Chapter XIX: Anthropology (1)

The races of man which I am about to enumerate at the commencement in this chapter, extend over a region of Eastern Africa lying between the first degree north of the Equator and five degrees to the south, and bounded on the west by the Victoria Nyanza and the thirty-fourth degree of east longitude, and on the east by the Indian Ocean. I wish, for the sake of comparison, to review all the known races inhabiting this wide stretch of country; but I shall more especially describe those dwelling in the vicinity of Mount Kilima-njaro, with whom I have come into personal contact during my recent stay in that district.

The country which lies between the Victoria Nyanza and the coast, and is circumscribed by the limits I have just cited, offers certain peculiarities of conformation worthy of recapitulation, inasmuch as they doubtless influence the races of men inhabiting those regions. Beyond the fertile cultivated coast-belt, which is rarely more than ten miles broad, begins the Nyika, a strange “wilderness,” as its name imports, covered with harsh repellant vegetation, and almost unprovided with running water. Here the rainfall is scanty, and the country bears a parched look all the year round. This semi-desert, except where it is broken by mountainous districts or intersected by great rivers, extends uninterruptedly to within a short distance of the eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza—is indeed the prevailing type of scenery throughout Africa, for the Dark Continent is on the whole less forested than any other part of the tropics. But, as a happy contrast to this dreary “veldt,” as it is called in the south, rise the magnificent mountain systems of Usambara, Taita, Pare, Ugweno, Kilima-njaro, Kiulu; not to mention other mighty ranges which Thomson has made known to us, and which offer from his description the same characteristics as those I have myself explored. Another break in the Nyika is made by the courses of perennial rivers flowing to the Indian Ocean, such as the Ruvu or Luvu, the Tzavo or Sabaki, the Tana, and a few minor streams of less importance. The marked distinction between the outward aspects of the well-watered forest country on the banks of rivers, lakes, or amid high mountains, and the great rolling plains sparsely covered with stunted trees or thorny scrub which I call the Nyika, is carried out further in the races of man inhabiting either. The forest country on the hills or along the rivers is occupied by resident agriculturists, belonging principally to the Bantu family, ethnologically and linguistically, and the forbidding wilderness in the plains is ranged over by the semi-nomad, cattle-keeping Masai, who for the present must be regarded as forming an independent group in African anthropology.

The Masai, who occupy a large portion of this district, are divided into many classes, tribes, and even independent nations. Some are settled agriculturists (called by the coast people Wa-kwavi), others are still fierce semi-nomads, spreading far and wide in their raids, though retaining a certain tribal district in which they make a more or less permanent abode. There are the Wa-kwavi of En-ǰemsi and the district of Lake Baringo; of Laikipia; Kosova and Lumbwa, near Kavirondo. There are also the Wa-kwavi of Aruša and Méru, near Kilima-njaro, and of the Ruvu river, and Ṅguru in the south. The principal Masai clans are those of Sigirari, Kisoṅgo, Sogonoi, Ṅgiri, and Laitokitok, in the vicinity of Kilima-njaro, and of Matumbato, Kaputei, Kinaṅgop, Dogilani, Eṅ-guaso Eṅ-gišu—(Cattle-river)—districts stretching to the north and west of the great snow-mountain. Thomson[48] considers the Masai of Kilima-njaro to be the purest in blood, and the most free from foreign admixture.

To the extreme north of the district under review certain peoples have been made known to us by Thomson’s explorations, such as the Nandi, Sūk, and Kamasia tribes, which, according to this distinguished traveller’s observations, would seem to be related in language and race with the Masai, and help to fill up the blank between the southern members of that family and their distant relatives, the Latuka and Bari, in the valley of the White Nile.

The principal Bantu tribes in this region are the Wa-tutwa, Wa-kara, and Wa-rori on the south-eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza, and the Ba-samia and Ba-nyara to the north of Kavirondo; the Wa-kikuyu, Wa-mbe, and Wa-δaičo to the south and west of Mount Kenia; the A-kamba, inhabiting a large district known as Ukambani, between the rivers Amboni and Tzavo; the Wa-pokomo on the Tana, which flows from the base of Kenia to the Indian Ocean; the A-nyika, A-digo, Wa-bondei, and the Arabized Wa-swahili on the coast between Lamu and the mouth of the Ruvu at Pangani; the Wa-sambara and Wa-zeguha that inhabit Usambara and the adjacent plains; the Wa-taita of the Taita mountains, midway between Kilima-njaro and the coast; the Wa-pare and Wa-gweno, and, lastly, the Wa-taveita, dwelling to the south-east of Kilima-njaro; the Wa-kahe of the Upper Ruvu, and the Wa-čaga, who inhabit all but the northern flanks of the great snow-mountain.

The north-eastern portion of this district, which I term Eastern Equatorial Africa, is mainly populated by the Galla and Somali peoples, two races bitterly opposed to one another, although closely related in blood and language. They form a remarkably distinct variety of man apparently midway between the Negro on the one hand and the Arab on the other. Their languages belong to the Ethiopic branch of the Hamitic family according to some, and according to others constitute (with their congeners) a separate and independent group, with certain undeniable approaches to the Semitic and Hamitic tongues.

