Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

witchcraft and gross superstitions everywhere; Negrillo: little known; Bush.-Hot.: animism, nature-worship, and reverence for ancestors; among Hottentots belief in supreme powers of good and evil.

#Culture.# Bantu: much lower than the Negroid Sudanese, but higher than the true Negro; principally cattle rearers, practising simple agriculture; Negrillo and Bush.: lowest grade, hunters; Hot.: nomadic herdsmen.

Main Divisions.

#Bantus#[224]: Bonjo; Baya; Ba-Ganda; Ba-Nyoro; Wa-Pokomo; Wa-Giryama; Wa-Swahili; Zulu-Xosa; Ma-Shona; Be-Chuana; Ova-Herero; Eshi-Kongo; Ba-Shilange; Ba-Lolo; Ma-Nyema; Ba-Kalai; Fan; Mpongwe; Dwala; Ba-Tanga.

#Negrilloes#: Akka; Wochua; Dume(?); Wandorobbo(?); Doko(?); Obongo; Wambutte (Ba-Mbute); Ba-Twa.

#Bushmen#: Family groups; no known tribal names.

#Hottentots#: Wa-Sandawi (?); Namaqua; Griqua; Gonaqua; Koraqua; Hill Damaras.

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In ethnology the only intelligible definition of a Bantu is a full-blood or a half-blood Negro of Bantu speech[225]; and from the physical standpoint no very hard and fast line can be drawn between the northern Sudanese and southern Bantu groups, considered as two ethnical units.

Thanks to recent political developments in the interior, the linguistic divide may now be traced with some accuracy right across the continent. In the extreme west, Sir H. H. Johnston has shown that it coincides with the lower course of the Rio del Rey, while farther east the French expedition of 1891 under M. Dybowski found that it ran at about the same parallel (5 deg. N.) along the elevated plateau which here forms the water-parting between the Congo and the Chad basin. From this point the line takes a south-easterly trend along the southern borders of the Zandeh and Mangbattu territories to the Semliki Valley between Lakes Albert Edward and Albert Nyanza, near the equator. Thence it pursues a somewhat irregular course, first north by the east side of the Albert Nyanza to the mouth of the Somerset Nile, then up that river to Mruli and round the east side of Usoga and the Victoria Nyanza to Kavirondo Bay, where it turns nearly east to the sources of the Tana, and down that river to its mouth in the Indian Ocean.

At some points the line traverses debatable territory, as in the Semliki Valley, where there are Sudanese and Negrillo overlappings, and again beyond Victoria Nyanza, where the frontiers are broken by the Hamitic Masai nomads and their Wandorobbo allies. But, speaking generally, everything south of the line here traced is Bantu, everything north of it Sudanese Negro in the western and central regions, and Hamitic in the eastern section between Victoria Nyanza and the Indian Ocean.

In some districts the demarcation is not quite distinct, as in the Tana basin, where some of the Galla and Somali Hamites from the north have encroached on the territory of the Wa-Pokomo Bantus on the south side of the river. But on the central plateau M. Dybowski passed abruptly from the territory of the Bonjos, northernmost of the Bantu tribes, to that of the Sudanese Bandziri, a branch of the widespread Zandeh people. In this region, about the crest of the Congo-Chad water-parting, the contrasts appear to be all in favour of the Sudanese and against the Bantus, probably because here the former are Negroids, the latter full-blood Negroes. Thus Dybowski[226] found the Bonjos to be a distinctly Negro tribe with pronounced prognathism, and altogether a rude, savage people, trading chiefly in slaves, who are fattened for the meat market, and when in good condition will fetch about twelve shillings. On the other hand the Bandziri, despite their Niam-Niam connection, are not cannibals, but a peaceful, agricultural people, friendly to travellers, and of a coppery-brown complexion, with regular features, hence perhaps akin to the light-coloured people met by Barth in the Mosgu country.

Possibly the Bonjos may be a degraded branch of the Bayas or Nderes, a large nation, with many subdivisions widely diffused throughout the Sangha basin, where they occupy the whole space between the Kadei and the Mambere affluents of the main stream (3 deg. to 7 deg. 30' N.; 14 deg. to 17 deg. E.). They are described by M. F. J. Clozel[227] as of tall stature, muscular, well-proportioned, with flat nose, slightly tumid lips, and of black colour, but with a dash of copper-red in the upper classes. Although cannibals, like the Bonjos, they are in other respects an intelligent, friendly people, who, under the influence of the Muhammadan Fulahs, have developed a complete political administration, with a Royal Court, a Chancellor, Speaker, Interpreter, and other officials, bearing sonorous titles taken chiefly from the Hausa language. Their own Bantu tongue is widespread and spoken with slight dialectic differences as far as the Nana affluents.

Clozel, who regards them as mentally and morally superior to most of the Middle and Lower Congo tribes, tells us that the Bayas, that is, the "Red People," came at an unknown period from the east, "yielding to that great movement of migration by which the African populations are continually impelled westwards." The Yangere section were still on the move some twelve years ago, but the general migration has since been arrested by the Fulahs of Adamawa. Human flesh is now interdicted to the women; they have domesticated the sheep, goat, and dog, and believe in a supreme being called So, whose powers are manifested in the dense woodlands, while minor deities preside over the village and the hut, that is, the whole community and each separate family group. Thus both their religious and political systems present a certain completeness, which recalls those prevalent amongst the semi-civilised peoples of the equatorial lake region, and is evidently due to the same cause--long contact or association with a race of higher culture and intelligence.

