natives to the student of the ethnological history of the Eastern world.
Their long isolation has made them a remarkably homogeneous race,
stamping them all with a common resemblance not seen in the mixed races
generally met with in continental areas. For although, as with most
savages, marriages within the family (using the term in a very wide
sense) are most strictly forbidden, all such alliances have necessarily
been confined to natives of the islands. They are the least modified
representatives of the people who were, so far as we know, the primitive
inhabitants of a large portion of the earth’s surface, but who are now
verging on extinction. It is, however, not necessary to suppose that the
Andaman Islanders give us the exact characters and features of all the
other branches of the race. Differences in detail doubtless
existed--differences which are almost always sure to arise whenever
races become isolated from each other for long periods of time.
In many cases the characters of the ancient inhabitants of a land have
been revealed to us by the preservation of their actual remains.
Unfortunately we have as yet no such evidence to tell us of the former
condition of man in Southern Asia. We may, however, look upon the
Andamanese, the Aëtas, and the Semangs, as living fossils, and by their
aid conjecture the condition of the whole population of the land in
ancient times. It is possible, also, to follow Quatrefages, and to see
in them the origin of the stories of the Oriental pygmies related by
Ctesias and by Pliny.
We now pass to the continent of Africa, in the interior of which the
pygmies of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle have generally been placed.
Africa, as is well known, is the home of another great branch of the
black, frizzly-haired, or Ethiopian division of the human species, which
does, or did till lately, occupy the southern two-thirds of this great
continent, the northern third being inhabited by Hamite and Semite
branches of the great white or Caucasian primary division of the human
species, or by races resulting from the mixture of these with the
Negroes. But besides the true Negro there has long been known to exist
in the southern part of the continent a curiously modified type,
consisting of the Hottentots and the Bushmen--Bosjesmen (men of the
woods) of the Dutch colonists--the latter of whom, on account of their
small size, come within the scope of the present subject. They lead the
lives of the most degraded of savages, dwelling among the rocky and more
inaccessible mountains of the interior, making habitations of the
natural caves, subsisting entirely by the chase, being most expert in
the use of the bow and arrow, and treated as enemies and outcasts by the
surrounding and more civilised tribes, whose flocks and herds they show
little respect for when other game is not within reach. The physical
characters of these people are well known, as many specimens have been
brought to Europe alive for the purpose of exhibition. The hair shows
the extreme of the frizzly type; being shorter and less abundant than
that of the ordinary Negro, it has the appearance of growing in separate
tufts, which coil up together into round balls compared to
“peppercorns.” The yellow complexion differs from that of the Negro,
and, combined with the wide cheek-bones and form of the eyes, so much
recalls that of certain of the pure yellow races that some
anthropologists are inclined to trace true Mongolian affinities and
admixture, although the extreme crispness of the hair makes such a
supposition almost impossible. The width of the cheek-bones and the
narrowness of the forehead and the chin give a lozenge-shape to the
front view of the face. The forehead is prominent and straight; the nose
extremely flat and broad, more so than in any other race, and the lips
prominent and thick, although the jaws are less prognathous than in the
true Negro races. The cranium has many special characters by which it
can be easily distinguished from that of any other. It has generally a
very feminine, almost infantile, appearance, though the capacity of the
cranial cavity is not the smallest, exceeding that of the Andamanese. In
general form the cranium is rather oblong than oval, having straight
sides, a flat top, and especially a vertical forehead, which rises
straight from the root of the nose. It is moderately dolichocephalic or
rather mesaticephalic, the average index of ten specimens being 75·4.
The height is in all considerably less than the breadth, the average
index being 71·1. The glabella and supra-orbital ridge are little
developed, except in the oldest males. The malar bones project much
forwards, and the space between the orbits is very wide and flat. The
nasal bones are extremely small and depressed, and the aperture wide;
the average nasal index being 60·8, so they are the most platyrhine of
races.
