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Title: The natives of British Central Africa
Author: Werner, Alice
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The natives of British Central Africa" ***
CENTRAL AFRICA ***
THE NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
[Illustration: WOMEN CARRYING WATER-JARS, CHIROMO]
The Native Races of the British Empire
THE NATIVES
OF
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
BY
A. WERNER
WITH THIRTY-TWO FULL-PAGE
ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE
AND COMPANY, LTD.
1906
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
IN MEMORIAM
J. R. W.
ELMINA, AUGUST 16, 1891
... ‘_Desiderio_ ...
_Tam cari capitis_....’
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF PLATES xi
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Geography. Botany: bush-fire. Climate. Fauna: beasts, birds,
fish, insects, 1
CHAPTER II
INHABITANTS
Classification of tribes. Physical characters. Keloids and
tribal marks. Ear ornaments. Tooth-chipping. Hair, 24
CHAPTER III
RELIGION AND MAGIC—I
Ancestor-worship. Offerings. Mulungu. Mpambe. Chitowe.
Evil spirits. Spirits of the dead. Dreams. Morality, 46
CHAPTER IV
RELIGION AND MAGIC—II
Creation. Origin of death. Lake Nyasa. Rain-making. Charms.
Witchcraft. Lycanthropy, Divination. Food tabus. Dances, 70
CHAPTER V
NATIVE LIFE—I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Villages. Huts. Birth. Naming. Dress. Childhood’s rights.
Games. Plastic art-work. Daily life, 99
CHAPTER VI
NATIVE LIFE—II
Initiation. Marriage. Division of labour. Meals. Food.
Hut-building. The _bwalo_. Affection, 123
CHAPTER VII
FUNERAL RITES
Wailing and mourning. The grave. Inheritance. The cause of
death. Ordeal, 154
CHAPTER VIII
ARTS, INDUSTRIES, ETC.
Agriculture: Maize, tobacco, gardens, etc. Hunting, trapping.
Ant-catching. Fishing. Weaving. Basket-making. Bark
cloth. Ironwork. Wood-carving. Pottery. Salt, 176
CHAPTER IX
LANGUAGE AND ORAL LITERATURE
Structure of the Bantu languages. Riddles. Songs. Music and
dancing. Story-telling, 208
CHAPTER X
FOLK-STORIES
Methods of story-telling. Animal stories. _Brer Rabbit._
Borrowed tales. Value of native folk-lore, 230
CHAPTER XI
TRIBAL ORGANISATION, GOVERNMENT, ETC.
Totemistic clans. Kinship counted through women. The paramount
chief: his powers. Succession to the chieftainship.
Administration of justice. Crime and punishment. Slavery, 252
CHAPTER XII
TRADITIONS AND HISTORY
Probable origin of the Yaos. The Makalanga. Undi. Migrations
of the Angoni. The Tambuka, 276
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 288
ADDENDA, 289
GLOSSARY, 292
INDEX, 295
ERRATA
Page 42, line 23, _for_ fourth, _read_ first.
” 100, line 12. The illustration referred to has not been included
in the volume, but the same type of square house may be
seen in Plate 16.
” 192, last line. This illustration has not been included.
” 199, last line, _for_ Pl. 23, _read_ Pl. 18.
LIST OF PLATES
PLATE
I. Women carrying water-jars, Chiromo, _Frontispiece_
II. Carriers resting in the Bush, _facing page_ 9
III. Chingomanje Stream, Mlanje, ” 16
IV. Hut built on platform as a defence against lions, ” 18
V. Two Yao women, ” 32
VI. Group of Anguru, ” 33
VII. A Mnguru, showing keloids, ” 39
VIII. Fashions in tooth-chipping, ” 42
IX. (1) Exceptional coiffure of Mngoni, } ” 44
(2) Women making porridge, }
X. The Progress of Civilisation! ” 45
XI. Tree with offerings, Ndirande Mountain, ” 50
XII. (1) Women on Likoma Island, } ” 105
(2) A Makua family, }
XIII. (1) _Mchombwa_ game, } ” 113
(2) Nyanja ball-game, }
XIV. (1) Boys digging out field-mice, } ” 120
(2) Caught, }
(3) Roasting, }
(4) Eating, }
XV. (1) Boy extracting jigger from a companion’s } ” 122
foot, }
(2) Herd-boys cooking their midday meal, }
XVI. Women pounding maize in Yao village, ” 135
XVII. Two men eating, ” 137
XVIII. Gang of Angoni at Mandala, ” 138
XIX. Nguru hut, ” 139
XX. Grinding snuff, ” 178
XXI. Women weeding maize-garden, ” 181
XXII. Women carrying baskets of maize, ” 185
XXIII. Boy with bow, ” 187
XXIV. Canoes at Liwonde’s, ” 194
XXV. (1) Mat-making, } ” 196
(2) Native loom, }
XXVI. Making _mtanga_ basket, ” 198
XXVII. Boy with crate of fowls, ” 199
XXVIII. Knives and ‘Angoni handkerchief,’ ” 203
XXIX. The ‘Dancing-man,’ ” 221
XXX. Musical instruments, ” 222
XXXI. Preparing for the dance, ” 226
XXXII. Angoni warriors, ” 278
THE NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Geography. Botany: bush-fire. Climate. Fauna: beasts, birds,
fish, insects.
When you steam up the Shiré, you pass on the first, second, or some
subsequent day (according to the state of the river and the capabilities
of your craft), after turning out of the Zambezi at Chimwara, a tree
on the western bank. This tree bears a notice-board which marks the
beginning of the British Central Africa Protectorate.
But the globe-trotter who is anxious to record in his diary the precise
hour and minute of all momentous events of a monotonous voyage may easily
overlook the all-important tree. The most eager inquirer may find his
experiences pall upon him when for hour after hour he sees nothing but
level shore, and a foreground of green _bango_-reeds festooned with dull
magenta convolvulus. In fact, the reason why the boundary had to be
marked by a board affixed to a tree, is because this particular angle
of alluvial land is so level and devoid of natural features that, in
the rainy season, there is usually one navigable channel, if not more,
cutting it off into an island, by connecting the Shiré and Zambezi.
On the eastern bank we have left Mount Morambala behind—a massive
ridge, extending over several miles and reaching a height of 4000 feet.
Beyond the flats in the north-east you see the strangely shaped cone of
Chinga-Chinga Mountain against the sky, and later on other ranges come
into view; but just here the river valley is a marsh (some parts of it an
actual lake) in the wet season, and a dusty plain at the end of the dry.
The Portuguese territory on the eastern bank extends a little farther
north till it reaches a more tangible boundary in the river Ruo, which
rushes down from Matapwiri’s Mountain in the north-east, throwing itself
over a fall of 200 feet, and then, winding through the same sort of plain
as that already described, enters the Shiré through a sort of miniature
delta, by the reedy island of Malo and the ‘lip’ of land where now stands
the British township of Chiromo.
I have spoken all along of the Shiré River; and it is not now to be
expected that Europeans will ever call it anything else; but it is
perhaps unnecessary to say that no native, unless thoroughly accustomed
to Europeans and their ways, would ever know it by that name. To him it
is the _Nyanja_, or, if he happens to be a Yao, the _Nyasa_—a word which
means any large body of water, whether river or lake. To those living
near Lake Nyasa, it is the lake which is Nyanja or Nyasa, as the case may
be; it is only European usage which has stereotyped the Yao word on our
maps. _Chiri_, in the Mang’anja language, means ‘a steep bank,’ and was
misunderstood (by the Portuguese, probably, as it seems to have been in
use before Livingstone penetrated the country) as the name of the river;
since a native would say, ‘I am going to the _bank_,’ where we should
say, ‘I am going to the _river_.’ As Sir H. H. Johnston has remarked, the
Zambezi is the only one of the four great African rivers which bears a
name given by, or even known to, the people dwelling on it.
Roughly speaking, the British Protectorate, to which we have been
referring, comprises the basin of Lake Nyasa and its outlet, the Shiré.
This general statement, of course, requires some qualification. The north
end of the lake (the British boundary is the Songwe River, running out in
about 10° of S. latitude) and nearly half the eastern side are German;
south of that, _i.e._ from 11° 30´ S. to Fort Maguire, is Portuguese.
From Fort Maguire, the border-line runs south-east to the small lake
called Chiuta, then south, by the salt lake Chilwa and Mlanje Mountain to
the Ruo.
The western frontier of the Protectorate is an irregular line, following
more or less the watershed between the streams that flow into the lake
and those that flow into the Luangwa (a tributary of the Zambezi which,
unlike most tributaries, goes up-stream to join its river—in this case in
a south-westerly direction), and meeting the Portuguese border about 14°
S. Thence it keeps on to the south-east, as far as the point on the Shiré
already mentioned, where the notice-board is affixed to the tree.
Measurements in square miles convey little or nothing to my mind, as
a rule, and I shall abstain as far as possible from inflicting them
on the reader; but it may as well be noted here that the area of the
Protectorate is estimated at 40,980.
West of the territory thus defined, and between the Zambezi and the
upper waters of the Congo, lies a vast region known officially as
North-east Rhodesia, and reaching up to the south end of Lake Tanganika.
We shall have something to say about the tribes living in this part
of the country; some of them, indeed, are identical with those in the
Protectorate proper; but it is with the latter that we shall chiefly have
to do.
We have seen that British Central Africa is a land of lakes and rivers;
it is a land of mountains also. ‘Before the discovery of Lake Ng’ami and
the well-watered country in which the Makololo dwell,’ said Livingstone,
‘the idea prevailed that a large part of the interior of Africa consisted
of sandy deserts into which rivers ran and were lost.’ His great journey
of 1852-56 dispelled this idea, and ‘the peculiar form of the continent
was then ascertained to be an elevated plateau, somewhat depressed in the
centre, and with fissures in the sides by which the rivers escaped to the
sea.’ The great lakes all lie on this central plateau, and the rivers
which drain them to the sea escape over its edge in the cataracts which
for so many centuries, by interrupting navigation, have prevented the
exploration of the interior. The Zambezi first throws itself into a huge
crack in the earth in the Victoria Falls, and afterwards, between Zumbo
and Tete, come the Kebrabasa Rapids.
Lake Nyasa is a narrow trough, 360 miles long, between mountain-ranges
which hem it in closely on the west (sending down, during the rains,
innumerable small torrents from their steep slopes), and retreat
somewhat from it on the east, leaving room for a few larger, but still
inconsiderable streams, such as the Songwe, the Rukuru, the Bua, and one
or two more. The Shiré is the lake’s only outlet, flowing through a level
alluvial valley (something like a delta reversed) till, a little below
Matope, it comes to the edge of the plateau and plunges over in a series
of falls known as the Murchison Cataracts. These extend over forty miles
of river, and make a difference in its level of some 1200 feet, though
none of them, individually, are of any great height.
The level of the lake, and consequently of the river which it feeds,
is very different at different seasons of the year. During the rains,
and for some time after, steamers can go to the foot of the Murchison
Cataracts—the usual terminus is Katunga’s, about twelve miles below them.
In the dry season they cannot always come within sight of Chiromo, and,
during the great drought of 1903, the natives of that place were hoeing
their maize-gardens far out in the channel of the river. The salt Lake
Chilwa, east of the Shiré, disappeared almost, if not quite, at that
time, but reappeared with subsequent rains. It is thought, however, that
there is a continuous fall in the level of Nyasa, which is unaffected by
the rise and fall of successive seasons. In some places a series of old
beaches can be traced, ascending like terraces from the lake-shore to the
foot-hills.
This fall is attributed to several causes—the wearing away of the outlet
channel, allowing more water to escape; the disappearance of the forests
and consequent diminution of the rainfall; and the raising of the ground
by volcanic action. There are not now any active volcanoes in the
country, but earthquakes are common in the neighbourhood of the lake, and
there are hot springs near Kotakota, and also on Mount Morambala (Lower
Shiré). Mlanje Mountain is of volcanic origin; in the German territory,
north of Nyasa, there are numerous extinct volcanoes and crater-lakes.
The district called the Shiré Highlands proper is enclosed between
the Shiré, the Ruo, and Lake Chilwa. It was so named by Livingstone,
and others besides him have noticed the similarity to the Scottish
mountains, in these rugged peaks and crags of quartzite and grey granite,
especially in the dry season, when the brown grass is very nearly the
colour of the dead heather and bracken. Sochi, near Blantyre, is, in
general outline, not unlike Ben Cruachan. The highest of these mountains
are Mlanje and Zomba—they are ranges rather than mountains; or, more
precisely still, Mlanje is an isolated mass, a plateau with peaks rising
from it like buttresses—the highest point 9680 feet. The plateau has a
height of 6000 feet, and a temperate climate—cool enough for hoar-frost
at night. From these mountains the land sinks in a series of irregular
undulations, to the Shiré, covered sometimes with bush, sometimes with
the thick, coarse grass so feelingly described by all travellers, which
is really more like canes. After it is burned, as it is every year,
it is a greater nuisance than ever, for the larger stalks (about as
thick as one’s finger) never get quite consumed, and neither stand up
nor lie flat, but lie across each other at every conceivable angle—too
high to step on and too low to push one’s way under. Other mountains are
Chiperone, Chiradzulo and Tyolo, Nyambadwe and Ndirande—the two latter
close to Blantyre. It is difficult to make out their relation to each
other. At a bird’s-eye view—as from the top of Nyambadwe, or some point
on Ndirande—they look like a confused sea of peaks and ridges; but they
are more or less continuous to Zomba, and are separated from Mlanje by
the Chilwa plain and the valley of the Tuchila, which runs into the Ruo.
West of the Shiré we have the Kirk Mountains, running north and south,
with some striking peaks—Dzonze, a collection of rounded humps; Mvai, a
rocky pyramid, with a three-cleft peak; Lipepete; and, far to the north,
Chirobwe, with a sharp rock pointing from its summit like a finger.
These mountains are mostly granite and quartzite. West of the lake and
the Shiré, there are outcrops of sandstone, and this part of the country
also contains coal. Iron ore is abundant almost everywhere, especially
the form called hæmatite—a soft, red stone, known to the natives as
_ng’ama_ or _kundwe_, and used by them as paint, and as medicine; lumps
of this can be picked up in the beds of all the mountain streams.
Graphite, or black lead, is found in the same way, and is used by the
women for colouring their pottery, to which it gives an effect exactly
like stove-polish. I think these are the only minerals of which they
themselves take much account. Gold exists in the quartz in some places,
and Sir Harry Johnston says: ‘In the valleys of the rivers flowing south
to the Zambezi (in Mpezeni’s country), gold really does exist, and
was worked at Misale by the half-caste Portuguese,’ in the eighteenth
century, and even later. But the Mang’anja and Yaos only know it through
their dealings with Portuguese and Arabs, and have no word for it in
their languages. _Ndalama_, which, with the addition of ‘red,’ means
gold, and of ‘white,’ silver, and by itself = ‘money,’ is, I fancy, a
borrowed word—the Arabic _dirhem_. I once bought (in the West Shiré
district) a bangle of pure copper, which was vaguely said to have been
obtained from a place to the north-west, but where it had been worked, I
could not ascertain. The brass which is fashioned by native craftsmen is
always bought from traders.
[Illustration: CARRIERS RESTING IN THE BUSH]
There are no deserts in this part, neither are there any dense forests of
huge trees, such as we usually think of when Central Africa is mentioned,
and such as are really to be found in the Upper Congo basin, on the Gold
Coast, and elsewhere. Two Yao boys, who had served in Ashanti with the
King’s African Rifles, spoke of the West African forest with the same
sort of surprise and wonder as any English rustic might have done. Both,
independently, answered the question, ‘What is that country like?’ with
the same expression—‘_Palibe kuona_, one cannot see!’ adding that the
trees were high—very high (with an upward gesture of hands and eyes)—away
up above one’s head. Large trees, growing close together, are just what
one does not find, as a rule, in the country we are thinking of. The Bush
(_tengo_, or _chire_) usually consists of small trees, thinly scattered,
with tufts of grass, small bushes, and various herbaceous plants growing
between them, and here and there a large tree standing by itself—perhaps
a baobab, or a wild fig, or a silver-thorn acacia, covered with bright
golden blossom. Or we have the kind of scenery described by travellers as
park-like—open glades, covered with short grass (which, however, never
makes turf; you can see the soil between the separate tufts), and dotted
with clumps of scrub and small trees, singly or in groups. This is the
kind of place where the zebras come to graze—not that I ever had the
luck to see any. The small boys who had held out hopes of this treat,
said, when we passed the place early in the afternoon, that it was still
too hot—the _mbidzi_ were all hidden in the bush, resting in the shade;
they would come out to feed on the _dambo_ when it grew cooler. When we
returned along the same path the sun was declining, but there were still
no _mbidzi_—a party of natives on their way to the village we had left
had scared them.
Where there are no trees or bushes, the grass is usually of the tall,
coarse-growing kind already referred to, which is used in hut-building,
and has to be burned off at the end of every dry season—otherwise it
would become an impenetrable jungle. The grass-fires serve a double
purpose—that of clearing the ground and manuring it—but they nearly
always spread to the bush, even if it is not fired purposely, to clear a
space for new gardens, or accidentally, by some travellers’ camp-fire.
These fires cause the scarcity of large trees, which, as a rule, are
only found either in deep ravines along watercourses, which have always
escaped the flames, or in the burying-grounds (the sacred groves called
_nkalango_), where the people carefully beat out the fire before it
reaches them.
These fires have from the earliest ages formed one of the characteristic
features of African travel. One of the oldest records of exploration—the
_Periplus_ of Hanno—describes them, with other phenomena, in a weird
and mysterious passage which fascinated my youth, and has not lost its
charm even when the marvels are resolved into tolerably commonplace
occurrences:—
‘Having taken in water, we sailed thence straight-forwards, until we
came to a great gulf, which the interpreters said was called the Horn
of the West.’ (This must have been somewhere near Sierra Leone, since
the farthest point reached by the expedition seems to have been Sherbro
Island.) ‘In it was a large island, and in the island a lake like a sea,
and in this another island, on which we landed; and by day we saw nothing
but woods, but by night we saw many fires burning, and heard the sound of
flutes and cymbals, and the beating of drums, and an immense shouting.
Fear came upon us, and the soothsayers bade us quit the island.’
Evidently the people were ‘playing,’ as the Anyanja say—and their
dances last sometimes from dark to daylight, even now—or there was a
lyke-wake on. Or else, maybe, they were well aware of the presence of the
strangers, and kept out of sight by day, and the effect of the drums and
flutes on the Carthaginian soothsayers was that desired by the performers.
‘Having speedily set sail, we passed by a burning country full of
incense, and from it huge streams of fire flowed into the sea; and the
land could not be walked upon because of the heat. Being alarmed, we
speedily sailed away thence also, and going along four days, we saw by
night the land full of flame, and in the midst was a lofty fire, greater
than the rest, and seeming to touch the stars. This by day appeared as
a vast mountain, called the Chariot of the Gods. On the third day from
this, sailing by fiery streams, we came to a gulf called the Horn of the
South.’
This, though the uninitiated would think it referred to a volcanic
eruption, is really a very good description of a bush-fire on a large
scale. On a moonless night in September, perhaps, you will see the
black hills seamed with curved and zigzag lines of fire, as the blaze
advances. Here and there a clump of dry scrub, or a dead tree, will burst
into a sheet of flame, lighting up the dense white clouds of smoke. The
heated air within the hollow stalks of grass and reeds expands till
they burst with a sound like the firing of guns, which rises above a
roar loud as that of the traffic of a great city. The smoke, rising
from several points at once, hangs in the air and collects into a dense
canopy of cloud, making the heat still more stifling, till, at last,
sheet-lightnings begin to play about it, followed by low growls of
thunder, and, perhaps, by the blessed relief of a shower. I have seen
this happen more than once, though some writers appear to doubt it.
While these fires are going on, the air is full of black particles, which
come floating down like an unnatural kind of snow, and the ground is
covered with charred, crunching vegetation and grey ashes. The native
name for this burning, or rather burnt stuff, is _lupsya_, and the early
rains, which wash it away, are called _kokalupsya_, ‘that which sweeps
away the _lupsya_.’ These rains are usually expected in October, and are
a kind of prelude to the real rains, which should begin in November,
but are sometimes delayed another month or even longer. While they last
there may be continuous, soaking rains for three days together; but,
more commonly, after a fine morning, the clouds begin to gather about 2
P.M., then a more or less heavy thunderstorm comes up, and the rain which
follows continues into the night. By morning it is fine again, and then
follows a half-day of the most exquisite weather, when you can almost
feel things growing—till the thunderstorm comes up again as before. This
will go on, day after day, till you get one without rain, as a change,
or maybe a spell of steady rain, as aforesaid. There is usually a break
of a few weeks about the end of the year—then the rains begin again, and
last till March or April. Then begins the ‘hungry time,’ when the old
food is done and the new crops are not yet ripe; it is sometimes a time
of real scarcity, as the supplies barely last out the year, and leave no
margin for emergencies. This is not so much from improvidence as from
the difficulty of preserving the stores from mice and weevils. But some
relief comes before long when the pumpkins, gourds, and cucumbers—many of
which may be gathered wild—are ready, and they help to bridge over the
time before the first ears of green maize can be plucked, though there is
always a good deal of more or less serious illness at this season. About
May the crops are ripe, and the dry season has fairly set in. There are
occasional cold showers in June and July, and sometimes in the hills a
week’s rain in August. At this time a chilly wind blows from the Indian
Ocean, bringing with it heavy clouds, which, on some days, hang low,
drifting along the slopes of the hills, and hurrying away to the west.
Now and then, too, there is a thick white mist, like a sea-fog. But the
sunny days, in the cold season, are bright and exhilarating. On such a
day the difference between the temperature at noon and at night may be as
much as 30°; and the dews are very heavy; a walk through long grass in
the early morning drenches one like heavy rain. After this the air gets
hotter and drier every day, and when the fires begin, it becomes still
more oppressive. The most trying time of the year is the three or four
weeks when the earth and all that is on it are ‘waiting for the rains.’
Curiously enough, the trees burst into leaf—with a greater variety of
colour than our own in autumn—just _before_ the rain comes, when the
ground is so baked and hard that any growth seems impossible.
The variety of trees and plants growing in this country is very great,
though it is somewhat difficult to give any clear idea of them, for most
have no names except native ones, which are pretty, but convey nothing to
the reader, and botanical ones, which are ugly, and in most cases convey
not much more. Such a general term as ‘palms,’ for instance, is of little
use; still, every one knows, to a certain extent, what the different
kinds of palms are like. We have several, all growing on the lower
levels; none are to be found so high as Blantyre, unless cultivated,
except the wild date, which grows beside the streams. The tall, graceful
fan-palms (_Borassus_ and _Hyphæne_) are very abundant in the plains. I
remember quite a forest of them near Maparera, on the Shiré. When you
descend from the hills either towards the river or towards Lake Chilwa,
baobabs and fan-palms make their appearance and remind you that you are
leaving the temperate heights behind and entering the hotter zone of the
low country.
Ferns are numerous—from the tree-fern, growing in the gorges of Mlanje,
to the smallest and most delicate species of maiden-hair, to be found in
the damp crevices of rocks, and beside the streams. The asparagus and
parsley ferns, and a beautiful kind of large hart’s-tongue, with the tip
of the frond cleft in two, are among the more noticeable forms.