The region over which the Galla race exists is a curiously extended one, and yet often strangely restricted in width. They occupy, roughly speaking, a long, narrow strip of Eastern Africa scarcely exceeding, at the utmost, 200 miles in breadth, in fact more or less confined between the thirty-seventh and fortieth degree of east longitude, but nevertheless stretching in a southerly direction from the twelfth parallel north of the Equator to the fourth parallel south, over a distance of some 1100 miles. The Gallas have largely mingled with the population of Abyssinia in North-Eastern Africa, and now they are every year advancing farther and farther southward down the Zangian coast, pushed on by their remorseless foes the Somali. At present the Gallas are nearing Mombasa, and the Somali have begun to approach the banks of the Tana river. Inland the southern boundary of the Galla extension is at present the Sabaki river. On the west they border on Ukambani, the country of the A-kamba, a Bantu race, and farther north they march with the Masai district till about 4° or 5° N. of the Equator, when, as far as we know, tribes of Nilotic negroes become their western neighbours. Apparently, as time goes on, they will come betwixt hammer and anvil. The Somali will push them farther and farther west, while the Masai will force them to recoil eastwards to avoid his savage raids. Thus their future is rather gloomy. Perhaps the best thing they can do is to advance towards the Nile and Abyssinia.

There is a curious colony of Nilotic negroes settled in the district of Kavirondo on the eastern bank of the Victoria Nyanza, surrounded on all sides by tribes of Bantu and Masai race. From what we know of their language, philologically, at any rate, they are closely related to the Šiluk people of the White Nile, and must represent a curious and isolated colony of Nile negroes, the remnant of some former invasion now surrounded on all sides by people of alien origin. They are only known as yet from the descriptions of Swahili traders, and no European has yet visited their country save the hasty coasting trip along their shores which Stanley made when circumnavigating the Victoria Nyanza.

Thomson has explored the country to the north of Kavirondo, and we learn from him that there the people are Bantu, speaking apparently a language closely related to Lu-ganda and Ki-nyoro. The nearest kinsmen, therefore, of this Šiluk colony on the Victoria Nyanza, would seem to be the Lur people who inhabit the north-western bank of the Albert Nyanza, in 4° N. latitude. I think it very probable that, at any rate in language, the Šiluk race is a distant relative of the Masai. The Bari tongue, one of the most northern members of the Masai group, betrays in its vocabulary a resemblance to certain languages of the Šiluk family which can hardly be accidental or be accounted for by a theory of loan-words. The same thing occurs also with the Diṅka, as Lepsius pointed out in the preface to his “Nuba Grammar.”[49]

Much yet remains to be ascertained about the relationships and affinities of the reported dwarf races lying between Kilima-njaro and the Nyanza, who may turn out possibly to resemble the Doko who inhabit a portion of the almost unknown regions stretching between Abyssinia and Masai-land. There are also curious helot tribes living in serfdom with the Masai and the Galla, and speaking the languages of their masters, though they are said to retain independent tongues of their own. Such are the Wa-boni (also known as the Wa-sania, Wa-dahalo, Wa-ta, ǰuwano, Alaṅgulo, &c.) who live in the vicinity of the Sabaki, Tana, and Ozi rivers, also on various parts of the coast between Malindi and the River ǰub. Then, also, there are the Endorobo (a Masai term, probably En-dorobo, “the short, stumpy, inferior”), the Elkonono, a tribe of blacksmiths. The Wa-boni (their very name is foreign, as may be seen by the Swahili prefix Wa-) live among or near the southern Galla tribes, and are often plundered by these tyrants. They are chiefly hunters, practise no agriculture, and keep few domestic animals but dogs. In physical type, judging by the few specimens I have seen in the vicinity of Lamu, I should call them very unlike the Galla. They are sooty black, undersized, and very negroid in their features, with woolly hair. M. Greffulhe, a French merchant who had come in contact with them while living and trading in their country, was kind enough to furnish me with a few words of their language, which I insert in a foot-note.[50] The reader will see that it is principally the same as Galla, except that in the numerals it makes a slight approach to Masai which is not so evident in the former tongue.

The Endorobo and Elkonono whom I encountered to the north-east of Kilima-njaro, were living near the Masai encampments as a helot race of hunters and smiths. I was informed that they manufactured all the spears, shields, and swords of the Masai. They were an ugly lot, very different in appearance from the Masai, short in stature, black, and with their legs often bowed and exhibiting a negro’s shin. I could not elicit any words of their own language—if they possessed a peculiar speech—and in my hearing they only spoke Masai.

In the country to the west and north-west of Usambara, below the mountains, are the remnants of a curious tribe of cattle-keepers, the Wa-mbugu, as their Usambara neighbours call them. They are sometimes known as the Ala. In appearance they are pleasing, with thin lips, well-shaped noses, rather narrow eyes, and not unlike the Masai. Their colour is a deep brown-black, and their hair does not apparently differ from the frizzly _chevelure_ of the Bantu negro. The language they speak (which has recently been brought to light by Archdeacon Farler of Magila[51]), is a thorough enigma. While possessing Bantu prefixes, and using them as they are used in Bantu languages, its word-roots, with one or two exceptions, are utterly unlike anything we have yet met with. The exceptions are a few terms taken from Masai, Ki-kamba, and Ki-sambara.