With regard to the stature, we have not yet sufficient materials for
giving a reliable average. Quatrefages, following Barrow, gives 4 feet 6
inches for the men, and 4 feet for the women, and speaks of one
individual of the latter sex, who was the mother of several children,
measuring only 3 feet 9 inches in height, but later observations (still,
however, insufficient in number) give a rather larger stature; thus
Topinard places the average at 1·404 metres, or 4 feet 7½ inches; and
Fritsch, who measured six male Bushmen in South Africa, found their mean
height to be 1·444 metres, or nearly 4 feet 9 inches. It is probable
that, taking them all together, they differ but little in size from the
Andamanese, although in colour, in form of head, in features, and in the
proportions of the body, they are widely removed from them.
There is every reason to believe that these Bushmen represent the
earliest race of which we have, or are ever likely to have, any
knowledge, inhabiting the southern portion of the African continent, but
that long before the advent of Europeans upon the scene, they had been
invaded from the north by Negro tribes, who, being superior in size,
strength, and civilisation, had taken possession of the greater part of
their territories, and, mingling freely with the aborigines, had
produced the mixed race called Hottentots, who retained the culture and
settled pastoral habits of the Negroes, with many of the physical
features of the Bushmen. These, in their turn, encroached upon by the
pure-bred Bantu Negroes from the north, and by the Dutch and English
from the south, are now greatly diminished, and indeed threatened with
the same fate that will surely soon befall the scanty remnant of the
early inhabitants who still retain their primitive type.
At present the habitat of the Bushman race is confined to certain
districts in the south-west of Africa, from the confines of the Cape
Colony, as far north as the shores of Lake Ngami. Farther to the north
the great equatorial region of Africa is occupied by various Negro
tribes, using the term in its broadest sense, but belonging to the
divisions which, on account of peculiarities of language, have been
grouped together as Bantu. They all present the common physical
characteristics typical of the Negro race, only two of which need be
specially mentioned here--medium or large stature, and dolichocephalic
skull (average cranial index about 73·5).
It is at various scattered places in the midst of these that the only
other small people of which I shall have to speak, the veritable pygmies
of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle, according to Quatrefages, are still
to be met with.[51]
The first notice of the occurrence of these in modern times is contained
in “The strange adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex, sent by
the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adjoining
regions near eighteen years” (1589 to 1607), published in _Purchas his
Pilgrimes_ (1625), lib. vii. chap. iii. p. 983:--
“To the north-east of _Mani-Kesock_ are a kind of little people, called
_Matimbas_; which are no bigger than Boyes of twelve yeares old, but
very thicke, and live only upon flesh, which they kill in the woods with
their bows and darts. They pay tribute to _Mani-Kesock_, and bring all
their Elephants’ teeth and tayles to him. They will not enter into any
of the _Maramba’s_ houses, nor will suffer any to come where they dwell.
And if by chance any _Maramba_ or people of _Longo_ pass where they
dwell, they will forsake that place and go to another. The women carry
Bows and Arrows as well as the men. And one of these will walk in the
woods alone and kill the Pongos with their poysoned Arrows.”
Battell’s narrative, it should be said, is generally admitted to have an
air of veracity about it not always conspicuous in the stories of
travellers of his time. In addition to the observations on the human
inhabitants, it contains excellent descriptions of animals, as the pongo
or gorilla, and the zebra, now well known, but in his day new to
Europeans.
Dapper, in a work called _Description de la Basse Ethiopie_, published
in Amsterdam in 1686, speaks of a race of dwarfs inhabiting the same
region, which he calls _Mimos_ or _Bakke-Bakke_, but nothing further was
heard of these people until quite recent times. A German scientific
expedition to Loango, the results of which were published in the
_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1874, and in Hartmann’s work, _Die
Negritier_, obtained, at Chinchoxo, photographs and descriptions of a
dwarf tribe called “Baboukos,” whose heads were proportionally large and
of roundish form (cephalix index of skull, 78 to 81). One individual,
supposed to be about forty years of age, measured 1·365 metres, rather
under 4 feet 6 inches.
