The Narrative of False Discoveries in Africa

If you grew up in Africa, one of the stories about Europeans that you must have been told as kids was the various places that the Europeans discovered in Africa. And of such stories is the story of Mungo Park, the young Scottish doctor and explorer who we were told discovered the River Niger.

For those who may not know, the River Niger is the main river of West Africa, extending about 4,180 km. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. The river runs in a crescent shape through Mali, Niger, on the border with Benin, and then through Nigeria, discharging through a massive delta known as the Niger Delta into the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean.

The Niger River is one of the longest rivers in Africa.

The question is, like many narratives of European discoveries in Africa, did Mungo Park really discover The River Niger?

Here is the story of Mungo Park as told by Martin Meredith in his book The Fortunes of Africa.

Mungo Park, a 24-year-old Scottish doctor who had previously served as a ship’s surgeon on a voyage to Asia, arrived on the coast of the Gambia in June 1795. He endured a litany of trouble: malarial fever, theft, demands for tribute; he was gradually stripped of most of his equipment. Much of the countryside through which he passed had been ravaged by war. For months on end he was held as a prisoner. But on 20 July 1796, six hundred miles from his starting point, as he approached Segu, the capital of Bambara, he caught sight of the Niger.

‘I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission; the long sought for, majestic Niger, glittering in the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing to the eastward.’ Mungo Park wrote in his journal.

Refused permission to cross the river and enter Segu, Park was obliged to observe it from a distance.

‘The view of this extensive city; the numerous canoes upon the river; the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a prospect of civilization and magnificence, which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa.’ Park said.

But his own position was perilous. Tired, hungry and in poor health, he was directed to stay in a village on the north bank, but on arriving there he was met with ‘astonishment and fear’. No one there would give him food or shelter. A storm was brewing. Dusk fell. Dejected by the prospect of a hard night ahead, he was sitting beneath a tree when a woman returning from labouring in the fields took him to her family compound, fed him and provided him with a place to rest.

As he lay down to sleep, one of the women in a family group spinning cotton began to tell his story in a song.

The winds roared, and the rains fell.

The poor white man, faint and weary, came and sat under our tree.

He has no mother to bring him milk; no wife to grind his corn.

Other women followed with a chorus.

Let us pity the white man; no mother has he . . .

Park recorded: ‘In the morning I presented my compassionate landlady with two of the four buttons which remained on my waistcoat; the only recompense I could make her.’

Park had planned to travel downstream to Jenne and then to Timbuktu, but after six days, as heavy rains began, he abandoned the idea:

‘Worn down by sickness, exhausted with hunger and fatigue; half-naked, and without any article of value, by which I might procure provisions, clothes or lodging; I began to reflect seriously on my situation.’

He turned back and made for the coast, but so ill was he from fever and so hazardous was the journey that there seemed little likelihood he would reach it.

Relying for food and shelter on the charity of villagers, however, he managed to stumble into Kamalia, a village west of Bamako, where a slave-dealing merchant named Karfa Taura nursed him back to health.

Once the main rains had ended, Park accompanied Karfa Taura and a ‘coffle’ of slaves which he was taking for sale to European traders on the Gambia River.

Upon his return to London in 1797, the African Association was duly appreciative. ‘We have . . . by Mr Park’s means opened a Gate into the Interior

of Africa,’ its founder, Joseph Banks, told members.

Eight years later, Park volunteered to try again. His plan this time was to take with him an army escort of thirty soldiers and a team of six carpenters, to follow the same route from the Gambia to the Niger, and then to build boats and to sail downriver until they reached the terminus. The British government approved the plan and agreed to provide funds, hoping to secure trade opportunities.

‘His Majesty has selected you to discover and ascertain whether any, and what commercial intercourse can be opened with the interior,’ Park was officially informed.

Delayed in starting, Park’s expedition soon encountered difficulty. He was no more than halfway to the Niger in June 1805 when the rains began. Struck down by malaria and dysentery, soldiers and carpenters died along the way. Not until mid-August did Park finally reach the Niger at Bamako.

‘When I reflected that three-fourths of the soldiers had died on their march, and that in addition to our weakly state we had no carpenters to build the boats in which we proposed to prosecute our discoveries; the prospects appeared somewhat gloomy,’ he wrote in his journal.

Nevertheless, he decided to press on. In Segu, the remnant of his expedition fashioned a forty-foot-long barge-like canoe and set off downstream.

Wanting to avoid trouble, Park decided not to land anywhere until he reached the end of the

river. He sailed straight past Timbuktu and Gao, traversed the great Niger bend, and was heading due south, only 350 miles from the Atlantic coast, when he and his few remaining colleagues perished at the Bussa rapids.

A sad story that revealed something

The story of Mungo Park is quite a beautiful one for a 24-year-old but a sad one for the way it ended. But since this article is not so much about his life or what he did or did not do, but about the lies told about the discovery of the Niger River, we will share our thoughts using questions.

Firstly, if according to Mungo Park’s own words ‘‘The view of this extensive city; the numerous canoes upon the river; the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the surrounding country, formed altogether a prospect of civilization and magnificence, which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa.’ referring to both the Niger River and the civilization around it, how on earth then was he the one that discovered the Niger River, since there was a civilization and a people already established and thriving in trade on the river?

For the purpose of fairness, could it be that the record that says that Mungo Park discovered the Niger River was in relation to him ‘discovering’ it for those who sent him from London? But even if that is the case, why is there a general acceptance that he discovered the Niger River as if there was never anyone who had seen the river before he came to Africa?

And come to think of it, how can you even discover a river that runs through the very backyards of the locals living in the area? The river from which they fish for food, get water for drink and even travel on? If a white man claims he discovered it, what about the locals who have lived their lives for generations in that same place?

It reminds us of a BBC report in 2021 about how a white woman discovered dolphins in the coast of Kenya. When we first saw that report, the first question that came to my mind was ‘If she said she discovered the dolphins, what about the locals who told her about the dolphins and whose boat she used to go see the dolphins?’

You can watch the video HERE