On the coast, especially between Lamu and Pangani, ancient Arab settlements were planted a thousand years ago, and though their pristine glory has long since departed, some of the descendants of these early colonists still remain, and together with the more recently arrived ’Omani and Hadramauti Arabs represent the Semitic family in this congeries of nations. The intermixture of Arab and Bantu has formed the curious mongrel race known as the Wa-swahili, or “people of the coast” (from the Arabic Sahel, coast), and these enterprising traders have, especially in late years, played a most important _rôle_, for good and for bad, in the opening-up of Eastern and Western Africa.

I will now proceed to describe more in detail such of those tribes and races with whom I came into personal contact during my expedition to Kilima-njaro. They fall naturally into two groups—the Masai and the Bantu.

Until I had safely reached Kilima-njaro with all my goods, I was not at all anxious to encounter any of the former race, great as was the interest I felt in their strange customs and the structure of their euphonious language. Nevertheless, when Mandara sent to me one day the message that a party of Masai had come to visit him and trade, and that I might run over and interview them, I hastened to do so; and, tucking my note-book under my arm, I made off to Moši, where the good-natured chieftain, who was a fluent speaker in Masai, served as my interpreter, and wrung from his solemn, stately guests some of the information which I here impart. At that time Thomson had only just returned to Zanzibar from his wonderful journey through Masai-land, and the result of his observations had not been given to the world: so that the Masai were to me nearly a new subject, and I was eager for enlightenment as to their idiosyncrasies. To many of my readers who have perused Mr. Thomson’s interesting work, much of what I here write may seem a twice-told tale, but as a matter of fact it is rather the filling in the details of the picture Mr. Thomson has so vividly and faithfully drawn.

The Masai of whom I write belong mainly to the clans of Kisoṅgo,[52] Sigirari, and Laitokitok. I have come in contact with them both on the march and when I have been living at Taveita or Moši, whither their women and elders would come to purchase honey and vegetables. I have also traded with the Wa-kwavi (agricultural Masai) of Taveita, Aruša, and the Ruvu valley.

The distinction made between the Wa-kwavi and Masai has been already commented on, and I would only refer to it again to repeat it is little more than one based on mode of life. In speech these two divisions of the race are identical, and the Wa-kwavi only differ from the Masai in appearance in those districts where they have made slaves among the neighbouring Bantu tribes and taken the females as concubines, a thing which has occurred considerably—as I am informed by Swahili traders—in those vague districts lying between Kilima-njaro and Unyamwezi. But as the Masai of neighbouring districts do the same, with the same result, namely, that the colour of the skin becomes black, and the features lose all fineness of moulding—this negroid mingling is not to be taken as a characteristic of the Wa-kwavi section.

The previous history of the Masai people has been a common incident in the unwritten race-struggles which surge among savage humanity. It has been that of most rising and invading populations, like the Huns and Turks and Goths of Europe. First, some tribe, or division of a tribe, has been forced into war in self-defence, and has won a victory over its assailants. Then it acquires a taste for fighting, and from being persecuted becomes the persecutor. It spreads its conquests and ravages far and wide, the fighting qualities descend from father to son in increasing intensity. Soon, however, there are no weaker peoples left to subdue or to harry. The land is a wilderness, cultivation has ceased. The fighting tribe suffers from hunger. Then a section of them turns to the soil and commences a rude agriculture. This pursuit in time prospers, and the improved condition of the agriculturist attracts the envy and greed of their nomadic brothers. A civil war ensues, which, no matter what vicissitudes may happen, ends in the triumph of the tillers of the soil, for to defend their crops and granaries they construct fortifications and walled towns. Then with the victory of the settled authorities comes an opening for commerce. The lives of traders are safer among a hardworking colony of agriculturists than amid lawless rovers and cut-throats. So, in time, civilization finds an opening into what was once a _terra incognita_ on account of the fierceness of its inhabitants. So it has been, and is, with the Masai. The last few decades a perceptible alteration in their condition of life has begun to appear. That section of them known as the Wa-kwavi has taken to a settled mode of life. No longer do they rove about seeking whom they may rob and slay, but they dwell within fixed limits, cultivate the soil, and encourage traders to settle in their midst. A bitter civil war has raged between them and their still nomadic cousins, at times a war of mutual extermination, but somehow or other the settlements of the Wa-kwavi continue to increase and prosper, while not a few of the tribes of Masai who retain their pastoral habits and still scorn to till the soil are being confronted by a disagreeable alternative that they themselves can recognize. They must either turn their spears into spades and their swords into reaping-hooks—or starve. The cattle disease which has lately raged among them throughout the length and breadth of the land, has played havoc with the herds on which their main sustenance depends. As to renewing their live-stock by raids on the tribes of the coast or the far interior, that will soon be—is already—an impossibility. Where their victims were too weak to resist they have simply given up cattle-keeping for fear of attracting the ruthless plundering of the Masai, and now subsist meekly on vegetables and fowls; where they were already strong, they have become stronger, either by settled government or by occupying unassailable positions. Soon there will be no cattle left to raid, and the Masai will range the wide deserted plains in all their splendid insolent bravery and die of inanition. The inhabitants of the walled cities or the lofty hills will dwell secure from attack, and the wretched remnants of vanquished tribes still lingering in unprotected haunts will not be worth robbing. Then the proud Masai must turn to and wring from the soil that sustenance which only comes as the reward of honest labour. A dear old warrior of Kisoṅgo, with the manners of a well-bred Arab, and the physique of an aged Hercules (supposing that hero to have recovered his attack of blood-poisoning and to have attained the condition of a magnificent ruin), said to me a little more than a year ago, “Ah, when you next return to Taveita in twelve months’ time, you will find us all Embarawuio (Wa-kwavi), like these people of Kikoro,[53] whom we used to rob and kill when _I_ was a youth. And now, see! All our cattle are dying, though we have sent them to the pastures of ǰipé, and I have to come here to buy food from these Es-singa (slaves), who are fat and strong, and lack not good things to eat.” The old gentleman had, in fact, come with a troop of wives and many asses to buy grain and honey and dried bananas. In time these more civilized Wa-kwavi will prevail in numbers and power over the fierce pastoral Masai, and thus Eastern Equatorial Africa will be opened up to safe and profitable trade. At the very worst, however, the Masai are neither so dangerous nor so bloodthirsty as the Soudanese Arabs or the fanatical Tuaregs of the Sahara. If you are content to pay their tribute, you need not fight, and if you _are_ forced to defend yourself, these people are powerless in front of a stockade, as they have no guns, and never _throw_ their spears, being only accustomed to a hand-to-hand fight. We may be thankful that Mohammedanism has not yet reached them to turn them into mad fanatics or faithless cut-throats like their neighbours to the north and east. It is, indeed, a curious subject for reflection that this powerful religion, which in a short time swept like an epidemic over all Somali-land and the entire Soudan from Red Sea to Atlantic, should have halted on the borders of Masai-land, powerless in its appeals.

