underlies thaumaturgy in general: they result from conviction in a gross
mass of exaggerations heaped by ignorance, falsehood, and credulity,
upon the slenderest foundation of fact--a fact doubtless solvable by the
application of natural laws. The African temperament has strong
susceptibilities, combined with what appears to be a weakness of brain,
and great excitability of the nervous system, as is proved by the
prevalence of epilepsy, convulsions, and hysteric disease. According to
the Arab, El Sara, epilepsy, or the falling sickness, is peculiarly
common throughout East Africa; and, as we know by experience in lands
more civilised, the sudden prostration, rigidity, contortions, &c. of
the patient, strongly suggest the idea that he has been taken and seized
(επιληφθεις) by, as it were, some external and invisible agent. The
negroid is, therefore, peculiarly liable to the epidemical mania called
“Phantasmata,” which, according to history, has at times of great
mental agitation and popular disturbance broken out in different parts
of Europe, and which, even in this our day, forms the basework of
“revivals.” Thus in Africa the objective existence of spectra has become
a tenet of belief. Stories that stagger the most sceptical are told
concerning the phenomenon by respectable and not unlearned Arabs, who
point to their fellow-countrymen as instances. Salim bin Rashid, a
half-caste merchant, well known at Zanzibar, avers, and his companions
bear witness to his words, that on one occasion, when travelling
northwards from Unyanyembe, the possession occurred to himself. During
the night two female slaves, his companions, of whom one was a child,
fell, without apparent cause, into the fits which denote the approach of
a spirit. Simultaneously, the master became as one intoxicated; a dark
mass, material, not spiritual, entered the tent, and he felt himself
pulled and pushed by a number of black figures, whom he had never before
seen. He called aloud to his companions and slaves, who, vainly
attempting to enter the tent, threw it down, and presently found him in
a state of stupor, from which he did not recover till the morning. The
same merchant circumstantially related, and called witnesses to prove,
that a small slave-boy, who was produced on the occasion, had been
frequently carried off by possession, even when confined in a windowless
room, with a heavy door carefully bolted and padlocked. Next morning the
victim was not found, although the chamber remained closed. A few days
afterwards he was met in the jungle wandering absently like an idiot,
and with speech too incoherent to explain what had happened to him. The
Arabs of Oman, who subscribe readily to transformation, deride these
tales; those of African blood believe them. The transformation-belief,
still so common in Maskat, Abyssinia, Somaliland, and the Cape, and
anciently an almost universal superstition, is, curious to say, unknown
amongst these East African tribes. The Wahiao, lying between Kilwa and
the Nyassa Lake, preserve, however, a remnant of the old creed in their
conviction, that a malevolent magician can change a man after death into
a lion, a leopard, or a hyæna. On the Zambezi the people, according to
Dr. Livingstone (chap. xxx.), believe that a chief may metamorphose
himself into a lion, kill any one he chooses, and then return to the
human form. About Tete (chap. xxxi.) the negroids hold that, “while
persons are still living, they may enter into lions and alligators, and
then return again to their own bodies.” Travellers determined to find in
Africa counterparts of European and Asiatic tenets, argue from this
transformation a belief in the “transmigration of souls.” They thus
confuse material metamorphosis with a spiritual progress, which is
assuredly not an emanation from the Hamitic mind. The Africans have
hitherto not bewildered their brains with metaphysics, and, ignoring the
idea of a soul, which appears to be a dogma of the Caucasian race, they
necessarily ignore its immortality.
The second, and, perhaps, the most profitable occupation of the Mganga,
is the detection of Uchawi, or black magic. The fatuitous style of
conviction, and the fearful tortures which, in the different regions,
await those found guilty, have already been described, as far as
description is possible. Amongst a people where the magician is a police
detector, ordeals must be expected to thrive. The Baga or Kyapo of East
Africa--the Arabs translate it El Halaf, or the Oath--is as cruel,
absurd, and barbarous, as the red water of Ashanti, the venoms of
Kasanji (Cassange), the muavi of the Banyai tribes of Monomotapa, the
Tangina poison of the Malagash, the bitter water of the Jews, the
“saucy-water” of West Africa, and the fire tests of mediæval Europe. The
people of Usumbara thrust a red-hot hatchet into the mouth of the
accused. Among the south-eastern tribes a heated iron spike, driven into
some tender part of the person, is twice struck with a log of wood. The
Wazaramo dip the hand into boiling water, the Waganda into seething oil;
and the Wazegura prick the ear with the stiffest bristles of a gnu’s
tail. The Wakwafi have an ordeal of meat that chokes the guilty. The
Wanyamwezi pound with water between two stones, and infuse a poisonous
bark called “Mwavi:” it is first administered by the Mganga to a hen,
who, for the nonce, represents the suspected. If, however, all parties
be not satisfied with such trial, it is duly adhibited to the accused.
