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

The contrast and the relationship between the pastoral conquerors and the agricultural tribes is clearly seen among the Ba-Nyoro. "The pastoral people are a tall, well-built race of men and women with finely cut features, many of them over six feet in height. The men are athletic with little spare flesh, but the women are frequently very fat and corpulent: indeed their ideal of beauty is obesity, and their milk diet together with their careful avoidance of exercise tends to increase their size. The agricultural clans, on the other hand, are short, ill-favoured looking men and women with broad noses of the negro type, lean and unkempt. Both classes are dark, varying in shade from a light brown to deep black, with short woolly hair. The pastoral people refrain, as far as possible, from all manual labour and expect the agricultural clans to do their menial work for them, such as building their houses, carrying firewood and water, and supplying them with grain and beer for their households." "Careful observation and enquiry lead to the opinion that the agricultural clans were the original inhabitants and that they were conquered by the pastoral people who have reduced them to their present servile condition[234]."

From these indications and many others that might easily be adduced, it may be concluded with some confidence that the great mass of the Bantu populations are essentially Negroes, leavened in diverse proportions, for the most part by conquering Galla or Hamitic elements percolating for thousands of generations from the north-eastern section of the Hamitic domain into the heart of Bantuland.

The date of the Bantu migrations is much disputed. "As far as linguistic evidence goes," says H. H. Johnston[235], "the ancestors of the Bantu dwelt in some region like the Bahr-al-Ghazal, not far from the Mountain Nile on the east, from Kordofan on the north, or the Benue and Chad basins on the west. Their first great movement of expansion seems to have been eastward, and to have established them (possibly with a guiding aristocracy of Hamitic origin) in the region between Mount Elgon, the Northern Victoria Nyanza, Tanganyika, and the Congo Forest. At some such period as about 300 B.C. their far-reaching invasion of Central and South Africa seems to have begun." The date is fixed by the date of the introduction of the fowl from Nile-land, since the root word for fowl is the same almost throughout Bantu Africa, "obviously related to the Persian words for fowl, yet quite unrelated to the Semitic terms, or to those used by the Kushites of Eastern Africa." F. Stuhlmann, on the contrary, places the migrations practically in geological times. After bringing the Sudan Negroes from South Asia at the end of the Tertiary or beginning of the Pleistocene (Pluvialperiod), and the Proto-Hamites from a region probably somewhat further to the north and west of the former, he continues: From the mingling of the Negroes and the Proto-Hamites were formed, probably in East Africa, the Bantu languages and the Bantu peoples, who wandered thence south and west. The wanderings began in the latter part of the Pleistocene period[236]. He quotes Th. Arldt, who with greater precision places the occupation of Africa by the Negroes in the Riss period (300,000 years ago) and that of the Hamites in the Mousterian period (30,000 to 50,000 years ago)[237].

All these peoples resulting from the crossings of Negroes with Hamites now speak various forms of the same organic Bantu mother-tongue. But this linguistic uniformity is strictly analogous to that now prevailing amongst the multifarious peoples of Aryan speech in Eurasia, and is due to analogous causes--the diffusion in extremely remote times of a mixed Hamito-Negro people of Bantu speech in Africa south of the equator. It might perhaps be objected that the present Ba-Hima pastors are of Hamitic speech, because we know from Stanley that the late king M'tesa of Buganda was proud of his Galla ancestors, whose language he still spoke as his mother-tongue. But he also spoke Luganda, and every echo of Galla speech has already died out amongst most of the Ba-Hima communities in the equatorial regions. So it was with what I may call the "Proto-Ba-Himas," the first conquering Galla tribes, Schuver's and Decle's "aristocracy," who were gradually blended with the aborigines in a new and superior nationality of Bantu speech, because "there are many mixed races, ... but there are no mixed languages[238]."

These views are confirmed by the traditions and folklore still current amongst the "Lacustrians," as the great nations may be called, who are now grouped round about the shores of Lakes Victoria and Albert Nyanza. At present, or rather before the recent extension of the British administration to East Central Africa, these peoples were constituted in a number of separate kingdoms, the most powerful of which were Buganda (Uganda)[239], Bunyoro (Unyoro), and Karagwe. But they remember a time when all these now scattered fragments formed parts of a mighty monarchy, the vast Kitwara Empire, which comprised the whole of the lake-studded plateau between the Ruwenzori range and Kavirondoland.

The story is differently told in the different states, each nation being eager to twist it to its own glorification; but all are agreed that the founder of the empire was Kintu, "The Blameless," at once priest, patriarch and ruler of the land, who came from the north hundreds of years ago, with one wife, one cow, one goat, one sheep, one chicken, one banana-root, and one sweet potato. At first all was waste, an uninhabited wilderness, but it was soon miraculously peopled, stocked, and planted with what he had brought with him, the potato being apportioned to Bunyoro, the banana to Buganda, and these form the staple food of those lands to this day.

