Chapter XIX: Anthropology (2)

Almost exclusively the Masai inhabit the plains round the Kilima-njaro district, while the uplands still retain the older population of the country. This consists of people belonging linguistically and racially to the great Bantu family, which occupies nearly all Africa south of the Equator. From a linguistic point of view the Bantu are absolutely homogeneous—there is no mistaking a Bantu tongue for a member of any other family. But ethnologically the distinction is much disputed. Some good authorities maintain that the Bantu races (Kaffirs, Congo, Swahili people, and the inhabitants of the great lakes) do not agree amongst themselves in any particular type, nor differ markedly from other negroes on the Nile or the west coast. This is a question of such intricacy, and needing so much careful argument, that I am not prepared to enter into it here, nor am I ready or anxious to prove the racial homogeneity of the Bantu-speaking people. While I recognize that there is certainly a great physical similarity between the Ovampo, Ovaherero (Damaras), the inhabitants of the Upper Congo, the Ba-ganda of the Victoria Nyanza, and the Zulus, I admit at the same time that there are many other tribes and races speaking Bantu languages who differ markedly from the fine types above cited. I have seen natives from the borders of Lake Nyassa, from the Lower Congo, from East Central Africa, who presented all the most hideous and exaggerated features of the Gold Coast negro, although the yellow faces in some of them might suggest an ancient strain of Hottentot or Bushman. Of course the Bantu is a negro—so is the Masai, the Wolof, the Mandiṅgo, or the pale-faced Berta of Abyssinia; so also, in my opinion, are the Hottentots and Bushmen. All African races with frizzly hair I would call negroes, whether their noses varied (as they do in the same tribe) from the patulous, wide nostrilled, bridgeless form of the Bushman to the fine, aquiline, delicately-shaped organ which you encounter among the Masai or the Wolof. There is no feature constant like the hair. You may meet some tribes of Bushmen who are dwarfs, and others (such as those found near the Kunéné and Upper Zambezi) who attain the average size. The colour of all negroes may vary in the same district from jet-black to tawny-yellow, but still their hair, though it may be long or short, is frizzly. Nevertheless, among the negro races there are wide differences that separate them into certain fairly well marked groups, the members of which evince more affinity for one another than for other sections of the sub-species or variety. Thus the low types of Masai resemble, not the Bantu, but the negro races of the Nile—the Šiluk-Diṅka people—from whom they perhaps originally sprang. The finest physical type of the Bantu, whether he be found in Damara-land, on the Victoria Nyanza, or in Natal, offers much the same characteristics in common, and does not at all resemble the Masai, who may be the highest development of the Nile negro, or the Wolof, who is among the handsomest samples of the races of Northern Guinea. Therefore, inasmuch as the mountaineers of the Kilima-njaro district and elsewhere, who speak languages of the Bantu family, differ from the Masai in speech and in physical features, and resemble rather in both these points the majority of the inhabitants of the southern half of Africa (who also belong linguistically to the same group), and further, as I cannot call one negro and the other negroid (since both are negro), I prefer to use the term Bantu in a physical as well as in a linguistic sense, and to speak of the Bantu peoples in contradistinction to the Masai. The principal Bantu tribes in the district I am describing are the Wa-taveita on the River Lumi, at the base of Kilima-njaro, the Wa-čaga, who, under many chieftains and political divisions, inhabit the great mountain, the Wa-gweno and Wa-kahe to the south, and the A-kamba and Wa-taita to the north-east and east. When I started for Kilima-njaro from Mombasa I encountered no inhabitants until we reached the hills of Maungu, on the borders of Taita. Here some people came and sold us honey and spoke to us in the Ki-taita dialect. At Ndara and Bura we subsequently saw more of the Wa-taita, and many of them afterwards emigrated to Taveita and Čaga, and even entered my service as hunters and scouts, so that I was enabled to see a good deal of them from first to last, and take down vocabularies of their dialect.

