This looks like strong evidence, but when we examine the facts the
illusion vanishes. The Nubians, it appears, are given to stealing the
wives of these Niam-Niam, to induce them to ransom them with ivory. A
case occurred within Dr. Schweinfurth's own experience (II., 180-187).
Two married women were stolen, and during the night
"it was touching, through the moaning of the wind, to catch
the lamentations of the Niam-Niam men bewailing the loss of
their captured wives; cannibals though they were, they were
evidently capable of true conjugal affection. The Nubians
remained quite unaffected by any of their cries, and never
for a moment swerved from their purpose of recovering the
ivory before they surrendered the women."
Here we see what the expression that the Niam-Niam "spare no sacrifice
to redeem their imprisoned women" amounts to: the Nubians counted on
it that they would rather part with their ivory than with their wives!
This, surely, involved no "sacrifice"; it was simply a question of
which the husbands preferred, the useless ivory or the useful
women--desirable as drudges and concubines. Why should buying back a
wife be evidence of affection any more than the buying of a bride,
which is a general custom of Africans? As for their howling over their
lost wives, that was natural enough; they would have howled over lost
cows too--as our children cry if their milk is taken away when they
are hungry. Actions which can be interpreted in such sensual and
selfish terms can never be accepted as proof of true affection. That
the captured wives, on their part, were not troubled by conjugal
affection is evident from Schweinfurth's remark that they "were
perfectly composed and apparently quite indifferent."