Then the people waxed wicked, and Kintu, weary of their evil ways and daily bloodshed, took the original wife, cow, and other things, and went away in the night and was seen no more. But nobody believed him dead, and a long line of his mythical successors appear to have spent the time they could spare from strife and war and evil deeds in looking for the lost Kintu. Kimera, one of these, was a mighty giant of such strength and weight that he left his footprints on the rocks where he trod, as may still be seen on a cliff not far from Ulagalla, the old capital of Buganda. There was also a magician, Kibaga, who could fly aloft and kill the Ba-Nyoro people (this is the Buganda version) by hurling stones down upon them, and for his services received in marriage a beautiful Ba-Nyoro captive, who, another Delilah, found out his secret, and betrayed him to her people.

At last came King Ma'anda, who pretended to be a great hunter, but it was only to roam the woodlands in search of Kintu, and thus have tidings of him. One day a peasant, obeying the directions of a thrice-dreamt dream, came to a place in the forest, where was an aged man on a throne between two rows of armed warriors, seated on mats, his long beard white with age, and all his men fair as white people and clothed in white robes. Then Kintu, for it was he, bid the peasant hasten to summon Ma'anda thither, but only with his mother and the messenger. At the Court Ma'anda recognised the stranger whom he had that very night seen in a dream, and so believed his words and at once set out with his mother and the peasant. But the Katikiro, or Prime Minister, through whom the message had been delivered to the king, fearing treachery, also started on their track, keeping them just in view till the trysting-place was reached. But Kintu, who knew everything, saw him all the time, and when he came forward on finding himself discovered the enraged Ma'anda pierced his faithful minister to the heart and he fell dead with a shriek. Thereupon Kintu and his seated warriors instantly vanished, and the king with the others wept and cried upon Kintu till the deep woods echoed Kintu, Kintu-u, Kintu-u-u. But the blood-hating Kintu was gone, and to this day has never again been seen or heard of by any man in Buganda. The references to the north and to Kintu and his ghostly warriors "fair as white people" need no comment[240]. It is noteworthy that in some of the Nyassaland dialects Kintu (Caintu) alternates with Mulungu as the name of the Supreme Being, the great ancestor of the tribe[241].

Then follows more traditional or legendary matter, including an account of the wars with the fierce Wakedi, who wore iron armour, until authentic history is reached with the atrocious Suna II (1836-60), father of the scarcely less atrocious M'tesa. After his death in 1884 Buganda and the neighbouring states passed rapidly through a series of astonishing political, religious, and social vicissitudes, resulting in the present pax Britannica, and the conversion of large numbers, some to Islam, others to one form or another of Christianity. At times it might have been difficult to see much religion in the ferocity of the contending factions; but since the establishment of harmony by the secular arm, real progress has been made, and the Ba-Ganda especially have displayed a remarkable capacity as well as eagerness to acquire a knowledge of letters and of religious principles, both in the Protestant and the Roman Catholic communities. Printing-presses, busily worked by native hands, are needed to meet the steadily increasing demand for a vernacular literature, in a region where blood had flowed continually from the disappearance of "Kintu" till the British occupation.

To the admixture of the Hamitic and Negro elements amongst the Lacustrians may perhaps be attributed the curious blend of primitive and higher institutions in these communities. At the head of the State was a Kabaka, king or emperor, although the title was also borne by the queen-mother and the queen-sister. This autocrat had his Lukiko, or Council, of which the members were the Katikiro, Prime Minister and Chief Justice, the Kimbugwe, who had charge of the King's umbilical cord, and held rank next to the Katikiro, and ten District chiefs, for the administration of the ten large districts into which the country was divided, each rendering accounts to the Katikiro and through him to the King. Each District chief had to maintain in good order a road some four yards wide, reaching from the capital to his country seat, a distance possibly of nearly 100 miles. Each District chief had sub-chiefs under him, independent of the chief in managing their own portion of land. These were responsible for keeping in repair the road between their own residence and that of the District chief. In each district was a supreme court, and every sub-chief, even with only a dozen followers, could hold a court and try cases among his own people. The people, however, could take their cases from one court to another until eventually they came before the Katikiro or the King.

Yet together with this highly advanced social and political development a totemic exogamous clan system was in force throughout Uganda, all the Ba-Ganda belonging to one of 29 kika or clans, each possessing two totems held sacred by the clan. Thus the Lion (Mpologoma) clan had the Eagle (Mpungu) for its second totem; the Mushroom (Butiko) clan had the Snail (Nsonko); the Buffalo (Mbogo) clan had a New Cooking Pot (Ntamu). Each clan had its chief, or Father, who resided on the clan estate which was also the clan burial-ground, and was responsible for the conduct of the members of his branch. All the clans were exogamous[242], and a man was expected to take a second wife from the clan of his paternal grandmother[243].

No direct relations appear to exist between the Lacustrians and the Wa-Kikuyu, Wa-Kamba, Wa-Pokomo, Wa-Gweno, Wa-Chaga, Wa-Teita, Wa-Taveita, and others[244], who occupy the region east of Victoria Nyanza, between the Tana, north-east frontier of Bantuland, and the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro. Their affinities seem to be