In East Africa, from Somaliland to the Cape, and throughout the interior
amongst the negroids and negroes north as well as south of the equator,
the rain-maker or rain-doctor is a personage of consequence; and he does
not fail to turn the hopes and fears of the people to his own advantage.
A season of drought causes dearth, disease, and desolation amongst these
improvident races, who therefore connect every strange phenomenon with
the object of their desires, a copious wet monsoon. The enemy has
medicines which disperse the clouds. The stranger who brings with him
heavy showers is regarded as a being of good omen; usually, however, the
worst is expected from the novel portent; he will, for instance, be
accompanied and preceded by fertilising rains, but the wells and springs
will dry up after his departure, and the result will be drought or
small-pox. These rumours which may account for the Lybian
stranger-sacrifices in the olden time, are still dangerous to
travellers. The Mganga must remedy the evil. His spells are those of
fetissists in general, the mystic use of something foul, poisonous, or
difficult to procure, such as the album græcum of hyænas, snakes’ fangs,
or lions’ hair; these and similar articles are collected with
considerable trouble by the young men of the tribe for the use of the
rain-maker. But he is a weatherwise man, and rains in tropical lands are
easily foreseen. Not unfrequently, however, he proves himself a false
prophet; and when all the resources of cunning fail he must fly for dear
life from the victims of his delusion.
The Mganga is also a predictor and a soothsayer. He foretels the
success or failure of commercial undertakings, of wars, and of
kidnapping-commandos; he foresees famine and pestilence, and he suggests
the means of averting calamities. He fixes also, before the commencement
of any serious affair, fortunate conjunctions, without which a good
issue cannot be expected. He directs expiatory offerings. His word is
ever powerful to expedite or to delay the march of a caravan; and in his
quality of augur he considers the flight of birds and the cries of
beasts, like his prototype of the same class in ancient Europe and in
modern Asia.
The principal instrument of the Mganga’s craft is one of the dirty
little buyu or gourds which he wears in a bunch round his waist; and the
following is the usual programme when the oracle is to be consulted. The
magician brings his implements in a bag of matting; his demeanour is
serious as the occasion; he is carefully greased, and his head is
adorned with the diminutive antelope-horns fastened by a thong of
leather above the forehead. He sits like a sultan upon a dwarf stool in
front of the querist, and begins by exhorting the highest possible
offertory. No pay, no predict. Divination by the gourd has already been
described; the Mganga has many other implements of his craft. Some
prophesy by the motion of berries swimming in a cup full of water, which
is placed upon a low stool surrounded by four tails of the zebra or the
buffalo lashed to sticks planted upright in the ground. The Kasanda is a
system of folding triangles not unlike those upon which plaything
soldiers are mounted. Held in the right hand, it is thrown out, and the
direction of the end points to the safe and auspicious route; this is
probably the rudest appliance of prestidigitation. The shero is a bit of
wood about the size of a man’s hand, and not unlike a pair of bellows,
with a dwarf handle, a projection like a nozzle, and in the circular
centre a little hollow. This is filled with water, and a grain or
fragment of wood, placed to float, gives an evil omen if it tends
towards the sides, and favourable if it veers towards the handle or the
nozzle. The Mganga generally carries about with him to announce his
approach a kind of rattle called “sánje.” This is a hollow gourd of
pine-apple shape, pierced with various holes, prettily carved and half
filled with maize, grains, and pebbles; the handle is a stick passed
through its length and secured by cross-pins.
The Mganga has many minor duties. In elephant hunts he must throw the
first spear and endure the blame if the beast escapes. He marks ivory
with spots disposed in lines and other figures, and thus enables it to
reach the coast without let or hindrance. He loads the kirangozi or
guide with charms and periapts to defend him from the malice which is
ever directed at a leading man, and sedulously forbids him to allow
precedence even to the Mtongi, the commander and proprietor of the
caravan. He aids his tribe by magical arts in wars, by catching a bee,
reciting over it certain incantations, and loosing it in the direction
of the foe, when the insect will instantly summon an army of its fellows
and disperse a host, however numerous. This belief well illustrates the
easy passage of the natural into the supernatural. The land being full
of swarms, and man’s body being wholly exposed, many a caravan has been
dispersed like chaff before the wind by a bevy of swarming bees.