Though, as we have seen, there are no forests on a large scale, a fair
number of fine timber-trees are to be found. There is the _mbawa_, a kind
of mahogany, and the _mpingo_, or ebony, both of large size and handsome
growth, and the Mlanje cedar (really a _Widdringtonia_), the only
indigenous conifer, and growing nowhere but on that mountain. Its wood
is pale red, smooth, and deliciously scented. Most of the native wood
which can be used at all is hard and heavy, and somewhat difficult to
work; but the result, especially in the case of the cedar, is worth the
trouble. Another useful timber-tree, whose wood is never attacked by the
destructive borer-beetle, is the _msuku_ (_Napaca Kirkii_), only found at
a height of over two thousand feet, and very common on the hills about
Blantyre. It bears the favourite wild fruit of the natives, consisting
of a skin and a quantity of large seeds, with a little sweet pulp, and
a moderate allowance of juice; what there is of it is so good that it
would be well worth cultivation. Other wild fruits are not so attractive
to the European palate. There is one about the size of an orange, with a
hard shell, and seeds embedded in a juicy pulp, slightly bitter, slightly
acid, and slightly sweet, and at the same time not unpleasant in flavour.
I believe the tree is a kind of _Strychnos_, consequently one would
expect the fruit to be poisonous, yet native children eat any quantity,
and seem none the worse.
The _myombo_, with leaves like our ash, is a very common tree, and the
one from which bark-cloth is usually obtained. The bark of the wild fig
is used for the same purpose.
The thorn-trees—acacias and mimosas—are among the most characteristic
plants of the country, and some of them have very handsome flowers. The
_mlungusi_, which has particularly vicious, hooked thorns, is sometimes
planted in hedges. Another tree which makes a very effectual hedge is the
cactus euphorbia. Of the same family (Spurges) are the weird candelabrum
euphorbia, growing in the hills, and a leafless, fleshy, pale-green
kind, often found in the villages, whose acrid, milky juice is used for
stupefying fish.
There is no season of the year quite without flowers, and no place in
which some kind or other is not to be found; but, of course, the best
time is the first few weeks of the rains. It would be hopeless to attempt
a description, or even a mere enumeration, of the lovely and wonderful
forms to be found side by side with familiar home growths, such as
buttercups, penny-royal, and self-heal. Some slight idea of what is to
be seen in the Shiré Highlands, and especially on Mlanje, where you
pass from tropical to temperate, and even to Alpine, vegetation, may be
gathered from the botanical chapter in Sir H. H. Johnston’s _British
Central Africa_.
We must say a few words about the _fauna_ of British Central Africa,
not only because it is interesting in itself, but because it plays an
important part in the life and thought of the people. Elephants are less
numerous than they were forty years ago, when herds of them haunted the
marsh to which they have given their name; but they are still frequently
seen between Chikala and Mangoche, north-east of Lake Chilwa, and since
they have been protected by Government, have even been returning to the
banks of the Shiré. In 1877 the late Consul Elton saw a herd of over
three hundred near the north end of Lake Nyasa.
[Illustration: CHINGOMANJE STREAM, MLANJE]
The hippopotamus is found in the Shiré and Lake Nyasa, and indeed almost
in any stream or lake where the water is deep enough to cover him. The
rhinoceros is known, but not very common. There are many Cape buffaloes
in the plains and marshes of the Shiré, and the solitary bulls, driven
out of the herd on account of bad temper or other defects, are sometimes
extremely savage. Such an animal, in 1894, charged out of the long
grass on a party of carriers, near Chiromo, and knocked down, gored and
trampled on, one man, who was rescued from him with difficulty. This
man, a Tonga named Kajawa, when treated at Blantyre, was found to have
seventeen wounds about him, but ultimately recovered.
Of other large animals, we have already mentioned the zebra; and the
eland, though not very common, is also met with. There are several
kinds of smaller antelopes, and, in the mountains, the beautiful little
creature called the klipspringer, or, by the natives, the _gwapi_, which
is something like a chamois.
Of monkeys, there are baboons, which go about in troops and plunder the
growing crops, when they get a chance, and several smaller kinds.
The curious ant-eater called _Manis_ or ‘Pangolin,’ and by the natives
_nkaka_, is three or four feet long, shaped like a lizard and covered
with lozenge-shaped brown scales, more like those on a fir-cone (the
long, thin-scaled cones of the Norway spruce) than anything else I can
think of. With his powerful claws he digs his way into the hills of the
white ants on which he feeds, catching them on his sticky tongue, as
he has no teeth wherewith to eat them. He is a slow-moving, nocturnal
creature, and seldom seen, unless dug out of his burrow.
Another underground creature who ventures out by night is the porcupine,
whose black and white quills are sometimes picked up in the bush
and brought for sale by natives. It is fond of pumpkins and other
vegetables, and often comes to feed on the crops at night.
Of beasts of prey we have the lion, the leopard, several smaller kinds
of cats, the spotted hyena (disgusting in habits and contemptible in
character, but interesting from his place in native folk-lore), jackals,
and wild dogs (_mimbulu_), which hunt in packs like wolves.
Lions are common enough to be a plague. Thirteen years ago they were
looked on as a thing of the past at Blantyre, though even then they were
met with a few miles out on the Matope road, and I have heard, though
not seen, them in the Upper Shiré district. (The roaring we heard two or
three times, on stormy nights, came, we were assured, from the banks of
the Kapeni, six miles away.) But the mysterious disease among the wild
buffaloes, antelopes, and other game, which in 1894 spread westward to
the lakes and then southward, and when it attacked the cattle in South
Africa was known as rinderpest, deprived them of their food, and drove
them to invade the more settled districts. Twelve were shot within a few
weeks on one plantation, and a planter in the neighbourhood of Zomba,
who was riding a bicycle, was chased for some miles by a lion, but
ultimately escaped. In some parts, as, for instance, on the low ground
near the Shiré, below the Murchison Cataracts, the natives build their
huts on raised platforms so as to be safe from lions at night. Leopards
also are apt to be dangerous; they prowl about habitations by night,
usually in the hope of getting into the goat-kraal, or picking up some
stray dog unlucky enough to have been left outside, and are by no means
above carrying off the miserable fowls to be found in native villages,
one of which can scarcely be a mouthful. But they frequently attack human
beings; and at one village a leopard had made a habit of waiting in the
grass beside a certain path along which the women went to fetch water
from the river, and had killed several before he was shot. Wizards are
supposed to take this shape, among others.
[Illustration: HUT, NEAR SHIRÉ RIVER]
Domestic animals are not numerous, but we shall come back to them in a
later chapter.
British Central Africa, says Sir H. H. Johnston, ‘is a country singularly
rich in bird life.’ On the Shiré we have a wonderful variety of
water-birds—flamingoes, herons, cranes, ducks, geese, plovers—and, to
mention no more (these two are among the first noticed by the new comer),
the handsome black-and-white fishing-eagle, and the tiny kingfisher,
‘like a flash of blue light.’ Among the hills we have strange forms,
like the hornbill, and gorgeous colouring, as in the plantain-eaters and
rollers and some of the fly-catchers, and familiar home birds, and their
near relations—swallows, thrushes, larks, woodpeckers (the native name
for the latter, _gogompanda_, is very expressive). As to singing-birds,
I may quote again from Sir Harry Johnston: ‘Both Mr. Whyte and myself
have remarked with emphasis at different times on the beauty of the
birds’ songs in the hilly regions of British Central Africa. The chorus
of singing-birds is quite as beautiful as anything one hears in Europe,
thus quite disposing of one of the numerous fictions circulated by early
travellers about the tropics, to the effect that the birds, though
beautiful, had no melodious songs, and the flowers, though gorgeous, no
sweet and penetrating scents. The song of the Mlanje thrush is scarcely
to be told from that of the English bird.’ This entirely accords with
my own experience. A bird which often sang at night sounded just like a
thrush.
As to reptiles, crocodiles abound in the Shiré and the lake, and are
so dangerous that in many places the women draw water from the top of
a high bank by means of a calabash attached to a long pole, instead
of going down to the edge of the stream, as they would naturally do.
Though accidents are so frequent, the crocodile can hardly be called a
habitual eater of human flesh. His staple food is fish, and ‘it is only
a rare incident for them to capture a mammal of any size; an incident
which, given a number of crocodiles in any stream or lake, can only occur
to each one at most once a year on an average.’[1] The natives (women
sometimes do take the precaution I have mentioned) are strangely reckless
in venturing into the water; they provide themselves with ‘crocodile
medicine’ in whose efficacy they firmly believe; and if any bather comes
to grief notwithstanding, it is presumed that his ‘medicine’ was not of
the right kind, or had lost its power. But it seems that the crocodile
will only seize a solitary person; consequently, if a whole party go into
the water together, as usually happens, and make a great splashing, they
are comparatively safe.
Of other reptiles, we shall have to notice the iguana and the tortoise
(of which there are several kinds) in connection with folk-lore. There
are also several kinds of chameleon and some small lizards, very
beautifully coloured. Snakes, venomous and non-venomous, are of all
sizes, from the python downward to the harmless little _mitu iwiri_ or
‘two-heads,’ silver-grey, and not much thicker than a pencil. It is a
kind of slow-worm, and gets its native name from the bluntness of its
tail, which makes it difficult to see which end is which.
Fish are numerous, but as yet insufficiently studied.
As for the insects, volumes might be written on them; though the beetles
and butterflies are, on the whole, less gorgeous in colouring, and the
objectionable insects less execrable than in other tropical countries. It
is curious that, while the native languages have a word for ‘butterfly’
(usually more or less expressive of the peculiar movements of its
flight—_chipuluputwa_ in Yao, _peperu_ and _gulugufe_ in Nyanja), they
never seem to distinguish between different kinds. Every kind of beetle,
on the other hand, has its own name, but I could never get hold of a
designation for beetles as a class. Perhaps this is the outcome of a
severely practical turn of mind—beetles can be utilised, and therefore
compel a certain degree of individual attention—butterflies, so far as I
know, are not. Some beetles are eaten, for instance a glossy dark-green
one, about an inch and a half long, called _nkumbutera_, and another
kind is manufactured into a snuff-box; and the useful ball-rolling
beetles (all related to the sacred scarab of Egypt) have been observed
and named accordingly.
Archdeacon Woodward assures me that the natives at Magila (Wa-Bondei
and Wa-Shambala) absolutely refused to believe, till convinced by
ocular demonstration (which must have taken time and trouble), that the
butterfly came from the caterpillar. I did not ascertain whether this
was the case at Blantyre; on the whole, the people seemed fairly good
observers of insects and their ways. But, on consideration, it seems
probable, for there are names for many different kinds of caterpillars;
and the reason for this closer observation is similar to that in the
case of the beetles—some destroy man’s food (as the _mpeza_ which eats
the young maize), and others are food for him—notably a green and yellow
striped kind which is roasted on the equivalent for a hot shovel.
Ants, of course, abound—those that get into the food, those that eat you
(or would if they got the chance), and those (only, properly speaking,
they are not ants at all) that build mounds and destroy wood-work,
besides others, which seem to do nothing in particular. The hill-building
termites vary their erections according to locality—the huge, conical
mounds are chiefly found on low land liable to floods. Sometimes they
build curious erections like irregular chimneys. The chapter devoted to
these in the late Professor Drummond’s _Tropical Africa_ shows that they
do an important work in the economy of Nature; but it is a mistake to
suppose that there are no earth-worms in Africa, though they are not so
common as with us. I do not know, however, if the Nyasaland ones are ever
as large as one I measured in Natal, which was 22 inches long, and except
for its size, just like those in our gardens. Bees make their nests in
hollow trees, or in boxes hung up for them; mason-wasps build tiny clay
nests the shape of the common native water-jar, about the length of one’s
finger-nail. One must not conclude even the most imperfect review without
a glance at the locusts (of which we shall have something to say later
on), grasshoppers, and the extraordinary group of insects which look like
leaves and sticks, and are comprehended under the name of Mantis.
Having now taken a hasty survey of the country in its main outlines, of
the vegetation which clothes it, and the wild creatures which (in their
various ways) enliven it, let us see, in the next chapter, who are the
people that live there.
CHAPTER II
INHABITANTS
Classification of tribes. Physical characters. Keloids and
tribal marks. Ear ornaments. Tooth-chipping. Hair.
The principal tribes inhabiting British Central Africa are as follows:
In the Protectorate proper:—
1. The Anyanja, or Mang’anja.
2. The Yaos (Wayao or Ajawa).
3. The Alolo.
4. The Awankonde.
5. The Batumbuka.
6. The Angoni.
The Angoni are placed last, as being the most recent arrivals in the
country. They are, as will be explained later on, rather a ruling
caste than a distinct race. The Makololo, as we shall see, cannot be
counted as a tribe; neither can the Achikunda of the Middle and Lower
Zambezi, ‘compounded of the old slaves of the Portuguese, brought from
many different parts of Eastern and Central Africa,’[2] who, moreover,
scarcely come into British Central Africa, though some of them are to be
found on the Shiré.
Of the above, 1 and 6 extend beyond the Protectorate into North-eastern
Rhodesia, where we find, in addition,
The Awemba (Babemba).
The Alunda.
The Alungu.
The Batonga—above Zumbo on the Zambezi.
The Anyanja extend, under several different names, from the Shiré valley
to the Luangwa, and as far north as the middle of Lake Nyasa. At one
time they seem to have occupied this country continuously, but they
have been displaced and broken up by intrusions of strange tribes. The
Makalanga (of whom the Mashona are a subdivision) appear to have formed
a powerful kingdom in the sixteenth century, and they are nearly related
to the Anyanja, if not actually the same people. Their language so
closely resembles Anyanja that a European, who had acquired the latter at
Likoma, could make himself understood without difficulty in Mashonaland.
The languages called by some writers ‘Sena,’ and ‘Tete’ (Nyungwe) are
dialects of Nyanja, and the following tribes may all be reckoned as
closely united branches of the same stock: Achewa, Achipeta (Maravi),
Basenga, Makanga, Badema (north bank of the Zambezi, near Kebrabasa
Rapids), Anguru, Ambo, and Machinjiri, the last-named in Portuguese
territory, between the Ruo and the coast.
Livingstone first came across these people under the name of the Maravi,
when he descended the Zambezi from Linyanti in 1855. ‘Beyond Senga,’
he says, ‘lies a range of mountains called Mashinga, to which the
Portuguese in former times went to wash for gold, and beyond that are
great numbers of tribes which pass under the general name Maravi.’ A
little above Zumbo, he first came across women wearing the characteristic
lip-ring (_pelele_), and adds: ‘This custom prevails throughout the
country of the Maravi.’ It is now more prevalent among the Yaos—the
Anyanja, from whom they adopted it, having more or less disused it.
Between Kebrabasa and Zumbo there were two independent Anyanja chiefs,
Mpende and Sandia; all the rest were subject to these. ‘Formerly all the
Mang’anja were united under the government of their great chief, Undi,
whose empire extended from Lake Shirwa (Chilwa) to the river Luangwa;
but after Undi’s death it fell to pieces, and a large portion of it on
the Zambezi was absorbed by their powerful southern neighbours, the
Banyai.’[3]
These are the people marked on the Portuguese maps as ‘_Mang’anja d’alem
Chire_’ (beyond the Shiré).
In attempting to describe the physical type of this people, one finds
that there is so much variety as to make it difficult to fix on any
one as specially characteristic. This is not to be wondered at, when
we remember how the various tribes have been blended together in the
course of the wars and migrations to which we shall come back in a later
chapter. I think I may say I have noticed three well-marked varieties
of physique among Anyanja, or men reckoned as such. Before considering
these, it may be well, however, to glance at the characteristics
possessed in common by the people with whom we have to do in this book.
They all belong to the ‘Bantu’ family of African natives, which, as
regards _language_, is sharply distinguished from the ‘Negro’ peoples
of West Africa and the Soudan. In other respects, it is more difficult
to draw the line. As long as our ideas of the ‘Negro’ were taken from
degraded and exaggerated types found in the unhealthy Niger delta and
the slave-trading ports of the Guinea coast, it was easy to say that the
Bantu were altogether on a higher level, and attribute the difference
to some hypothetical admixture of Arab or other Asiatic blood. A better
acquaintance with the inland peoples of the Guinea region shows that the
difference is not so great as one had supposed. But the question which
was the main stock whence the other parted off, and that as to the exact
nature of the difference between them, need not be discussed here, as our
concern is entirely with the Bantu.
Perhaps it is scarcely necessary to explain that this word, or something
very like it, means ‘people,’ in the language of (roughly speaking) every
tribe from the Cape of Good Hope to Lake Victoria and the great loop of
the Congo, with the exception of the Kora and Nama (Hottentots), the
Bushmen, and the Masai. It was adopted as a convenient designation when
Bleek had shown how closely these languages were interrelated, and has
never been superseded by any other.
The Bantu, then, are brown (not black), and have woolly hair, growing
continuously over the head, and not in separate tufts, like the Bushmen.
The nose is broad and somewhat flattened (but the last is by no means
invariably the case), and the lips thick, from being turned outward more
than they are in Europeans; but this, too, is not always very marked. The
hair is black, and the eyes generally dark brown, sometimes hazel.
The colour of the skin varies very much in different tribes, and even
in individuals of the same tribe. Sir Harry Johnston says: ‘There
are extremes met with in the individual members of a tribe, as well
as a general tendency to be detected in one tribe or another towards
greater average darkness or lightness of skin. As a rule, the negro of
British Central Africa is decidedly black, so far as any human skin is
really black—the nearest approach to actual black being a deep, dull
slaty-brown. I should say that the average skin-tint is ... a dark
chocolate.’
If I can trust my recollection of the Anyanja, they were many of them not
quite so dark as this; but in the Blantyre district they are intermixed
with the Yaos, who are described by the same writer as ‘probably the
lightest-tinted tribe’ in the region under review. The soles of the
feet and palms of the hands are always much lighter, and give a curious
impression, as if the colour had been washed out.
Among these Anyanja you find, chiefly on the River, tall,
broad-shouldered, finely built men, with well-developed muscles, though
rather smoother and more rounded in outline than an athletic European.
The Rev. H. Rowley, who saw them before the Yao invasion, describes the
Hill Mang’anja as smaller and poorer in physique than the River people,
and lays stress on their small jaws and weak mouths and chins. Their
physical inferiority and want of union among themselves fully account
for their subjugation. This writer also says: ‘In stature, the Mang’anja
were not a tall race, though you rarely met a little man.’ But tall
individuals are fairly common. The length of the arms is particularly
noticeable. Measurements show that very often the distance between the
finger-tips of the outstretched arms is considerably greater than the
height of the individual, whereas, in a well-proportioned European, they
are supposed to be equal.
The second type is that of the people usually, but erroneously called
‘Angoni,’ who live in the districts west of the Upper Shiré, and are
really Anyanja conquered by the Zulu Angoni and subject to their chiefs.
These are small, active, wiry men, usually rather dark. They sometimes
have good features and even, aquiline noses.
Here and there, among these last, you find yet a third kind, very tall
men, over six feet, but painfully lean and slender, and perhaps a shade
lighter in complexion than their neighbours. So far as it was possible
to trace the history of these men, they seemed to come from a distance;
but I will recur to this in a later chapter. I do not remember any women
of this type, though one of the men in question had two daughters,
slim, delicate-looking girls, who might have been like him when grown
up. One of them, a really pretty creature, died suddenly—I fancy of
consumption—aged, most likely, about fifteen or sixteen.
The description given by the writer already quoted will still serve
fairly well for a good many of the Anyanja:—
‘The forehead of the Mang’anja was high, narrow, but not retreating; and
now and then, among the chiefs and men in authority, you found a breadth
of brain not inferior to that of the best European heads. The nose,
though decidedly African, was not always unpleasantly flat or expansive;
occasionally you saw this feature as well formed as among the possessors
of the most approved nasal organs. The cheek-bones were not high; indeed,
they rarely interfered with the smooth contour of the face. The jaws were
small and not very prominent; the chin, however, was insignificant and
retreating. But the mouth was their worst feature.’
This requires some deductions, and Mr. Rowley goes on to qualify it in
the case of the River people, who, however, ‘had less amiability of
expression—indeed, many of them looked fiercely vile.’ Perhaps time had
mellowed them in this respect, for I cannot say I observed any lack of
amiability when I came on the scene some thirty years later; and I must
own that I cannot form a very clear idea of a man’s expression when
he looks ‘fiercely vile.’ A cast of countenance with which I am more
familiar is that of the ‘Angoni’ (= Anyanja).
The original home of the YAOS seems to be in the Unango Mountains,
between Lake Nyasa and the Mozambique coast. They were driven thence
by the encroachments of other tribes from the north, and forced into
the Shiré Highlands, where they partially displaced the population, but
in course of time settled down side by side with them. In 1893-4 the
villages surrounding the mission station at Blantyre were reckoned, some
as Yao and some as Nyanja; but a good deal of intermarriage had taken
place, and many of the present generation are Yao by the mother’s side,
and Nyanja by the father’s, or _vice versâ_. When this is the case, they
usually speak both languages. Even in the villages west of the Shiré,
where the people are supposed to be pure Nyanja, there were families
whose mothers were Yaos, brought back in the Angoni raids of 1880-1890.
Perhaps the appearance of the Yaos cannot be better described than by
the authority already quoted for the Anyanja. ‘Compare an ordinary
Mang’anja with an ordinary Ajawa man, and the latter was at once seen to
be physically the superior: his face was broader; his frontal development
more masculine; the organs of causality fuller; the perceptive faculties
larger; the jaws not more prominent, but more massive; the chin large and
well to the front; the mouth, though of full lip, shapely and expressive
of strength of will; while the eyes ... had a steadfastness and an
intensity of expression.... Compared with the Mang’anja, the Ajawa head
was large and round.... The Ajawa varied greatly in height. You saw men
not more than five feet two or three, and you saw others five feet eight
or ten.’
I should have said—but it is dangerous to make such statements without
actual measurements—that a good proportion of them were six feet and over.
The Yaos of some of the Ndirande villages used to have a great reputation
for strength and stature, and were much in request as machila-carriers.
A gang of them took me from Blantyre to Matope—forty miles, though,
it is true, most of the way is downhill—between 8 A.M. and sunset—say
6 P.M.; and I do not think I ever saw a finer set of men. They are
usually, as Mr. Rowley describes them, of square and sturdy build, even
in youth; but sometimes you see lithe and slender boys, graceful, and
at the same time full of fire and vivacity, like a spirited horse. The
Yao women, as a rule, are bigger and stouter than those of the Anyanja,
and are said to be not so good-looking. Personally, when I try to recall
individuals among both, I should find it hard to say that they were
typically different—one finds Yao girls with slender figures, and small,
neat features, as well as faces on a larger scale, which are by no means
unattractive. The younger woman in the illustration is, apart from the
_pelele_, by no means a favourable specimen.
