BANGWA
107
ment made by Assunganyi toward the end of 1900
when punitive war retribution payments were being
demanded of him. It is not verifi able.
Assunganyi further explained that Conrau had
been his blood brother and that he had consequently
trusted him to take some of his people to
go work on the coast. He further stated that he
had expected them to come back with Conrau,
who had countered that they hadn’t because their
work term had not yet concluded.63 However, a
year earlier, a report in the Deutsches Kolonialblatt
had stated that Conrau’s “murder” in the
Bangwa region had in all probability been connected
with the uprisings along the frontier of the
Cross River area, which had taken Lt. von Queis’
life.64 The reasonable justifi cation for Conrau’s
detention, brought about by concern for those he
had taken to the plantations, was dismissed in a
storm of German outrage. This was a “revolt in
the making that directly threatens Christianity and
the German nation,”65 claimed a German colonial
newspaper, the publication of the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft,
the German Colonial Society.
A punitive expedition mounted by the German
military force in Cameroon, which was made up
primarily of African troops under the command
of German offi cers, arrived on February 25, 1900,
in the Banyang area of Tali, where Conrau’s route
to the Bangwa highlands had begun in December
1898.66
Most Banyang villages that German troops
passed through had been abandoned. As they
approached Lebang, they encountered threemeter
high wooden barricades that blocked river
crossings and paths. The terrain slopes steeply
upward from 400 to 740 meters, and they were
continuously shot at and pelted with rocks as they
pressed on. By the time they were able to enter Azi
three days later, its inhabitants had fl ed. This fi rst
punitive expedition turned back to Tali on March
4, 1900. A few days later, on March 9, without
being prompted to do so, Assunganyi sent a Bali
messenger named Nanji, who had once worked
for Zintgraff and subsequently for Conrau, with
the message that he wanted peace and was prepared
to submit to all demands. He sent a clump
of leaves that had been spit on with chewed kola
nuts as a token of peace.67 The Bali messenger was
sent back to Azi the following day and returned
again with a thirty- to forty-pound elephant tusk
and several sheep, which he delivered on March
15.68 He was sent to Azi a second time but disappeared,
and many misunderstandings ensued. Another
peace offer was proffered and is mentioned
in the colonial reports dated October 17, 1900.
As part of it, Assunganyi sent some of Conrau’s
belongings, “a hunting bag with compasses, a
Mauser pistol, ... ammunition, and a broken
lantern,”69 as signs of his good will. However, in
the end Assunganyi refused to comply with what
the Germans required of him, and they undertook
further punitive expeditions to force the Bangwa
to submit.
FIG. 26 (facing page, right):
Plaza in Azi (Fontem),
c. 1901.
From Kurt Strümpell, Blätter aus
der Geschichte der Schutztruppe
für Kamerun, Carl Pfeffer Verlag,
Heidelberg, 1921, p. 38.
FIG. 27 (above):
Fontem Assunganyi, fon of
Lebang, before 1951.
Photographer unknown.
From Robert Brain and Adam
Pollock, Bangwa Funerary Sculpture,
University of Toronto Press, 1971,
fi g. 3.