The physical appearance of the unregenerate robber Masai is splendid. It is a treat to the anthropological student to gaze on such magnificent examples of the fighting man. It is an example of one side of our multiform nature pushed to an exclusive and supreme development. The Masai warrior is the result of the development of Man into a beautiful Animal. To call him God-like, as we do the Greek ideals, would be silly and inappropriate—as much so as seeing divinity in a well-bred race-horse or an Alderney cow. To compare him with the statues of Apollo with which we are most of us familiar in foreign galleries or as plaster casts in English palaces of entertainment, is unfair to the one and the other. If you could find Apollo represented with huge-lobed ears, fang-like teeth, high cheek-bones, and a woolly crop, not to mention other peculiar and, to our, or perhaps I may say _your_ notions—for I am personally without prejudices—ungraceful developments, then you might aptly compare his ideal representation with the living Masai; or if you could discover specimens of these people who possessed the fleshy effeminate contours, the sexless countenance of vacuous beauty attributed to the god of poetry, music, and prophecy, you might more fittingly describe them as dark statues of Apollo. As it is, the physical perfection of these East African beef-eating, bloodthirsty warriors is of the prize-fighter’s or the rowing-man’s ideal, rather than the æsthete’s.

The full-grown Masai of pure blood generally attains six feet in height by the age of seventeen, though at that time he is often spindly and cumbersome, an ungraceful hobbledehoy. Three years, however, of an exclusive diet of milk, blood, and half-raw beef-steaks, combined with a rigorous training in warlike and athletic exercises, have developed him into a sinewy, muscular man of admirable proportions, broad of chest, with a smallish head, a graceful neck, and limbs whose muscles seem hard as iron. There is no fat on his body. I cannot say that his hands and feet are always well-shaped. Though the instep is high, the foot spreads out rather broadly and squarely at the toes; the minor ones advancing nearly in a line with the big toe.

Their faces are somewhat Mongoloid in look, at first sight. The rather narrow, slanting eyes, the prominent cheek-bones, and the pointed chin suggest that impression. On the other hand, the nose is often beautifully shaped, with high bridge and delicately-carved nostrils, which obey sensitively the passing feelings of their owner, quivering and dilating with pride and rage, or widening and relaxing with good humour. Their heads are often singularly round and broad for Africans, though at the same time I have not failed to see the most dolichocephalic skulls among the true Masai. The hair is certainly longer and less frizzly than among the true negroes, though at the same time this may be only due to the careful and continual combing-out it undergoes and its straightening with a thick paste of clay and fat. It is, after all, a negro’s wool, and is not longer or more abundant, certainly, than the regular Papuan crops of hair which the Bantu people of the Upper Congo have been found to possess.

The ears of the Masai are naturally large, and, inasmuch as big ears are admired, this may be an inherited and perpetuated peculiarity; but, apart from what Nature has done for the race, Art steps in and effects greater changes still in the individual. When quite young the Masai children drill holes through the lobes of their ears. Through these small twigs are pushed, beginning at the size of lucifer-matches and gradually increasing as the aperture is extended until a huge wedge of ivory, four or five inches in diameter, can be passed easily through the lobe of the ear, which is changed to a thin loop of skin drooping to the shoulder. Sometimes a kind of wooden stretcher is employed, like a cotton-reel with a groove at both ends, and this is inserted lengthwise, to extend the ear. Usually, when it is considered sufficiently large, a row of fine iron chains, made by the skilful Čaga forgers, will be hung to the distended loop, or there may be a circular wooden or ivory ring like Mandara’s, which is illustrated on page 107. Married people change all these ornaments for discs of copper-wire, coiled round and round and looking just like small Catherine-wheels in shape. These are hung on to the ear, and it is _de rigueur_ to do so on entering the marriage state.