[Illustration: TWO YAO WOMEN]
[Illustration: GROUP OF ANGURU: WOMEN WITH “PELELE”]
The ANGURU, or ALOLO, are a tribe belonging to the Makua group who
occupy the country inland from Mozambique. Some of them live in the
Mlanje district. The Lomwe country, which is entirely inhabited by them
(A-lomwe is either a synonym for Alolo, or the name of a tribe closely
allied to them), is west of Lake Chilwa. Some Alolo were, about forty
years ago, living at the back of Morambala. A correspondent tells me:
‘Anguru are localised on the east side of Shirwa round the Luasi hills,
and are a sort of mongrel lot, as these hills seem to have been a sort
of junction of Yao, when they were driven from the north, Lomwe driven
from the east, and Mang’anja, on the Shirwa shores.’ The Anguru speak a
dialect of Nyanja, the Alolo one of Makua, a language, as Father Torrend
points out, resembling Sechwana in several important particulars, in
which the intervening languages differ from both. The Lomwe country was
for many years harassed by slavers, and its people were continually at
war with one another—so much so that, in 1894, the villagers did not know
the names of hills more than a day’s journey from their own homes, and
travellers could not get guides except to the next village ahead of them.
Perhaps this state of things accounts for the comparatively poor physique
of the Alolo.
The BATUMBUKA. These are a set of people considered by Sir H. H. Johnston
as indigenous to the plateau west of Lake Nyasa, and including, besides
the Batumbuka proper, the Wapoka, Wahenga, and Atonga. These last live
along the western shore of the lake, to which they were driven by the
conquering Angoni, under Mombera. Father Torrend, however, supposes that
they are a branch of the Batonga on the Zambezi, whom he thinks ‘the
purest representatives of the original Bantu.’ In that case, they have
either disused or greatly changed their original language; that which
they now speak being closely allied to Tumbuka, Henga, and Poka, which
are virtually identical. The Atonga are well known at Blantyre, as they
are (or were some years ago) in the habit of coming down in gangs to
work in the plantations, or otherwise. They are usually tall, strongly
built men, with well-developed muscles, and (like the Alolo) very dark
skins.
The AWA-NKONDE, or Nkonde people (this is said by some to mean ‘people of
the plain’) live at the north end of Lake Nyasa—some of them in German
territory. They include the Awakukwe, Awawiwa, and several others,
whose names we need not enumerate. They are very dark, usually tall,
and sometimes described as extremely well shaped; but to judge by the
photographs reproduced by Sir H. H. Johnston and Dr. Fülleborn, a good
many of them would seem to have a tendency to bow-legs, and to be what
is called ‘in-kneed.’ The legs are also, in some cases, of excessive
length in proportion to the rest of the body. M. Edouard Foà[4] says that
the Awankonde are, on the whole, good-looking, and, both men and women,
‘plump and well-liking,’ in consequence, no doubt, of their diet, and the
pleasant, easy life they lead—now that they are no longer raided by Arabs
and others. They are, with the exception of the Angoni and Achewa, the
only people in the Protectorate who keep cattle to any great extent; and
they live chiefly on milk and bananas.
The ANGONI were originally a Zulu clan who came from the south, under
Zwangendaba, about 1825, and incorporated with themselves large numbers
of the tribes whom they conquered by the way, so that there are now few,
if any, of unmixed descent remaining. The ‘southern Angoni’—formerly
known as ‘Chekusi’s people’—are mostly Anyanja; but there were, in 1894,
a few head-men and others, besides Chekusi’s own family, who spoke Zulu,
and some of the elders wore the head-ring, but of a different pattern
from the Zulu _isigcoco_ (which is a smooth, round ring), being more
like a crown done in basket-work. The northern Angoni (Mombera’s people)
all speak Zulu, with considerable dialectic modifications, such as the
gradual elimination of the clicks, and the substitution of _r_ for _l_.
But their speech is quite intelligible to Zulus from the south. As
already stated, there is a great variety of types. The young warriors
introduced to me under the name of ‘Mandala’s boys’ (Mandala was the
brother of Chekusi or Chatantumba, at that time chief of the southern
Angoni) were big, swaggering, long-limbed fellows, somewhat vacant of
face, and, I think, somewhat lighter in colour than the sturdy little men
who went to work on the Blantyre plantations. But whether the difference
between them was a matter of race, or merely of an easier life and a
diet of beef, I would not venture to say; for these warriors must have
been, in part at least, recruited from the sons of the small, dark,
hard-working Anyanja, who lived on scanty rations of maize and millet
porridge in the Upper Shiré villages. These were always liable to have
their growing lads sent for ‘_ku mdzi_’—_i.e._ to the chief’s kraal in
the hills—where they had to herd Chekusi’s cattle, and, later on, entered
what we may call the ‘Life Guards.’
The history of the Angoni and their migrations will be considered in a
later chapter.
The Makololo of the Shiré valley, though they cannot be enumerated as a
separate tribe, have had no small influence on the affairs of the Shiré
valley tribes, and must not therefore be passed over without notice.
Their history will help to illustrate what I have already mentioned and
shall have to come back to later on—the ceaseless drifting backwards and
forwards, and consequent intermingling of the Bantu tribes, which has
gone on, more or less, ever since Europeans knew anything about them, and
may be compared with the movement which brought the Germanic peoples into
the Roman world, and for which we seem to have no compendious designation
equivalent to the German word _Völkerwanderung_. The original Makololo
were a Basuto tribe, driven from their home by the onslaughts of the
Matebele, about 1823. Under the name of ‘Mantatees,’[5] they spread
terror and desolation among the Griquas and Bechuana, and finally, under
the leadership of Sebituane, made their way northward and settled in the
Barotse valley on the Zambezi, where Livingstone visited them in 1851.
They had even then begun to incorporate with themselves the Barotse
and other darker tribes about them, and had introduced their language
into the country, where it is still spoken, though the Makololo were
expelled, after Sekeletu’s death, by Sipopo, one of the former line of
Barotse chiefs. Sekeletu, Sebituane’s son, furnished Livingstone with an
escort, when he left Linyanti for Loanda in 1853, and again when, after
his return from the West coast, he started down the Zambezi. These
Makololo (most of whom, however, belonged to the subject tribes—Baloi
and others) remained behind at Tete when Livingstone returned to
England; and though, when he came out again in 1858, he offered to take
them all back to Sekeletu’s, some preferred to stay where they were.
Some others, among whom was the well-known Ramakukane, came back with
him from Sesheke, after he had taken the rest home in 1860. In course
of time, having settled on the Shiré below the Cataracts, and married
women of the country, they became powerful chiefs, and, though somewhat
oppressive towards the Anyanja, they were a check on the Yao advance from
the east. One of these chiefs, Mlauri, is still living, and as active
as ever, in spite of age. Masea, whose village was on the west bank of
the Shiré, two or three miles below Katunga’s, died a few years ago. In
1893 he was still a very fine, vigorous old man, and his numerous family
of sons and daughters (some of them educated at the Mission) are mostly
noticeable for good looks and intelligence: they show their descent in
the lighter complexion. Livingstone says that Sebituane was ‘of an olive
or coffee-and-milk’ colour. As far as language and customs go, these
descendants of the Makololo are now completely merged in the Anyanja.
As we have seen, the breaking-up and absorption of one tribe by another
has gone on to such an extent that, though in some cases we might
confidently pronounce a man to be a Yao or a Nyanja from his build
and personal appearance generally, yet very often it would be quite
impossible. A surer criterion—though even that is nowadays beginning
to fail us—is that afforded by artificial deformations—such as the
filing and chipping, or even removal, of the teeth, the boring of noses,
lips, and ears for the insertion of ornaments, and the scarifying and
tatuing of the skin. These arts seem to be resorted to all the world
over by people who do not go in for much clothing—apparently on the
principle that the human face and figure need some modification in
order to differentiate them as such. If your teeth are not chipped, you
might as well be a dog—such, in general, seems to be the native line of
reasoning.
[Illustration: A MNGURU, SHOWING KELOIDS DOWN CENTRE OF CHEST]
The African knows nothing of tatuing proper, and the introduction of
colouring matter under the skin is hardly known. For the coloured designs
of Polynesia is substituted the raised scar. The process is very rough
and usually consists in making cuts which heal and leave ‘proud flesh’
(_keloid_) behind. Dr. Kerr Cross says: ‘The tissues of the negro seem
to have a tendency to take on a keloid growth. That is to say, the
cicatricial tissue grows large. If a native gets a cut, it becomes like a
tumour or a new growth. If he has been vaccinated, the mark rises up like
a two-shilling piece. If he tatus (_i.e._ scars) himself, the surface
becomes a series of little growths protruding above the general level of
the skin.’ But in case the natural tendency should not be enough, the
operator sometimes assists nature by pinching the lips of the cut away
from each other. Some tatu-marks (_mpini_, _konde_) are not raised much
above the level of the skin; they have a smooth surface and a dark-blue
colour, which blends well with the skin, and is produced by rubbing in
charcoal or wood-ash, and sometimes gunpowder. Formerly the various scars
always indicated the tribe to which a person belonged, and the children
were marked with the mother’s pattern; now the tribal marks are no longer
strictly kept to. The distinctive Yao tatu (called _mapalamba_) was two
rows of small cuts across the temples. Some have stars in dark blue on
the chest and elsewhere. I have seen them on Yaos, but do not know if
they are distinctive. The Nyanja women used to score long lines over
shoulders, chest, and back. The Lomwe tribes have various patterns—one a
crescent, turned downwards, just between the eyebrows, others a series
of from three to six crescents in the same position. The Alolo have a
mark on each side of the chest, consisting of a crescent turned up, and
two short, vertical cuts below it. The Makua make a line of cuts above
the eyes, deep enough to form ‘little pouches’ in which they keep snuff,
as I hear from Mr. J. Reid. Some tribes add dots all over the forehead,
and some, on the Zambezi, raise a line of small lumps down the middle of
the forehead. I have seen Yao women whose chests and shoulders seemed
to be covered with small marks like those left by ordinary vaccination;
and some seem to have the whole body more or less covered. Besides marks
intended for decoration, there are those caused by a favourite method of
treatment for various kinds of indisposition, viz., to make a cut and rub
in the juice of a herb, or some other form of ‘medicine’; and I remember
a poor girl, evidently suffering from a bad attack of influenza, who had
just had a series of these cuts made all down the inside of her arm.
I was once present at a discussion between a number of young people
(this kind of debate is called _mákani_, and is a recognised fireside
amusement) on the question whether ‘it is better to make holes in
one’s lips, like the Yaos, or in one’s ears, like the Angoni.’ The
_pelele_, which was referred to, was a Nyanja decoration, but is now
seen more frequently amongst Yao women. The upper lip is bored and a
bit of grass-stalk inserted into the hole, which at first is scarcely
larger than would be made by a stout darning-needle. After this has been
worn for some time—I have often seen girls of ten or twelve with it—a
slightly thicker one is inserted, and that, in time, again exchanged for
a thicker, till at last the hole is large enough to admit a small plug
of ivory, say a quarter of an inch across. The plug becomes larger and
larger, till a ring is substituted for it, which also grows in size,
with the wearer’s advance in years, till you see matrons wearing one
like an ordinary napkin-ring. It seemed to me, however, that there was a
tendency to stop short at the earlier stages, as I remember quite elderly
women, with only a moderate plug. The Alolo women, not content with the
_pelele_, wear a brass nail, two or three inches long, in the lower lip
as well. Certainly, as far as personal preference went, I was inclined to
side with the Angoni in the _mákani_ above alluded to.
The favourite ear ornaments are a kind of conical stud, ornamented in
patterns with beads. They are quite small, and do not distend the lobe of
the ear much. I think they are considered by natives to be a speciality
of the Angoni. I have once or twice seen young warriors wearing in their
ears ornaments about the length of one’s finger, which may have been very
diminutive tusks of the bush-pig (_nguluwe_), or perhaps the teeth of
some other animal. Both sexes have the ears bored. I have seen girls who
had only recently had it done, wearing a flower stuck in the hole.
A style of ornament for the ear which I have only met with once was that
of a woman at Mlanje, from Matapwiri’s (on the Portuguese border), who
had her ears pierced with a series of holes in the _outer_ edge of the
cartilage, and loops of white beads strung through them. She probably
belonged to the Alolo, or some other tribe of Makua. Some Yao and Makua
women wear a stud (_chipini_) of lead or some other metal in the side of
the nose.
As to the teeth, it was a standing wonder to me that the way they were
treated did not ruin them entirely; but it does not seem as if chipped
teeth decayed any more readily than whole ones. Naturally, as most
travellers have reported, natives usually have splendid teeth; though Dr.
Fülleborn, in his observations on tribes at the north end of Lake Nyasa,
says he found a considerable percentage of people with decayed teeth. I
have come across one or two cases of toothache myself, but should say
that, on the whole, there is no need to revise the general opinion.
The Yaos chip the edge of the four upper front teeth into saw-like
points. This is usually done to boys and girls at about fifteen or
sixteen. I never saw the operation performed, but fancy that a mallet
and chisel are the instruments used. They are brought up to face the
prospect, I suppose, and seem to contemplate it with more equanimity than
most of us do going to the dentist. The Mambwe (on the Nyasa Tanganyika
plateau) have the two middle teeth of the lower jaw removed. One of them
told M. Foà that they were knocked out with an axe, adding ‘it is very
quickly done!’
A triangular gap between the two upper front teeth is made by different
tribes—the Anyika[6] of North-west Nyasa being one. I have a note of a
man whose teeth had been chipped in this way, and whom I understand to
have been a Yao; but, as he had gone to Zanzibar early in life (‘I do not
know how—probably through slavery,’ said my English-speaking informant),
there may have been some irregularity about his teeth.
Some of the Makua tribes file each separate tooth to a point (as shown
in the fourth example of our illustration); this is also done by the
Basenga, and, I believe, other tribes near the Luangwa. The Batonga
knock out the upper front teeth—or did so, in Livingstone’s time. ‘When
questioned respecting the origin of this practice, the Batoka reply that
their object is to be like oxen, and those who retain their teeth they
consider to resemble zebras.’ As the Batonga venerate the ox and detest
the zebra, we have here, what is absent elsewhere, some sort of a clue
to a connection between this custom and the people’s religious beliefs.
Livingstone further points out that the knocking out of the teeth is of
the nature of a solemn ceremony, without which no young people can be
considered grown up.
[Illustration: FASHIONS IN TOOTH-CHIPPING
1. Makua; 2 and 4. Yao; 3. Anyika and other North-end Tribes]
Fashions in hairdressing, though not precisely of the same kind with the
adornments just enumerated, may perhaps best be considered here. Most
natives, I fancy, would look on a person who let his or her hair grow
without doing anything to it (unless in mourning, or otherwise debarred
from ordinary social intercourse) as little better than a wild beast. The
usual thing among the Yaos and Anyanja is to shave the head from time to
time for the sake of coolness and cleanliness, never letting the hair
grow more than an inch or two in length. This is often clipped and shaved
into all sorts of patterns. A favourite one for little girls is to have
two bands shaved diagonally across the head, from the left temple to the
back of the right ear. Sometimes a ridge or crest is left, running along
the middle of the head, from front to back, and then clipped into points
like a cock’s comb; or some young men, while shaving the back of the
head, leave the hair an inch or two long over the brow, like a coronet.
The Angoni are very fond of the long pigtails called _minzu_; these
are not plaited, but very neatly and tightly rolled round with twisted
palm-fibre, fastened off at the ends. The most popular fashion used to
be to have these arranged in a line (like the crest already referred
to), forming a kind of lateral halo, if such a thing were possible. The
dandy with _minzu_ nine or ten inches long is a proud youth indeed. It
is a quaint spectacle to see such an one seated on the ground and a
chum squatting beside him, doing his hair. But the caprices of fashion
are endless. The illustration shows another style of coiffure worn by a
Mngoni, who may have evolved it out of his own inner consciousness, or
borrowed it, directly or indirectly, from the Bashukulumbwe of the Kafue.
As many Angoni have of late years travelled overland to Salisbury and
even farther south, to work in the mines or otherwise, it is possible
that the subject of the picture may have seen his model for himself in
the course of his wanderings.
Referring back to the picture of the Mnguru already given, we find that
he wears his hair fairly long and divided into strands, with beads tied
to the ends of them. Now and again we see a Yao woman (but I think
the fashion is not confined to any particular tribe; it is not very
extensively followed, comparative wealth, leisure, and one or more
skilled assistants being necessary) with what looks like a wig of red
beads. This is made by stringing on every few hairs the beads known as
_chitalaka_, which are like red coral, and white inside. How long it
takes to complete the dressing of a head in this way, I have no notion;
but African women possess an almost unlimited capacity for passive
endurance. A pretty variant of this is sometimes seen in little girls who
have a few loops of chitalaka strung to the hair on the top of the head,
adding a touch of bright colour and no suggestion of discomfort. Some of
the Atonga shave the hair all round, leaving a patch on the top of the
scalp, which they plait into small tails.
[Illustration: 2. WOMEN MAKING PORRIDGE IN AN (IMPORTED) IRON POT
The one on the left takes out a handful and moulds it into shape to add
to the pile on the basket (p. 136)
1. EXCEPTIONAL COIFFURE OF MNGONI]
[Illustration: THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION!]
Dress, which is a comparatively simple matter, apart from the singlets,
shirts, and other garments of European introduction, may be reserved
for another chapter which deals with native life from the cradle to the
grave.
CHAPTER III
RELIGION AND MAGIC—I
Ancestor-worship. Offerings. Mulungu. Mpambe. Chitowe. Evil
spirits. Spirits of the dead. Dreams. Morality.
In 1894 swarms of locusts, for the first time in thirty years, came
down on the Shiré Highlands and consumed all the crops in the native
gardens—even attacking at last the white men’s coffee-trees. Fresh broods
kept succeeding each other throughout the dry season, and as the time for
the rains drew near, the villagers became anxious. What was the good of
sowing their maize if the _dzombe_ were there, ready to eat up the young
shoots as soon as they appeared above ground? Great discussions went on
among the elders in the _bwalo_ as to the source of this visitation—if
one could only conjecture its reason, it might be possible to find a
remedy. Chesinka, an old head-man on Mlanje mountain, had a dream, one
night in October, which, at any rate, suggested a solution. His old
friend, Chipoka, dead some four years, appeared to him, and told him
that it was he himself who had sent the locusts, as a hint to his people
that they were not treating him properly; it was a long time since they
had given him any beer, and he was very thirsty in the spirit-world.
So Chesinka sent word to Chipoka’s son, who at once took steps for
repairing the omission.
Chipoka had been ‘a person of importance in his day’; he was the
principal chief on Mlanje in Livingstone’s time, and, when he died
in 1890, ‘had, with the consent of all his sub-chiefs and subjects,
transferred the sovereign rights of his country to the Queen, in order
to pledge the British Government to the protection of the indigenous
Nyanja people against Yao attacks.’[7] His son, of course, does not
occupy anything like the same position; but the village, when I saw
it, must have been in its old place—or very near it—on the bank of the
Mloza, a clear stream coming down out of the heart of Mlanje, between the
two peaks of Chinga and Manga. Chipoka’s grave, with some huge bamboos
growing on it, was within a short distance of the huts.
I had heard that a ceremony was to take place for the purpose of
propitiating the old chief’s spirit; and when I walked over, on the
morning of October 29, I found a sort of subdued stir, the people very
busy, but all looking extremely solemn. Young Chipoka—a man of about
thirty—and some other men were seated under the eaves of a hut, while
the women moved in and out of the huts with pots of beer, and other
people were busied about a group of neat miniature huts, made of grass,
about two feet high. The roofs of these huts, which had been finished
separately, were not yet put on, and I could see that a couple of earthen
jars were sunk in the ground inside each. These jars were now filled
with beer, and then the roof was lifted on. Chipoka, draped in his blue
calico, came forward very courteously to greet me, and explained that the
houses were ‘for Mulungu.’
Now ‘Mulungu’ is the word which is generally translated ‘God,’ and it
really does sometimes seem to denote a supreme Deity; but here it clearly
meant Chipoka’s spirit. Mr. Duff Macdonald has made it clear that the
‘gods’ of the Yaos—or, at least, those most definitely thought of as
such, are the spirits of the dead—of a man’s father or grandfather, or
the chief of his village,—sometimes of a great chief, who ruled over a
large extent of country, like Kangomba of Sochi. When such an one lived
long ago, people are apt to forget who he was when alive, and to think of
him as a spirit only. Such spirits are often associated with particular
hills, as is the case with Sochi and Ndirande, and might easily be
mistaken by inquirers for genuine nature-powers.
I have more than once seen these little spirit-huts in villages, though I
never on any other occasion received so straightforward an explanation of
them. Once, the children who were with me objected to my approaching the
hut, saying there was a _chirombo_ there. _Chirombo_ is a comprehensive
word which may mean an insect, objectionable or otherwise, a lion, or
other beast of prey, a mythical monster or bogy, or, simply, any animal
or plant not good to eat. They may have meant the uncanny Something which
was believed to have its abode there, or they may have been trying to
keep out unauthorised intrusion by the fiction of a palpable _chirombo_
with claws and teeth. Whether or not they consciously think of the dead
as little shadowy figures, a few inches high[8] (like the representation
of the soul as it issues from the body, on some Greek vases), such was
evidently the thought that suggested the erection of these miniature
dwellings.
Duff Macdonald says, ‘The spirit of every deceased man and woman, with
the solitary exception of wizards and witches, becomes an object of
religious homage.’ Of course, no one can worship all, and the chief of a
village worships his immediate predecessor as the representative of all
the people who have lived in the village in past times, and the whole
line of his ancestors. In presenting his offering, he will say, ‘“Oh,
father, I do not know all your relatives, you know them all, invite them
to feast with you.” The offering is not simply for himself, but for
himself and all his relatives.’ Sometimes a man approaches his deceased
relatives on his own behalf; but, as a rule, it is the chief who prays
and sacrifices on behalf of the village. As all the people living there
are usually related to the chief, the deceased chief is the one to whom
they would naturally pray; but any immigrants from elsewhere would
probably pray to their own ancestors on matters connected with their own
private concerns, while joining on public occasions in the recognised
worship of the village god.
Naturally it is difficult for an outsider to gain any exact information
as to religious practices, and, still more, religious beliefs. The Rev.
Duff Macdonald, whom we have just quoted, enjoyed almost unequalled
advantages, as regards the Yaos—spending three years in their country at
a time when it was still virtually untouched by European influences, and
being able to acquire a sufficient knowledge of the language to obtain
the people’s own account of things at first hand. Great patience and
tact, it is needless to say, are necessary for inquiries of this sort;
and, even if one knows the language, it is not, as a rule, much use
asking direct questions—unless of natives with whom you are fairly well
acquainted. Of things which the stranger can see for himself in passing
through the villages, the most noticeable are the little spirit-houses
already mentioned, where sacrifices are presented from time to time.
Sometimes these offerings are seen under trees, either in the village,
or away from it—in fact, Mr. Macdonald says that the huts are erected,
if there is no tree handy, close to the dead man’s house. (The house
itself, as we shall see, is usually either pulled down, or shut up and
left to decay.) If the tree is quite outside the village, the site may
have been shifted, as often happens; or perhaps the spirit may be one
of the ‘old gods of the land.’ This is possibly the case with the tree
in the illustration, which is on Ndirande mountain, a few miles from
Blantyre, though I am not sure whether this particular tree is close to
a village or not. Ndirande, like Sochi, has a spirit of its own; and I
suppose this is the reason why the boy who was accompanying me in the
ascent of Nambanga (an isolated peak or knob at the northern end of the
mountain) showed a sudden reluctance to go on. I thought he was tired,
and told him to rest, and I would go on alone; but this seemed equally
objectionable, and he was evidently making up his mind to go with me,
as the lesser evil, when I decided to avoid the risk of inhumanity by
turning back. As I could by no manner of means induce him to explain, I
suspected the spirit might have something to do with the matter.