In outward appearance the Wa-taita are unprepossessing. They are about the medium height, the men varying generally from five feet three inches to five feet nine inches, and the women from four feet eleven inches to five feet four inches. They have fairly good figures, the limbs, especially the legs, are well formed, but the men are somewhat effeminate and slight-looking. In facial aspect there is much variation. While many have little pug noses with no perceptible bridge, and a much-rounded, projecting forehead, others exhibit an almost Red Indian physiognomy, with aquiline noses, high cheek-bones, and retreating foreheads. The teeth are artificially filed and sharp pointed, but are naturally set somewhat wide apart in the jaw. The whites of the eyes are much clouded. The ears are so tortured and misshapen by prevailing fashion, that it is hard to guess their original shape. The body is disposed to be hairy, but is carefully depilated all over, even to the plucking out of eyebrows, eyelashes, beard and moustache. The colour of the skin is generally dull, sooty-black, but this is often disguised by the coating of soot or red earth and fat or castor-oil, which is rubbed over the skin. The hair is generally shaved all round the head, and only allowed to grow on the occiput. Here it is much cultivated and pulled out into long strings, which are stiffened with grease and threaded with beads. Beads, indeed, are the adoration of the Wa-taita. The women wear massive collars of them, sometimes six inches broad and three inches deep, which are placed round the neck, and sometimes so lift up the chin as to compel the wearer to keep the head well thrown back. Several hundred strings of beads are bound round the waist, smaller bands cross and recross the back and breasts, they are banded round the shaven part of the head, they hang in scattered strings from the temple downwards, they decorate the tiny _tablier_ or leather apron which is worn for purposes of decency, and the borders of the two-tailed leathern garment which hangs on the back and legs are also edged with beads of various colours. In both sexes the lobes of the ears are pierced, and the hole is widened until the distended flap of skin nearly reaches the shoulder. When this result has been attained, many rings of beads are inserted, and continue to weigh down the distorted ear, the outer auricle of which is further pierced and hung with beads of a larger kind. This hanging the ears with beads is peculiar to the Wa-taita, the other mountain races in the vicinity employing for the like purpose fine iron chains, bolts of wood, or rings of wood or ivory. There are but slight traces of religion among them. They are afraid of spirits, who are supposed to dwell in large forest trees, and perhaps for the reason that their dead are always buried in the forest. The country is but slightly wooded, but on the hill-tops clumps of high trees are religiously conserved. The baobabs among these people, as among other East African races, are looked upon as particularly the abode of spirits. The word for God in their language is _Mulungu_, but I more than suspect it is a borrowed term from the coast tribes, and that _Eruwa_, “sun,” is their true conception of an over-ruling deity. Among the Wa-pare, the Wa-gweno, the Wa-taveita, and the Wa-čaga the word for “sun” and “God” is identical. _Mulungu_ is in use among the A-nika and the A-kamba, and _Muūngu_ and _Mungo_ among the Wa-swahili and the Wa-pokomo. All these variants descend from an original form, _Mu-n-kulu-n-kulu_, which is most closely preserved in the modern Zulu _U-nkulunkulu_. The adjective _-kulu_ in nearly all Bantu tongues has the meaning of “great” or “old.” To this was added the _n_ prefix, then the personal prefix _mu_, so that finally the combination meant the “old, old one,” for great and old in this sense are almost synonymous, and Bleek conjectures the term to have been a relic of ancestor worship, or the deification of some tribe-founder.

One other incident may be mentioned about the Wa-taita before I leave them. Their marriages are arranged first by purchase, the intended husband paying the father of the girl the three or more cows fixed as the price. When these preliminaries are settled the girl runs away and affects to hide. She is sought out by the bridegroom and three or four of his friends. When she is found, the men seize her and carry her off to the hut of her future husband, generally each man holding a limb, so that she is supported by four men including the bridegroom. On arriving at their destination, being accompanied on the way by bands of laughing girls and women, she enters the hut with her four captors, and each in turn is allowed to exercise a peculiarly marital privilege. Then having been in this strange manner repaid for their services, they leave her to the exclusive possession of her husband. She remains with him for three days, then is escorted back to her father’s house by another procession, and finally returns to her future home to take up the cares and duties of domestic life.

The language of the Wa-taita is about intermediate between the dialects of the coast and those of Čaga.