The eyes, in these people, as already noted, are long and slanting. The sclerotic is clearer and whiter than in the typical negro, though in most of the men it becomes very bloodshot and enhances their fierce, wicked look. The eyebrows are prominent and generally hairless—I think the hairs are pulled out purposely with tweezers. Whether there is much sign of beard or moustache I cannot say. The men I have seen are always rigidly smooth-faced. They use razors (El-morūnya) of iron, made by the El-konono, a helot tribe of blacksmiths. I fancy the place of shaving-soap is taken by a thin layer of wet clay. “To shave,”—_barn_—, also means “to scrape,” in their language. I do not think, however, there is much growth of beard in these people, or that they need to shave very frequently.

The shape and size of the mouth varies exceedingly in the Masai, doubtless according to the greater or less purity of the race. This feature is always large, but frequently the lips are thin, and the upper one rather _in_verted than _e_verted. The teeth are generally very ugly. They are often carious, but even when sound they project at an angle from the purple-red, discoloured gum, and appear like isolated fangs. The wide space which is often seen between the two middle incisors of the upper jaw is doubtless due to artificial filing, and is supposed to aid them in the projecting of their saliva, which is such an important ceremony with these people.[54] Instances of marked prognathism I have never seen among the Masai.

As regards their limbs, I have generally noticed that the forearm is long, as it often is in Africans, and that the tip of the middle finger nearly reaches the knee when the arm is dropped by the side. The forearm is generally thin and rather straight all the way down, but although the muscles do not much project they are hard as iron. These few lines of vague description are of little use to anthropologists, and I regret very much that I have not a series of body-measurements to give you, but such a thing was impossible with the Masai. They angrily rejected the proposal when I advanced with my measuring-tape.

The colour of their skin is a dull chocolate-brown, ordinarily, varying between the Nos. 28 and 42 of Broca’s colour types. Occasionally among the women lighter shades may be seen, but this is generally in the vicinity of the Wa-gogo people, who are very light-complexioned negroes. Some Masai—more especially Wa-kwavi—are a dull black, but this tone always accompanies coarse features and indicates a mixture with captives from the black tribes east, south, and west. Hair on the body seems tolerably abundant in the usual parts, if allowed to grow—at least, so I am informed—but it is always rigorously pulled out, and all the Masai I ever saw were carefully depilated.

Circumcision is generally performed on the male at the age of fourteen, as far as I can ascertain—that is to say, it is done as one of the preparatory rites that celebrate the attainment of manhood. The manner of operation and the result are, I believe, quite peculiar to the Masai.[55]

After birth, the Masai baby (who is generally quite yellow when first born), is carried in a roll of leather attached to its mother’s shoulders. Female infants are considered a disappointment, and are often termed contemptuously “pans,” or “empty, hollow vessels” (E-modi). The more boys a wife bears, the more she is esteemed. Up to the age of three both sexes alike are term “Eṅ-gera” or “children”—a word meaning “the sheep sort,” or “the little sheep.” Then the males are distinguished as “Eṅ-aiok” (sing. Eṅ-aion), and later as “El-aiok,” while the girls continue to be called Eṅ-gera until they attain puberty, when they are known as En-doye (sing. En-dito). Young men after circumcision, when they leave the family home and consort with the warriors, are called “El-barnodi,” from the roots _barn_, to shave, and _odi_, or _godi_, a calabash. It means that they shave or scrape the milk-calabashes (which are never cleaned with water, but by scraping and rubbing with wood-ashes) for the young warriors, and make themselves otherwise generally useful. At about the age of seventeen they become fighting-men, and join the army, which includes practically the entire manhood of the nation between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four. The young men are known as El-moran. Their dress is picturesque but scanty. In ordinary, everyday life they wear nothing, and walk about in all their splendid, shameless nudity; or if they wish to make a little toilet, or are about to leave the camp, they sling a leathern cape about the shoulders or over one shoulder, tie a narrow leather girdle round the waist, in which to stick a knife or wooden club, and don their leather sandals, of which, by-the-bye, they are continually cutting out fresh pairs from new ox-hides, this being almost the only form of work they do not consider menial. When going to war, however, these simple adornments above described are considerably added to. The leather cape is removed, and its place is taken—firstly, by a long piece of cloth, sewn down the middle with a coloured stripe; and secondly, by a thick carapace made of kite’s feathers, or, as in my sketch, by a cape made of the skins of the Colobus monkey. A cap of Colobus skin may also be worn on the head, or a striking head-dress made of ostrich feathers, and shaped roughly like an ellipse. The leather cape which ordinarily is worn round the shoulders will now be twisted round the waist like a belt, and in the folds of this are secured the knobkerry (Ol-oikuma) and the Ol-alem or sword. Sometimes a ring of goat-skin, with the fur outside, or a strip of Colobus skin, will be worn round the ankles, and then, with a long-bladed spear and shield four feet high, the equipment of a Masai warrior is complete.