[Illustration: TREE, WITH OFFERINGS TO SPIRITS]
In Mr. Macdonald’s time, the chiefs of the Blantyre and Zomba villages
were all Yaos, and their canonised predecessors therefore belonged to the
same tribe; but a certain amount of reverence was also paid to ‘the old
gods of the land’—_i.e._ the spirits of dead Nyanja chiefs who haunted
the principal mountains, and were specially appealed to for rain. We
have already alluded to Kangomba of Sochi. The Rev. H. Rowley, when at
Magomero, in 1861, saw Kangomba in the flesh; he was then ‘about forty
years of age, had a frank, open countenance and a good head, and was
altogether a very manly fellow.’ Apparently he did not live to be old.
Mr. Macdonald says: ‘One tradition concerning him is this—When the Wayao
were driving the Wanyasa[9] out of the country, Kangomba, a Wanyasa
chief, saw that defence was hopeless, and entered a great cave on the
mountain-side. Out of this cave he never returned; “he died unconquered
in his own land.” The Wayao made the old tribe retire before them, but
the chief, Kangomba, kept his place, and the new comers are glad to
invoke his aid to this day. Their supplication for rain takes the form
_Ku Sochi, kwa Kangomba ula jijise_, “Oh, Kangomba of Sochi, send us
rain!” The Wayao chief, Kapeni, often asks some of the Wanyasa tribe that
can trace connection with Kangomba to help him in these offerings and
supplications.’
The offerings usually consist of native beer and maize flour (_ufa_),
sometimes also calico, as seen in the illustration. It is torn into
strips lest it should be appropriated by some needy and unscrupulous
passer-by, or perhaps because each offerer only feels it incumbent on
him to present a mere shred as a symbolic gift, since spirits, properly
speaking, have no use for calico. Mr. Macdonald quotes the native
reasoning on the subject. Spirits intimate their desire for various
things—in dreams, or by means of the oracle, and, if their request be at
all reasonable, it is granted. But, ‘if a spirit were to come, saying,
“I want calico,” his friends would “just say that he was mad,” and would
not give it. “Why should he want calico? What would he do with it? There
was calico buried with him when he died, and he cannot need more again.”’
Food and tobacco, and even houses, are, it would appear, quite another
matter.
Perhaps this opinion as to calico has been modified since the above was
written; certainly I have seen at least one tree covered with strips of
calico, and that within a mile or two of a mission station. That on the
Ndirande tree is a special sacrifice for rain. Usually the stones at the
foot of the tree support one or more pots of _moa_ (native beer made of
millet), and there is either a little basket of flour, or some is poured
in a heap on the ground.
According to Mr. Macdonald, men would often sacrifice to their own
particular ancestor, by putting down a little flour inside the hut,
at the head of their sleeping-mat. Omens were drawn from the shape of
this little heap of flour—whether it fell so as to form a neat cone, or
otherwise. Beer, also, was made to furnish omens; it was poured out on
the ground, and if it sank in, the god accepted the offering.
The same writer says that ‘when a deceased smoker wants tobacco, his
worshippers put it on a plate and set fire to it.’ Matope, the chief of
a village near Blantyre, died in 1893. In the following year, the Rev.
J. A. Smith (now of Mlanje), happening to be at the village, saw, as he
told me, the head-men take out the dead chief’s snuff-box, fill it with
snuff, and place his stool in a certain spot, sprinkling snuff all round
it. ‘This is done from time to time’ (I quote from my diary) ‘during the
first year or two after a death—after this time the spirit ceases to
haunt the place.’
In the Upper Shiré district, I was not very successful in gleaning
information, but have a note that a girl told me the ‘Angoni’ _a-pempera
Mulungu_ (‘pray to God’) after the following fashion: ‘The people here
sometimes sacrifice (_kwisula_) a goat; it is done by the head-man, and
the people all stand round _nda! nda! nda!_ (_i.e._ in a row or circle);
they eat the meat afterwards.’ Here too, evidently, the head-man acts on
behalf of the village; and though it is not clear whether _Mulungu_ here
means the spirit of a dead chief, or a Supreme Deity, this is, for the
moment, immaterial. I do not know whether the word _kwisula_ is Nyanja or
not, as I never heard it on any other occasion, and have hitherto been
unable to trace it.
We have already seen that _Mulungu_ is a name applied to the spirits of
the dead—the _amadhlozi_ or _amatongo_ of the Zulus (we shall come back
to these presently), and as local deities seem to be in many instances
(perhaps in all, if we could trace them) identical with deceased chiefs,
it looks as if the religion of the Bantu consisted, in the main, of
ancestor-worship. However, other ideas, though dim and vague, seem to
attach to the word _Mulungu_. Originally, perhaps, it meant no more than
‘the great ancestor’—the Zulu _Unkulunkulu_. This name, literally ‘the
Great, Great One,’ seems to have been used by the Zulus as if conveying
the notion of a supreme being and creator; but some of them, on being
questioned, stated that he was the first man, the common ancestor, at any
rate, of themselves and those tribes whom they acknowledged as akin to
them. No special worship, however, was offered to him, as he had lived so
long ago that no family could now trace its descent to him; and worship
is (as with the ancient Romans) a family, or at most a tribal matter.
The word _um-lungu_, in Zulu, means ‘a European’; it is used in no other
sense, but seems originally to have been bestowed under the idea that
white men were supernatural beings of some sort.
One might feel inclined to doubt the above etymology, which is Bleek’s,
since, in some languages, as in Nyanja, the word _Mulungu_ and the
adjective _-kulu_ (‘great’) exist side by side. But against this we may
set the possibility of the former being borrowed from other tribes. Mr.
Rowley, writing of the time when the Yaos were only beginning to settle
in the Shiré Highlands, says expressly that they used the name _Mulungu_
where the Anyanja spoke of _Mpambe_. Speaking from my own observation, I
should say that the former had quite displaced the latter throughout the
Blantyre and Upper Shiré districts. Now in Yao, precisely, the word for
‘great’ is not _-kulu_, but _-kulungwa_.
However that may be, some Yaos, at any rate, think of _Mulungu_ as ‘the
great spirit of all men, a spirit formed by adding all the departed
spirits together.’ This might almost seem too abstract a conception to be
a genuine native view, but it was clearly stated to Mr. Macdonald, and is
confirmed by Dr. Hetherwick, who has had many years’ experience of the
Yaos. This writer also states the view (which Mr. Macdonald hesitated to
accept), that the form of the word, or rather its plural (which shows
it to belong, not to the first, or ‘personal’ class, but to the second,
including things without a separate life of their own, such as parts
of the body, trees, etc.), points to _Mulungu_ not being regarded as a
person. Dr. Hetherwick was once trying to convey to an old head-man the
idea of the personality of God. The old man, as soon as he began to grasp
what was meant, talked of _Che Mulungu_, ‘Mr. God!’
I have noted down some uses of the word I have come across, which I
think could not possibly be set down to missionary influence. On two
occasions, people told me that their dead friends or relatives had
‘gone to Mulungu’; on another, a mother said that ‘Mulungu had taken
away’ the little sick girl I was inquiring after. On hearing thunder,
at the beginning of the rainy season, another woman remarked, ‘_Mulungu
anena_’—‘Mulungu is speaking.’ This is very suggestive of the theory on
the subject of earthquakes held, according to the Rev. A. G. MacAlpine,
by the Atonga of Lake Nyasa, viz., ‘that it was the voice of God
calling to inquire if his people were all there. When the rumble of the
earthquake was heard, they all shouted in answer, “_Ye, ye_,” and some
went to the flour mortars and beat on them with the pounding sticks.’
Any person who failed thus to answer ‘_Adsum_’ would be sure (it was
believed) to die before long. The name used, in this case, was not
_Mulungu_, but _Chiuta_.
We have mentioned the name _Mpambe_ as used by the Anyanja. Livingstone,
on his first visit to the Shiré Highlands, notes, ‘They believe in the
existence of a supreme being called Mpambe and also Morungo’ (Mulungu).
Mr. Rowley gives an interesting account of supplications addressed to
Mpambe for rain. The principal part was taken by a woman—the chief’s
sister. She began by dropping _ufa_ on the ground, slowly and carefully,
till it formed a cone, and in doing this called out in a high-pitched
voice, ‘_Imva Mpambe! Adza mvula_’ (‘Hear thou, O God, and send rain!’),
and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and
intoning—they always intone their prayers—‘_Imva Mpambe_.’ The beer was
then poured out as a libation, and the people, following the example of
the woman, threw themselves on their backs and clapped their hands (a
form of salutation to superiors), and, finally, danced round the chief
where he sat on the ground. The ceremony concluded with a rain-charm; but
as this is rather magic than religion (the previous proceedings, as being
distinctly an appeal to unseen and superior powers, come under the latter
head), it will be more convenient to return to it later on. In this very
neighbourhood, I heard, one sultry afternoon in September 1894, weird,
shrill cries, which I was told were ‘the people shouting for rain’ on
Mpingwe—one of the mountains between Blantyre and Magomero. Distant peals
of thunder had been heard before the crying began, and the rain came
before morning.
It is worth noting that, here, Mpambe is thought of as sending rain,
while, in some parts, as on Nyasa, the word means ‘thunder.’ The
connection between rain and thunder is obvious, especially where, as is
the case in these countries, the latter always heralds the breaking-up
of the dry season. Sometimes the word is said to mean ‘lightning’—which
comes to much the same thing as far as the idea is concerned.
This certainly looks like a personification of nature-powers, which seems
more probable than the suggestion that _mpambe_ only came to mean thunder
or lightning because these were the work of the being to whom the name
was originally applied.
It is worth noticing that in Yao the rainbow is called _Mulungu_, or
_ukunje wa Mulungu_ (‘the bow of Mulungu’) and an earthquake _chilungu_,
which is the same word with another prefix.
_Chiuta_ (which is treated by the Rev. D. C. Scott as synonymous with
_Mulungu_ and _Mpambe_) is perhaps derived from the Nyanja word _uta_,
‘a bow,’ and connected with the rainbow (called in this language _uta wa
Lezi_). _Lezi_, or _Leza_, meaning ‘lightning’ in the Kotakota dialect,
is another synonym.[10] I have never heard it used except in the above
compound. _Chiuta_ is the word used by the Atonga, and, according to the
Rev. A. G. MacAlpine, ‘is very difficult to derive with certainty, but
whatever its root may be, it now denotes one who inspires wonder and
awe.’ If, however (as is quite possible), the name was borrowed by the
Atonga from the Anyanja, this may be a secondary meaning imported into it.
We shall see, later on, that a distinction seems to be made between
deaths ‘by the act of Mpambe,’ and from other causes.
Before leaving this part of the subject, we may note that, according to
the Yao belief, Mulungu ‘arranges the spirits of the dead in rows or
tiers,’ and some mysterious beings called ‘the people of Mulungu’ figure
in their fragmentary legends of creation.
Besides the above, the Yaos seem to have had special deities of their
own, connected with the country whence they came, and, therefore,
probably, ancient chiefs of theirs, as ‘the old gods of the country’ were
of the Anyanja. Such was Mtanga, supposed to dwell on Mount Mangoche,
lying midway between Lake Chiuta and the Shiré, and the old home of the
Mangoche tribe. It was believed that the voice of Mtanga could still be
heard on Mangoche. Some said (twenty or thirty years ago) that ‘Mtanga
was never a man,’ and the name is only ‘another word for Mulungu.’
However, both meanings would seem to have been lost sight of in more
recent times, since, in Dr. Hetherwick’s Yao vocabulary we only find
‘_Mtanga_, a hobgoblin.’ This definition would also suit Chitowe (or
_Siluwi_), who is enumerated along with Mtanga by Dr. Macdonald, but
figures in fairy tales as a kind of monstrous being, with only one arm,
one leg, one eye, etc., the rest of his body being made of wax. ‘He is
associated with famine.... He is invoked by the women, on the day of
initiating their fields ... when the new crop has begun to grow.’ Chitowe
may become a child or a young woman. In this disguise he visits villages
and tells whether the coming year will bring food or famine. He receives
their hospitality, but throws the food over his shoulder without eating
it. Chitowe is a child or subject of Mtanga, and some speak of several
Chitowe who are messengers of Mtanga. The Nyanja bogy, Chiruwi (the
word is translated in Scott’s _Dictionary_, ‘a mysterious thing’), is
probably the same as Chitowe; he is constructed as above described, and,
in addition, carries an axe. He is in the habit of meeting travellers and
wrestling with them in lonely places; if the traveller falls, ‘he returns
no more to his village—he dies.’ If, on the contrary, he throws Chiruwi,
he says, ‘I will kill you, Chiruwi,’ and Chiruwi entreats for his life,
promising to show the man ‘lots of medicines.’ Then the man lets him go,
‘and Chiruwi goes on before and says this tree is for such a disease,
and that tree is for such a disease’—in short, gives him a lecture on
_materia medica_, which proves exceedingly useful.
Mbona of Tyolo seems to have been one of these local deities. Mr. Rowley
says that he was supposed to be the supreme ruler of the Anyanja,
superior to the Rundo, or Paramount Chief, who consulted him in all
special emergencies. This was done through the medium of Mbona’s wife—a
woman chosen for the purpose, who lived in a solitary hut on Tyolo
Mountain—or elsewhere, for ‘he was thought to be ubiquitous,’ and huts
on other mountains were consecrated to his service. ‘He was spoken of as
having a visible presence, but no one could say they had actually seen
him or heard him.... If the Rundo wished for Bona’s advice, he or his
deputies would proceed to the top of the mountain, with horn-blowing
and shouting, to make the bride of Bona know of his approach. She then
retires to the seclusion of her hut, hears without seeing those who
come to her, seeks and finds Bona in sleep, receives from him, in this
condition, that which he wishes her to declare, and when she awakes
she declares to the expectant people the message Bona has given her to
deliver.’ As Mbona’s wife was thus condemned to solitude for the rest
of her days, the position was naturally not much coveted, and the Rundo
usually had women kidnapped to fill it. Mr. Macdonald, some twenty years
later, merely refers to this spirit in passing, as a ‘local deity.’ The
word appears now to be used as a common noun, in the following senses:
(1) ‘A wonder,’ (2) ‘something desirable’, (3) ‘one who looks after
people or things’—as the overseer at the _namwali_ ceremonies, which will
be referred to later on, and (4) ‘a witness.’ It may be connected with
the verb _bona_, meaning ‘to look at’ (in Nyanja, _ona_ is ‘to see’);
and possibly (3) is or was used as the name of the spirit. I cannot
help wondering whether a story I once heard, of an old woman living
on Morambala, who kept a number of spirits shut up in her house, has
any reference to this tradition. I once, at Blantyre, questioned some
Chikundas from the River about this old woman, and they said that they
had heard of her, and that her name was _Mbonda_. I knew nothing about
Mbona at the time, and perhaps misheard _Mbonda_ instead of it; the
sounds are not unlike, if both _o_‘s are pronounced open. The application
of the spirit’s name to the woman is just the sort of confusion that
might arise when a tradition is falling into oblivion. About the same
time (in 1894) I heard of another old woman living in a cave on Malabvi—a
mountain a few miles east of Blantyre. No European had been able to
acquire the land in the immediate neighbourhood, as the people refused to
sell it during her lifetime. It has since occurred to me that she might
have been one of ‘Mbona’s wives.’
I do not think that, as a rule, the Bantu have much notion of anything
that can be called a devil, or, indeed, of evil spirits as such; the
spirits of the dead seem to be thought of as beneficent or hostile,
according to their dispositions when alive, or the behaviour of the
survivors. Dr. Hetherwick says, ‘While there is no trace of a devil in
the Mang’anja faith, they have the _ziwanda_, who are ... the _mizimu_
of men and women, but who work only ill. They are always feared. Their
nature is that of the other _mizimu_, but they have only the wish to
do harm.’ The Wankonde, however, according to Dr. Kerr Cross, ‘firmly
believe in a spirit of evil’—Mbasi.
‘In one place Mbasi is a person, an old man, who exercises extraordinary
power. He only speaks at night, and to the head-men of the tribe, and
during the interview every other voice must be silent and every light
extinguished. In Wundale the people believe in such a person as having
the power to make lions, and being able to send them off as messengers
of evil ... against whom he chooses. His house is surrounded with long
grass, in which he keeps his lions as other men keep dogs.’
Coming back to the spirits of the dead, we find that the Yaos use the
word _lisoka_ to express that part of a man which survives when he dies;
when it is an object of worship, it is called _mulungu_. These spirits,
as we have already seen, are frequently prayed to, and may give evidence
of their existence in three ways—by answering the prayers addressed to
them, in dreams, and through the prophetess. There are also various means
of divination (such as that of the flour already mentioned) and omens,
which may be consulted and interpreted by professional diviners.
Every village has its ‘prayer-tree,’ under which the sacrifices are
offered. It stands (usually) in the _bwalo_, the open space which
Mr. Macdonald calls the ‘forum,’ and is, sometimes, at any rate, a
wild fig-tree.[11] The Wankonde offer prayers—at least their priests
(_waputi_) do—in the sacred groves where the dead are buried. The nearest
approach to a temple among the Anyanja is a small hut called _kachisi_,
which is sometimes built near the house of the village chief, if not
actually under his eaves—sometimes in the bush, at a short distance from
the village. ‘The chief utters the prayers in the house himself, alone,
while the people answer by chanted accompaniments and clapping of hands
at the door.’ The same sort of ritual was observed in the prayers for
rain described by Mr. Rowley. The shower which fell on that occasion was,
of course, accepted as an answer to the people’s supplications.
The natives say, ‘A man complains, and the spirits can hear him, but they
can have no intercourse with man except in dreams, and in the silent care
which they can exercise, having power to lead men, and to watch over them
with favour, or when a man is going into danger to turn him back.’ If
more explicit communication is needed, they inspire some person, and make
him rave (_bwebweta_); his words are not directly intelligible, but some
one is found to interpret them; ‘one man is laid hold of by the spirits
that he may tell all people and they may hear.’ The person thus inspired
may be a man or a woman—among the Yaos perhaps more frequently the latter.
The dead _may_ manifest themselves in the shape of animals; but this
does not happen so often as among the Zulus, who quite expect their
deceased relatives to come back, like Cadmus and Harmonia, as ‘bright
and aged snakes,’ and are very glad to see them when they do. The Yao
theory seems to be that none of the departed will do this, unless they
mean to be nasty. ‘If a dead man wants to frighten his wife, he may
persist in coming as a serpent. The only remedy for this is to kill the
serpent’—which no Zulu in his senses would dream of doing. However, the
accidental killing of ‘a serpent belonging to a spirit’ seems to demand
some sort of apology. ‘A great hunter generally takes the form of a
lion or a leopard; and all witches seem to like the form of a hyena.’
But witches often turn into hyenas without dying first—which belongs to
another part of the subject. The Makanga, in the angle between the Shiré
and Zambezi, refrain from killing lions, believing that the spirits of
dead chiefs enter into them.
There seems to be some difference of opinion with regard to the degree to
which the spirits will make communications in dreams. An old Nyanja chief
said to Livingstone, ‘Sometimes the dead do come back, and appear to us
in dreams; but they never speak nor tell us where they have gone, nor how
they fare.’ On the other hand, as we have seen, communications in dreams
are expected as a regular thing. The Anyanja and Makololo (says Mr.
Macdonald) were inclined to lay more stress on dreams than on the oracle
of the _ufa_ cone. They argued that, if you put the flour down carefully
enough, it will always assume the proper pyramidal shape, and if you
cover it with an upturned pot overnight (the usual practice), it will
keep it—unless the rats overturn the pot. Perhaps this was due to the
rationalising influence of the Makololo, who had been longer in contact
with white men, and (like other natives in like case) were always burning
to assert the superiority which this gave them.
If the dreams are not sufficiently explicit, we must fall back on the
prophet or prophetess. Macdonald’s account tallies with the description
of the woman set apart for the service of Mbona, except that he speaks of
one living in a village with her family, who may arouse the neighbours
with her shrieks in the dead of night. The people assemble to hear the
message delivered by the spirits, and then return to bed; ‘or there may
be a great meeting in the morning, when the prophetess appears, her head
encircled with Indian hemp, and her arms cut as if for new tatus.’
But the _Kubwebweta_ inspiration may come on any one, at any time, or
in any place. Thus, one of a party of carriers on a journey suddenly
finds himself ‘possessed,’ and his companions listen to his ravings with
the greatest reverence. These utterances of possessed people always
require some one to interpret them, and ‘an old woman or other skilled
person’ is usually found. Macdonald says nothing of this, in the case
of the prophetess, but if, as is probably the case, she is more or less
of a professional,[12] she will have the necessary skill herself. The
messages are not, as a rule, of a very recondite character—either the
deceased chief wishes to help his people by warning them of war, or
telling them where game may be found; or he feels himself neglected
(like old Chipoka), and demands such and such offerings. Namzuruwa, an
ancient chief of the district below the Murchison Cataracts, occasionally
inspires people in this way.
The dead sometimes appear in visible form, as a native told the Rev. D.
C. Scott: ‘People sometimes see those who have died and are dead walking
outside in the gardens.’[13] I have never had the luck to hear a ghost
story at first hand myself—the ‘night fears’ of the small boys whom I
found objecting to go out after dark were connected, not with ghosts, but
with _wizards_, of whom more presently.
There are haunted places in the Bush, where spirits are supposed to be
heard, but not seen. M. Junod was told, over and over again, in the
Delagoa Bay country, of people who had heard the drumming and singing of
the spirits. These haunted spots were the burial-places of the chiefs,
and no doubt this is so in other cases. The Anyanja have a curious
account of ‘the spirits’ hill,’ where people who go, carrying pots on
their heads, have them lifted off by the baboons, and hear a sound, ‘as
of people answering.’ They also speak of the ‘spirit-drums’—the small
ones sounding _piye! piye!_ and the big ones, _pi! pi!_ as though a
dance were going on, and so far as one can gather, these spirits seem
to be thought of as in sight like ordinary men and women—not the little
εἴδωλα who dwell in the spirit-houses.
