In South Africa, word of the Europeans had not yet travelled and the first encounter brought with it interesting perceptions. In one instance, the people of Tswana were thrown into fits of convulsive laughter at the strangeness of the white men and referred to them as ‘white lice’. However, the Zulu and Natal tribes of South Africa, known for their strong ancestral homage rituals, met the Europeans with extreme caution. The Zulu tribe believed that the Europeans were sea creatures, and the Natal tribe believed them to have come from the sky. Once the Natal tribe was sure these men weren’t hostile these tribes welcomed the Europeans with verve, believing them to be children of the sun who had come to heal the sick and crippled.
The tribes
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It was the opposite in Ghana, the home of the Asante, Fantee, and Coromantee tribes known for being particularly hostile and troublesome for seamen, which instead, during the first encounter, welcomed the European sailors and merchants in for trade. Mentioned previously, the Africans tribes known for revolting on slave ships were those of the Coromantee, Fantee and Asante, and the Ibbibby/Quaw from Nigeria, which suggest that the temperaments of those tribes surrounding the Bight of Benin did in fact support the argument of predictability in African resistance depending on tribal region. The African tribes who did not participate in resistance and/or assisted their European masters were the Chambas and the Heebo tribes of inner Nigeria, which, as demonstrated by Olaudah Equiano, reacted to the first encounter with fear and hopelessness. The slaves of the fierce 1830-1831 revolt previously mentioned came from Ayudah, a tribe known for being docile. The tribe temperament, it seems, matters less than the location of the tribe, which in the case of Ayudah, lay on the Gold