Hulda Jane Stumpf (10 January 1867 – 3 January 1930) was an American Christian missionary who was murdered in her home near the Africa Inland Mission station in Kijabe, Kenya, where she worked as a secretary and administrator.For date of birth and middle name, Marvin J. Newell, A Martyr's Grace, Moody Publishers, 2006, 103–104; for death, image of Stumpf's headstone, accessed 2 October 2013.
Stumpf may have been killed because of the mission's opposition to female genital mutilation (FGM, also known as female circumcision). Kenya's main ethnic group, the Kikuyu, regarded FGM as an important rite of passage, and there had been protests against the missionary churches in Kenya because they opposed it. The period is known within Kenyan historiography as the female circumcision controversy.
Stumpf is reported to have taken a firm stand against FGM in the Kijabe Girls' Home, which she helped to run. Some apparently unusual injuries on her body suggested to the governor of Kenya at the time that, before or after smothering her, her killer(s) had genitally mutilated her, although a court concluded that there was no evidence she had been killed because of her opposition to FGM.
Early life and education
Stumpf was born in Big Run, Pennsylvania, to J. R. Stumpf and his wife, and was raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, one of four children. Her father owned Indiana's first five-and-dime store, located on the 700 block of Philadelphia Street. He was one of the first local people to own a steam car – in 1906 only six cars were registered in the town – and in July 1901 began using it to make deliveries to his customers.Hulda Stumpf, former resident, said murdered", The Indiana Gazette, 7 January 1930; John F. Busovicki, Indiana County, Arcadia Publishing, 2003, 28.
Stumpf attended business school, then New York Music School for two years. After college she worked as a clerk and stenographer, then taught shorthand at Indiana Business College.Newell 2006, 104.
In October 1906 she applied for a position as a missionary with the Africa Inland Mission (AIM), describing herself in her first letter as "forty years of age ... and not very rugged looking," but in good health.Hulda Stumpf, Letter to G.K. Sample , 26 October 1906, courtesy of Wheaton College. She wrote on the application form that she wanted to work in Africa because of an "earnest desire, believing the time to be short, when He shall appear, and the need in foreign fields seems to be great."Dana Lee Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice, Mercer University Press, 1996, 211.
In November 1906 she told the AIM that she was trying to move away from denominationalism: "There is only one form of church government, as I understand the term, and that is based upon the scriptures, and the scriptures alone, leaving out man's notion as to how a church should be governed."Robert 1996, 212, n. 57. From May 1907 she studied for two months at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in preparation for her missionary work. Her college file described her as "direct, businesslike, and kind."Newell 2006, 105.
Work in Africa Arrival
Stumpf sailed from New York in November 1907 on the SS Friedrich der Große, arriving in Gibraltar on 12 November, and in Naples on 15 November."India Party was in Naples Nov 15", Indiana Evening Gazette, 30 November 1907. In December she arrived in Kijabe, Kenya, where she was assigned to work as a secretary for the head of the Africa Inland Mission. She wrote in a letter to the Indiana Gazette, dated 20 December 1907:
Since I am anxious that you should all know something about my trip and the condition of the country as we find it in British East Africa, I am sending this general letter. I have had my first visit to a native village where goats, sheep and human beings occupy the same hut. The houses are built of bamboo and thatched with grass; the center or highest point is about ten feet, sloping to the outer edge until the door or hole to crawl through is about three feet high. ... The chief occupation for the men is herding goats; the women do the gardening, wood chopping, carrying of heavy loads, etc. The women carried all our trunks and baggage from the depot up to the mission station, a distance of about three miles. It is considered a disgrace for a man to carry a load of wood, pail of water, etc.
The clothing consists of a goat skin thrown carelessly over the shoulder, and a great deal of tin and brass jewelry; rings on the ankles, toes, neck and ears, also bands or strings of beads around the head and waist. ... The chief timber just near us is wild olive and cedar. ... The roses and geraniums grow like trees almost and bloom continually. Ferns of all kinds grow wild. All the way from Mombasa to Kijabe, a distance of 1575 miles, we saw banana, coconut and mangoe trees ..."Hilda Stumps tells of life in Africa", The Indiana Gazette, 5 February 1908, 15.
Kijabe Girls' Home
Stumpf remained in Africa for most of the rest of her life, helping to run the Kijabe mission and writing articles for its monthly magazine, Inland Africa. She lived for many years in the two-room cottage in which she died, 300 yards from the mission building.Newell 2006, 105–106. Her last visit to the United States was in 1925. By the time of her death the Africa Inland Mission had 45 mission stations in East Africa, 225 missionaries and 1,000 African teachers."Woman Missionary Murdered in Africa", The New York Times, 6 January 1930.
According to historian Dana Lee Robert, Stumpf—irascible and hard of hearing, at least toward the end of her life—was a typical missionary woman, viewed by African society as having little status because she was an unmarried woman, and viewed the same way within the mission because of her relatively junior role. Robert describes her as "[m]arginalized both missiologically and physically." Nevertheless, Robert argues, as an agent of Western culture Stumpf represented a significant "challenge to daily life" in Africa.Robert 1996, 230–231.