Similarly in South Africa the magician kicks an ant-hill and starts
wasps which put the enemy to flight. And in the books of the Hebrews we
read that the hornet sent before the children of Israel against the
Amorite was more terrible than sword or bow. (Joshua, xxiv.)
The several tribes in East Africa present two forms of government, the
despotic and the semi-monarchical.
In the despotic races, the Wakilima or mountaineers of Chhaga, for
instance, the subjects are reduced to the lowest state of servility.
All, except the magicians and the councillors, are “Wasoro”--soldiers
and slaves to the sultan, mangi, or sovereign. The reader will bear in
mind that the word “sultan” is the Arabic term applied generically by
traders to all the reguli and roitelets, the chiefs and headmen, whose
titles vary in every region. In Uzaramo the Sultan is called p’hazi; in
Khutu, p’hazi or mundewa; in Usagara, mundewa; in Ugogo, mteme; in
Unyamwezi, mwami; in Ujiji and Karagwah, mkama. “Wazir” is similarly
used by the Arabs for the principal councillor or minister, whose
African name in the several tribes is mwene goha, mbáhá, mzágírá,
magáwe, mhángo, and muhinda. The elders are called throughout the
country Wagosi and Wányáp’hárá; they form the council of the chief. All
male children are taken from their mothers, are made to live together,
and are trained to the royal service, to guarding the palace, to tilling
the fields, and to keeping the watercourses in order. The despot is
approached with fear and trembling; subjects of both sexes must stand at
a distance, and repeatedly clap their palms together before venturing to
address him. Women always bend the right knee to the earth, and the
chief acknowledges the salutation with a nod. At times the elders and
even the women inquire of the ruler what they can do to please him: he
points to a plot of ground which he wishes to be cleared, and this
_corvée_ is the more carefully performed, as he fines them in a bullock
if a weed be left unplucked. In war female captives are sold by the
king, and the children are kept to swell the number of his slaves. None
of the Wasoro may marry without express permission. The king has
unlimited power of life and death, which he exercises without
squeamishness, and a general right of sale over his subjects; in some
tribes, as those of Karagwah, Uganda, and Unyoro, he is almost
worshipped. It is a capital offence to assume the name of a Sultan; even
a stranger so doing would be subjected to fines and other penalties. The
only limit to the despot’s power is the Ada, or precedent, the unwritten
law of ancient custom, which is here less mutable than the codes and
pandects of Europe. The African, like the Asiatic, is by nature a
conservative, at once the cause and the effect of his inability to rise
higher in the social scale. The king lives in a manner of barbarous
state. He has large villages crowded with his families and slaves. He
never issues from his abode without an armed mob, and he disdains to
visit even the wealthiest Arabs. The monarchical tribes are legitimists
of the good old school, disdaining a _novus homo_; and the consciousness
of power invests their princes with a certain dignity and majesty of
demeanour. As has been mentioned, some of the Sultans whose rule has the
greatest prestige, appear, from physical peculiarities, to be of a
foreign and a nobler origin.
In the aristocratical or semi-monarchical tribes, as the Wanyamwezi, the
power of the Sultan depends mainly upon his wealth, importance, and
personal qualifications for the task of rule. A chief enabled to carry
out a “fist-right” policy will raise himself to the rank of a despot,
and will slay and sell his subjects without mercy. Though surrounded by
a council varying from two to a score of chiefs and elders, who are
often related or connected with him, and who, like the Arab shaykhs,
presume as much as possible in ordering this and forbidding that, he can
disregard and slight them. More often, however, his authority is
circumscribed by a rude balance of power; the chiefs around him can
probably bring as many warriors into the field as he can. When weak, the
sultan has little more authority than the patell of an Indian village or
the shaykh of a Bedouin tribe. Yet even when the chief cannot command in
his own clan, he is an important personage to travelling merchants and
strangers. He can cause a quarrel, an advance, or an assassination, and
he can quiet brawls even when his people have been injured. He can open
a road by providing porters, or bar a path by deterring a caravan from
proceeding, or by stopping the sale of provisions. Thus it is easy to
travel amongst races whose chiefs are well disposed to foreigners, and
the utmost circumspection becomes necessary when the headmen are
grasping and inhospitable. Upon the whole, the chiefs are wise enough
to encourage the visits of traders.