The notion of a connection between religion and morality comes
comparatively late in human development; but we can perhaps see traces of
it in the idea of the _chirope_. This means that, when a man has killed
another man, he will either be ill, or be seized by a sort of murderous
madness till he has performed some expiatory ceremony. The accounts I
have before me are somewhat different, but are not, perhaps, inconsistent
with one another. Among the Yaos, in Macdonald’s time, it seems to have
been a condition that the victim should not be an enemy (towards whom no
obligations were recognised), or even a person of the same tribe, whose
kinsfolk could take up the feud and demand compensation. But, if a Yao
killed his own slave (or, apparently, his child, his younger brother,
or any one under his charge), he feared that he ‘would pine away, lose
his eyesight, and die miserably, unless he went to the chief, paid him a
certain fee, and said, “Give me a charm, for I have slain a man.”’ The
Angoni, like the Zulus, apply the notion to killing a man in battle, and
think that, unless they gash the bodies of the slain, so as to let out
the air from the intestines, and prevent the corpse from swelling, they
will be attacked by a mysterious disease which causes their own bodies
to swell up. (This precise symptom is not given in the accounts before
us, but is believed in by the Zulus, and probably by the Angoni.) The
Angoni afterwards dance a war-dance ‘to throw off the _chirope_.’ The
word appears to be connected with _mlopa_, ‘blood,’ used particularly
of blood shed in killing—as of animals in hunting—and the idea is that
the spirit of the slain enters the body of the slayer. This is even the
case with animals; and hence it is the custom for the hunter to cut off
a small piece of the meat as soon as he has shot any animal, throw it on
the fire, and eat it, ‘because of the spirit of the beast that enters
into one if one does not.’
The Angoni and various other tribes west of the Lake have a belief that
there is a distinct relation between smallpox and morality; that, if the
disease attacks a village where the moral tone is good, all the patients
will recover; whereas, in a place given, as the native statement puts it,
‘to adultery and other sins,’ every one who sickens, young or old, will
die. The locality, and various other circumstances, make it unlikely that
this is an imported notion.
It is generally believed that the Eastern Bantu have no ‘idols’ properly
so called; and their charms, to which we shall come back later, do not
usually take the form of human figures. But the Tonga chiefs used to
carry about with them little wooden images called _angoza_—representing
men, women, or animals. Sometimes they were only sticks with a little
head carved at one end. The Rev. A. G. MacAlpine, who seems puzzled what
to make of them, does not state whether any are now in existence. ‘Long
ago they used to be owned by chiefs only, and were lodged in the house of
the head-wife.... They were not displayed except on special occasions.
In the talking of important cases, they are said to have been brought
out and planted in the ground at some little distance from the chief,
and when he went on a journey they might be carried along with him,
both of which uses would suggest their being an emblem of authority....
Often people came asking to see them, when they would be brought out
covered up and not exposed till some gift had been made.’ We find that
the Achewa have articles described as ‘fetiches’ and consisting ‘of a few
short pieces of wood the size of one’s forefinger, bound together with
a scrap of calico into the figure of a child’s doll. Inside the calico
is concealed a tiny box made of the handle of a gourd-cup, ... [and]
supposed to contain the spirit of some dead ancestor.’ Spirits wandering
homeless in the bush are apt to annoy the living in various ways, till
captured by a ‘doctor’ and confined in one of these receptacles.
The Yao children play with dolls bearing about as much resemblance to
the human figure as a ninepin, but evidently intended to represent it.
If games are survivals of religious ceremonies, they may originally have
been _teraphim_, or fetiches of some sort. The ‘ugly images’ found by
Livingstone near Lake Mweru, in ‘huts built for them,’ which were used in
rain-making and cases of illness, seem to have been somewhat different
from the _angoza_ of the Atonga.[14]
CHAPTER IV
RELIGION AND MAGIC—II
Creation. Origin of death. Lake Nyasa. Rain-making. Charms.
Witchcraft. Lycanthropy. Divination. Food tabus. Dances.
So far as we can get at the notions of the Bantu about creation, they
do not seem to have thought that this world ever had a beginning. All
the stories one has met with assume it as already existing, and explain
how this or that feature—mountains, rivers, lakes, animals, men—was
introduced into it. The Yaos tell that Mtanga pinched up the surface
of the earth into mountains, Chitowi—who had failed in performing the
operation himself—having called him in for the purpose. He then dug
channels for rivers, and brought down rain to fill them. The Yaos, being
mountaineers, assumed that a plain would be unfit for human habitation:
Mtanga, on first viewing their country, remarked, ‘This country is bad
because it is without a hill.’ There are also legends of the introduction
of the sun, moon, and stars, and of the origin of clouds, wind, and rain;
but all these presuppose the existence of people on the earth.
Mankind is held to have originated at Kapirimtiya, a hill—or as some
say, an island in a lake, far to the west of Nyasa. Here it is believed
that there is a rock covered with marks like the footprints of men and
animals, and that, when men were first created, the island was a piece of
soft mud, and Mulungu sent them across it, so as to leave their footmarks
there, before they were dispersed over the world. One native account says
that ‘they came from heaven and fell down below upon the earth’; another,
that they came out of a hole in the rock, which was afterwards closed by
‘the people of Mulungu,’ and is now ‘in a desert place towards the north.’
In the Bemba country, the natives speak of two such places; and one of
them was seen in 1902 by a European, who describes it in a letter to
_Life and Work_ as ‘a conglomerate rock showing what the natives call
footprints of a man, a child, a zebra or horse, and a dog.’ The Bemba
people say that these footprints were made by Mulungu (or, as they call
him, Luchereng’anga) ‘and the people and animals he brought to occupy the
country.’ Offerings of beads, calico, and beer are placed on this rock.
The writer thought the marks certainly looked like footprints, but were
merely hollows where the rain had washed out the softer parts of the
rock. The old head-man of the place, naturally enough, would not hear
of this explanation, and maintained that the marks had once been much
plainer, but were now partly washed away by the rains.
This account agrees well enough with the vague indications given by the
Blantyre people as to the direction of Kapirimtiya. It seems to show that
the Yaos and Bemba had some common centre, though the latter also say
(which is confirmed by other testimony) that they came from the west in
comparatively recent times.
The story of the Chameleon is found among so many of the Bantu as to
suggest that they derived it from a common source. Whether it came from
the Hottentot legend of the Moon and the Hare—or from the story out
of which that was developed, I do not feel competent to discuss. The
Yaos, the Anyanja, and the Atonga all possess it in slightly differing
versions. I shall give the last-named.
‘_Chiuta_ deputed the Chameleon and the Lizard (or Frog, as it is
variously given) to take to men the message, the one of life and the
other of death. The Chameleon was to tell men that they would die, but
that they would return again, while the Lizard was bid tell them that
when they died, they would die for good. The Chameleon had the start,
but in its slow, hesitating pace was soon outrun by the swift Lizard,
which darted in among men with its tale that dying they should end their
existence. A good while after, the Chameleon came lazily along and
announced that, though men should die, they would return to life again;
but he was met by the angry and sorrowful reply that they had already
heard that they must die without returning, and that they had accepted
the message first delivered.’
This is exactly like the Zulu story, where the people say, ‘Oh! we
have taken hold of the word of the Lizard, when it said, “People shall
die.” We never heard that word of yours, Chameleon—people _will_ die!’
Consequently, Zulus, Yaos, Anyanja, Atonga, and, I suppose, most Bantu,
detest the poor Chameleon, and consider him an unlucky beast. The
Anyanja never pass one without putting snuff into its mouth, ‘that it
may die,’ and any one who knows what a value they set on this commodity,
and what minute quantities they seem, as a rule, to carry about with
them, will allow that this is, indeed, carrying enmity very far. However,
the Lake Anyanja seem to take a different view of the matter from the
Blantyre people. They hold that their ancestors were grateful for the
Chameleon’s message, though it came too late—perhaps they reflected that
it was not his fault: he was not built for fast travelling;—and they give
him tobacco as a reward; so that chameleons who die by nicotine poisoning
are the victims of ill-judged kindness, not of revenge. It is worth
noticing that the creature’s name in the Lake dialect—_gulumpambe_ or
_gwilampambe_—seems to mean ‘seize the lightning’ (or ‘Mpambe’). Possibly
there is some still recoverable tradition at the back of this.
The Yaos have another very curious tale, in which the Chameleon is
directly concerned in the introduction of Man into the world. At first
Man was not—only Mulungu and the beasts. Apparently the Chameleon has
been forced by changed circumstances to alter his mode of living, for, in
those days he used to set traps for fish in the river—wicker arrangements
on the principle of the lobster-pot—as natives do now. One morning,
on visiting his trap, he found two unknown beings in it—no other than
the first man and woman, who had somehow blundered into it during the
night. (I have seen a _mono_ big enough to contain one person, with
his knees drawn up, but the size of the First Parents is not stated.)
He consulted Mulungu as to what he should do with them, and was told,
‘Place them here, they will grow.’ They did grow, and developed various
activities—among others that of making fire by twirling a hard stick on a
bit of soft wood (_kupeka moto_), as is done to this day. But in the end
they set the grass alight, and thus drove Mulungu from his abode on this
earth. The Chameleon escaped by climbing a tree; but ‘Mulungu was on the
ground, and he said, “I cannot climb a tree.” Then Mulungu set off and
went to call the Spider. The Spider went on high and returned again and
said, “I have gone on high nicely,” and he said, “You now, Mulungu, go on
high.” Mulungu then went with the spider on high. And he said, “When they
die, let them come on high here.” And behold, men on dying go on high in
order to be slaves of God, the reason being that they ate his people here
below.’
That is, as soon as they had found out the use of fire, they began
to kill and cook buffaloes and other animals. No hint is given here
as to where or how these human beings originated. Mulungu evidently
knows nothing about them (while the animals, with which they have been
interfering, are ‘his people’), and makes the Chameleon responsible
for them, just as a chief at the present day would hold any man who
introduced strangers into a village responsible for their conduct. Two
other points are noteworthy—the region into which Mulungu makes his
escape is ‘above’; and the Spider, who helps him, is a conspicuous figure
in West African folk-lore and mythology. This is the only instance
except one where I have met with him in an Eastern Bantu story; but we
have numerous examples in Duala, and one at least from the Congo.
This tale seems to be a very crude form of the myth in which a divine
being is driven from earth by the wickedness of mankind—like Astræa
and the Kintu of the Baganda. The curious, and, to us, inconsistent
limitations of his power are just what one may expect to find in stories
of this kind.
Perhaps we might include among legends of creation a story told at the
mysteries (to which we shall recur later on) to account for the origin of
Lake Nyasa.
‘In old days the Lake was small as a brook. Then there came a man out
of the west with a silver sceptre.’ (The story is ‘taken down from
native lips’; I do not know what is the original wording in this place;
but we may suppose that the Lake people knew silver through the coast
traders even before they were acquainted with Europeans. In any case,
the ‘silver sceptre’ need not prove the story to be a recent invention;
one constantly finds touches of ‘actuality’ introduced by the tellers of
these tales.) ‘He married, and brought his wife to return with him to his
country. She consented, and her brother said, “Yes, and I will go too.”
But his brother-in-law said, “I will not have you go too.” Then he wept
bitterly for his sister, when he saw her cross the lake, and he grew very
angry, and he took his stick and struck the water, till it swelled up and
covered all things and became a flood. Then the woman and her brother
died, both of them together, and the corpse of the woman went to the
north, and that of her brother to the south. When a cloud weeps in the
south, the sister rests quietly in the north, and when a cloud appears
and weeps in the north, the brother rests quietly in the south.’
In another chapter we shall find a legend of a river struck with a staff
with the opposite purpose, viz., to make a passage through it. It is
possible that these may be echoes of the Biblical stories heard from the
missionaries, though, as a matter of fact, I do not think this is the
case.
In the last chapter I spoke of magic as distinguished from religion.
By the latter I mean appeals to—or attempts to propitiate—some unseen,
superior powers, whether these be thought of as ancestral spirits,
nature-powers, or what we generally understand by a Deity. Magic, on
the other hand, consists in performing certain actions which will, in
some occult way, have such an effect on natural forces as to produce the
result desired; that is to say (to put it roughly), it enables man to
control nature on his own account. I must confess, however, that I do
not always see where the line should be drawn, and have included several
matters in this chapter without attempting to decide how they should be
classified. Usually people attempt to do magic on the principle that like
produces like—as when water is poured out on the ground in the hope of
bringing rain.
It will be remembered that, when we spoke in the last chapter of
Chigunda’s people calling on Mpambe for rain, it was said that
the ceremony concluded with ‘a rain-charm.’ This is described as
follows:—‘The dance ceased, a large jar of water was brought and placed
before the chief; first Mbudzi (his sister) washed her hands, arms, and
face; then water was poured over her by another woman; then all the
women rushed forward with calabashes in their hand, and dipping them
into the jar, threw the water into the air with loud cries and wild
gesticulations.’
This, however, might be taken as prayer and not magic, if we are to
understand the water to be thrown into the air as a sign that water is
wanted. Sometimes people smear themselves with mud and charcoal to show
that they want washing. If the rain still does not come, they go and wash
themselves in the rivers and streams.
In 1893 the rains were unusually late. In the West Shiré district we only
had one or two showers up to December 12—by which time the crops should
have been in the ground in the ordinary course of things; and though that
day and the next were wet, the weather cleared again—except for delusive
thunder and lightning which led to nothing. After about a week of this,
I happened to go to a village, and found all the women busy cleaning out
the well whence they obtained their usual water-supply. It was a large
hole, three or four feet across, and perhaps ten or twelve feet deep,
and pegs had been driven into one side, by which even the white-haired
old grandmother of the party ascended and descended with the greatest
agility. They had already dug out a large heap of mud, and seemed serious
and preoccupied, and none of the men were to be seen—in fact, the huts
appeared to be deserted. But it never struck me that they were doing
anything else but digging out their well because the water had come to an
end.
Some years later, when I read M. Junod’s _Les Baronga_, a passage in it
forcibly recalled this scene, and showed that it had a meaning which
had never occurred to me at the time. The Ronga women, it appears,
have a solemn rite of clearing out the wells in time of drought. For
this, they lay aside all their usual garments, clothing themselves only
with grass or leaves, and start for the well, with special songs and
dances. I did not notice anything special about the costume of the women
at Pembereka’s, nor did I hear any singing, but probably that would
accompany the dance, which would have taken place before they actually
got to work. As the well was quite close to the huts, there would be
no marching in procession—two or three of the women may have come from
other kraals, but there were so few in all that the ceremony must have
taken place on a very small scale. Not knowing of the Ronga usage, I
could not ascertain whether or not the Anyanja women carried it out on
the following points: (1) Before starting for the well, they go in a body
to the house of _a woman who has had twins_, and pour water over her out
of their calabash dippers; (2) When they have finished cleaning out the
well, they go and pour water on the graves in the sacred grove.
It will be remembered that the ceremony at Chigunda’s was conducted
(though in the presence of the chief and all his people) by women only.
I did not hear of any case of twins among these people during the time
of our stay, and do not know how they are looked on. I have been told
that the Yaos, when twins are born, kill one, but this is an unsupported
statement (made by a native, however), which I have not been able to
test. It seems clear that the Atonga and other tribes by the lakeside
consider them unlucky, and act on that belief in varying degrees.
We do not find a special class of rain-doctors apart from the ordinary
sorcerer, diviner, or ‘witch-doctor.’ Public ceremonies are conducted—or
at least presided over—by the chief, though no doubt the ‘doctor’ is
frequently consulted. M. Junod, in the account above referred to, says
that the chief gives orders for the women to go out and clean the wells,
after having ascertained, through lots cast by the principal diviners,
that such a step is necessary.
There is no bar, however, to the exercise of special powers by
individuals who possess them. Sir Harry Johnston speaks of an old
rain-maker named Mwaka Sungula, at the north end of Lake Nyasa. His power
extended to wind as well as rain. He was once resorted to by the native
crew of the _Domira_ when she stuck on a sandbank, and, as the wind
changed during the night following his incantations, he had a triumphant
success.
There are charms, as might be expected, not only for bringing rain, but
for keeping it away. When travelling from the Upper Shiré district to
Blantyre towards the close of the rainy season, I found that one of the
carriers was provided with _mankwala a mvula_ (rain-medicine) to ensure
fair weather during the journey. I inspected this talisman, and found
it to consist of two sticks, about a foot long, firmly lashed together
with strips of bark, and, inserted between them, a piece of charred wood,
and perhaps some other things which I could not clearly make out. He had
paid the local practitioner a goat for it. He kept it in his hand on the
march, and, from time to time, pointed it towards the quarter from which
rain might be expected. It is a fact that none fell till we were within a
few miles of the Mission; and Chipanga might have argued that the power
of the charm was here neutralised by the more powerful influence of the
white men.
This brings us to the subject of _mankwala_, variously translated
‘medicine,’ or ‘charms,’ and including what we understand by both
terms. I have never been able to ascertain the etymology of the Nyanja
word _mankwala_ (a plural without a singular); in Yao, _mtela_, ‘a
tree or plant,’ is, like the Zulu _umuti_, used with this meaning.
Native doctors, both men and women, often have a very good knowledge of
medicinal herbs, but it is the other kind of ‘medicine’ with which we
have to do just now.
This may be divided, roughly, into offensive and defensive. You enter
the little courtyard and see growing in the space between the huts,
a cherished bush of cayenne peppers, to which is tied a protective
apparatus consisting of a small wooden hoop with a goat’s or ram’s horn
filled with heaven knows what messes, fastened into it. Or a string is
hung at the door of a house, which is supposed to turn into a snake
if any one enters to steal. Or a bamboo is set up close to the garden,
with a horn on the top of it; or a string is run round the crops, or you
may see ashes laid beside the path which passes by them; or, again, the
medicine may be buried. Snail-shells and bundles of leaves may be used in
this way. Those who attempt to steal in spite of these contrivances will
either die on the spot or be taken ill afterwards.
The word _winda_, which means to protect a garden (or anything else)
in this way, is also used of women letting their hair grow while their
husbands are on a journey, lest any ill should befall the travellers.
They are also supposed (among the Yaos at any rate) to refrain from
washing their faces or anointing their heads till the absent ones return.
It would be impossible to enumerate all the different varieties of
‘medicine.’ I believe there is some preventive of every ill likely to
befall mankind, and those who understand such things can do a profitable
business. The Shiré people venture recklessly into the water if they
are provided with ‘crocodile medicine’; and there are medicines against
lions, leopards, and, I suppose, every variety of dangerous wild beast,
not to mention the ‘gun medicine,’ which enables the hunter to shoot
straight, and which, perhaps, ought to be classed in the ‘offensive’
category, but that it is free from sinister associations. Most European
sportsmen, if at all successful, have been importuned for this, and it
used to be firmly believed that the late Mr. Monteith Fotheringham, who
was a very good shot, wore a belt charged with exceedingly powerful
‘medicines’ next his skin. There are also ‘medicines’ to make a man
bullet-proof, like Chibisa, the Nyanja chief, who was brought down at
last by a sand-bullet, as Dundee was with a silver one at Killiecrankie.
Some natives once assured me that Chikumbu, a Yao chief, who at one
time gave the Administration some trouble, was invulnerable by shot or
steel; the only thing that could kill him—since he had not been fortified
against it by the proper medicine—was a sharp splinter of bamboo. This
reminds one of Balder and the mistletoe. The East African Wadoe have a
legend about a magician who could be killed by one thing only—the stalk
of a gourd. But as the gourd-stalk was ‘a forbidden thing’ to him, this
suggests the subject of _miiko_ or tabu-prohibitions, which we must take
up presently.
Various seeds, nuts, claws of animals, and other things are worn round
the neck as ‘medicine’ of this kind. Sometimes it takes the shape of
wedge-shaped wooden tablets, or bits of stick about an inch long, which
are also seen strung on the band which people wear round the head as a
remedy for headache—a kind of combination of ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’
means, as the string is supposed to give relief by pressure.
As for ‘offensive’ medicine, there are various kinds. Some are ‘buried
against people’—usually in the form of horns—by the witch (_mfiti_) who
wishes to do the said people a mischief. I have no doubt that horns are
really sometimes buried with such intent; but it more frequently happens
that they are _un_buried by the witch-detective who has probably the best
of reasons for knowing where to find them. Then there is a very immoral
kind of medicine which, like the Hand of Glory, enables thieves to steal
without detection, by throwing the owners of the stolen property into
a deep sleep, or even (adding insult to injury) forces them to answer,
unconsciously, any questions as to the whereabouts of their wealth. There
are several kinds of this charm, but I do not know the composition of
any; though, in some parts of East Africa, a plant with the botanical
name of _Steganotaenia_ is supposed to possess these marvellous
properties. There is also a charm by means of which thieves can make
themselves invisible; but as it might also enable honest men to escape
from their enemies, it ought perhaps to have been enumerated in the first
category. One kind, at least, of this medicine is the drug _strophanthus_
(obtained from a plant locally called _kombe_), and with this the chief
Msamara poisoned himself in 1892, imagining that it would enable him to
walk unseen out of prison at Fort Johnston. He had previously taken off
all his clothes, reasoning that the drug would not make them invisible.
I remember being told that native burglars (I understand that such exist,
but cannot say I have come across them personally, and do not believe
that they are common, except in the coast towns), when setting out for
their night’s work, strip and oil themselves all over. This, I understood
at the time, was to make it difficult for any one to get a grip of them,
if caught; but it has since occurred to me that it was also part of the
process for rendering themselves invisible—the medicine being applied
externally as an unguent.
Secret theft is looked on with horror, as probably connected with
witchcraft. Natives are so ready to share everything they have with their
neighbours, that a person who stealthily takes what he might have for the
asking lays himself open to suspicion of yet darker dealings. It is the
Bewitcher, the _Mfiti_, who is the great terror of native life.
Witchcraft is not, so far as I can make out, thought of as a system of
compelling the unseen powers (whether dead ancestors or nature-spirits)
to work one’s will. The _mfiti_, however, employs certain animals as
messengers—the owl, and the jackal, whose bark summons him to midnight
orgies; but I do not know that he intrusts these creatures, as Zulu
sorcerers are said to do the baboon and the wild-cat, with ‘sendings’
to injure an enemy. Besides bewitching, as aforesaid, by means of
‘medicines,’ the things one most frequently hears of his doing are
turning himself into a hyena, leopard, or other animal, and digging up
graves to eat the flesh of corpses. But I am not sure that the latter
ever happens without the former, it being usually for this purpose
that the hyena shape is supposed to be assumed. So much of the funeral
ceremonies is connected with this belief that we shall have to treat it
more fully when we come to them.
Witchcraft and cannibalism are synonymous. ‘Why did So-and-So have to
drink _mwavi_?’ ‘_Chifukwa wodiera antu_—because he was an eater of men.’
This need not imply that he actually has eaten any one, only that he
has caused (or tried to cause) some one’s death with the intention of
eating the corpse. It is the reverse of the vampire superstition, where
the corpse will not stay dead, but gets up and feeds on the living; and
as there was a recognised remedy for this evil in the Middle Ages, so
there are various ways of preventing witches from getting at the graves,
as we shall see in due course. It has been said that cannibalism of
this sort is actually prevalent among the Anyanja; but the statements
on this subject require to be carefully sifted. The Yaos were thirty
years ago in the habit of using certain parts of their slain enemies as
a charm for producing strength and courage; they reduced them to ashes
and mixed them with gruel, which had to be eaten in a particular way.
Ordinary cannibalism may have been practised in times of scarcity. But
the Europeans who were in the Shiré during the terrible famine of 1862-3,
heard of no such cases, though nine-tenths of the Anyanja population
perished, many committing suicide in despair. There _may_, of course, be
some foundation in fact for this very widespread belief, but it is quite
capable of flourishing on little or none.[15]
Certain medicines (called _mphiyu_ by the Atonga) have the power of
turning those who take them into some animal—each kind, leopard, hyena,
crocodile, or what not, having its own particular medicine. The Atonga
belief presents some interesting features.
