MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE DWARFS.--A SURPRISE VISIT.--A GORGEOUS
FEAST.--RIDICULOUS SHOW OF BABIES.--THE DWARF LANGUAGE.--A DWARF
DANCE.--THE OLD FABLE OF THE CRANES AND THE PIGMIES.
AFTER several visits to the settlement of the Dwarfs we became friends,
but it took time. My great friend among them was Misounda, an old
woman, the first one I had seen, and whom I pulled out of her own
house; but I had some trouble before I could tame friend Misounda.
One day I thought I would surprise the Dwarfs, and come on them
unawares, without having told my friend Misounda I was coming. When
I made my appearance I just caught a glimpse of her feet as she was
running into her house. That was all I saw of Misounda. At all the
other huts little branches of trees had been stuck up in front to show
that the inmates were out, and that their doors were shut, and that
nobody could get in. These were, indeed, queer doors. I had never seen
the like. They were of little use except for keeping out the dogs and
wild beasts. When I went in Misounda's hut and got hold of her, she
pretended to have been asleep. "So, after all, these little Dwarfs,"
said I, "know how to lie and how to deceive just as well as other
people."
Upon one of my visits to the village I saw two other women, a man, and
two children; all the other Obongos had gone. So I made friends with
them by giving them meat and beads. I saw that the women were not the
mothers of the children. I looked at the doors of all the huts; they
all had branches put at the entrance to signify that the owner was
out. I do not know why, but I begun to suspect that the mother of the
children was in the settlement, and close by where they stood. I had my
eyes upon one of the little houses as the one where she was hiding; so
I put aside the branches at the entrance, and, putting half of my body
into the hut, I succeeded in discovering in the dark something which I
recognized after a while as a human being.
"Don't be afraid," I said. "Don't be afraid," repeated my Ashango
guides. The creature was a woman. She came out with a sad countenance,
and began to weep. She had over her forehead a broad stripe of yellow
ochre. She was a widow, and had buried her husband only a few days
before.
"Where is the burial-ground of the Dwarfs?" I asked of my Ashango
guides. "Ask her," said I to them.
"No, Spirit," said they, "for if you ask them such a question, these
Dwarfs will fear you more than ever, and you will never see them any
more. They will flee far away into the thickest part of the forest.
We Ashango people do not know even where they bury their dead. They
have no regular burial-ground. How could they?" added my guide, "for
they roam in the forest like the gorilla, the nshiego-mbouvé, the
kooloo-kamba, and the nshiego. I believe," said the Ashango, "that all
these Dwarfs have come from the same father and the same mother long,
long ago."
Another time I came to the village of the Obongos with two legs of
goats, a leg of wild boar, ten house-rats which had been trapped, a
large dead snake, and two land turtles, which I intended to give as
a feast to the Obongos. Rebouka, Macondai, and Igalo were with me,
and several Ashango women accompanied us. We had several bunches of
plantain, for I had resolved to give them a regular banquet, and we had
set out to have a good time in their settlement. I had brought beads, a
looking-glass, some spoons, knives, forks, and one of my little Geneva
musical boxes. Guns were also to be fired, for I was going to show
the Dwarfs what the Oguizi could do. When they saw us with food they
received us with great joy. "What a queer language," I thought, "these
Dwarfs have!" There was a wild Dwarf hurra, "Ya! ye! yo! _Oua! oua!_
Ké! ki-ke-ki!" when they saw the good things that were to be eaten.
Nearly all the Dwarfs were here; very few of them were absent.
Misounda, who was my friend, and who seemed to be less afraid of me
than any body else, stood by me, and kept her eyes upon the meat.
There were fifty-nine Dwarfs all told, including men, women, children,
and babies. What little things the babies were! Smoke came out of
every hut, fires were lighted all round, nuts were roasting, berries
and fruits had been collected in great abundance, and snake-flesh
was plentiful, for the Dwarfs had been the day before on a feeding
excursion. Rats and mice had also been trapped.
"Obongos," said I, "we have come to have a good time. First I am going
to give to every one of you beads." Then the Ashangos brought before
them a basket containing the beads, and I asked who was the chief. I
could not find him, and they would not tell me. Among them were several
old people.