The hair of the men is combed out into long frizzles, artificially lengthened with strips of bark, and stiffened with clay and fat. Sometimes it is worn in long locks like rats’-tails, or more frequently it is drawn into a couple of pig-tails both over the forehead and at the nape of the neck. The women usually shave their heads, wholly or in part, and bestow little care on that part of their person. On the other hand, they are much more extensively clothed than the men, being enwrapped generally from head to feet in ample garments of dressed leather. Their necks, wrists, and ankles are covered with massive coils of iron or copper wire, and beads are largely used to ornament the fringe of their clothing.

Fig. 74—A Masai Warrior.
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The Masai men rarely marry until they are over twenty-five, nor the women until twenty. But both sexes, _avant de se ranger_, lead a very dissolute life before marriage, the young warriors and unmarried girls living together in free love. The married Masai is a changed being. From a lustful, bloodthirsty fiend he becomes a staid, courteous, and reasonable man, anxious to obtain and impart information, and as desirous of healing a breach and preventing bloodshed as before he loved to foment a quarrel and take part in a massacre. Whilst still an unmarried man and a warrior he abjures all vegetable food, and strictly confines himself to a diet of milk and meat. Moreover, he must not mix these two things, but, before changing from one to another, must take a powerful purgative, so that, for instance, if he has been living on milk, and wishes to eat or drink blood, he must thoroughly clear his system before changing from one to the other. But after marriage, when he is no longer looked upon as a fighting-man, his diet is unrestricted. He now seeks to obtain vegetable food from the humble races of cultivators who dwell in the vicinity of his settlement, or eagerly purchases honey with tusks of ivory.

Marriage is little more than a question of purchase, and the amount of cows to be paid varies with the comparative wealth of the bridegroom and the bride’s father. This question also regulates the number of wives. They seldom, however, espouse less than two. Married people are generally called “El-kieko,” and the husband is termed “El-moruo.”

When little children die, they are often buried within the village enclosure, or even beneath the floor of the mother’s dwelling. Grown-up persons are generally placed under a tree in a sitting posture with the knees touching the chin. A calabash supposed to contain milk, but generally empty, is placed by the side. A slight excavation in the ground is either chosen or made, in which to put the body. Stones are then heaped around it and over it, and grass is thrown on the top, so that a kind of cairn is generally formed. Nevertheless, the hyenas scarcely ever fail to pull down this mound and drag out the corpse, which is then devoured without any interposition on the part of the surviving relatives. When any person dies within an inhabited village, the settlement has to be purified by the medicine-man with a liquor made from the half-digested food (_E-moǰok_) in the stomach of an ox, which is killed for the occasion. After death the name of a deceased person is never mentioned, lest his spirit should obey the call and return. Notwithstanding this impression, these people have almost no fear of or belief in ghosts or demons, and mock at the Bantu people in their vicinity for their elaborate propitiation of the shades.

The Masai worship a vague Supreme Being, whom they call “Eṅ-gai,” a feminine word also meaning the “heavens” and “rain.” Eṅ-gai is sometimes supposed to dwell on the summit of Kilima-njaro, which is therefore called “Eṅgaǰi-Eṅgai” or the House of God. This Great Spirit with whom rain and grass[56] are peculiarly associated—as being the chief sign and result of his beneficence—is propitiated with loud singing and dancing (_Isīlil_). They also sacrifice sheep, and tie all the bloody remains in the skin and leave it on isolated mountains, or at a place where many paths converge. The Masai mention another and weaker divinity, whom they also designate by a female appellation—“En-naiterkob.” En-naiterkob seems to be a kind of earth-spirit (Eṅ-kob, the earth, the world), in contradistinction to Eṅ-gai, the heavens, the over-arching sky. The Masai often call on Naiterkob to mediate with Eṅ-gai and obtain the granting of their prayers for rain, success in war, or many male children. They regard with peculiar veneration the snowy summits of both Kilima-njaro (Ol-doinyo oibor, the white mountain) and Kenia (En-durkenia, or Ol-doinyo oigeri, the spotted mountain), imagining that these are at once the chosen residence of Naiterkob and the places on which Eṅ-gai reposes, and that they are therefore the most fitting sites for mediation with the Most High.

The political constitution of the Masai tribes is mainly patriarchal, but the rule is sometimes a dual one. The father of the tribe, the supreme chief, is generally a man chosen for his wealth, his wisdom, or his martial renown; or it may be that he is a mighty medicine-man skilled in the arts of divination and prophecy, and able to compound powerful drugs from the roots and bark of certain trees. If the former he is called Ol-beiǰani, and holds his place as long as he can keep it, but if his power is sacerdotal—if he is an Ôl-eibon, then he is probably supreme till death. The office is not hereditary. Sometimes the Beiǰani and the Eibon are found ruling side by side—the temporal and spiritual chieftains. In other cases it may be the Eibon who wields exclusive power or unites the temporal and spiritual functions in his own person. The Wa-kwavi states are usually little republics ruled by an oligarchy of all the wealthier or more powerful elders. Here the Eibon, or medicine-man, plays a less important part.