One of her duties was to help administer the Kijabe Girls' Home and Training School, where girls were taught literacy and agricultural skills, mathematics, sewing and Bible lessons. The school was known locally as Ishai because it had an iron roof, unlike others with grass roofs; ishai meant iron sheet and also place of shelter.Old Africa, issue 18, 2008, 5–6. It was one of several girls' homes and schools run by the Africa Inland Mission.
The relationship between the missionaries and the Kikuyu members of the AIM's congregation was not one of equals. James Karanja cites a letter Stumpf wrote in June 1916, asking that only plain dresses be sent from the United States for the Kikuyu girls, without "tucks, ruffles, piping, etc." Apparently the previous year dresses had been received by another mission that were regarded as too good for the Kikuyu, and they had been given to missionaries' children instead. The concern, Stumpf wrote (possibly relaying objections, rather than expressing her own), was that the Kikuyu would be "dressed better than white children."James Karanja, The Missionary Movement in Colonial Kenya: The Foundation of Africa Inland Church, Göttingen: Cuvillier Verlag, 2009, 53.
Female genital mutilation Missionary opposition
Female genital mutilation (FGM) was regarded by the Kikuyu, Kenya's main ethnic group, as an important rite of passage between childhood and adulthood.Janice Boddy, Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan, Princeton University Press, 2007, 243. The procedures include removal of the clitoris (clitoridectomy), removal of the inner labia (excision), and removal of all the external genitalia and the suturing of the wound (infibulation)."Female genital mutilation", World Health Organization, February 2013. The Kikuyu practised excision and sometimes infibulation, calling it irua for female and male circumcision.Boddy 2007, 243; for infibulation, 235, 359, n. 54.Lynn M. Thomas, "'Ngaitana (I will circumcise myself)': Lessons from Colonial Campaigns to Ban Excision in Meru, Kenya" in Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund (eds.), Female "Circumcision" in Africa: Culture Controversy and Change, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000, 132. A memorandum by the Church of Scotland Mission described it, in or around 1929:
Female circumcision, as it exists among the Kikuyu, is an operation which varies in severity, some sections of the tribe practising a more drastic form than others. It involves the removal of not only the Clitoris, but also the labia minora and half the labia majora, together with the surrounding tissue, resulting in the permanent mutilation affecting the woman's natural functions of maturation, menstruation, and parturition, with disastrous results not only to the birth rate, but also to the physique and vitality of the tribe.Karanja 2009, 92–93.
The medical issues apart, the missionaries objected to the sexual nature of the ceremonies.Karanja 2009, 93. For the Kikuyu, the ceremonies and procedure were a vital ethnic ritual. Unexcised women (irugu) were viewed as unmarriageable outcasts.Robert Strayer and Jocelyn Murray, "The CMS and Female Circumcision," in Robert Strayer (ed.), The Making of Missionary Communities in East Africa, SUNY Press, 1978, 136. The Times of London reported in February 1930: "The young girls represent an economic asset to the parents and, in the eyes of the tribe, their value is completely lost unless the rites are performed. In fact, the older Kikuyu believe that no woman may bear children unless the ceremonies have been observed."The Times, 24 February 1930, cited in Boddy 2007, 241. There were rumours among the Kikuyu that the British wanted to stop irua so that they could marry the unmutilated girls and thus acquire Kenyan land.Boddy 2007, 246.
The African Inland Mission began campaigning against FGM in 1914, and in 1916 the Church of Scotland Mission said it would excommunicate African Christians who practised it. The Kenya Missionary Council was the first organization known to call it mutilation; Marion Scott Stevenson, a Church of Scotland missionary, coined the term "sexual mutilation of women" for the practice in 1929, and the Missionary Council followed suit.Karanja 2009, 93, n. 631. That year African teachers working in CSM and AIM schools were asked to sign an oath renouncing both FGM and membership of the Kikuyu Central Association, the representative body of the Kikuyu people.Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience, Manchester University Press, 1990, 192.Klaus Fiedler, Christianity and African Culture, Brill, 1996, 5, including n. 6.Also see Jocelyn Murray, "The Church Missionary Society and the "Female Circumcision" Issue in Kenya 1929-1932", Journal of Religion in Africa, 8(2), 1976 (92–104), 93. Ninety percent of the African congregations chose to leave rather than swear the oath.John Lonsdale, "Kikuyu Christianities", Journal of Religion in Africa, 29(2), May 1999 (206–229), 217. Ronald Hyam writes that the issue split the Kikuyu Christian community into kirore (abolitionists) and karinga (traditionalists).Hyam 1990, 192.
Stumpf's involvement
Stumpf took "one of the firmest stands" against FGM at the Kijabe Girls' School, according to Dana Lee Robert.Roberts 1996, 230. In May 1927 Stumpf described what happened to one teacher who had had FGM performed on his daughter:
About three years ago Muchai along with many others was prohibited from teaching and was excommunicated forever, the sentence read, unless he was willing to confess his wrong and swear allegiance to the white man and his rulings. The confession was sorrow for allowing his daughter to be circumcised.Hulda Stumpf in a letter to H. Campbell, May 1927, cited in Karanja 2009, 94.