in the sixteenth century.

A. P. R.
RUSHMORE, SALISBURY,
April, 1900.