The Masai are very respectful in disposition to their elders, and the younger members of the community will seldom sit in the presence of the old men. At the same time they exhibit little grief at the death of their comrades, whether in battle or in village squabbles. As to remorse, that outcome of civilization does not exist among them. A Masai will murder his friend or neighbour either in a free fight over a herd of captured cattle, or in pursuance of private revenge, and live not a whit the less merrily afterwards. Nevertheless, while it is thought an honourable distinction to kill a fellow-citizen in fair fight, to murder any one secretly or by surprise is punished by a heavy fine. This is for the good of the community, not because it is thought wicked. The Masai, in fact, have scarcely any conceptions of good and bad like those of Europeans. _Torono_, which we translated “bad,” really means “broken, useless, inferior, spoilt;” _Maṅgadi_ is not “wicked,” but “cruel;” _Sidai_ is not “good,” but “loose-mannered, easy-going, wanton, unchaste.” Certain actions are recognized as injurious to the community and the commonwealth, and as such they are punished and repressed; but they do not, as do many races of men, connect different good or bad deeds with the pleasure or displeasure of the gods. Were the Masai given to enunciating moral maxims they would probably say, “To be good is to be silly,” and “Be cunning and you will prosper;” “Happy is the man who has smashed many skulls and stolen many cows: his children shall honour him,” and so on.

The agricultural Wa-kwavi build their houses generally after the method of the Bantu or other foreign races in whose vicinity they settle; besides copying them in many other particulars. The semi-nomad Masai do not make much pretence at architecture. As they roam about over certain districts, they often inhabit different portions at different times of the year. In the rainy season they may take to the open plains where the grazing is now good for the cattle, but in the winter or rainless period they will change to hilly ground where the mists create perennial verdure, or to the vicinity of great lakes and rivers for the same reason. Their quickly-constructed towns or villages, of which the women are generally the architects and builders, consist of a huge circle of low mud huts, surrounded by a thorn fence. In the middle of this enclosure the cattle are kept at night. Their huts are generally built as follows: first making a rough framework of pliant boughs, which are bent over and stuck in the ground at both ends, they plaster on this a mixture of mud and ox-dung, and, for further resistance to heavy rain, hides are thrown over the top, outside. The height of the dwellings barely exceeds four feet. There is a low, porch-like door. The only attempt at furniture is a hide laid across a row of sticks to serve as a couch at night.

The length of the house may be from nine to ten feet, and the breadth five. The top is generally rounded from the nature of the framework. They often, especially when built in a row, look like little more than inhabited mud walls.

The principal utensils of the Masai are calabashes, made from gourds and the huge fruit of the baobab-tree, leather bags, pots and spoons hollowed out of soft wood, or made of clay for cooking purposes. Snuff-boxes and pipe-bowls are made from the hard shells of certain fruits, or from ivory or rhinoceros horn. Their spears, knives, razors, and all metal instruments are made by the curious El-konono tribe, who dwell among them as vassals and serfs. Some of the poor Masai make a subsistence by neatly sewing leathern garments and disposing of them to women or old men in exchange for food.

The domestic animals of the Masai are oxen, goats, sheep, donkeys, and dogs. Fowls they despise and do not keep. Their cattle absorb all their thoughts. For their possession and retention wars are waged. The gift of an ox is a sign of solemn peacemaking, and is generally accompanied by much spitting right and left of the men who lead it. Nearly all their rites and superstitions are connected with cattle. They believe that they are the lawful heritage of the Masai race, whose primal ancestor received from Naiterkob the power to tame the wild oxen of the woods; and under this impression they “lift” the cattle of all weaker nations, maintaining that they have no right to their possession. Nevertheless, they probably got their kine from their northern home, somewhere on the White Nile, for the generic word they use for cow and cattle is identical with that of the Bari people round Gondokoro, and related to similar terms in the Šiluk and Diṅka tongues (_vide_ Vocabulary). The only type of ox which I have seen in their possession is that humped Asiatic breed (the zebu), so common in Tropical Africa, and which probably owes its introduction to the ancient Egyptians. But I am informed that farther in the interior to the eastward of Kilima-njaro, there is another breed of cattle in the possession of these people—a breed like the oxen of the Cape and South-west Africa, with large bodies, no hump, and immense widespread horns. On the Kunene river (South-west Africa, latitude 17° S.) I have met with the two breeds side by side—the big, long-horned and the small, humped cattle. In Angola there is a mingling of the two. On the Gold Coast and the Oil rivers I have only seen the small, humped variety, though I am told farther inland the other appears. Whence this long-horned, straight-backed, large-sized ox (which is normally a dun-brown) came from, I am at a loss to say. Of course it was not African in its origin, as in Africa there is not, nor, as far as we know, has there been, a wild ox of the genus Bos. Yet this last breed—which much resembles the Hungarian and South European (Spanish) cattle, was evidently an early introduction into Africa, for in many districts it appears to have preceded the humped kind. It was the only breed the Hottentots possessed. It seems to be very much kept by the populous nations in the interior of South Central Africa, between the Congo and Zambezi.

The Masai have a word for the pig which is also common to their distant relatives on the Nile (_vide_ Vocabulary), but they do not keep it in a domestic condition. The term for pig is used to indicate the wild warthog (_Phacochœrus_).