The A-kamba, who live on a broad stretch of country to the north of Taita nearly to the base of Kenia, are the neighbours of the Gallas on the coast. They are very roving, colonizing people, and great hunters. I have seen many of them at Taveita, whither they would bring rhinoceros horns and dried rhinoceros flesh for sale. These are on the whole a good-looking race, and I was surprised to find in many that the hair, though short, is straight, which together with a light skin shows an intermixture of Galla blood. They are slightly clothed in leathern coverings with a certain regard for decency. Originally, according to their traditions, inhabitants of plains and mountains to the south-east of Kilima-njaro, they were driven farther north by the inroads of the Masai, and eventually settled in that long strip of country which separates the latter race from the Galla. Here they have taken pretty firm root, together with their close relations, the Wa-kikuyu and the Wa-δaičo of Kenia, and however they may have been harassed by both Masai and Galla, they have increased and multiplied. Indeed of late years they have become too numerous in their own land for the limited supply of food, and so are compelled to wander to the coast and to Taveita in search of subsistence. They are a quiet, industrious, manly race, very different to the wretched A-nyika of Mombasa (_teste_ Krapf), and will doubtless, when their country comes to be opened up, play the same important _rôle_ of carriers and workmen as the Wa-swahili of Zanzibar.

The beautiful forest district of Taveita is inhabited by two different colonies. One a Kwavi people of Masai origin, and the other and more primitive a most interesting Bantu tribe, the Wa-taveita, who exhibit marked peculiarities in their language and ideas. Let me begin by saying that they are one of the pleasantest people I have ever encountered in Africa. They are of fair height, some of the men being both tall and robust, and attaining occasionally six feet in height. Their figures are often models of symmetry and grace. They anoint the body with oil and ochre, as do the neighbouring people already described. The hair is dressed in many fashions, more often divided with fat into separate strips, and the whole united in a pigtail at the back, or else allowed to hang in long locks about the face and shoulders. They frequently let the beard and moustache grow, and generally abstain from plucking out eyelashes and eyebrows, as is done elsewhere, though this is also occasionally practised at Taveita. Circumcision is general. Marriage is of course a matter of purchase, but no sign of imitating capture seems to be practised here. If the young man cannot afford to pay for his wife at once, he gives over to the father a certain portion of the price, and his intended bride is betrothed to him and carefully prevented from communicating with other males until the rest of the purchase is paid. Then she becomes a wife, and directly signs of pregnancy are manifest she is dressed with much display of beads, and over her eyes a deep fringe of tiny iron chains is hung, which hides her and also prevents her from seeing clearly. She is generally accompanied by an old woman, who is deputed to screen her from all excitement and danger until the expected event has taken place; after which little further fuss is made, and other succeeding children are born without any extra precautions being taken.

After marriage the greatest laxity of manners is allowed among the women, who often court their lovers under the husband’s gaze; provided the lover pays, no objection is raised to his addresses. Both sexes have little notion or conception of decency, the men especially seeming to be unconscious of any impropriety in nakedness. What clothing they have is worn as an adornment or for warmth at night and early morning. These people are affectionate and kindly in their family relations, as may be instanced by such an episode as the one recorded on page 214 of this work. Nevertheless they display strange callousness sometimes where death is concerned. The body of a much-loved wife or child is hastily buried in a shallow trench outside the circle of huts, and covered with stones and grass. The hyenas at night proceed to exhume and devour the corpse without provoking any interference from the sorrowing relatives, who the next morning will kick aside the osseous fragments of their loved ones without exhibiting the slightest sign of emotion or tenderness. They have a vague belief in life after death, but it is the disembodied spirits on whom they concentrate their thoughts, and not the lifeless clay, which is to them of no account. This is not as most of their congeners think—it is rather the effect of Masai influence; for among the majority of Bantu negroes very considerable attention is paid to the corpse, under the idea that the spirit of the dead person is still much affected by the condition and disposal of its previous tenement.

The people of Taveita subsist mainly on vegetable food, of which they rear a great variety in their beautiful gardens. They also eat fish and meat. The fish are caught in the River Lumi, which runs through the settlement, by means of skilfully-made wickerwork traps and weirs. They also construct from the midribs of a Raphia palm most clever rods and lines, the whole material coming from the palm, with a native-made iron hook superadded.