‘The living man might inform his friends that he had medicine to change
him into a crocodile, and if after his death a crocodile made its
appearance in a pool where crocodiles had not often been seen before, it
was of course believed to be their friend come back. If these animals
took to killing people, a representation would very probably be made to
the relatives of the dead to go and attend to their spirit, and have
it appeased. That a man-eating lion or other beast of prey was a real
_mzuka_ (one risen from the dead under another form) people could easily
tell, when the corpses were left uneaten: a real lion, it was thought,
would be sure to devour its victim. If this killing went on after
complaint had been made to the supposed relatives of the _mzuka_, the
issue would probably be a _mlandu_ with these on account of their alleged
carelessness of the rites due to their dead. People who were known to
have eaten _mphiyu_ were not mourned for in the ordinary way with loud
wailing and outcry. They were silently wept for by their relatives, the
only sound of mourning that might be heard being the mimic pounding in
the empty grain-mortar into which pieces of rubber were thrown from time
to time to still further deaden the sound. When after a time they heard
lions or leopards roaring in the bush, the villagers said, “There’s
Karakatu (_i.e._ one risen), he’s mourning for himself.”’
Not only do the natives firmly believe that their neighbours can thus
on occasion transform themselves, but occasionally a man is found to be
convinced that he can do so himself and has actually done it. Du Chaillu
mentions a case like this in West Africa, and Sir H. H. Johnston has
recorded another. A number of murders had taken place near Chiromo in
1891 or 1892, and were ultimately traced to an old man who had been in
the habit of lurking in the long grass beside the path to the river,
till some person passed by alone, when he would leap out and stab him,
afterwards mutilating the body. He admitted these crimes himself.
‘He could not help it (he said), as he had a strong feeling at times
that he was changed into a lion and was impelled, as a lion, to kill and
mutilate. As according to our view of the law he was not a sane person,
he was sentenced to be detained “during the chief’s pleasure,” and
this “were-lion” has been most usefully employed for years in perfect
contentment keeping the roads of Chiromo in good repair.’
An Englishman who had lived for some time in the Makanga country told
me that these people credit the were-hyena with a human wife, who lives
in a village and performs the ordinary work of a native woman by day,
but by night opens the door of the goat-kraal to admit her husband, and
then goes away into the bush with him to join in the feast. A goat was
carried off one night from the village near which the narrator lived, and
the people showed him, in the morning, the hyena’s tracks, and, running
parallel with them, the print of bare human feet. It was in vain to point
out that some one might have attempted to pursue the hyena and rescue his
prey, or, at any rate, have run out to see what had happened—they were
positive that the footprints were those of the hyena’s wife. Rats, too,
may be wizards in animal shape, which is a reason for their nibbling the
toes of sleepers.
Watching the grass-fires one night towards the end of the dry season, I
remember seeing a strange, sudden blaze on Nyambadwe Hill; the flames
rushing to an enormous height—whether from some change of wind, or
because they had caught a large dead tree, I do not know. I happened
to speak of this next day to an old man (a good-for-nothing old man he
was, by the bye, though that is nothing to the present purpose), and
he said that he had looked out of his hut and seen it too, remarking,
cryptically, that it was due to _afiti_. He went on to tell me that he
sometimes heard them passing by at night—they flew over the tree-tops
with a great whirring of wings. In fact, it appeared that they could do
‘most anything.’ The boys, who dared not go out at night for fear of
_afiti_, asserted that they carried a light which you could see afar
off, but put it out when you came near them, and that they could make
themselves large and small instantaneously. Some held that it was good to
pluck up heart and address them; others, that if you spoke to them, you
would become dumb like Mœris, when the wolf saw him first. I did not at
the time understand the precise connection between the witches and the
fire; but it appears that the grave itself becomes luminous when they
gather there. ‘When a fire is seen on a distant hill, where no fire can
be accounted for’—that is the place of their assembly. They call the
dead man by his childish name (which none ever uses after he has once
passed through the mysteries), and he cannot choose but come out of the
grave—then they tear him limb from limb and eat him. When you consider
that people believe this, not as a piece of curious folk-lore, but as a
solid conviction forming part of everyday life, it is hardly surprising
that they think no treatment too bad for the witches—if they can be
caught.
This may be done in various ways—most, if not all of which, we must
remember, are used for the detection of other things besides witches.
There is the Mabisalila or Mavumbula, the woman who dances herself
into a state of frenzy, and reveals the name of the guilty person. She
comes to stay at the village which has requisitioned her services, and
so gains time to glean all the gossip of the place before pronouncing
her opinion, and also to bury the horns during her nightly prowls,
ostensibly undertaken for the purpose of spying on the Witches’ Sabbath,
and seeing who leaves the village to attend it. She is able to make
her investigations quite undisturbed, as no one likes to venture out
after dark during her stay, lest he should meet her and be fixed on as
the culprit. When her preparations are complete, the people are called
together by the sound of the great drum. Then she begins to dance,
working up herself and the spectators to a furious pitch of excitement,
rushes round, smells their hands to see if she can detect any traces of
strange food eaten at the unholy banquet, and at last calls on the guilty
person by the name she pretends to have heard him addressed by at the
grave. When no one answers, she says ‘So-and-So is known in the village
by such and such a name,’ and then leads the way to his house, where the
horns are dug up. The enraged people usually lynch the accused on the
spot.
The ordeal of the mwavi is resorted to when people are suspected
either of witchcraft or of some other crime, such as theft; and as
it is a regular form of judicial procedure, it is perhaps best to
consider it more fully under that heading. Here I need only say that
the poison is administered to the suspected person; if he dies, his
guilt is established; if he recovers, he is _ipso facto_ acquitted. In
some districts the poison used does not cause death, but the guilt or
innocence of the accused is decided according to the different symptoms
produced.
Under the heading of ‘oracles’ we may include a great many different
processes of divination, some partaking of a judicial character, such
as the following, of which a very curious description is given by an
eye-witness, the Rev. H. Rowley. If there was no cheating, it seems to
have been a case of what is known as ‘motor automatism.’
‘Some corn had been stolen from the garden of one of Chigunda’s people.
The owner complained to the chief, who employed the services of a
celebrated medicine-man living near. The people assembled round a large
fig-tree, and the magician ... first of all produced two sticks, about
four feet long, and about the thickness of an ordinary broom-handle;
these, after certain mysterious manipulations and utterings of
unintelligible gibberish, he delivered, with much solemnity, to four
young men, two being appointed to each stick. Then from his goat-skin
bag he brought forth a zebra-tail, which he gave to another young man,
and after that a calabash filled with peas, which he delivered to a boy.
The medicine-man rolled himself about in hideous fashion and chanted an
unearthly incantation; then came the man with the zebra-tail, followed
by the boy with the calabash, moving, first of all, slowly round the
men with the sticks, but presently quickening their pace and shaking
the tail and the calabash over the heads of the stick-holders.... Ere
long the spell worked. The men with the sticks were subject to spasmodic
twitchings of the arms and legs. These increased rapidly, until they
were nearly in convulsions; they foamed at the mouth; their eyes seemed
starting from their heads.... According to the Mang’anja notion, it was
the sticks that were possessed primarily, the men through them.... The
men seemed scarcely able to hold the sticks, which took a rotary motion
at first and whirled the holders round and round like mad things. Then
headlong they dashed off into the bush, through stubborn grass and thorny
shrub, over every obstacle—nothing stopped them; their bodies were torn
and bleeding. Round to the gaping assembly again they came, went through
a few more rotary motions, and then, rushing along the path at a killing
pace, halted not until they fell down, panting and exhausted, in the
hut of one of Chigunda’s slave-wives. The woman happened to be at home,
and the sticks were rolled to her very feet.’ She, however, vehemently
asserted her innocence, and offered to take mwavi to prove it, which she
did by proxy, the poison being administered to a fowl. The second oracle
reversed the decision of the first, and the defendant was acquitted;
but, curiously enough, no one’s faith seems to have been shaken by the
contradiction between two infallible ordeals.
The Rev. Duff Macdonald alludes to this kind of divination, but very
briefly; it seems to be more Nyanja than Yao. He says that the sorcerer
‘occasionally makes men lay hold of a stick which, after a time, begins
to move as if endowed with life, and ultimately carries them off bodily
and with great speed to the house of the thief.’
I have never heard of this oracle of the sticks in the Blantyre or Upper
Shiré district. Of course, it by no means follows that it is not used;
but from various indications I fancy that the witch-detective, the
_Mabisalila_, whose operations have already been described, has been more
popular since the time of the Yao settlement. The ‘sticks’ are still in
vogue on the Lake. The Rev. H. B. Barnes, of the Universities’ Mission,
was told of a man at Ngofi who possessed this charm, and ‘had bought it
with much money at the coast.... It was described to me as consisting
of two short pieces of wood, with a large feather behind the second.
The master of the charm sets it on the ground near the place whence
the disappearance has taken place, and keeps his hand on the feather,
following it as it moves off on the track. It is also used when war is
threatening, in order to ascertain the safest direction in which to
flee.’[16]
There are various methods of divination besides those already referred
to. The sorcerer puts bits of stick and pebbles into a gourd, shakes them
up, and throws them out, deducing his answer to the questions put from
their position as they lie on the ground. I am sorry to say I never saw
this done, and cannot discover from any of the native accounts before me
whether there is a system of interpretation which allows one to get an
answer out of almost any possible combination of the ‘pieces’—as among
the Delagoa Bay people; but it is probable that the diviner follows
some such rules. Neither the ‘divining tablets’ of the Mashona, nor the
knuckle-bones of sheep and goats seem to be used—their place is taken
by small pieces of wood (_mpinjiri_), sometimes neatly cut into shape,
and the claws of the tortoise, which are divided into four pieces—the
front or tip of the claw being halved to make a ‘male’ and a ‘female’
piece (which are marked on the under side), and in like manner the back.
One way of consulting this oracle is to spread all the pieces on a dry
skin and then knock it from underneath, and catch in the hand the piece
(if any) which jumps off; if the same piece comes twice running, it is
a conclusive proof that the person whom the diviner thought of, when he
made the inquiry, is the correct one. Another way is to put the lots into
a jar, cover it up, and leave it for a time; if they still keep their
relative positions when next looked at, the omens for the journey or
other undertaking inquired about are favourable. Mr. Macdonald found that
the Yao professional diviners were usually very intelligent men, who gave
sensible advice according to their own lights, and invested it with a
certain impressiveness by means of the ‘lot,’ thinking people would care
nothing about it, or perhaps take offence, unless they could attribute it
to a supernatural source.
Many men consult the oracle on their own account, especially on a
journey, either by means of the flour-pyramid, as already described,
or by sticking a knife into the ground and leaning two small sticks
against it, or laying two sticks on the ground, and a third across them.
If they fall down, or are disturbed from their position, the omen is
unfavourable. There are many other omens which would cause a party to
turn back, unless very much set on an expedition—such as one of them
striking his foot against a stump (a common accident, to judge by the
number of ulcerated toes one sees), or certain creatures crossing the
path—some kinds of snakes, the chameleon, etc.—the partridge’s cry, and
so on. The evil-smelling _mdzodzo_ and _mtumbatumba_ ants, on the other
hand, are supposed (perhaps by the rule of contraries) to be of good
augury.
There is a certain system of abstinence from different kinds of food
which is probably connected originally with totemism; but either no one
has succeeded in getting at the matter except in a very fragmentary
way, or else the natives of the present day have forgotten the reasons
for the practice, and it only survives in a number of apparently casual
and isolated usages. Certain people will not eat some particular kind
of meat, either ‘because it makes one ill, or because of some religious
scruple or vow, or because one’s mother has for no apparent reason
decreed in one’s infancy that a certain food is to be tabu to one.’ It
might be more correct to reduce these three alternative reasons to one,
because, as a matter of fact, people who have been forbidden some food
in their infancy usually become ill if they eat it; and it is no stretch
of language to say that they are transgressing ‘a religious scruple’ in
doing so. Further inquiry is needed before we can decide whether or not
there is a reason behind these prohibitions; quite possibly, as already
stated, the people have forgotten that there ever was one, and have
no notion of any relationship supposed to exist between them and the
forbidden animal or plant, such as the Bechwana clans recognise in the
case of the lion, the crocodile, etc. The Rev. D. C. Scott says: ‘Each
tribe or family has its particular abstinence from certain foods.’ The
Achikunda, so my boatmen told me on the Zambezi, don’t eat hippo; the
Apodzo do, as might be expected, they being a tribe who get their living
by hunting that animal. This really resolves itself into ‘Apodzo and
not Apodzo,’ because the Achikunda are not really a tribe, but a mixed
multitude of slaves brought into the country by the Portuguese; and a
good many different tribes look on the hippopotamus as sacred. Some of
the boys at Blantyre mission-school ‘did not eat hippo’—but on what
exact tribal or family grounds, I never made out. The practical result
was that some other food had to be provided for them, when one of the
teachers arrived from the River with a supply of this meat sufficient for
the whole school. The Machinga are looked down on by some other tribes
because they eat fish, which the Angoni, _e.g._, never touch. Rats are
forbidden to women, and to those who offer sacrifice; they are considered
‘uncanny,’ for very comprehensible reasons, though this does not prevent
their being a very popular article of diet with those not so restricted.
Doctors or others who have to treat a patient by scarifying, or, as the
natives say, ‘cutting medicine in,’ must not eat elephant. ‘In other
cases the individual himself objects to certain meats as being bad for
him, specially producing heat and spots all over.... God, they say, made
men with these necessities in them; people can’t make mistakes in what
abstinence is essential for them.’ On the whole, the various regulations
one can find look like scattered parts of a system no longer understood.
Doctors, as on the Congo, prescribe abstinence from various things when
their patients are recovering from illness. The animals most generally
avoided are those which we should class as unclean feeders, such as
crocodiles, hyenas, vultures, etc.; because they are _afiti_—feeding on
the dead.
Folk-stories frequently refer to such prohibitions. Thus, in one, when a
girl is married, her mother tells the bridegroom that she must never be
asked to pound anything but castor-oil beans. His mother, determined to
overcome this fancied laziness, insists on the young wife’s helping to
pound the maize; she does so, and is immediately turned to water.
Various ‘dances on several occasions,’ which are important items in
native life, ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in this place, since they
undoubtedly are religious ceremonies; but they can be considered more
fully in the course of the following chapters. The same may be said
of the _unyago_ or _chinamwali_ ‘mysteries’; but one or two points in
connection with the latter may be just touched on here. The _zinyao_
dances held in the villages of the Anyanja on these occasions perhaps
embody some tradition, though what it is, no one, so far as I know, has
yet made out. Figures are traced by scattering flour on the smooth ground
of the _bwalo_, representing animals, usually the leopard, the crocodile,
and, strangely enough, the whale. What the word _namgumi_, which is thus
translated in Dr. Scott’s dictionary, really means, or is derived from,
it would be interesting to know—though reports of such an animal may have
been received from the coast people. Never having seen the _zinyao_, as
these figures are called, I can form no opinion as to what the _namgumi_
is intended to represent. The word is common to Nyanja and Yao; perhaps
adopted by the former from the latter, in which it means ‘a large fish,
the picture of which is drawn on the ground by the head-instructor on
the day of sending the boys back to their homes.’ But some light may
be thrown on the matter by the fact that Mr. Lindsay (of the Limbi,
Blantyre), passing through the bush where one of these ceremonies had
been held, saw a huge clay model (he thought about forty feet long) of
some creature which the English-speaking native with him told him was
‘a whale,’ but which was more like one of the extinct saurians of the
Oolitic period. He was certain it was like no living creature he knew of.
One observer describes circles filled with geometrical patterns traced
on the ground, but makes no mention of the animals, except from hearsay.
Besides the drawing of these figures, dances are performed by men got
up as various animals. This is done by means of real heads carefully
preserved and mounted on sticks, while the bodies are represented by
calico stretched over wooden hoops. One such figure—say that of an
elephant or buffalo—requires several men to move it, of course hidden
by the draperies. Other performers wear masks of plaited grass, and are
weird figures supposed to represent the spirits of the dead. These dances
are held by moonlight; and the explanation generally given is that they
are intended to frighten and impress the young people who have that day
come of age. What ideas are embodied may be a matter of conjecture, but,
for the present at least, nothing certain can be said on the subject.
_Note._—Since the above chapter was written, I have learned
from a correspondent in Nyasaland that there are secret
societies among the Yaos, which practise cannibalism, and that
the practice has been spreading of late years. In the absence
of further particulars, it is impossible to determine how much
of this was ceremonial in origin and how much due to a depraved
taste in certain individuals which may have originated in a
time of famine. See also Sir H. H. Johnston, _British Central
Africa_, pp. 446, 447.
CHAPTER V
NATIVE LIFE—I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Villages. Huts. Birth. Naming. Dress. Childhood’s rights.
Games. Plastic art-work. Daily life.
I cannot begin this chapter better than by describing one of the villages
I know best—those of the Anyanja in the Upper Shiré district.
This district lies between the Kirk Mountains on the west and the Zomba
range on the east, and the part I am thinking of is a fertile plain,
slightly undulating in parts and crossed by two good-sized streams, which
slopes down from the western mountains to the river. As you look from
the hill on which our house stood, you see a wide level—green during
the rains, yellow when the grass is dry, with patches of bush here and
there and one grove of great trees plainly in sight—the _nkalango_,
where the dead are buried. Here and there, dotted about the plain, are
little groups of huts, several of which, taken together, may be held to
constitute a village. Each group, as a rule, contains one family (_i.e._
husband and wife or wives with their children), and is enclosed in a
stout fence of grass and reeds, woven as closely as matting, and tall
enough to keep any ordinary wild beast from leaping over. There is a door
to this enclosure, but, not being on hinges, it is usually invisible in
the daytime, as the people take it down, and, as often as not, lay it on
some short posts fixed in the ground, and use it as a table, on which
they can spread out grain or other things to dry. At night the door is
fastened by cross-bars, and perhaps thorn-bushes are stuck in at the
sides to give additional security.
Inside the enclosure stand the round huts, with their conical thatched
roofs—three, four, or more, according to the number of the family.
Between them are the corn-bins, called _nkokwe_—in a small enclosure only
one, or perhaps two. In the picture, which is that of a Yao village near
Domasi, several of these _nkokwe_ are to be seen—one with the top off—but
they do not look as neat as one often sees them. They are like huge round
baskets, woven of split bamboo, seven or eight feet high, without top or
bottom, raised from the ground on a low platform roughly floored with
small logs, and covered with a conical roof like those of the huts, but
not fastened down, so that it can be tilted up by means of a stick, or
taken off altogether when corn is wanted. They are reached by a primitive
ladder made of two poles, and cross-pieces lashed between them with bark.
This Yao village is in several ways different from the one I am
describing. It is larger, and, being in a more settled district, not
enclosed in a fence, though some of the huts may have a semicircular one
before the door, to screen it from the wind. The houses, too, are many of
them square, a fashion introduced, in some places by Europeans, in others
by coast people.
The huts in the enclosure have their doors facing inward; there may be
a tree (probably the ‘prayer-tree’) in the middle of the vacant space;
in any case, you will see the mortars, in which the women pound the
grain, perhaps a reed mat, with flour drying on it, or millet waiting
to be husked, and one or more little fires, with their three stones for
supporting the cooking-pot. Perhaps there will be also a pigeon-house,
like a neatly plaited basket, with a pointed roof, raised on a post,
and another post close by, supporting half an old water-jar, which has
come to grief, but can still be used as a bath and drinking-place for
the pigeons. The fowl-house, if any, is somewhere between, and rather
behind the huts, and perhaps there is also a house for the goats, but
some people prefer to have their stock sleeping in the hut with them, for
security’s sake. I remember calling at Sambamlopa’s one day, and finding
his mother engaged in plastering three or four stalls for the goats
against the circular wall of the hut, just leaving room for some of the
family to sleep between them and the central fireplace.
Sometimes there is a single enclosure, standing by itself; sometimes
several are grouped very closely together, the entrances being reached
by narrow, winding paths between the stockades, which, I suppose, are
intended to puzzle the enemy, in case of a night attack. Two old men,
brothers, Pembereka and Kaboa, had their enclosures side by side, and
the sacred tree in the narrow space of ground between the two. A little
way off, on one side of the path, was the well mentioned in the last
chapter, which I saw the women clearing out; and near this, too, some
trees had been left standing.
Entering Pembereka’s stockade, one day in early spring, we found a
certain bustle and excitement pervading the place, the cause of which was
soon apparent, when we saw the head-wife, old Anapiri (the same whom I
found conducting the rain-ceremony a fortnight later), seated on a mat,
with a new-born baby on her knees. It was a queer little yellow thing;
they always start in life very light-coloured, but grow darker before
long. They also seem, to me, at least, to have more hair than European
babies, though they are not allowed to retain it. The mother on this
occasion was not visible—she was a younger wife of Pembereka’s; she was
in one of the huts, which she would not leave for some days—perhaps
eight or nine, perhaps less. The baby is supposed to stay with her, till
formally ‘brought out into the world’; but it may be that Anapiri had
been giving it its first bath and oiling. The eldest child of a family is
called the ‘child of the washing,’ or ‘of oil’—not that the others are
not bathed and oiled, but this is a ceremonial washing (with ‘medicine’)
and anointing. (Both children and grown-ups require plenty of oil to keep
their skins from cracking and chapping; they neither look nor feel well
without it.)
A Yao woman used—sometimes, at any rate, if not always—to go out into the
bush a few days before the birth of a child. One or two women would go
with her, to put up a little grass shelter and look after her, till they
could bring back mother and baby to the village, where, in the case of
a first child, they were met with great joy, the grandmother coming out
to welcome them and singing, ‘I have got a grandchild, let me rejoice.’
The mother would then go into the special house set apart for her—no
one being allowed to enter it except the older women—and stay there for
three or six days. If the baby dies during this interval, no mourning is
held for it; it has not been formally introduced into the world, and its
spirit is not supposed to count, or require propitiating. Perhaps they
think it has not really attained to a separate existence of its own.
When the time of seclusion is over, the old women shave the mother’s
head and also the baby’s, and they are brought out and rejoiced over.
The baby is now named by one of the women. I am not sure, however, that
the name is always given quite so soon. A Nyanja woman once seemed very
much amused when I asked her baby’s name, and said, ‘It has no name—it’s
only an infant.’ She was going about with it on her back, so that it must
have been more than a few days old if the custom of seclusion had been
observed. But perhaps she only thought it unlucky to tell me the name,
being a stranger.
Children are sometimes called after their father, or other relations, and
frequently a person who is no relation ‘may make “friendship” with the
babe and give it his own name, or the name of his brother or sister.’
Very often, too, the name is determined by some circumstance connected
with the place or time of birth. The father may have been making a canoe
(_ngalawa_), and finished it on the day of the child’s birth, so he will
name it Ngalawa accordingly. I knew a small boy called Chipululu, ‘the
wilderness,’ because, as his mother explained, ‘he was born at the time
of the hunger, when the people had to go into the bush to gather food.’
