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

ranged much farther north, and in historic times were certainly known in Egypt some 4000 or 5000 years ago. This is evident from the frequent references to them in the "Book of the Dead" as far back as the 6th Dynasty. Like the dwarfs in medieval times, they were in high request at the courts of the Pharaohs, who sent expeditions to fetch these Danga(Tank) from the "Island of the Double," that is, the fabulous region of Shade Land beyond Punt, where they dwelt. The first of whom there is authentic record was brought from this region, apparently the White Nile, to King Assa (3300 B.C.) by his officer, Baurtet. Some 70 years later Heru-Khuf, another officer, was sent by Pepi II "to bring back a pygmy alive and in good health," from the land of great trees away to the south[294]. That the Danga came from the south we know from a later inscription at Karnak, and that the word meant dwarf is clear from the accompanying determinative of a short person of stunted growth.

It is curious to note in this connection that the limestone statue of the dwarf Nem-hotep, found in his tomb at Sakkara and figured by Ernest Grosse, has a thick elongated head suggesting artificial deformation, unshapely mouth, dull expression, strong full chest, and small deformed feet, on which he seems badly balanced. It will be remembered that Schweinfurth's Akkas from Mangbattuland were also represented as top-heavy, although the best observers, Junker and others, describe those of the Welle and Congo forests as shapely and by no means ill-proportioned.

Kollmann also, who has examined the remains of the Neolithic pygmies from the Schweizersbild Station, Switzerland, "is quite certain that the dwarf-like proportions of the latter have nothing in common with diseased conditions. This, from many points of view, is a highly interesting discovery. It is possible, as Nueesch suggests, that the widely-spread legend as to the former existence of little men, dwarfs and gnomes, who were supposed to haunt caves and retired places in the mountains, may be a reminiscence of these Neolithic pygmies[295]."

This is what may be called the picturesque aspect of the Negrillo question, which it seems almost a pity to spoil by too severe a criticism. But "ethnologic truth" obliges us to say that the identification of the African Negrillo with Kollmann's European dwarfs still lacks scientific proof. Even craniology fails us here, and although the Negrilloes are in great majority round-headed, R. Verneau has shown that there may be exceptions[296], while the theory of the general uniformity of the physical type has broken down at some other points. Thus the Dume, south of Gallaland, discovered by Donaldson Smith[297] in the district where the Doko Negrilloes had long been heard of, and even seen by Antoine d'Abbadie in 1843, were found to average five feet, or more than one foot over the mean of the true Negrillo. D'Abbadie in fact declared that his "Dokos" were not pygmies at all[298], while Donaldson Smith now tells us that "doko" is only a term of contempt applied by the local tribes to their "poor relations." "Their chief characteristics were a black skin, round features, woolly hair, small oval-shaped eyes, rather thick lips, high cheekbones, a broad forehead, and very well formed bodies" (p. 273).

The expression of the eye was canine, "sometimes timid and suspicious-looking, sometimes very amiable and merry, and then again changing suddenly to a look of intense anger." Pygmies, he adds, "inhabited the whole of the country north of Lakes Stephanie and Rudolf long before any of the tribes now to be found in the neighbourhood; but they have been gradually killed off in war, and have lost their characteristics by inter-marriage with people of large stature, so that only this one little remnant, the Dume, remains to prove the existence of a pygmy race. Formerly they lived principally by hunting, and they still kill a great many elephants with their poisoned arrows" (pp. 274-5).

Some of these remarks apply also to the Wandorobbo, another small people who range nearly as far north as the Dume, but are found chiefly farther south all over Masailand, and belong, I have little doubt, to the same connection. They are the henchmen of the Masai, whom they provide with big game in return for divers services.

Those met by W. Astor Chanler were also "armed with bows and arrows, and each carried an elephant-spear, which they called bonati. This spear is six feet in length, thick at either end, and narrowed where grasped by the hand. In one end is bored a hole, into which is fitted an arrow two feet long, as thick as one's thumb, and with a head two inches broad. Their method of killing elephants is to creep cautiously up to the beast, and drive a spear into its loin. A quick twist separates the spear from the arrow, and they make off as fast and silently as possible. In all cases the arrows are poisoned; and if they are well introduced into the animal's body, the elephant does not go far[299]."

From some of the peculiarities of the Achua (Wochua) Negrilloes met by Junker south of the Welle one can understand why these little people were such favourites with the old Egyptian kings. These were "distinguished by sharp powers of observation, amazing talent for mimicry, and a good memory. A striking proof of this was afforded by an Achua whom I had seen and measured four years previously in Rumbek, and now again met at Gambari's. His comic ways and quick nimble movements made this little fellow the clown of our society. He imitated with marvellous fidelity the peculiarities of persons whom he had once seen; for instance, the gestures and facial expressions of Jussuf Pasha esh-Shelahis and of Haj Halil at their devotions, as well as the address and movements of Emin Pasha, 'with the four eyes' (spectacles). His imitation of Hawash Effendi in a towering rage, storming and abusing everybody, was a great success; and now he took me off to the life, rehearsing after four years, down to the minutest details, and with surprising accuracy, my anthropometric performance when measuring his body at Rumbek[300]."