Fig. 75.—Men of Taveita making fire.
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Drills and Fire-sticks.
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The Wa-taveita proper number about 2000. They bear an excellent reputation among the coast traders for honesty and friendliness. They speak Ki-swahili almost universally, and speak it with singular correctness; but of course among themselves Ki-taveita is the only language used. This very interesting Bantu dialect offers many curious features and retains a number of archaic words in its vocabulary. It is somewhat midway between Ki-kamba and Ki-čaga but offers independent features of its own. So much intercourse with traders from the coast seems to have slightly robbed them of originality, and in their modes of life and forms of belief they somewhat ape the Wa-swahili. Many of them are almost Mohammedans. I noticed one little detail as regards fire-making which is worth recording. To produce fire, which is done in the common African way by rapidly drilling a hard pointed stick into a small hole in a flat piece of wood, is the exclusive privilege of the men, and the secret is handed down from father to son, and never, under any conditions—so they say—revealed to women. I asked one man why that was. “Oh,” he said, “if women knew how to make fire they would become our masters.” Nevertheless, without this drawback, the fair sex in Taveita have pretty much their own way. I have known one or two leading matrons who have always insisted on having their voice in the deliberations of the Wazēē, or elders, who govern Taveita. I have referred to their laxity of conduct after marriage, but it springs so much from amiability of disposition that it can hardly be called vice. In short, a more kindly, sensible, considerate set of beings, I have never met than the Wa-taveita.

The Wa-čaga of Kilima-njaro do not altogether resemble them. They are neither so pleasing in appearance nor in disposition. Sometimes they attain a fine stature, as in the case of Mandara, the chief of Moši, but generally they are short men. The women, however, are at times good-looking, and have well-proportioned figures. In fact, the ordinary rule amongst Africans is here reversed, and the women are handsomer than the men. Amongst these people we again meet signs of marriage by capture, but in their case it does not seem to be as I have described in the Wa-taita, for the bridegroom is quite equal single-handed to the capture of his wife, and certainly not disposed to reward his friends in the same manner as the less exclusive M-taita husband. On several occasions when I observed a marriage ceremony during my residence in Čaga, I found it consisted (after the purchase of the woman had been privately arranged) in the husband carrying off his wife pig-aback, while the relatives and friends pursued with shrieks of laughter, affecting to try and rescue the screaming girl; but, of course, all this was simulated, and a survival of past customs, for nowadays a man only gets his bride when he has settled the bargain previously with his future father-in-law. In such states as Moši, where there is a relatively large standing army, the chief will generally distribute the female slaves captured in war among his soldiers, and dower them himself with cattle. Thus his soldiers become indebted to him for their domestic happiness, and are consequently very much attached to the person of their monarch, who is, to them, the sole dispenser of benefits.

Real immorality hardly exists among the Wa-čaga; Mohammedan influence not having as yet initiated them into vicious thoughts and ways. We should be apt to call, from our point of view, their nakedness and almost animal unconsciousness of shame indelicate, but it is rather, when one gets used to it, a pleasing survival of the old innocent days when prurient thoughts were absent from the mind of man. The Wa-čaga cannot be accused of indecency, for they make no effort to be decent, but walk about as Nature made them, except when it is chilly, or if they wish to look unusually smart, in which cases they throw cloth or skins around their shoulders.

There are, as far as I can ascertain, no initiatory ceremonies among the Wa-čaga, such as are so constantly met with in other tribes of Bantu negroes in connection with the entrance into a state of puberty of young people of either sex. Circumcision, if performed on the male, which it is not universally, is generally done after the age of puberty.