The baby at Pembereka’s was named Donna,[17] in honour of ourselves, as
we happened to visit the family on the day when he arrived. His being
a boy is nothing to the purpose—there is no such thing as grammatical
gender in the Bantu languages, and no one thinks (in Nyanja, at any rate)
of making any difference between the names given to girls and boys. In
fact, one occasionally finds the same name borne by both. Most names
have some obvious meaning—‘Leaves,’ ‘Affliction,’ ‘Wind on the Water,’
‘It goes,’ ‘We shall see it when we die,’ ‘I have been a Fool,’ ‘Ends
of Grass,’ ‘The Day of Beer,’ are a few specimens. But there are others
not so easy to make out, and if you ask, people will tell you ‘they are
just names—nothing more.’ Probably, unless they are found to be borrowed
from another language, these will be old words, obsolete except as proper
names. Sometimes, too, a compound, used as a name, is so contracted that
its separate parts are scarcely recognisable.
Mothers, when seated, hold their babies in their arms and on their knees,
just as they do in other countries. But when walking about, they carry
them on their backs, supported by a piece of cloth knotted in front, the
two upper corners passing under the arms and over the breast, the lower
round the waist; or, in some parts, by a goat-skin, with strings tied to
the four legs. The babies develop a most marvellous power of holding on.
One sees them sometimes spread out like the letter X; sometimes, when the
cloth is quite firmly fixed, and allows of a comfortable attitude, seated
in ‘the bight’ of it, with their feet appearing round the mother’s waist
in front. I do not remember seeing babies seated astride the hip (as
in India), but no doubt it is sometimes done, as shown in the group of
Likoma Island women in the photograph.
[Illustration: 1. WOMEN ON LIKOMA ISLAND
2. A MAKUA FAMILY]
Babies are not dressed, but the mothers wash and oil them carefully, and
hang a string of beads round their necks or waists, and a charm or two
to keep them from sickness or accident. In some parts they shave their
heads on both sides, leaving a little band in the middle, running from
the forehead to the nape of the neck. Of course, in cold weather, they
are wrapped in anything that comes handy, and the skin or cloth fastening
them to the mother’s back keeps them as warm as clothing would do. When
not being carried about, they are laid to sleep on a mat. They are not
weaned till two or three years old—sometimes later; in tribes where
cattle are not kept, it is somewhat difficult to get suitable food for
them, but a kind of thin porridge or gruel is made. The Anyanja, though
many of them keep goats, never drink milk.
As soon as the children can walk, or even crawl, they are left to play
about among the huts while the mothers are busy, cooking or pounding
grain. They are left in charge of the grandmother, and perhaps one of the
elder children, when the women have to go away to the gardens. They are
allowed to do pretty much as they like, so long as they keep out of the
fire, or refrain from climbing up any of the many tempting places whence
a fall might be dangerous—the fence, or the _nkokwe_ ladder, or what not.
If there is any one to keep an eye on them, they will be snatched back
in the first case, and fetched down in the second, and slapped in both,
to emphasise the lesson that ‘we don’t want to have a mourning for you
because you died by accident’—that being a wholly wilful and gratuitous
proceeding. One sometimes sees scars of bad burns that must have been
caused by a tumble into the fire; but, on the whole, these infants learn
to take care of themselves after a fashion at a wonderfully early age. It
is when the mothers have begun to put them into European garments that
fatal accidents are apt to occur; the child stands at what would be quite
a safe distance from the fire but for the little shirt or frock, and the
calico is ablaze before any one is aware.
Children wear nothing much for the first few years, unless they feel
cold, and are supplied with a skin, or a piece of cloth, to wrap
themselves in. The little boy in the illustration has a pretty complete
toilet. This family, like the group above them, were photographed at
Likoma, but the mother is a Makua and wears the _chipini_—the leaden
ornament like a drawing-pin stuck through a hole in the side of the
nose—which is in fashion among the coast women and some of the Yaos.
Very little Angoni boys have a mat of beads, three or four inches square,
worked for them by their mother or elder sister, and wear it like an
apron. Sometimes also they have a ‘sporran,’ made from the skin of some
small animal, such as a field-rat. In most homes now there is enough
calico to give each of the children a piece to wrap round the waist,
as they grow bigger. The only difference between the dress of the boys
and girls, as a rule, is that the latter put theirs on a little higher
up. The stuff used is the cheap ‘unbleached,’ which can be got in this
country for about twopence a yard. Babies are washed very carefully;
older children are left to do much as they please in the matter of
cleanliness; but they love bathing, when the means are accessible, and
near a lake or river all know how to swim.
Small children’s heads are shaved, from time to time, in the interests
of cleanliness, by their mothers; older boys and girls do it for each
other. I saw a woman performing this service for her little girl who
was squatting on the ground before her; she first greased the hair with
some mixture which she took out of a small earthen pot, and which had
the consistency of soft soap, and then scraped from the nape of the neck
forward and upward, with a little spatula-shaped iron razor, held firmly
in the right hand. Having finished the hair, she went on to shave the
eyebrows, but I do not think this is always done.
The strings of beads which the very little girls wear round their waists
disappear from view when they grow older and wear a cloth; but they are
kept on all the same, and added to from time to time, till, when they are
grown up, they may have several thick rolls. These, of course, are not
worn for ornament, but it is considered the safest and handiest way of
storing property, and a woman thus carries her private fortune about with
her.
Children and young people often stick flowers in their hair, or into the
perforation of the ear, and girls at Likoma weave wreaths or crowns out
of the _namteke_ blossoms, a small kind of sunflower.
As soon as children are able to eat solid food, they fare much the same
as their elders, though there are two or three kinds of sweet, thick
gruel, besides that already mentioned, which are made specially for the
younger ones, and also sometimes for sick people. It is sweetened—not
with sugar, but with malt (that is, sprouting maize or millet), or the
juice of a kind of millet, which is almost as sweet as sugar-cane. The
stalks of this _msale_—and also sugar-cane, where that is to be had—are
constantly being chewed, both by children and grown-up people. The
results are visible on every native path as little bundles of tousled
white fibrous matter—and the new comer is apt to wonder what they are.
There is a game which mothers sometimes play with children supposed to
be too old for special infant diet; they tickle the child’s back with
a stalk of grass, and, if he starts, accuse him of having ‘eaten the
baby’s gruel’—which would be more attractive than the ordinary _nsima_.
It can readily be inferred that the young are not overburdened in the way
of education. Some training there must be—some elementary inculcation of
modesty and manners, to judge by results: but the deference shown to very
small children—especially boys; the girls begin to make themselves useful
at an early age, and are duly kept in their places—is somewhat ludicrous,
and one would expect it to be disastrous, only that the effects do not
seem to answer such expectation. When a six-foot Ntumbi native informed
me that his son (a precocious youth of perhaps eight, and extremely
minute for that age) had failed to attend school because he had gone
‘to a beer-drinking at So-and-So’s,’ and I expressed some not unnatural
surprise, not unmingled with reprobation, the father replied, ‘If he has
made up his mind to go, who can hinder him?’ ‘_Akana mwini_—his lordship
refuses,’ was the answer given by the female relatives of another
youthful truant to the teacher of the Blantyre mission-school.
I was still new to the country when I went out for a walk at Blantyre
with one Limwichi—aged, I suppose, ten, and with something of a
reputation for _chipongwe_ (the best translation is ‘cheek’)—to carry my
butterfly-net. We met a big Yao, meditatively walking along and eating
a piece of _chinangwa_ (cassava root) as he went. Whether Limwichi was
previously acquainted with this gentleman or not, I don’t know; but he
walked coolly up to him and asked (with what degree of politeness my
proficiency in the language did not enable me to judge) for a share in
this delicacy. I half expected to see Limwichi’s ears boxed, instead
of which the man broke off a piece of his _chinangwa_ and handed it to
him. I fear he did not say ‘Thank you.’ (Some hold that natives never
do—perhaps not understanding that ‘_Chabwino_’—‘It is good’ conveys the
same thing.)
Limwichi, I am sorry to say, had been to school—not long enough, let us
say, to have his manners (though these were not precisely ferocious)
softened by learning; but nothing could be gentler and prettier than the
ways of the unschooled Ntumbi village children who, having got over their
first shyness at the unwonted white faces which made babies shriek and
dogs bark from end to end of the kraals, followed one along the narrow
native paths—somewhat embarrassing in their desire to walk alongside,
where the nature of the ground made it difficult, and to hold one’s
hands, half a dozen at once—but not really forward or troublesome. I
never, with fair opportunities to have come across that sort of thing if
it had been at all common, saw a child struck or otherwise ill-treated.
On the whole, I think, if native parents fail in their duty, it is
through being too easy-going.
I cannot understand the statement sometimes made, that native children
do not know how to play, are without toys and games, and have rather
a melancholy time of it altogether. The traveller who speaks of their
portentous and unnatural solemnity has, of course, only observed them
under the inspiring influence of his own immediate neighbourhood. It is
curious to contrast the pathetic appeals on this score to the compassion
of English children which one sometimes reads with the experience of
the missionaries at Magomero. ‘Indeed it was a question with us at one
time what it was we could teach these children of ours in the way of
amusement. At last, Scudamore and Waller thought to surprise them with
a kite. The kite was made, the children assembled to see it ascend, but
it was lop-sided and heavy, would not go up, went down, and the children
made merry thereat. Said Waller, “You have never seen anything like this
before, have you?” Said a little urchin in reply, “Oh yes! we have,
though. We have seen them, but ours were different to yours. Ours went
up, yours go down.”’
These children had been hunted away from their homes, some of them had
lost their parents, they had all suffered more or less from hunger and
some of them from illness, so that a certain amount of depression would
have been excusable; but the spirit in which they entered into the kindly
meant effort to amuse them is thoroughly characteristic. But for that
casual question, their instructors would never have learned that they
knew how to make kites which would go up. Miss Woodward tells me that she
has seen the Likoma children playing with kites, but I have never seen
one myself, and cannot describe their exact construction.
There are two kinds of tops, the wooden one (_nguli_), which is kept up
by beating, like our whipping-top, with a lash of three strands of bark
tied to a bit of stick. The other, the _nsikwa_, is made of a round
piece of gourd-shell, with a spindle of cane through the middle of it.
‘The game is played by two parties sitting opposite to each other, with
a bare space of hard ground between them, and spinning the tops across
the empty space with as much force as a twirl between the finger and
thumb is capable of, at little pieces of maize-cob set up before their
adversaries.’ Any number can play, one top and one piece of maize-cob
being allowed to each, and the game is to knock over all the pieces on
the opposite side before those on one’s own side are overthrown. The
player whose piece is knocked over catches his adversary’s top and fires
it back at him.
Maize-cobs (_zikonyo_) are also used in the game of _ponyana zikonyo_,
or throwing these missiles at each other; and in that of _tamangitsana_
(literally ‘making run,’ in which one side pretend to be Angoni, and
carry shields). There is a very popular game called _chiwewe_, which is
a somewhat original exercise with a skipping-rope. One player squats
down and whirls the cord, weighted at one end, round his head, so as to
describe round himself a circle of two or three yards in diameter, while
the others jump over it; the one who fails to clear it has to take his
place in the middle.
[Illustration: 1. “MCHOMBWA” OR “MSUO”
2. NYANJA BALL-GAME]
Children build little houses of grass, and otherwise imitate the
proceedings of grown-up people; the boys make themselves little bows,
with arrows of grass-stalks (sometimes these are tipped with sharp bits
of bamboo and strong enough to kill small birds with), and girls grind
soft stones to powder, pretending they are _ufa_, and carry maize-cobs on
their backs for babies. The little Yao girls have a kind of wooden doll
called a _mwali_ (‘girl’): there is no attempt at representing the human
figure; in fact, the thing is more like a ninepin than anything else,
except that both ends are rounded, so that it will not stand up, and one
of them, by way of suggesting the head, is covered with small scarlet
seeds, fitted on like a wig.
Cat’s cradle is played, though I am not certain how, and there is a
variety of guessing games, called ‘tricks’ (_zinyao_), such as _chagwa_,
which is something like ‘hunt-the-slipper’; and another where ‘three
arrows or three sticks are set, and one guesses which is chosen—if he
guess wrongly, his companions laugh and beat him in fun with the sticks.’
An elementary kind of swing is sometimes extemporised by means of a
convenient creeper hanging from the branch of a large tree; but I think I
have also seen one made with a rope.
There is a genuine native ball-game (_mpira_) played with an india-rubber
ball, in which the players stand in a circle, and, after every catch,
clap their hands rhythmically and leap into the air. This, being done
with great regularity, has a very pleasing effect. In one account I have
seen, an umpire is described as calling out ‘Hock! hock!’ after every
good catch. This is an impossible word in either Yao or Nyanja; one
conjectures it may be meant for _yaka_, ‘catch.’ The well-known game
of ‘mankala,’ which seems to be played all the way down from Abyssinia
to Mashonaland, and to be of Arab origin, is here called _mchombwa_
and _msuo_. The Abyssinians play it on a board, but this is not at all
necessary; the four rows of holes can be made on any bit of smooth
ground, and one often sees them in the _bwalo_ of a Nyanja village, where
the men sit smoking and gossiping and weaving baskets. It has been said
that no European has ever succeeded in mastering this game; and I must
own that I have always failed to follow the explanations obligingly given
by the players, but Dr. Scott’s description seems fairly clear. Premising
that there are two players, each provided with a handful of pebbles or
seeds, and six (or nine) holes in each row, it is as follows: ‘The game
consists in distributing one’s men along the rows of holes on one’s own
side, and again moving them up one hole at a time, until those in any
one hole surpass in number those in the enemy’s hole opposite, when the
latter are appropriated and placed out of the game; the game is won when
one is able to appropriate the last remaining one on his opponent’s side.’
_Chuchu_ is a kind of combination of this game and ‘hunt-the-slipper.’
A spiral is drawn on the ground, and holes made in it; three stones are
chosen and two put into the holes. ‘The people are divided into two
bodies, and the stone belonging to each party is moved up according to
the skill of that party in guessing who has the other stone—this third
stone is put in the hands of one by a person who goes all round and
pretends to give the stone to each.’ A somewhat similar game is played
with ten holes and nine stones, and the boy who goes away (or hides his
face) has to guess whether there is a stone in any particular hole at the
moment he is asked, or not.
Some of the above, especially the _mchombwa_, are also played by
adults, who enter into them with great zest. On the coast, and in the
Portuguese settlements, they also play at cards, though the game, or
that form of it which has now spread to the Shiré Highlands, is said to
be ‘unintelligible to Europeans.’ They call the court-cards after local
celebrities, such as Sir Harry Johnston (‘Jonsen’) and the late Mr. John
Buchanan (‘Makanani’). Speaking of games adopted from Europeans—though
it does not strictly belong to our subject—I cannot forbear quoting the
following description from Mr. H. L. Duff’s _Nyasaland under the Foreign
Office_:—
‘The football played at Kota Kota has scarcely more in common with
Association than with Rugby or any other known rules. Indeed, the
distinguishing peculiarity of the game would seem to be its gay immunity
from any rules or restrictions whatever. No limit is apparently set to
the extent of the ground, to the period of time to be covered, or to
the number of those who participate in the game. The spectators may and
do join in when and where they please, and continue to play as long as
they can stand or see. The ball, once fairly committed to the mêlée,
disappears for good. So, of course, does any man who has the misfortune
to tumble down in a scrimmage. The goal-posts are rickety superfluities,
a mere concession to appearances, heeded by nobody and nearly always
prostrated at the first rush. The same abundant energy and the same lack
of restraint are noticeable wherever these Central African natives take
to any European game, and they take to European games of the rougher sort
very readily indeed. I have seen them at Blantyre clubbing one another
on the head, under pretence of playing hockey, just as they rend one
another to pieces at Kota Kota under pretence of playing football. It is,
however, only fair to add that they show great activity, enthusiasm, and
pluck; nor is there much reason to doubt that they might develop into
really sound players, if they could only be induced to adopt a coherent
system and a somewhat more chastened style.’
Games are very often played by moonlight; some of these come rather under
the heading of dances, and _vice versâ_. In fact, the words _sewera_,
‘to play,’ and _bvina_, ‘to dance,’ are used interchangeably; on one
occasion, when the drums boomed all night long from Chona’s kraal, and
the dancing was still going on at 8 A.M., we were told that ‘it was the
Angoni playing.’ As the drums are an essential feature of the dance, this
moonlight diversion becomes trying for the hearer in the vicinity of
European settlements, where empty tins can be got hold of and made to do
duty in the orchestra. The boarders at the Blantyre girls’ school used
to let off their superfluous gaiety by drumming on the zinc baths used
in the laundry, and this was permitted, within limits, lest worse should
befall.
One of these moonlight games, at Likoma, consists in the players joining
hands in a ring and dancing round and round, singing the words _Zunguli,
zunguli, bwata_ (‘Go round, go round, crouch!’) over and over again.
Every time the word _bwata_ comes, the whole ring drops into a squatting
position. In another, ‘a ring of boys dance round one boy crouching in
the middle with a cap or something on his head, and each one of the
ring has in turn to dance round the boy in the middle, keeping his back
to him, not losing his hold of his companions on either hand, and not
displacing the object on the boy’s head.’ One refrain sung with this
game is: ‘_Katuli, katuli, eee katuli_—don’t tread on the boy who has
it, don’t tread on him!’—I have not been able to find out the meaning of
_katuli_ (_e-e-e_ is just the repeated vowel sound, very common in songs,
of which the refrain is often nothing more than _i_, _i_, _i_ or _o_,
_a_, _o_), it probably has none, as now used, and belongs to the same
category as ‘_Tit, tat, toe_’ and the like. Words sung in games are often
more or less of this kind, though sometimes quite intelligible, like
_Nkondo lelo ijija_—‘War comes to-day,’ which belongs to a game something
like ‘Fox and Geese.’ ‘Two captains, each with a long tail of followers,
holding tight one behind the other, face one another, singing this song,
and each seeks to swoop upon the last man in his opponent’s tail and
make a prisoner of him, without his own tail being broken.’ Wrestling is
practised (at least by the Yaos), and a kind of single-stick.
One sometimes comes on a little group of children quietly busy and happy
on the bank of a stream and finds that they are engaged in modelling
figures out of clay. One does not see this art carried into adult life;
and as there is no attempt to make the results permanent by burning them,
they are not often met with. I suppose it was an unusually successful
group I once saw, set up on the ant-heap just outside Ndabankazi’s kraal;
it was, I think, meant to represent a European (there could be no mistake
about that, for he had a hat on) riding on an ox. I was so struck with
this work of art that I offered to buy it if it could be baked, and
understood that the offer had been agreed to—but nothing came of it.
It has been remarked that what knowledge they have seems to come to
these African children instinctively—for no one ever sees them taught,
or chastised for not knowing! Certainly one wonders how they learn some
things which the smallest children do quite easily. Twisting string,
for instance, out of bark, or the fibre of the _bwazi_, the _sonkwe_
hibiscus, and other plants, is a thing which requires a certain knack,
yet you see the whole population at it, when they have the materials
handy, and nothing else to do—from the old grandmother sitting on the
ground to have a chat with you, to the little boy or girl whose attention
is found to be wandering in school. I imagine they must always have
bunches of fibrous stuff secreted somehow about their persons. The
process begins with rubbing a bit of it against one’s leg with the open
hand—further than that, I cannot tell exactly what is done, or how they
manage to twist two strands round each other without making the whole
thing curl up, as it does when I try it.
Having got a sufficient supply of string, the next thing is to make
string bags—which is done by making a row of loops for the bottom of the
bag, and working round and round, putting the end of the string through
each loop to make a fresh row. Usually the end is fastened to a hen’s
feather to make it go through easily. It is a kind of netting without the
knot, and is often quite tastefully done in string of two colours.
But the realities of life begin to make themselves felt. Girls get real
babies tied to their backs instead of dolls, as soon as they are big
enough to carry them. I have no doubt that this injures their growth
less than dragging them about in their arms; and anyhow they are usually
very cheerful about it. Then they have to fetch water, and, as soon as
they are able, to help their mothers in pounding corn and hoeing in the
gardens. The boys have an easier time—at ten, or so, perhaps earlier,
they are set to herding the goats, and will start for the _dambo_ in the
early morning, as soon as the kraal gate is opened, with their sticks,
and, during the rainy season, an old worn-out shield to shelter under in
case of a shower. They take a bit of cold porridge with them, done up in
a leaf, or some roasted maize cobs, unless they are near enough to run
home for the family meal a little before noon. Sometimes they make a fire
in the _dambo_, and roast their maize themselves—or any small game they
may have taken. They shoot small birds with arrows, or knock them down
with sticks; they set various kinds of traps in the grass, and, if they
can find the burrows (which are fairly common), they dig out field-mice
(_mbewa_), which are considered a rare delicacy, and roast them as shown
in the illustration.
The various kinds of traps will be described more fully under the heading
of Hunting and Fishing.
When not cooking, eating, or keeping their charges from straying, they
will find plenty of diversion to help them through the day. They build
little houses in trees, putting up a platform of sticks and a grass
shelter over it; they dig out mole-crickets (_lololo_), guided by the
sound of their chirping, or they make models, as aforesaid, if they find
a patch of moist clay, or an ant-heap and water in happy conjunction. In
fact, whenever, in walking through bush or dambo, you come across any
phenomenon obviously due to human agency—such, for instance, as hats
made out of leaves pinned together with thorns or bits of grass—yet
without visible author or apparent object, you may be sure your escort
will attribute it to the _abusa_—herd-boys. When I asked the meaning of
a number of tufts of grass knotted together in the middle of a piece of
meadow, the children cheerfully said that the _abusa_ had done it in
order to trip people up. I think, however, that they need not be credited
with this, as it is more probable that some one had been marking out a
plot for hoeing next rainy season; and besides, natives are not in the
habit of walking off the path.
[Illustration: 1. BOYS DIGGING OUT FIELD-MICE
2. CAUGHT!
3. ROASTING THE “MEAT,” SPITTED ON A STICK
4. EATING
Note the flat basket of porridge, for which the roast mice are the
“relish”]
They divert themselves also with music, of a sort, making flutes and
whistles out of hollow reeds, or joints of bamboo—it is surprising what
sweet sounds they get out of a very simple bamboo flute. There was a boy,
Bvalani, who used to play on his flute all the way up the hill, as he
came to school. He further distinguished himself by wearing a charming
little coronet, plaited out of pale green palm-leaves, into which he had
stuck two or three blossoms of the crimson ‘Turk’s cap’ lily. Sometimes
they fasten several lengths of reed together to make a kind of Pan-pipes.
The only times they are likely to get into serious trouble are when they
let the goats get into the gardens—or when (being set to watch the fields
when the crops are ripening) they fail to drive off the baboons.
Then, as the sun gets low, they drive their respective flocks home, put
them up for the night, and join the family at the evening meal—or, if
that is over, the mothers are sure to have put aside something for them.
And then come the evening games, on moonlight nights—or the sitting round
the fire, telling stories and asking riddles. This is the appropriate
hour for such amusements. A little Yao boy told Mr. Macdonald that ‘the
old people’ said that ‘if boys recited riddles at midday, horns would
grow on their foreheads.’ This _might_ be intended as a precaution
against their attention being absorbed by this pastime when they ought to
be herding.