A somewhat similar account is given by Ludwig Wolf of the Ba-Twa pygmies visited by him and Wissmann in the Kassai region. Here are whole villages in the forest-glades inhabited by little people with an average height of about 4 feet 3 inches. They are nomads, occupied exclusively with hunting and the preparation of palm-wine, and are regarded by their Ba-Kubu neighbours as benevolent little people, whose special mission is to provide the surrounding tribes with game and palm-wine in exchange for manioc, maize, and bananas[301].

Despite the above-mentioned deviations, occurring chiefly about the borderlands, considerable uniformity both of physical and mental characters is found to prevail amongst the typical Negrillo groups scattered in small hunting communities all over the Welle, Semliki, Congo, and Ogowai woodlands. Their main characters are thus described. Their skin is of a reddish or yellowish brown in colour, sometimes very dark. Their height varies from 1.37 m. to 1.45 m. (4 ft. 4-1/4 in. to 4 ft. 9-1/4 in.[302]). Their hair is very short and woolly, usually of a dark rusty brown colour; the face hair is variable, but the body is usually covered with a light downy hair. The cephalic index is 79. The nose is very broad and exceptionally flattened at the root; the lips are usually thin, and the upper one long; the eyes are protuberant; the face is sometimes prognathic. Steatopygia occurs. They are a markedly intelligent people, innately musical, cunning, revengeful and suspicious in disposition, but they never steal.

They are nomadic hunters and collectors, never resorting to agriculture. They have no domestic animals. Only meat is cooked. They wear no clothing. They use bows and poisoned arrows. Their language is unknown. They live in small communities which centre round a cunning fighter or able hunter. Their dead are buried in the ground. They differ from surrounding Negroes in having no veneration for the departed, no amulets, no magicians or professional priests. They have charms for ensuring luck in hunting, but it is uncertain whether these charms derive their potency from the supreme being, though evidence of belief in a high-god is reported from various pygmy peoples.[303]

THE BUSHMEN AND HOTTENTOTS.

Towards the south the Negrillo domain was formerly conterminous with that of the Bushmen, of whom traces were discovered by Sir H. H. Johnston[304] as far north as Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and who, it has been conjectured, belong to the same primitive stock. The differences mental and physical now separating the two sections of the family may perhaps be explained by the different environments--hot, moist and densely wooded in the north, and open steppes in the south--but until more is known of the African pygmies their affinities must remain undecided.

The relationship between the Bushmen and the Hottentots is another disputed question. Early authorities regarded the Hottentots as the parent family, and the Bushmen as the offspring, but the researches of Gustav Fritsch, E. T. Hamy, F. Shrubsall[305] and others show that the Hottentots are a cross between the Bushmen--the primitive race--and the Bantu, the Bushman element being seen in the leathery colour, prominent cheek-bones, pointed chin, steatopygia and other special characters.

In prehistoric times the Hottentots ranged over a vast area. Evidence has now been produced of the presence of a belated Hottentot or Hottentot-Bushman group as far north as the Kwa-Kokue district, between Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza. The Wa-Sandawi people here visited by Oskar Neumann are not Bantus, and speak a language radically distinct from that of the neighbouring Bantus, but full of clicks like that of the Bushmen[306]. Two Sandawi skulls examined by Virchow[307] showed distinct Hottentot characters, with a cranial capacity of 1250 and 1265 c.c., projecting upper jaw and orthodolicho head[308]. The geographical prefix Kwa, common in the district (Kwa-Kokue, Kwa-Mtoro, Kwa-Hindi), is pure Hottentot, meaning "people," like the postfix qua (Kwa) of Kora-qua, Nama-qua, etc. in the present Hottentot domain. The transposition of prefixes and postfixes is a common linguistic phenomenon, as seen in the Sumero-Akkadian of Babylonia, in the Neo-Sanskritic tongues of India, and the Latin, Oscan, and other members of the Old Italic group.

Farther south a widely-diffused Hottentot-Bushman geographical terminology attests the former range of this primitive race all over South Africa, as far north as the Zambesi. Lichtenstein had already discovered such traces in the Zulu country[309], and Vater points out that "for some districts the fact has been fully established; mountains and rivers now occupied by the Koossa [Ama-Xosa] preserve in their Hottentot names the certain proof that they at one time formed a permanent possession of this people[310]."

Thanks to the custom of raising heaps of stones or cairns over the graves of renowned chiefs, the migrations of the Hottentots may be followed in various directions to the very heart of South Zambesia. Here the memory of their former presence is perpetuated in the names of such water-courses as Nos-ob, Up, Mol-opo, Hyg-ap, Gar-ib, in which the syllables ob, up, ap, ib and others are variants of the Hottentot word ib, ip, water, river, as in Gar-ib, the "Great River," now better known as the Orange River. The same indications may be traced right across the continent to the Atlantic, where nearly all the coast streams--even in Hereroland, where the language has long been extinct--have the same ending[311].

On the west side the Bushmen are still heard of as far north as the Cunene, and in the interior beyond Lake Ngami nearly to the right bank of the Zambesi. But the Hottentots are now confined mainly to Great and Little Namaqualand. Elsewhere there appear to be no full-blood natives of this race, the Koraquas, Gonaquas, Griquas, etc. being all Hottentot-Boer or Hottentot-Bantu half-castes of Dutch speech. In Cape Colony the tribal organisation ceased to exist in 1810, when the last Hottentot chief was replaced by a European magistrate. Still the Koraquas keep themselves somewhat distinct