Mineral Point Tribune

AFRICAN WOMEN'S RIGHTS
The Ladies of the Akona Tribe Bring Their Husbands to Terms.
The Women of Civilized Countries May Learn a Lesson From the Heathen Women.

Mr. Pauli, who lived for some time in the Cameroon region, West Africa, tells of a highly successful woman's rights movement a while ago in the Akona tribe illustrating the fact that when women unanimously assert them in saving lands, as well elsewhere, they are a great power in the community. In that benighted region women are not supposed to have any rights. When a girl is 13 or 14 years old she is sold to anybody who has property enough to pay the price her father asks for her and thereafter she works like a slave for her board and lodging and is subject to all the caprices of her lord and master. Even the bondsmen in the community have more privileges than the free women, and some of them in time are able to support rather extensive harems of their own.

It happened that there were some strong minded women among the Akona people, and they lifted up their voices in public places in favor of some radical social reforms that would make the lot of woman-kind rather more endurable. They were jeered at, as women reformers have been in some other lands, and were advised by the superior sex to keep on digging in the fields and pounding manioc root and thank fortune that their lot was not less tolerable. Reform was evidently not to be secured by any amount of feminine protest, and so these strong minded women put their long heads together and decided upon radical and far reaching measures.

The tribe is a small one. Nearly all the adult females in it enlisted under the banner of woman's rights. One day there was an enormous commotion in that little community. It was almost wholly confined to the male population, the fact being that there was hardly a woman there to share the excitement. The mothers and wives, in the most unexpected and heartless manner, suddenly dropped their implements of drudgery, and with their children in their arms and marriageable daughters had hied them through the forests to the territory of another tribe, where, at a distance of eight or ten miles from their own garden patches, they were prepared to open negotiations with the lordly chaps they had left behind them.

They knew beforehand that they would meet with a hospitable reception in the tribe with which they took refuge. It happened that this tribe was larger than the Akona, and did not like them very well, and it tickled them half to death to see the pickle in which the Akona men suddenly found themselves. The women set themselves to work earning their daily bread, and waited without a bit of impatience for an embassy from home. It was not long before the embassy put in an appearance.

The Akona tribe was of the opinion that they could not continue in business without the female members thereof, so they wanted the women to come home. The particularly strong minded woman of the refugees said she was glad at last that the women of their tribe was a desirable element of the Akona people. As the women had taken care of all the men it was evident they were able to take care of themselves, and they hadn't the slightest intention of going home, except on certain conditions, which she specified. Then the embassy went home to consult the chief men, who, as their harems were the largest suffered the most by the flight of the fair sex.

The women stipulated that they would come back if a considerable part of the agricultural duties of the community were in future turned over to the slaves, if the mothers were permitted to have something to say about the disposal of their daughters, and if several other conditions were complied with. It did not take long for the gentlemen of Akona to decide what to do, a day or two later the women went back in high feather, having gained a complete victory and they have been treated very well ever since.