Dr. Touchard, in a “Notice sur le Gabon,” published in the _Revue
Maritime et Coloniale_ for 1861, describes the recent destruction of a
population established in the interior of this country, and to which he
gives the name of “Akoa.” They seem to have been exterminated by the
M’Pongos in their expansion towards the west. Some of them, however,
remained as slaves at the time of the visit of Admiral Fleuriot de
Langle, who in 1868 photographed one (measuring about 4 feet 6 inches
high) and brought home some skulls, which were examined by Hamy, and all
proved very small and sub-brachycephalic.
Another tribe, the M’Boulous, inhabiting the coast north of the Gaboon
river, have been described by M. Marche as probably the primitive race
of the country. They live in little villages, keeping entirely to
themselves, though surrounded by the larger negro tribes, M’Pongos and
Bakalais, who are encroaching upon them so closely that their numbers
are rapidly diminishing. In 1860 they were not more than 3000; in 1879
they were much less numerous. They are of an earthy-brown colour, and
rarely exceed 1·600 metres in height (5 feet 3 inches). In the rich
collections of skulls made by Mr. R. B. Walker and by M. Du Chaillu,
from the coast of this region, are many which are remarkable for their
small size and round form. Of many other notices of tribes of negroes
of diminutive size, living near the west coast of Equatorial Africa, I
need only mention that of Du Chaillu, who gives an interesting account
of his visit to an Obongo village in Ashango-land, between the Gaboon
and the Congo; although unfortunately, owing to the extreme shyness and
suspicion of the inhabitants, he was allowed little opportunity for
anthropological observations. He succeeded, however, in measuring one
man and six women; the height of the former was 4 feet 6 inches, the
average of the latter 4 feet 8 inches.[52]
Farther into the interior, towards the centre of the region contained in
the great bend of the Congo or Livingstone River, Stanley heard of a
numerous and independent population of dwarfs, called “Watwas,” who,
like the Batimbas of Battell, are great hunters of elephants, and use
poisoned arrows. One of these he met with at Ikondu was 4 feet 6½ inches
high, and of a chocolate brown colour.[53] More recently Dr. Wolff
describes, under the name of “Batouas” (perhaps the same as Stanley’s
Watwas), a people of lighter colour than other negroes, and never
exceeding 1·40 metres (4 feet 7 inches) high, but whose average is not
more than 1·30 (4 feet 3 inches), who occupy isolated villages scattered
through the territory of the Bahoubas, with whom they never mix.[54]
Penetrating into the heart of Africa from the north-east, in 1870, Dr.
Schweinfurth first made us acquainted with a diminutive race of people
who have since attained a considerable anthropological notoriety. They
seem to go by two names in their own country, _Akka_ and _Tikki-tikki_,
the latter reminding us curiously of Dapper’s Bakke-bakke, and the
former, more singularly still, having been read by the learned
Egyptologist, Mariette, by the side of the figure of a dwarf in one of
the monuments of the early Egyptian empire.
It was at the court of Mounza, king of the Monbuttu, that Schweinfurth
first met with the Akkas. They appear to live under the protection of
that monarch, who had a regiment of them attached to his service, but
their real country was farther to the south and west, about 3° N. lat.
and 25° E. long. From the accounts the traveller received, they occupy
a considerable territory, and are divided into nine distinct tribes,
each having its own king or chief. Like all the other pygmy African
tribes, they live chiefly by the chase, being great hunters of the
elephant, which they attack with bows and arrows.
In exchange for one of his dogs, Schweinfurth obtained from Mounza one
of these little men, whom he intended to bring to Europe, but who died
on the homeward journey at Berber. Unfortunately all the measurements
and observations which were made in the Monbuttu country by Schweinfurth
perished in the fire which destroyed so much of the valuable material he
had collected. His descriptions of their physical characters are
therefore chiefly recollections. Other travellers--Long, Marno, and
Vossion--though not penetrating as far as the Akka country, have given
observations upon individuals of the race they have met with in their
travels. The Italian Miani, following the footsteps of Schweinfurth into
the Monbuttu country, also obtained by barter two Akka boys, with the
view of bringing them to Europe. He himself fell a victim to the
fatigues of the journey and climate, but left his collections, including
the young Akkas, to the Italian Geographical Society. Probably no two
individuals of a savage race have been so much honoured by the
attentions of the scientific world. First at Cairo, and afterwards in
Italy, Tebo (or Thibaut) and Chairallah, as they were named, were
described, measured, and photographed, and have been the subjects of a
library of memoirs, their biographers including the names of Owen,
Panceri, Cornalia, Mantegazza, Giglioli, Zannetti, Broca, Hamy, and de
Quatrefages. On their arrival in Italy, they were presented to the king
and queen, introduced into the most fashionable society, and finally
settled down as members of the household of Count Miniscalchi Erizzo, at
Verona, where they received a European education, and performed the
duties of pages.