The Dwarfs were now eager for beads, and surrounded me, and, though I
am a man of short stature, I seemed a giant in the midst of them; and
as for Rebouka and Igalo, they appeared to be colossal. "Ya! ya! yo!
yo! ye! qui! quo! oh! ah! ri! ri! ké! ki! ké! ki!" seemed to be the
only sounds they could make in their excitement. Their appearance was
singular indeed, the larger number of them being of a dirty yellow
color. A few of them were not more than four feet in height; others
were from four feet two inches to four feet seven inches in height. But
if they were short in size they were stoutly built; like chimpanzees,
they had big, broad chests, and, though their legs were small, they
were muscular and strong. Their arms were also strong in proportion to
their size. There were gray-headed men, and gray-headed, wrinkled old
women among them, and very hideous the old Dwarfs were. Their features
resembled very closely the features of a young chimpanzee. Some had
gray, others hazel eyes, while the eyes of a few were black.
As I have said before, their hair was not like that of the negroes and
Ashangos among whom the Dwarfs live, but grew in little short tufts
apart from each other, and the hair, after attaining a certain length,
could not grow longer. These little tufts looked like so many little
balls of wool. Many of the men had their chest and legs covered with
these little tufts of woolly hair. The women's hair was no longer than
that of the men, and it grew exactly in the same manner.
I could not keep my eyes from the tiny babies. They were ridiculously
small, and much lighter in color than the older people. Their mothers
had a broad string of leather hanging from their shoulders to carry
them in.
There was great excitement among them as I distributed the beads,
and they would shout, "Look at his djivie (nose); look at his mouna
(mouth); look at his diarou (head); look at his nchouié (hair); look
at his mishou (beard)!" and, in spite of my big mustache, they would
shout, "Is he a bagala oguizi (man spirit), or an oguizi mokasho (woman
spirit)?" Some declared that I was a mokasho, others that I was a
bagala. I did not forget my friend Misounda.
After I had given them beads I took out a large looking-glass which
I had hidden, and put it in front of them. Immediately they trembled
with fright, and said, "Spirit, don't kill us!" and turned their heads
from the looking-glass. Then the musical box was shown, and when I had
set it playing the Dwarfs lay down on the ground, frightened by the
brilliant, sparkling music of the mechanism, and by turns looked at me
and at the box. Some of them ran away into their little huts. After
their fears were allayed I showed them a string of six little bells,
which I shook, whereat their little eyes brightened, and their joy was
unbounded when I gave them the bells. One, of course, was for friend
Misounda, who hung it by a cord to her waist, and shook her body in
order to make it ring.
After this I ordered Igalo to bring me the meat, and taking from my
sheath my big, bright, sharp hunting-knife, I cut it and distributed it
among the Dwarfs. Then I gave them the plantains, and told them to eat.
I wish you had seen the twisting of their mouths; it would have made
you laugh. Immediately the little Dwarfs scattered round their fires,
and roasted the food I had given them, and it was no sooner cooked than
it was eaten, they seemed to be so fond of flesh.
When they had finished eating the Obongos seemed more sociable than I
had ever seen them before. I seated myself on a dead limb of a tree,
and they came round me and asked me to talk to them as the spirits
talk. So I took my journal, and read to them in English what I had
written the day before. After speaking to them in the language of the
Oguizis, I said, "Now talk to me in the language of the Dwarfs;" and,
pointing to my fingers, I gave them to understand that I wanted to know
how they counted. So a Dwarf, taking hold of his hand, and then one
finger after another, counted one, moï; two, beï; three, metato; four,
djimabongo; five, djio; six, samouna; seven, nchima; eight, misamouno;
nine, nchouma; ten, mbò-ta; and then raised his hands, intimating that
he could not count beyond ten.
One of them asked me if I lived in the soungui (moon), then another if
I lived in a niechi (star), another if I had been long in the forest.
Did I make the fine things I gave them during the night?
"Now, Obongos," I said to them, "I want you to sing and to dance the
Dwarf dance for me." An old Dwarf went out, and took out of his hut
a ngoma (tam-tam), and began to beat it; then the people struck up a
chant, and what queer singing it was! what shrill voices they had!
After a while they got excited, and began to dance, all the while
gesticulating wildly, leaping up, and kicking backwards and forwards,
and shaking their heads.
Then I fired two guns, the noise of which seemed to stun them and fill
them with fear. I gave them to understand that when I saw an elephant,
a leopard, a gorilla, or any living thing, by making that noise I could
kill them, and to show them I could do it I brought down a bird perched
on a high tree near their settlement. How astonished they seemed to be!
"After all," I said to myself, "though low in the scale of
intelligence, like their more civilized fellow-men, these little
creatures can dance and sing."
