ANTHROPOLOGY.
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.
[Illustration:
Fig. 74—A Masai Warrior.
]
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.
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.
[Illustration:
Fig. 75.—Men of Taveita making fire.
]
[Illustration:
Drills and Fire-sticks.
]
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.
[Illustration:
Fig. 76.—A Čaga Forge.
]
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.
[Illustration:
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.
]
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.
[Illustration:
Fig. 78.—A Čaga House.
]
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.