In order to understand all these relations, as well as the general constitution of the Bantu populations, we have to consider that the already-described Black Zone, running from the Atlantic seaboard eastwards, has for countless generations been almost everywhere arrested north of the equator by the White Nile. Probably since the close of the Old Stone Age the whole of the region between the main stream and the Red Sea, and from the equator north to the Mediterranean, has formed an integral part of the Hamitic domain, encroached upon in prehistoric times by Semites and others in Egypt and Abyssinia, and in historic times chiefly by Semites (Arabs) in Egypt, Upper Nubia, Senaar, and Somaliland. Between this region and Africa south of the equator there are no serious physical obstructions of any kind, whereas farther west the Hamitic Saharan nomads were everywhere barred access to the south by the broad, thickly-peopled plateaux of the Sudanese Black Zone. All encroachments on this side necessarily resulted in absorption in the multitudinous Negro populations of Central Sudan, with the modifications of the physical and mental characters which are now presented by the Kanuri, Hausas, Songhai and other Negroid nations of that region, and are at present actually in progress amongst the conquering Fulah Hamites scattered in small dominant groups over a great part of Sudan from Senegambia to Wadai.

It follows that the leavening element, by which the southern Negro populations have been diversely modified throughout the Bantu lands, could have been drawn only from the Hamitic and Semitic peoples of the north-east. But in this connection the Semites themselves must be considered as almost une quantite negligeable, partly because of their relatively later arrival from Asia, and partly because, as they arrived, they became largely assimilated to the indigenous Hamitic inhabitants of Egypt, Abyssinia, and Somaliland. Belief in the presence of a Semitic people in the interior of S.E. Africa in early historic times was supported by the groups of ruins (especially those of Zimbabwe), found mainly in Southern Rhodesia, described in J. T. Bent's Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. Exploration in 1905 dispelled the romance hitherto connected with the "temples" and produced evidence to show that they were not earlier in date than the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries and were of native construction[228]. They probably served as distributing centres for the gold traffic carried on with the Semitic traders of the coast. For certainly in Muhammadan times Semites from Arabia formed permanent settlements along the eastern seaboard as far south as Sofala, and these intermingled more freely with the converted coast peoples (Wa-Swahili, from sahel = "coast"), but not with the Kafirs, or "Unbelievers," farther south and in the interior. In our own days these Swahili half-breeds, with a limited number of full-blood Arabs[229], have penetrated beyond the Great Lakes to the Upper and Middle Congo basin, but rather as slave-hunters and destroyers than as peaceful settlers, and contracting few alliances, except perhaps amongst the Wa-Yao and Ma-Gwangara tribes of Mozambique, and the cannibal Ma-Nyemas farther inland.

To this extent Semitism may be recognised as a factor in the constituent elements of the Bantu populations. Malays have also been mentioned, and some ethnologists have even brought the Fulahs of Western Sudan all the way from Malaysia. Certainly if they reached and formed settlements in Madagascar, there is no intrinsic reason why they should not have done the same on the mainland. But I have failed to find any evidence of the fact, and if they ever at any time established themselves on the east coast they have long disappeared, without leaving any clear trace of their presence either in the physical appearance, speech, usages or industries of the aborigines, such as are everywhere conspicuous in Madagascar. The small canoes with two booms and double outriggers which occur at least from Mombasa to Mozambique are of Indonesian origin, as are the fish traps that occur at Mombasa.

There remain the north-eastern Hamites, and especially the Galla branch, as the essential extraneous factor in this obscure Bantu problem. To the stream of migration described by M. Clozel as setting east and west, corresponds another and an older stream, which ages ago took a southerly direction along the eastern seaboard to the extremity of the continent, where are now settled the Zulu-Xosa nations, almost more Hamites than Negroes.

The impulse to two such divergent movements could have come only from the north-east, where we still find the same tendencies in actual operation. During his exploration of the east equatorial lands, Capt. Speke had already observed that the rulers of the Bantu nations about the Great Lakes (Karagwe, Ba-Ganda, Ba-Nyoro, etc.) all belonged to the same race, known by the name of Ba-Hima, that is, "Northmen," a pastoral people of fine appearance, who were evidently of Galla stock, and had come originally from Gallaland. Since then Schuver found that the Negroes of the Afilo country are governed by a Galla aristocracy[230], and we now know that several Ba-hima communities bearing different names live interspersed amongst the mixed Bantu nations of the lacustrian plateaux as far south as Lake Tanganyika and Unyamweziland[231]. Here the Wa-Tusi, Wa-Hha, and Wa-Ruanda are or were all of the same Hamitic type, and M. Lionel Decle "was very much struck by the extraordinary difference that is to be found between them and their Bantu neighbours[232]." Then this observer adds: "Pure types are not common, and are only to be found amongst the aristocracy, if I may use such an expression for Africans. The mass of the people have lost their original type through intermixture with neighbouring tribes."

Roscoe[233] thus describes the inhabitants of Ankole. "The pastoral people are commonly called Bahima, though they prefer to be called Banyankole; they are a tall fine race though physically not very strong. Many of them are over six feet in height, their young king being six feet six inches and broad in proportion to his height.... It is not only the men who are so tall, the women also being above the usual stature of their sex among other tribes, though they do injustice to their height by a fashionable stoop which makes them appear much shorter than they really are. The features of these pastoral people are good: they have straight noses with a bridge, thin lips, finely chiselled faces, heads well set on fairly developed frames, and a good carriage; there is in fact nothing but their colour and their short woolly hair to make you think of them