"Now, Obongos, that you have asked me about the Oguizis," I said to
them, "tell me about yourselves. Why do you not build villages as other
people do?"
"Oh," said they, "we do not build villages, for we never like to remain
long in the same place, for if we did we should soon starve. When we
have gathered all the fruits, nuts, and berries around the place where
we have been living for a time, and trapped all the game there is in
the region, and food is becoming scarce, we move off to some other part
of the forest. We love to move; we hate to tarry long at the same spot.
We love to be free, like the antelopes and gazelles."
"Why don't you plant for food, as other people do?" I asked them.
"Why should we work," said they, "when there are plenty of fruits,
berries, and nuts around us? when there is game in the woods, and fish
in the rivers, and snakes, rats, and mice are plentiful? We love the
berries, the nuts, and the fruits which grow wild much better than
the fruits the _big people_ raise on their plantations. And if we had
villages," they said, "the strong and tall people who live in the
country might come and make war upon us, kill us, and capture us."
"They do not desire to kill you," I said to them. "See how friendly
they are with you! When you trap much game you exchange it for
plantains with them. Why don't you wear clothing?"
"Why," said they, "the fire is our means of keeping warm, and then the
_big people_ give us their grass-cloth when they have done wearing it."
"Why don't you work iron, and make spears and battle-axes, so that you
might be able to defend yourselves, and be not afraid of war?"
"We do not know how to work iron; it takes too much time; it is too
hard work. We can make bows, and we make arrows with hard wood, and can
poison them. We know how to make traps to trap game, and we trap game
in far greater number than we can kill it when we go hunting; and we
love to go hunting."
"Why don't you make bigger cabins?"
"We do not want to make bigger cabins; it would be too much trouble,
and we do not know how. These are good enough for us; they keep the
rain from us, and we build them so rapidly."
"Don't the leopards sometimes come and eat some of you?"
"Yes, they do!" they exclaimed. "Then we move off far away, several
days' journey from where the leopards have come to eat some of us; and
often we make traps to catch them. We hate the leopards!" the Obongos
shouted with one voice.
"How do you make your fires? tell me;" and I could not help thinking
that, however wild a man was, even though he might be apparently little
above the chimpanzee, he had always a fire, and knew how to make it.
They showed me flint-stones, and a species of oakum coming from the
palm-tree, and said they knocked these stones against each other, and
the sparks gave them fire.
Then, to astonish them, I took a match from my match-box and lighted
it. As soon as they saw the flame a wild shout rang through the
settlement.
"Obongos, tell me," said I, "how you get your wives, for your
settlements are far apart, and you have no paths leading through the
forest from one to another. You never know how far the next settlement
of the Dwarfs may be from yours."
"It is true," said they, "that sometimes we do not know where the next
encampment of the Obongos may be, and we do not wish to know, for
sometimes we fight among ourselves, and if we lived near together we
should become too numerous, and find it difficult to procure berries
and game. Our people never leave one settlement for another. Generation
after generation we have lived among ourselves, and married among
ourselves. It is but seldom we permit a stranger from another Obongo
settlement to come among us."
"How far," said I, pointing to the east, "do you meet Obongos?"
"Far, far away," they answered, "toward where the sun rises, Obongos
are found scattered in the great forest. We love the woods, for there
we live, and if we were to live any where else we should starve."
"As you wander through the forest," I asked, "don't you sometimes come
to prairies?"
"Yes," said they, and here an old Obongo addressed himself to my
Ashango interpreter. "When I was a boy, we had our settlement for a
long time in the forest not far from a big _prairie_, and farther off
there was a big river. Since then," said the old Obongo, "as we moved
we have turned our backs upon where the sun rises, and marched in the
direction where the sun sets" (which meant that they had been migrating
from the east toward the west).
"Did you not see," said I, continuing my questions, "birds with long
legs and long beaks in those prairies?"
"Yes," said all the Obongos; "sometimes we kill them, for we love their
flesh."
I could not but remember the description Homer gave of the cranes and
the Pigmies, and I here give it to you in the translation of a man of
whom every American should be proud as one of the greatest poets of the
age. Mr. William Cullen Bryant's translation reads as follows:
"As when the cry
Of cranes is in the air, that, flying south
From winter and its mighty breadth of rain,
Wing their way over ocean, and at dawn
Bring fearful battle to the Pigmy race,
Bloodshed and death."--_Iliad_, iii., 3-8.
