Africa at the Internet Archive: Black Tales for White Children

This month I am focusing on public domain texts at the Internet Archive, and this week I'm trying to cover the main "types" of folktale collections that show up in the public domain: collections by colonial adventurers like Jephson's Stories Told in an African Forest, collections by missionaries like Nassau's remarkable Where Animals Talk: West African Folklore Tales, and collections by anthropologists, especially linguistic anthropologists, like Boas and Simango's Tales and Proverbs of the Vandau. 

Today's book falls into the category of the colonial adventurer and, also like Jephson's book, this is a literary retelling of folktales meant specifically for children: Black Tales for White Children by Chauncey Hugh Stigand and Nancy Stigand: 

Chauncey Hugh Stigand was a British army officer who served in both Burma and in Africa; see Wikipedia for details. You can also read his own account of eastern Africa in this book published in 1913 (and available at Internet Archive): The land of Zinj, being an account of British East Africa, its ancient history and present inhabitants. In 1917, Stigand was appointed governor of Mongalla in what is now South Sudan, and he was killed in the Dinka Uprising in 1919. 

This book of stories, a collection of 29 Swahili stories retold in English and coauthored with his wife Nancy Stigand, was published in 1914. The book is intended for children, and has a friendly introduction that is far less explicitly racist than Jephson's introduction to his book, although it is still full of colonial paternalism. Jephson did record the names of the storytellers in his book; in this book, there is no acknowledge at all of the actual individuals from whom the Stigands took these stories. Here is a list of the story titles, linking to the specific pages at Internet Archive: The Lion of Manda / Pemba Muhori / The Cat's Tail / The Young Thief / The Trapper, the Lion and the Hare / Nunda the Slayer / The Woodcutter and His Donkey / Kitangatanga of the Sea / The Lion's Talisman / Kibaraka and the Bird / The Fools / The Hyena and the Moonbeam / The Sultan's Snake-child / The Poor Man and His Wife of Wood / Binti Ali the Clever / Segu / Lila and Fila / The Hunters and the Snake / Ali of the Crooked Arm / Feeding the Hungry / Shani and Tabak / A Man and His Mother-in-law / The Jackal, the Hare and the Cock / The Magic Date Trees / Paka the Cat / The Oil Merchant / Bata the Duck / The Sultan's Daughter / The Lion, the Hyena and the Hare.

The illustrations are by John Hargrave, and they are a very positive addition to the text. The animals are marvelous, and the drawings of the African people are well done also. Here are a few examples:

So, this book is still steeped in the kind of racism that makes it impossible to share with young readers today as-is, but it contains valuable material that can be repurposed, and even the illustrations are in the public domain. I'll be using some stories from this book for my public domain anthology project, and I'll update this post with a link to those stories when they are ready to go! In the meaning, the book and all its stories are just a click away at Internet Archive, ready for you to read and also reuse and repurpose if you are inspired to do so!

Black Tales for White Children

by Chauncey Hugh Stigand and Nancy Stigand