A patriarchal or purely republican form of government is unknown in East
Africa. The Wasagara, it is true, choose their chief like the Banyai of
“Monomotapa,” but, once elected, he becomes a monarch. Loyalty--or, to
reduce it to its elements, veneration for the divinity that hedges in a
king--is a sentiment innate in the African mind. Man, however, in these
regions is not a political animal; he has a certain instinctive regard
for his chief and a respect for his elders. He ignores, however, the
blessings of duly limited independence and the natural classification of
humanity into superior and inferior, and honours--the cheap pay of
nations--are unknown. He acknowledges no higher and lower social strata.
His barbarism forbids the existence of a learned oligarchy, of an
educated community, or of a church and state, showing the origin of the
connection between the soul and body of society. Man being equal to man,
force being the only law and self the sole consideration, mutual
jealousy prevents united efforts and deadens all patriotic spirit. No
one cares for the public good; the welfare of the general must yield to
the most contemptible individual interests; civil order and security are
therefore unknown, and foreign relations cannot exist.
In the lowest tribes the chieftain is a mere nonentity, “a Sultan,” as
the Arabs say, “within his own walls.” His subjects will boast, like the
Somal, that he is “_tanquam unus ex nobis_;” and they are so sensible of
restraint that “girdles and garters would be to them bonds and shackles”
metaphorically as well as literally. The position of these Sultans is
about equal to that of the diwans of the Mrima; their dignity is
confined to sitting upon a dwarf three-legged stool, to wearing more
brass wire than beads, and to possessing clothes a little better than
those of their subjects. The “regulus” must make a return present to
strangers after receiving their offerings, and in some cases must begin
with gifts. He must listen to the words of his councillors and elders,
who, being without salary, claim a portion of the presents and
treasure-trove, interfere on all occasions of blackmail, fines, and
penalties, demand from all petitioners gifts and bribes to secure
interest, and exert great influence over the populace.
Legitimacy is the rule throughout the land, and the son, usually the
eldest, succeeds to the father, except amongst the Wasukuma of N.
Unyamwezi, where the line of descent is by the sister’s son--the “surer
side”--for the normal reason, to secure some of the blood royal for
ruling. Even the widows of the deceased become the property of the
successor. This truly African practice prevails also amongst the
Bachwana, and presents another of those curious points of resemblance
between the Hamite and Semite races which have induced modern
ethnologists to derive the Arab from Africa. The curious custom amongst
the Wanyamwezi of devising property to illegitimate children is not
carried out in the succession to power. Where there are many sons, all,
as might be expected, equally aspire to power; sometimes, however, of
two brothers, one will consent to hold authority under the other. In
several tribes, especially in Usukuma, the widow of a chief succeeds to
his dignity in default of issue.
Punishments are simple in East Africa. The sar, vendetta or blood-feud,
and its consequence, the diyat or weregeld, exist in germ, unreduced, as
amongst the more civilised Arabs, to an artful and intricate system.
But these customs are founded, unlike ours, upon barbarous human nature.
Instinct prompts a man to slay the slayer of his kith and kin; the
offence is against the individual, not the government or society. He
must reason to persuade himself that the crime, being committed against
the law, should be left to the law for notice; he wants revenge, and he
cares nought for punishment or example for the prevention of crime. The
Sultan encourages the payment of blood-money to the relatives of the
deceased, or, if powerful enough, claims it himself, rather than that
one murder should lead to another, and eventually to a chronic state of
bloodshed and confusion. Thus, in some tribes the individual revenges
himself, and in others he commits his cause to the chief. Here he takes
an equivalent in cattle for the blood of a brother or the loss of a
wife; there he visits the erring party with condign punishment. The
result of such deficiency of standard is a want of graduation in
severity; a thief is sometimes speared and beheaded, or sold into
slavery after all his property has been extorted by the chief, the
councillors, and the elders, whilst a murderer is perhaps only fined.
The land in East Africa is everywhere allodial; it does not belong to
the ruler, nor has the dawn of the feudal system yet arisen there. A
migratory tribe gives up its rights to the soil, contrary to the
mortmain system of the Arab Bedouins, and, if it would return, it must
return by force. The Sultan, however, exacts a fee from all immigrants
settling in his territory.