Their goats are those of East Africa generally, a small, plump variety. They possess two breeds of sheep, only one of which I have seen. This is the hairy, fat-tailed sheep, with short horns. The other I judge from report to resemble the tall, big-horned, chest-maned, domestic sheep of Central and Western Africa (_vide_ illustration, p. 428 of my book, “The River Congo”). The common fat-tailed sheep is called Eṅ-gera, and the long-horned kind El-mērekeš, or El-kirieš.

The Masai donkeys are generally splendid beasts, and are simply and solely the wild Ethiopian ass (_Equus hœmiopus_) domesticated. Where they have been free from mixture with coast breeds, they are, as I saw them, literally undistinguishable in size, colour, and markings from the wild ass of Abyssinia and North-east Africa. They have none of the stripes on the legs which appear in the wild ass of Somali-land. The Masai must have got them from the far north. Their word for ass agrees with that in the Latuka language spoken in 5° north latitude, to the east of the Nile (_vide_ Vocabulary).

The Masai are much attached to their dogs. Generally each child is followed about by one, its own exclusive pet. They are—those that I have seen—disappointing mongrels, all colours, and of no marked breed. Generally the ears are erect and pointed. The colour may be fawn, fawn and white, black and tan, all black, or black, tan, and white. They are about the size of large terriers. They never bark.

The marabou storks (_Leptoptilus_), vultures, and hyenas (_H. crocuta_) which frequent the Masai encampments are strangely tame, and are protected for the useful scavenging they perform. Strangers cause grave offence by killing them. The spotted hyena is often called by the Masai “Ol-uwaru onyoǰine”, the limping leopard. The striped hyena, which is rarer and shyer, and keeps more to the open, is called “Otonu.”

Whenever the warrior Masai are on a journey they are positively accompanied by flights of vultures and a few marabou storks. Wherever they stop to slaughter cattle, these scavengers descend and feast on the offal till they are so gorged that you may see a Masai pushing them away with his foot. The hyenas that haunt the vicinity of their burial-places root up and devour the dead soon after their relatives have laid them in the soil, without in any way being checked or molested.

The Masai rarely kill or eat any of the game around them—zebras, giraffes, buffaloes, and antelopes, so that their country from long preserving has become a hunter’s paradise. Unfortunately, the Masai are incensed at any guns being fired in their vicinity, lest the report should stampede their cattle; consequently a sportsman would often find himself cruelly hampered.

The ivory in which these people trade is secured for them by the helot tribes of hunters—En-dorobo, El-mau, and others, who actively pursue the elephants with spears and poisoned lances. The Wa-kwavi, who are agricultural Masai, cultivate, of course, most of the East African vegetables—sugar-cane, maize, bananas, millet, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and the collocasia root. The names of all these things are derived from Bantu languages, and are not related to terms employed by the other members of the Masai family in the Nile basin. Tobacco is not smoked by the Masai, but mixed with natron (_magad_) and chewed. It is also powdered and taken as snuff most extensively. Tobacco is always called by a corruption of the coast name, which again is only a variant of “tobacco.” It is wonderful, considering how recent is the introduction, that tobacco has so quickly spread among these wild people that they already forget its foreign origin.

The Masai are very fond of honey, which they not only purchase from their agricultural, bee-keeping neighbours, but also obtain from the stores of wild bees in warthog or ant-bear burrows. To these they are often guided by the honey-bird (_Indicator_), a creature they naturally regard with kindness. From the honey, mixed with water, they make an intoxicating mead called “ol-marūa.” This and sour milk are their chief beverages. Milk is regarded as a sacred fluid. They will never give or sell it to strangers of other nations, and were it not that the women are less rigid in their views than the men, and that they may occasionally be bribed with beads to bring milk clandestinely to the strangers, this grateful fluid would otherwise be unprocurable in Masai-land. Moreover, although they will readily give or sell castrated bullocks, they will never willingly part with a cow. The most heinous act a stranger can commit in their land is to _boil_ milk. This, they think, will so enrage the cows that they will at once run dry. Any one caught doing so can only atone for the sin with a fearfully heavy fine, or, failing that, the insult to the holy cattle will be wiped out in his blood. Talking of blood, this is one of the Masai warrior’s chief and favourite forms of nutriment. The ox is generally stunned with a blow on the back of the head, and then a vein is opened in the throat. To this the Masai applies his lips, and sucks and sucks until he can hold no more or until his impatient comrades tear him from the spurting vein. Doubtless the salts in the warm blood supply a need in his diet, for in no other form does salt mix with his food, the warriors being compelled to refrain from the salted tobacco their elders so enjoy.

Commerce and the cattle disease will do much to open up Masai-land, which is the finest country in Africa. The one will soften and the other will tame these fierce people. The increasing love of trade goods impels them to encourage the arrival of coast caravans, and the loss of their cattle, as before explained, will force them to till the soil. Then, as my old Masai friend prophesied, they will all become Wa-kwavi, and if the original nomad Masai be a fierce, intractable, insolent bully, he no sooner becomes a settled agriculturist than he changes into the nicest, quietest, honestest, mildest inhabitant in Africa. Therefore, although they may fail to see it, the greatest boon Eṅ-gai can confer upon them is to sweep their cattle off the land.