In reply to an inquiry addressed to my friend, Dr. Giglioli, of
Florence, I hear that Thibaut died of consumption on 28th January 1883,
being then about twenty-two years of age, and was buried in the cemetery
at Verona. Unfortunately no scientific examination of the body was
allowed, but whether Chairallah still lives or not I have not been able
to learn. As Giglioli has not heard of his death, he presumes that he is
still living in Count Miniscalchi’s palace.
One other specimen of this race has been the subject of careful
observation by European anthropologists--a girl named Saida, brought
home by Romolo Gessi (Gordon’s lieutenant), and who is still, or was
lately, living at Trieste as servant to M. de Gessi.
The various scattered observations hitherto made are obviously
insufficient to deduce a mean height for the race, but the nearest
estimate that Quatrefages could obtain is about 4 feet 7 inches for the
men, and 4 feet 3 inches for the women, decidedly inferior, therefore,
to the Andamanese. With regard to their other characters, their hair is
of the most frizzly kind, their complexion lighter than that of most
negroes, but the prognathism, width of nose, and eversion of lips
characteristic of the Ethiopian branch of the human family are carried
to an extreme degree, especially if Schweinfurth’s sketches can be
trusted. The only essential point of difference from the ordinary negro,
except the size, is the tendency to shortening and breadth of the skull,
although it by no means assumes the “almost spherical” shape attributed
to it by Schweinfurth.
Some further information about the Akkas will be found in the work, just
published, of the intrepid and accomplished traveller, in whose welfare
we are now so much interested, Dr. Emin Pasha, Gordon’s last surviving
officer in the Soudan, who, in the course of his explorations, spent
some little time lately in the country of the Monbuttu. Here he not only
met with living Akkas, one of whom he apparently still retains as a
domestic in his service, and of whose dimensions he has sent me a most
detailed account, but he also, by watching the spots where two of them
had been interred, succeeded in obtaining their skeletons, which, with
numerous other objects of great scientific interest, safely arrived at
the British Museum in September of last year. I need hardly say that
actual bones, clean, imperishable, easy to be measured and compared, not
once only, but any number of times, furnish the most acceptable
evidence that an anthropologist can possess of many of the most
important physical characters of a race. There we have facts which can
always be appealed to in support of statements and inferences based on
them. Height, proportions of limbs, form of head, characters of the face
even, are all more rigorously determined from the bones than they can be
on the living person. Therefore, the value of these remains, imperfect
as they unfortunately are, and of course insufficient in number for the
purpose of establishing average characters, is very great indeed.
As I have entered fully into the question of their peculiarities
elsewhere,[55] I can only give now a few of the most important and most
generally to be understood results of their examination. The first point
of interest is their size. The two skeletons are both those of
full-grown people, one a man, the other a woman. There is no reason to
suppose that they were specially selected as exceptionally small; they
were clearly the only ones which Emin had an opportunity of procuring;
yet they fully bear out, more than bear out, all that has been said of
the diminutive size of the race. Comparing the dimensions of the bones,
one by one, with those of the numerous Andamanese that have passed
through my hands, I find both of these Akkas smaller, not than the
average, but smaller than the smallest,--smaller also than any Bushman
whose skeleton I am acquainted with, or whose dimensions have been
published with scientific accuracy. In fact, they are both, for they are
nearly of a size, the smallest normal human skeletons which I have seen,
or of which I can find any record. I say normal, because they are
thoroughly well grown and proportioned, without a trace of the deformity
almost always associated with individual dwarfishness in a taller race.