The sources of revenue in East Africa are uncertain, desultory, and
complicated. The agricultural tribes pay yearly a small per centage of
grain; this, however, is the office of the women, who are expert in
fraud. Neither sowing nor harvest can take place without the chief’s
permission, and the issue of his order is regulated by his own
interests. Amongst the hunting tribes, slain elephants become the
hunter’s property, but the Sultan claims as treasure-trove a tusk of any
animal found wounded or dead in his dominions, and in all cases the
spoils of dead lions are crown property. The flesh of game is
distributed amongst the elders and the ruling family, who also assert a
claim to the cloth or beads purchased by means of the ivory from
caravans. Some have abditaria and considerable stores of the articles
most valued by barbarians. Throughout the slave-paths the chiefs have
learned to raise revenue from the slaves, who thus bribe them to forbear
from robbery. But whilst the stronger require large gifts without
return, the weaker make trifling presents, generally of cattle or
provisions, and expect many times the value in brass wire, cloth, and
beads. The stranger may refuse these offerings; it is, however, contrary
to custom, and as long as he can afford it he should submit to the
imposition. Fiscs and fines are alarmingly frequent. If the
monsoon-rains delay, the chief summons a Mganga to fix upon the
obstructor; he is at once slain, and his property is duly escheated. The
Sultan claims the goods and chattels of all felons and executed
criminals, even in the case of a servant put to death by his master. In
the more republican tribes the chief lives by the sweat of his slaves.
Briefly, East Africa presents an instructive study of human society in
its first stage after birth.
I will conclude this uninteresting chapter--attribute its dulness,
gentle reader, to the effects of the climate and society of
Konduchi--with a subject which strikes home to the heart of every
Englishman, slavery.
The origin of slavery in East Africa is veiled in the glooms of the
past. It is mentioned in the Periplus (chap. iii.), as an institution of
the land, and probably it was the result of the ancient trade with
southern Arabia. At present it is almost universal: with the exceptions
of the Wahinda, the Watosi, and the Wagogo, all the tribes from the
eastern equatorial coast to Ujiji and the regions lying westward of the
Tanganyika Lake may be called slave-races. An Arab, Msawahili, and even
a bondsman from Zanzibar, is everywhere called Murungwana or freeman.
Yet in many parts of the country the tribes are rather slave-importers
than exporters. Although they kidnap others, they will not sell their
fellows, except when convicted of crime--theft, magic, murder, or
cutting the upper teeth before the lower. In times of necessity,
however, a man will part with his parents, wives, and children, and when
they fail he will sell himself without shame. As has been observed,
amongst many tribes the uncle has a right to dispose of his nephews and
nieces.
Justice requires the confession that the horrors of slave-driving rarely
meet the eye in East Africa. Some merchants chain or cord together their
gangs for safer transport through regions where desertion is at a
premium. Usually, however, they trust rather to soft words and kind
treatment; the fat lazy slave is often seen stretched at ease in the
shade, whilst the master toils in the sun and wind. The “property” is
well fed and little worked, whereas the porter, belonging to none but
himself, is left without hesitation to starve upon the road-side. The
relationship is rather that of patron and client than of lord and
bondsman; the slave is addressed as Ndugu-yango, “my brother,” and he is
seldom provoked by hard words or stripes. In fact, the essence of
slavery, compulsory unpaid labour, is perhaps more prevalent in
independent India than in East Africa; moreover, there is no adscriptus
glebæ, as in the horrid thraldom of Malabar. To this general rule there
are terrible exceptions, as might be expected amongst a people with
scant regard for human life. The Kirangozi, or guide, attached to the
Expedition on return from Ujiji, had loitered behind for some days
because his slave girl was too footsore to walk. When tired of waiting
he cut off her head, for fear lest she should become gratis another
man’s property.
In East Africa there are two forms of this traffic, the export and the
internal trade. For the former slaves are collected like ivories
throughout the length and breadth of the land. They are driven down from
the principal depôts, the island of Kasenge, Ujiji, Unyanyembe, and
Zungomero to the coast by the Arab and Wasawahili merchants, who
afterwards sell them in retail at the great mart, Zanzibar. The internal
trade is carried on between tribe and tribe, and therefore will long
endure.
The practice of slavery in East Africa, besides demoralising and
brutalising the race, leads to the results which effectually bar
increase of population and progress towards civilisation. These are
commandos, or border wars, and intestine confusion.