The Wa-čaga share with the Masai, whom they may have copied, a curious habit of _spitting_ on things or people as a compliment or sign of gratitude. I remember one man, after I returned to my settlement in Čaga from a short trip to Taveita, was so pleased at my safe return that he took my hand in his and spat repeatedly at the sky, saying constantly “Eruwa iča!” (“God is good!”). They have but a vague idea of the deity. Indeed, one never knows whether or not he is identical with the sun, for that luminary bears just the same name, “Eruwa.” It is interesting to notice, in contradistinction to the derivation of the name of God I recently gave as coming from ancestor worship, that among other African nations the deity is identified with the sky or the sun. Thus there is the term “Eruwa” already referred to, which indicates “God” in Ki-čaga. Among the Wa-taveita it is “Zuwa,” also “Sun,” although the Swahili have lately introduced their word, Muungu. The form “Eruwa,” “Zuwa,” is identical in origin with the Swahili “ǰua,” the Luganda “Njuba,” the Congo “Ntuva,” all meaning sun, and all remounting to an archaic form “Nduba.” On the Upper Congo the Ba-yanzi have but one word for God and sky—“Ikuru,” or “Likulu.” Even among the Gallas “Waka” means indifferently God and sky, and in the Masai language “Eṅgai” (a feminine word) means both God, sky, and rain.

However, to return to the subject of the Wa-čaga. Though having little religious belief, they are very superstitious, and have great dread of sorcery. Large trees are supposed to be much affected by ghosts, and for this reason are spared by the axe. Their dead are buried in these isolated forests, sometimes in hollow trees, sometimes in the ground. Hyenas generally dig them up and eat them—this being little cared for by the survivors, as is the case among the Masai and the Wa-taveita.

Fig. 76.—A Čaga Forge.
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The Wa-čaga are clever smiths, and forge all kinds of utensils, weapons, and ornaments from the pig-iron they receive from the country of Usanga, near Lake ǰipé. The forge is but a pair of goat-skin bellows converging into a hollow cone of wood, to which is added two more segments of stone pierced through the centre and ending in a stone nozzle which is thrust into the furnace of charcoal. The bellows are kept steady by several pegs thrust into the ground, and a huge stone is often placed on the pipe to keep it firm. After the iron has been heated white hot in the charcoal it is taken out by the iron pincers and beaten on a stone anvil. The Čaga smiths make not only spear-blades and knives of apparently tempered steel, but they can fabricate the finest and most delicate. Out of a rhinoceros horn they will make a beautifully turned and polished club, carved by hand, for they have no turning lathe. Pottery is almost absent. Basket-work is carried to great perfection, and they can weave it so tightly that milk may be held in these utensils of woven grass or banana-fibre. The wooden platters that they make show no little skill in shaping, as they are cut out of solid blocks of wood, and not joined in any way.

But it is in their husbandry that the Wa-čaga mostly excel. The wonderful skill with which they irrigate their terraced hill-sides by tiny tunnels of water diverted from the main stream shows a considerable advancement in agriculture. Their time is constantly spent in tilling the soil, manuring it with ashes, raking it, and hoeing it with wooden hoes. All their agricultural implements, except the choppers, adzes, and sickles, are of wood—wooden hoes, wooden stakes, and so on. They have a very clever mode of irrigating equally a given surface. As the little canals of water are always elevated above the cultivated plots, they will tap it at a convenient spot above the bed to be watered, and then turn the stream into a rough conduit made of the hollow stems of bananas cut in half, the end of each stem overlapping the next. Then as the water enters the last joint it is freely turned right and left, dispersing the vivifying stream in all directions.

1. Wooden Hoe.—2. Leather Honey Case.—3. Gourd.—4. Wooden Tray or
Dish.—5. Club made from Rhinoceros Horn.—6. Knife.

Fig. 77.—Čaga Utensils.
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The food of the Wa-čaga is mostly vegetable. Fish are absent from the streams of their country; but, morever, like the Wa-taita, they think them unfit to eat, and of the same nature as serpents. They breed fowls in large numbers, but merely to sell to the passing caravans of traders from the coast, for they themselves abjure poultry as food, thinking it unwholesome and unmanly. Their other domestic animals are the ox, the goat, the sheep, and the dog, though the latter animal is rarely seen. The oxen are much valued. They belong to the humped Zebu breed prevalent throughout East Africa from the days of the ancient Egyptians. The goats are small and handsome, with poorly developed horns, drooping ears, and often two small appendages of skin in place of the ordinary beard. The sheep are of large size, hairy, with fine dewlaps and drooping ears. The male has an enormously fat tail, developed to such an extent as to really impede his movements. A fine sheep may be bought for from four to eight yards of cloth, a fat goat for about the same cost, and a milch goat a trifle dearer.

