The following pages, initially prepared for limited circulation in 1961,
contain brief extracts and summaries of those parts of Eugen Zintgraff's
book Nord-Kamerun (1895), of most interest concerning the colonial
Bamenda and Wum Division. Zintgraff's book, the first by a European
about the Grassfields, has not been translated and is hard to get
second-hand. In using these notes the following points should be borne
in mind: Zintgraff's knowledge of Bali (Mungaka) and Hausa was very
slight, and his discussions of character, motives and political
institutions are consequently superficial and open to criticisms. He had
no means of checking what he was told, or thought he was told. He had no
previous knowledge of any similar culture and no training in
ethnographical method. He was, however, a good observer, and his
descriptions of tools, dress, weapons and the like, can be regarded as
fairly reliable. Finally, it must be remembered that Zintgraff wrote the
book to justify his own actions and to support that small but
influential section of public opinion in Germany which favoured rapid
imperial expansion. A full account of the actions and motives of
Zintgraff's opponents in the Kamerun Government and in the Colonial
Bureau of the German Foreign Office has not been written: we only have
one side of the story. But there are some suggestive points made in
Rudin's Germans in the Cameroons and others referred to in these notes.
What is perhaps most striking about Zintgraff's account is the fact that
the people of the Western Grassfields were not so isolated from one
another or their neighbours as might be thought. A network of
trade-friendships covered the country and big men exchanged gifts over
long distances. These links must be set beside the insecurity due to
raids and slave-catching, and are well worth investigation.