One only, that of the female, is sufficiently perfect for articulation.
After due allowance for some missing vertebræ, and for the
intervertebral spaces, the skeleton measures from the crown of the head
to the ground exactly 4 feet, or 1·218 metres. About three-quarters of
an inch more for the thickness of the skin of the head and soles of the
feet would complete the height when alive. The other (male) skeleton
was, judging by the length of the femur, about a quarter of an inch
shorter.
The full-grown woman of whom Emin gives detailed dimensions is stated to
be only 1·164 metres, or barely 3 feet 10 inches.[56] These heights are
all unquestionably less than anything that has been yet obtained based
upon such indisputable data. One very interesting and almost unexpected
result of a careful examination of these skeletons is that they conform
in the relative proportions of the head, trunk, and limb, not to dwarfs,
but to full-sized people of other races, and they are therefore
strikingly unlike the stumpy, long-bodied, short-limbed, large-headed
pygmies so graphically represented fighting with their lances against
the cranes on ancient Greek vases.
The other characters of these skeletons are Negroid to an intense
degree, and quite accord with what has been stated of their external
appearance. The form of the skull, too, has that sub-brachycephaly which
has been shown by Hamy to characterise all the small Negro populations
of Central Africa. It is quite unlike that of the Andamanese, quite
unlike that of the Bushmen. They are obviously Negroes of a special
type, to which Hamy has given the appropriate term of _Negrillo_. They
seem to have much the same relation to the larger long-headed African
Negroes that the small round-headed Negritos of the Indian Ocean have to
their larger long-headed Melanesian neighbours.
At all events, the fact now seems clearly demonstrated that at various
spots across the great African continent, within a few degrees north and
south of the equator, extending from the Atlantic coast to near the
shores of the Albert Nyanza (30° E. long.), and perhaps, from some
indications which time will not allow me to enter into now (but which
will be found in the writings of Hamy and Quatrefages), even farther to
the east, south of the Galla land, are still surviving, in scattered
districts, communities of these small negroes, all much resembling each
other in size, appearance, and habits, and dwelling mostly apart from
their larger neighbours, by whom they are everywhere surrounded. Our
information about them is still very scanty, and to obtain more would be
a worthy object of ambition for the anthropological traveller. In many
parts, especially at the west, they are obviously holding their own with
difficulty, if not actually disappearing, and there is much about their
condition of civilisation, and the situations in which they are found,
to induce us to look upon them, as in the case of the Bushmen in the
south and the Negritos in the east, as the remains of a population which
occupied the land before the incoming of the present dominant races. If
the account of the Nasamonians related by Herodotus be accepted as
historical, the river they came to, “flowing from west to east,” must
have been the Niger, and the northward range of the dwarfish people far
more extensive twenty-three centuries ago than it is at the present
time.[57]
This view opens a still larger question, and takes us back to the
neighbourhood of the south of India as the centre from which the whole
of the great Negro race spread, east over the African continent, and
west over the islands of the Pacific, and to our little Andamanese
fellow-subjects as probably the least modified descendants of the
primitive members of the great branch of the human species characterised
by their black skins and frizzly hair.
XX
FASHION IN DEFORMITY
AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE CUSTOMS OF BARBAROUS AND CIVILISED RACES[58]
What I here present you with is an Enditement framed against most
of the Nations under the Sun; whereby they are arraigned at the
tribunal of Nature, as guilty of High Treason, in Abasing,
Counterfeiting, Defacing, and Clipping her Coin instampt with her
Image and Superscription on the Body of Man.
J. BULWER, _Anthropometamorphosis_, 1650.
The propensity to _deform_, or alter from the natural form, some part of
the body is one which is common to human nature in every aspect in which
we are acquainted with it, the most primitive and barbarous, and the
most civilised and refined.
The alterations or deformities which it is proposed to consider in this
essay are those which are performed, not by isolated individuals, or
with definite motives, but by considerable numbers of members of a
community, simply in imitation of one another--in fact, according to
_fashion_, “that most inexorable tyrant, to which the greater part of
mankind are willing slaves.”