Milk enters largely into the diet of the Wa-čaga, and they are also passionately fond of warm blood fresh from the throat of a newly-slaughtered animal. Whenever I killed an ox for my men—who being Mohammedans insisting on cutting its throat and letting it bleed to death—the Wa-čaga would assemble with their little wooden bowls, and as the animal lay in its death throes on the ground, the hot purple blood spurting at high pressure from the severed veins, the eager natives filled one after the other their wooden vessels and then stepped apart from the crowd to drink the coagulating gore with utter satisfaction and a gourmet’s joy. They are great flesh-eaters when they can afford it, but, as I have already said, their main diet is vegetable. Among the plants grown for food are maize, sweet potatoes, yams, arums (_Colocasia antiquorum_), beans, peas, red millet, and the banana. Tobacco is also largely cultivated, and the natives chew it and consume it as snuff mixed with natron-salt. Honey is produced in immense quantities by the semi-wild bees which make their hives in the wooden cases put up by the natives among the forest trees. A large barrelful may be bought for two yards of cloth.

The Wa-čaga inhabit the western, southern, and eastern slopes of Kilima-njaro. The northern side of the mountain is without any other inhabitants than roving bands of Masai. The principal Čaga states, beginning on the west, are Šira, Kiboṅoto, Mačame, Uru, Kibošo, Mpokomo, Moši, Kirua, Kilema, Maraṅu, Mamba, Mwika, Msai, Rombo, Useri, and Kimaṅgelia. Although these little states are perpetually quarrelling among themselves, they are nevertheless closely united by ties of blood and possess a common language, Ki-čaga, unless, indeed, the Warombo, as I have sometimes thought, speak a dialect of their own.

The inhabitants of Kahe (the country lying due south of Kilima-njaro in the plains of the Upper Ruvu), of Ugweno, and also, I am told, of Mount Méru, seem to resemble closely the Wa-čaga in language and in physical features. They were doubtless the same race not long since, but the invasion of the Masai split them up into different sections, and they became isolated in their coigns of refuge, some on the mountains, some in the marshy swamps. The Wa-gweno are a very timid set, and greatly afraid of witchcraft. Everything at all strange or incomprehensible is “usawi” (sorcery). They not only dread the Masai with all their hearts, but they also invest the little Lake ǰipé, which lies at the foot of their mountains, with imaginary terrors, declaring they dare not fish on its banks or cross its waters in canoes, on account of an awful kelpy-like monster which dwells in the lake and sallies out to devour all who may approach the waterside. In vain do the Wa-taveita go and fish there fearlessly under the eyes of the Wa-gweno; these timorous folk nevertheless continue to avoid the lake wherein are present such boundless stores of food. I have no doubt that the legend of the water-monster arose from either the voracious crocodiles or the obstreperous hippopotami which inhabit the waters of ǰipé.

Fig. 78.—A Čaga House.
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My readers may possibly have been disappointed to find in this chapter so little information as to peculiar customs or beliefs exhibited by the people it described. I can only say this want is not owing to any lack of probing or questioning on my part. I have come to the conclusion that whatever religious notions, mystic ceremonies, initiatory practices which the inhabitants of Kilima-njaro may have retained originally from their ancestors and shared with their other existing relatives, have at the present time disappeared, or have been worn away by constant changes of abode, massacres, flights, and all the incidents of an anxious struggle for existence, which the fluctuating peoples of Eastern Equatorial Africa have, for the last few centuries, undergone. Those who may have read what I have previously written respecting African races on the Congo, in Angola, and elsewhere, will perceive that I have often had to remark curious initiatory ceremonies, elaborate animistic belief displayed in burial customs, various modes of phallic worship, and obscure superstitions connected with eating or drinking. Scarcely any of these phases of savage religion, fancy, or folk-lore, have I encountered in the peoples who inhabit Kilima-njaro and its vicinity. I do not say they are non-existent, I merely mention that they have not come under my personal recognition, and if succeeding travellers are more fortunate than I in this particular, I shall conclude that in spite of my constant investigation these peculiarities have failed to display themselves to my perception.