Of course our friend Homer, the grand old bard that will never die,
did not see the Dwarfs, and only related what he had heard of them,
and, like every thing that is transmitted from mouth to mouth, and from
country to country, the story has become very much exaggerated.
Beyond a doubt, at certain seasons of every year the cranes left the
country of which Homer spoke, for cranes are migratory, and their
migration was toward the Nile; thence they winged their flight toward
the Upper Nile, and spread all over the interior of Africa; and,
as they came to the country of the Dwarfs, the Dwarfs came out to
kill them, instead of their coming to kill the Dwarfs. The dwarfs
of Homer's time killed them for food, as they still kill them in
Equatorial Africa in certain seasons of the year.
I am now going to tell you what I wrote about these big cranes before I
had even heard of the Country of the Dwarfs, or that such people as the
Obongos ever existed:
"This account of Homer has been thought fabulous; for 'How,' it has
been asked, 'could cranes attack a race of men?'
"Where were these pigmies to exist? I will try to show that Homer had
some reason to say what he wrote. In the first book which I published
(called 'Explorations in Equatorial Africa') I did not mention what
Homer had written. I had heard of the Dwarfs, but I dismissed the
account given to me by the Apingi as fabulous. In chap. xiv., p. 260, I
say:
"'The dry season was now setting in in earnest, and I devoted the whole
month of July to exploring the country along the sea-shore. It is
curious that most of the birds which were so abundant during the rainy
season had by this time taken their leave, and other birds in immense
numbers flocked in to feed on the fish, which now leave the sea-shore
and bars of the river mouth, and ascend the river to spawn.'
"In the four paragraphs in advance on the same page I said, 'Birds
flocked in immense numbers on the prairies, whither they came to hatch
their young.
"'The ugly marabouts, from whose tails our ladies get the splendid
feathers for their bonnets, were there in thousands. Pelicans waded
on the river's banks all day in prodigious swarms, gulping down the
luckless fish which came in their way.'
"In the next paragraph, page 261, I continue:
"'And on the sandy point one morning I found great flocks of the _Ibis
religiosa_ (the sacred Ibis of the Egyptians), which had arrived
overnight, whence I could not tell.
"'Ducks of various kinds built their nests in every creek and on every
new islet that appeared with the receding waters. I used to hunt
those until I got tired of duck-meat, fine as it is. Cranes, too, and
numerous other water-fowl, flocked in every day, of different species.
All came, by some strange instinct, to feed upon the vast shoals of
fish which literally filled the river.
"'On the sea-shore I sometimes caught a bird, the _Sula capensis_,
which had been driven ashore by the treacherous waves to which it had
trusted itself, and could not, for some mysterious reason, get away
again.
"'And, finally, every sand-bar is covered with gulls, whose shrill
screams are heard from morning till night as they fly about greedily
after their finny prey.'
"I terminated the description by saying, 'It is a splendid time now for
sportsmen, and I thought of some of my New York friends who would have
enjoyed the great plenty of game that was now here.'
"In chap. xiii. of the same book, p. 199, I wrote:
"'From Igalé to Aniambié was two hours' walk, through grass-fields,
in which we found numerous birds, some of them new to me. One in
particular, the _Mycteria Senegalensis_, had such legs that it fairly
outwalked me. I tried to catch it, but, though it would not take to the
wing, it kept so far ahead that I could not even get a fair shot at it.
"'These _Mycteria Senegalenses_ are among the largest of cranes. They
have a long neck, and a very powerful beak, from eight to ten inches in
length, and I killed several of them, which I brought back. I had grand
shooting with them, and many a time I gave up the chase; but when I
killed one I took good care to see that the bird could not hurt me and
was quite dead before I approached it.'
"Hence I conclude that the description of Homer is correct as regards
the great number of cranes, and that he was right, for you see that
they came in the dry season, and when the rains came they disappeared
from the country.
"The dwarfish race of whom I speak are great hunters, and is it not
probable that during the dry season, when the cranes came, there was
rejoicing in the Pigmean race? for there would be food and meat for
them; and they would fight also with the large crane, the _Mycteria
Senegalensis_, which probably they could not kill at once, and hence
it required on the part of the Dwarfs great dexterity to capture
them. For myself, I was always careful in approaching the _Mycteria
Senegalensis_, whose height is from four to five feet, as I have said,
when quite clear. The natives, as I approached the first that I killed,
shouted to me, 'Take care; he will send his beak into your eye.'"
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