The girls sometimes join the games and dances, but they also have
their own amusements apart; and the boys, as they grow older, stand
on their dignity and ‘keep themselves to themselves.’ They have their
own dormitory (_gowero_) when too big to sleep in their mothers’ huts
with the babies; and in some villages, they have an open shed reserved
for their use, where they make a fire in the evenings, and sit round
it, telling tales and roasting sweet potatoes till a late hour. When
they are older, and after they have attended the dances in the bush and
been recognised as men, they are admitted to the bachelors’ house, the
_bwalo_, till they marry and set up an establishment of their own. In a
village like Ntumbi, of small, scattered kraals, the grown-up men of each
family will most likely have a small hut to themselves, as there will not
be a regular _bwalo_, in this sense—which is not quite the same as when
the word is used to mean the ‘village green’ or ‘forum.’
Like most other boys, they quarrel occasionally, and fight sometimes,
with fists, sticks, and anything else—scratching and biting not barred.
But on the whole they are not particularly combative, unless under
exceptional provocation, and their affectionate comradeship is a very
pleasing trait. A boy will never eat alone; and special treats, such as
biscuits, are often subdivided into very minute portions to make them
go round. The boy in the illustration is performing a service for his
friend which is only too frequently needed of late years, since the
non-indigenous pest, the jigger (_matekenya_), was introduced by Arab
caravans at the North End, and gradually found its way south to the
Zambezi. Unless the insect’s egg-sac can be extracted (usually from under
the toe-nail) before the eggs are hatched, a very bad sore is the result.
With the ‘mysteries,’ childhood ends, and a new phase of life begins,
which will be dealt with in the next chapter.
[Illustration: 1. BOY EXTRACTING JIGGER FROM A COMPANION’S FOOT
2. HERD-BOYS COOKING THEIR MIDDAY MEAL]
CHAPTER VI
NATIVE LIFE—II
Initiation. Marriage. Division of labour. Meals. Food.
Hut-building. The _bwalo_. Affection.
All Bantu tribes regard the passage from childhood to adult life as a
solemn event to be marked by more or less elaborate ceremonies. These
vary in different places, and some may have disused them altogether,
either through European influence, or because they have been so harassed
by enemies and driven from place to place as to have lost many of their
old usages. But it is safe to speak of the custom, in one form or
another, as universal among them. Indeed, it exists, or has existed,
all over the world; and the rejoicings over the ‘coming of age’ of the
heir to an estate, or the pleasant little excitement of a girl ‘coming
out’ at her first ball, represent it to this day among ourselves. These
things, with us, are mainly a matter of sentiment—that is to say, they
are not supposed to exercise any mysterious influence on the future life
of the boy or girl—to ensure good luck or avert disaster. But among
the people whom, for want of a better word, we call ‘savages’—it is an
unsatisfactory name for various reasons which I am not concerned to
discuss here—they are the outcome of a feeling that life is surrounded
by unknown and incalculable forces which must in some way be propitiated
and made harmless. Besides this, there is the desire to give their
children such instruction as may give them some help through the
difficulties that lie before them. In fact, in many tribes, the only
systematic teaching of any sort is that given at the ‘mysteries.’
Every year, during the dry season, and before the grass is burnt, if
arrangements have been made to hold one of these ceremonies, the Yaos
send people out into the bush, to clear a space of ground and build some
huts and booths for the _unyago_. The boys who have reached the age of
sixteen or thereabouts go there, carrying their sleeping-mats with them,
and stay, under the charge of one or more elderly men, for perhaps two
months. They are armed with sticks, to be thrown at any person who may
intrude; for no one but the boys and their instructors is permitted to be
present. Various dances are said to take place, the opening one lasting
three days, and the boys are given advice about the conduct of life,
and instructed in the traditions of the tribe. The story of the origin
of Lake Nyasa, mentioned in Chapter IV., is one said to be told at the
mysteries.
But as no European has ever been present at these celebrations, and as
those natives who might be willing to tell Europeans about them have
never been initiated themselves, it is very difficult to say anything
with certainty on this head. The booths are, as a rule, destroyed when
the _unyago_ is over, with all other traces of what has gone on—the
clay figure of a lizard seen by Mr. Lindsay in the bush was quite an
exceptional case. The sticks above mentioned, with others used in the
dances, are burnt or broken up; though some are ‘put together at a
cross-road’—doubtless as a charm of some sort. I once saw a short club
of dark wood, with a carved head, said to have been used at one of these
dances, which was sufficiently remarkable. It was polished with handling,
as if it had seen service for many years, and the head at the top had a
head-dress very like that on Egyptian mummy-cases, and a curiously long
and narrow face with features which I should not like to call un-African,
because I have occasionally seen natives with similar ones, but which was
rather the type of the Wahima[18] than that of the average Bantu. For a
wonder this stick had been offered for sale to the lady who showed it to
me, by a boy who brought it to the house and either could not or would
not—certainly he did not—give any account of how he came by it. He called
it _tsanchima_, which is the name given to the maskers or mummers taking
part in the dance already referred to in Chapter IV.
The principal person at these Yao mysteries is a man called ‘the rattler
of the tails’ (tails of wild cats and other animals are a great item in
witch-doctors’ outfits, and believed to be possessed of all sorts of
occult virtues), who communicates to the initiated all information about
the customs of the tribe, and delivers moral lectures, as for instance,
on unselfishness. A man who refuses to share his food with another is
laughed at as ‘uninitiated’ (_mwisichana_). Before they go home, all the
boys are given new names; and henceforth it is a deadly insult to address
one by his childish appellation. When they go home, they are promoted to
sleep _m’bwalo_, with the other unmarried men, and continue to do so till
they marry and set up a house or houses of their own.
The girls’ _unyago_ lasts a month. They go out to the bush with their
instructresses, the head-woman (who gets a fee in calico for each
candidate) being called ‘the cook of the mysteries.’ They are instructed
in house-building, making pots, cooking, and other duties of married
life, and put through a regular drill in these and other things, such
as pounding corn, carrying water, etc., which they have probably done
often enough before. They also go (symbolically, of course) through the
whole round of agricultural operations, pretending to sow the grain,
then hoeing, weeding, and reaping. The old women give them advice as
to housekeeping and the duties of married life, and warn them of the
penalties which await them if unfaithful to their husbands. They are
anointed with oil, mixed with certain ‘medicines,’ their heads are
shaved, and they are dressed in bark-cloth, which is now almost disused
in everyday life. Towards the close of the ceremony, the roof of a
house—or a skeleton model of one—is put over the heads of, say, ten at a
time, and they have to carry it about. This is supposed to be symbolical
of their position as pillars of the home. They are not allowed to leave
the scene of the mysteries till everything is over; and, as in the case
of the boys, no one not taking part is permitted to approach; while
sticks are laid in a peculiar way on the path leading to the place, to
show that it is barred. Some friends of mine once met the band of girls
leaving for home, ‘all freshly anointed and dripping with oil,’ and soon
came to the deserted encampment, with grass sheds built round three sides
of a square, and divided into small compartments in which the girls had
been sleeping. In the middle of the square were traces of pots having
been made, and _ufa_ pounded.
The whole proceeding is called ‘being danced.’ The Yaos ‘dance’ girls
very young—mere children of seven or eight sometimes—and, from what I
have seen, I should say, personally, that they were not improved by the
process. But the Yao practice cannot be regarded as typical, as there is
reason to believe that it has been modified by the influence of the coast
people.
The Anyanja do not ‘dance’ boys at all, and the ceremonies for the girls
only last, in some parts, for one day, and the candidates are all of full
age. The old women who are their teachers go outside the village with
them into the grass which has been left unburnt, and there they remain
all day, coming back after dark to the _zinyao_ dances in the _bwalo_,
which have already been referred to. Figures of animals are drawn on the
smooth ground with ashes or flour, and the people dance round them.[19]
The men also go out into the bush to disguise themselves, as already
described, in grotesque masks of wood and cloth, with grass, horns and
skins of wild beasts, and, returning, lead the girls out one by one and
dance with them in the centre of the ring. When it is over, the women
carefully see the girls home. They too have their names changed, and
their former ones are not supposed to be pronounced, unless they fall
into disgrace. There is, too, a strange belief that when witches are at
their cannibal orgies, they call the dead out of the grave by his or her
childish name, and this call cannot be ignored.
On the Lake the course of instruction lasts for several days; and the
girls wear caps made of beads, with other ornaments of the same. There is
also a preliminary course for children, who wear ornaments made of reeds
cut into strips and strung together. A curious feature in this course is
a procession round the village, out at one gate in the stockade and in
at the other, headed by a woman carrying a basket (_mnkungwa_), which
contains ‘certain mysteries.’
Marriage is the next step in life, at least for the girls—though even in
their case it does not always follow immediately. Young men may have to
wait for some years, owing to lack of means or for other reasons. In the
country under the Angoni chiefs they are called on, as we have seen, to
‘serve their time,’ herding the chief’s cattle, and later, perhaps, going
to war.
This is something like the Zulu system, and probably a relic of it. I
have not been able to discover anything similar in the case of the Yaos
or the Anyanja, perhaps because their government is less centralised, and
all chiefs and head-men would have their work done by their own slaves,
who are always on the spot. But the young men without, as yet, any family
ties of their own, may join some caravan going to the coast, or (in
the times when elephants were more abundant and there was no European
administration to interfere) put in the time hunting or slave-raiding, or
go to work for the white men, or, finally, stay about the villages, and
have a good time at beer-drinkings and dances for a year or two.
There are several different forms of marriage, and there is no
theoretical limit to the number of wives any man may have; but there is
a difference between the status of free and slave wives. The rules as to
who may or may not marry each other will be considered in another chapter.
Neither Yaos nor Anyanja, in the Shiré Highlands, at least, buy their
wives (unless, of course, in the case of a slave woman); but this term,
by the bye, is a very misleading one. The price paid by the Zulus (under
the name of _lobola_) and others cannot properly be called purchase,
being rather in the nature of a settlement or a guarantee that the suitor
is able to support a wife; it is held by her family in trust for her and
her children.
It is very common for girls to be betrothed in infancy, or even
(conditionally) before birth—the suitor (or his parents) giving a
present which has to be returned if she refuses to ratify the engagement
when of age; he also clothes her during the period of waiting—which, as
may be supposed, does not involve any ruinous outlay. The acceptance of
a calico waistcloth, and the girl’s wearing it, make the transaction a
binding one. She is sent to him after the _unyago_, or, sometimes, even
before, in which case she has a special charm given her on that occasion.
I remember hearing of a case where such an arrangement had a tragic end.
A Yao girl, promised by her parents in the way above described to an
elderly man, refused to marry him when the time came, as she preferred a
young man named Tambala, a teacher in the Blantyre school. Whether the
proper steps for dissolving the engagement had been taken or not, I do
not know; in any case the old man refused to give up his claim; and, a
day or two before the marriage was fixed to take place, Tambala was found
dead in the gardens near his village—shot by the disappointed suitor.
But the Anyanja, at any rate, seem to regard the question as quite an
open one, which may be settled by arrangement. A native statement on the
subject is as follows: ‘If the girl, when she is grown up, refuses, her
father takes money (_i.e._ cloth or beads) and gives it to that man,
because, he says, you have clothed my child.’ Nyanja girls, too, are very
often not betrothed in this way. It should also be remembered that the
marriages thus agreed on beforehand by parents are often between boys and
girls of suitable ages, and turn out quite happily.
When a man takes a fancy to a girl whom he finds to be disengaged, he
first of all comes to an understanding with her, then goes to her village
and tells her family—all the relations, including the grandparents, the
elder brother, and, above all, the maternal uncle, are consulted, as well
as the parents—and, if they have no objection, he then goes to his own
people. Having obtained their consent, ‘he returns to build the house,
and when it is nearly completed he calls his own people to meet his
bride’s people on a certain day. The bride’s people cook native porridge,
which is eaten with a fowl, and the marriage is finally ratified.
Unless this porridge and fowl are eaten by the parents of both parties
to the marriage, it is neither legal nor binding, hence this meal may
be regarded as their ceremony of marriage.’ This is stated to be ‘the
normal and legal form of marriage among both Yaos and Anyasa.’ Though not
mentioned in this account, it appears that a present is usually, if not
always, made to the girl’s uncle.
In the Western Upper Shiré district, they have some sort of a dance at
the wedding; but my only authority is a girl who did not give a very
detailed account—only saying that the bride and bridegroom stand by,
while ‘the people dance before them.’ The Wankonde marriage ceremonies
show distinct traces of marriage by capture. It sometimes happens that
women are actually ‘stolen’ and carried off as wives; but this is an
illegal act, not a recognised form of marriage.
Other authorities represent the young man as going first to his own
‘surety’ (who may be his father, his uncle, or his elder brother), and
getting his consent before approaching the girl’s relations. It will be
noticed that he goes and builds a house at the bride’s home. This is
the universal custom, where the marriage of free women is concerned,
with both Anyanja and Yaos. It is connected with the fact (to which we
shall return later on) that children belong to the mother’s kin, not
the father’s. One of the new husband’s first duties is to hoe a garden
for his mother-in-law, though he is bound by the rules of propriety to
avoid her to a certain extent. He must not eat in her presence nor see
her eat, and there are various other restrictions, all of which come to
an end when he has brought her the first grandchild, with a present. The
same rules apply also to the father-in-law, and to the maternal uncles
of both; while the wife has to observe them with regard to her husband’s
parents, and _their_ uncles. The important position which the mother’s
brother holds in the family will be referred to again later.
In practice, the number of wives varies from one to, in the case of a
chief, perhaps twenty. The Makololo and Angoni chiefs used to delight in
showing their consequence by huge harems of over a hundred women, and
the latter, at least, were in the habit of demanding additional wives,
from time to time, from their Anyanja subjects, making them send up a
selection of their daughters, as they sent their sons to herd the chief’s
cattle. But this custom was not followed by the indigenous tribes. Mr.
Macdonald says that, ordinarily, it is a man’s ambition to have five—one
free wife, and three or four slaves, who might at that time (some thirty
years ago) be bought for two buckskins apiece in the Angoni country. A
number of the Anyanja I knew on the other side of the Shiré had two,
some, I think, only one. If a man has more than one free wife, he spends
his time between their different villages, since each of them will remain
at her home. His slave wives are brought to his village, or rather to
that of his chief wife, where he settled on his marriage. They are
supposed to be under her orders and do most of the work; she is sometimes
a stern and even cruel taskmistress, but often they get on very amicably
together. She usually calls them her ‘younger sisters.’
If a man has a second free wife, it is, as a rule, because he has
inherited her from his elder brother according to Bantu custom. He also
inherits the wives of his maternal uncle, if the latter has no younger
brother living at the time of his death.
Wives may be captured in a raid, in which case there are no particular
formalities about the marriage. Some of my Anyanja friends at Ntumbi had
Yao wives who must have been obtained in this way, but appeared to have
settled down quite happily.
‘Another way’—to complete the enumeration—is when a young man’s master or
guardian (for he may, even if free, be under the tutelage of a real or
nominal elder brother) provides him with a wife.
We have spoken of the ‘sureties’ or ‘sponsors,’ who take part in
arranging a marriage. They, especially the wife’s, are of great
importance in married life. They are usually the maternal uncles or
elder brothers of the parties, and the woman’s represents her in all
transactions of any moment.
The feast (if it can be so-called) mentioned above as constituting the
marriage ceremony is sometimes (or used to be) celebrated in a more
elaborate form. In this case, it was the _entering the house_, as soon as
it was finished, which was held to constitute the act of marriage. The
woman would bring with her pots, baskets, a sleeping-mat, and some flour
to cook the first meal with. The man would contribute an axe and a hoe to
the common outfit. One of his wife’s first duties is to plaster the house
he has built, though this will not always be needed. The meeting at which
what we may call the marriage-contract is drawn up, takes place some time
later; perhaps not till the first produce of their new garden is ready.
The wife’s surety is said to ‘come to settle her’ in her home.
She prepares two pots of beer for her husband’s surety or sureties and
two for her own. The former contribute a cock to the banquet, the latter
a laying hen. Both then lay down certain rules for the behaviour of the
young couple, warning the wife against unfaithfulness, and binding both
to resort to the diviner in case of illness or other trouble.
[Illustration: WOMEN POUNDING MAIZE IN YAO VILLAGE
Note the cooking-stones and pots in the foreground; also the square house
(cf. p. 144)]
The division of labour between husband and wife varies a good deal
according to local circumstances. Where the husband goes away with
trading caravans, or on hunting expeditions, or works on a plantation, or
as a _tenga-tenga_ man (carrier), or where he is liable to be summoned
away for weeks at a time (as he was under the Angoni and Makololo) to
work for the chief, the field-work, of course, falls on the wife.
This we shall describe more fully when treating of Agriculture. She
also has to go to the bush to cut firewood, and to the stream or well
for water; to plaster the floor and walls of the house with mud (which
looks like grey stucco when dry); to fetch in supplies of food from
the gardens, to pound and husk the grain, and to do the cooking. I
have only once seen a man pounding at a mortar; this was a Ngoni who
lived temporarily in one of the Blantyre villages, while working on a
plantation, and, no doubt, he was lending a hand with the pounding by way
of payment for his board.
When the husband is at home, he helps in the gardens, cuts grass for
thatching, executes repairs generally on huts and fences, makes the grain
mortar (cut with an adze out of a tree-trunk), spins and weaves (where
this is still done), sews his wife’s calico, and makes mats and baskets.
On the Lake and River many are engaged all day in fishing, and some in
making canoes; the fishing by hand-nets or traps is also done by women.
Sometimes he accompanies his wife to the Bush for firewood, and has been
much reprobated for carrying nothing but his weapons while she is heavily
loaded. But this leaves out of account the ever-present possibility of
attack by raiders or wild animals—of course now rapidly becoming a matter
of tradition. Still, no longer ago than 1894, I saw men patrolling the
gardens with spear and shield, while their wives gathered the millet—in
very real danger of being carried off by the Machinga.
The wife, as time goes on, is helped by the junior wives, and in due
course by her daughters, sometimes also by slaves, men and women. The
pounding of the grain is about the heaviest work; the maize is first
husked, then the grain is stripped off the cobs with the fingers, and
put into the mortar for the first rough pounding. It is then taken out
and winnowed by being shaken in a flat basket, and after being separated
from the bran (which is given to goats, fowls, and pigeons, or used to
make coarse porridge in time of scarcity), pounded over again, sifting
out the coarser particles after each pounding, till at last it is fine
and white like flour. Millet is usually, when brought in from the garden,
spread out on mats to dry in the sun, and then beaten with thin sticks to
separate it from the husk. It is pounded with a little water, the bran
sifted out, the meal washed and partly dried, and finally ground fine
between two stones.
Porridge is made by stirring the maize or millet flour (usually the
former) into boiling water, and is ready in a few minutes, once the water
has been brought to the boil, which, with a large jar and a small fire,
is apt to be a work of time. The pot is supported over the fire on three
stones. Maize porridge (_nsima_) is, if well made of good flour, about
the colour of a suet dumpling; if inferior, it is more or less greyish.
It is very stodgy, trying to a European digestion, and exceedingly
sticky to the touch. Natives will eat surprising quantities of it; but
they feel it a privation to be obliged to take it without salt, or some
kind of ‘relish’ (_ndiwo_). This may be beans, or ground-nuts, or green
vegetables of some sort, such as the leaves of the manioc; or, more
rarely, a fowl, or a bit of goat’s flesh. Whatever it is, it is put on
to boil in a small pot beside the large one, after the latter has been
on for some time. Occasionally roasted rats, such as the boys bring in
from the fields, are eaten as _ndiwo_, or winged white ants—a great
delicacy—or dried locusts. Some tribes consider dried (and very high)
fish a choice kind of _ndiwo_—others will not touch fish in any shape.
[Illustration: TWO MEN EATING
Note the small earthen pot with the _ndiwo_]
In the spring and early summer, when the old maize is finished and the
new is not yet ripe, pumpkins, gourds, and cucumbers of various kinds
are a great stand-by, and are eaten boiled. Sweet potatoes are most
frequently roasted in the ashes, and manioc-root is eaten either boiled
or raw.
In the planting and weeding seasons, people set out for the gardens
before daylight, and return before noon, resting during the hottest hours
of the day. There are only two formal meals in the day—one about noon or
somewhat earlier, the other about sunset. Mothers put away some of the
cold porridge overnight, to give the children in the morning, and boys
are always roasting sweet potatoes in the ashes at odd times. Any one
who feels hungry between meals can usually find something to nibble at;
perhaps a roasted maize-cob, or a piece of raw chinangwa (manioc-root).
Men on a journey often make ‘pop-corn’ over an improvised fire, roasting
the grains (nowadays) on a shovel usually made by fixing the lid of a
tin box into a cleft stick. Beer (_moa_) is made of maize or millet—more
frequently of the latter. The process is as follows:—
First a gruel is made by stirring flour with cold water and then
pouring boiling water into it. This is allowed to stand till evening
and then malt is added. This has been previously prepared by leaving
some grain in water till it sprouts, letting it dry in the sun and
then pounding it. The mixture is left to stand overnight and then is a
sweet, non-intoxicating beverage called _nyombe_ or _mtibi_. This is
often drunk without further preparation; but if it is desired to make
real beer, it is kept another day and then boiled for two hours, then
poured off and left standing for two or three days more. It is now called
_mlusu_, is highly intoxicating, and is not drunk unless in very small
quantities. More malt is added, and on the next day more gruel is made,
as at the beginning—perhaps twenty, thirty or more pots—according to
the number of guests expected, and the _mlusu_ stirred into it, till
all the pots are of the same strength. The beer is ready for use on the
following day, after being strained. There are two kinds of strainers;
one shaped like a bag, is made of palm-fibre; the other a flat basket of
split bamboo. These large brewings are undertaken for funeral-feasts,
hoeing-matches, or ‘bees,’ and on various other occasions; beer is also
made for dances, or to celebrate the return of travellers, and sometimes,
on the conclusion of a lawsuit, the loser pays the other party in beer. A
Yao folk-tale relates how, after hearing both sides in a certain case,
the judges decided, ‘You must just pay each other’—and the resulting
conviviality must have lasted for at least a week. Moa does not, as
a rule, keep more than three or four days; but the one family would
begin their brewing three days after the other. On the last day of a
‘beer-drinking,’ porridge and perhaps fowls are cooked; but such solid
food is not expected on the other days.
[Illustration: GANG OF ANGONI AT MANDALA
Note the sleeping-mats rolled up with the other luggage, and the man on
the right roasting maize over the fire]
[Illustration: NGURU HUT
This is fairly typical for the whole of B.C.A., though the posts are
unusually thick]
In a small village, the men and boys all eat together, in the _Bwalo_.
The women of the several families take it in turns to prepare the food.
The porridge, when not eaten out of the pot, is ladled out into a wooden
platter or a flat basket, which is set down on the mat on which the men
are sitting, with the _ndiwo_ in a pot or bowl beside it; and they squat
round and eat from the dish with their fingers, which they are careful
to wash before and after. The women and little girls eat by themselves
either in a different place or later; the mother, or hostess, helps
every one else, putting their portions by hand into their plates, which
may be small flat baskets, or shallow bowls of wood or earthenware. A
mouthful is scraped off with the forefinger, rolled into the palm and
eaten; being first, if the _ndiwo_ is boiled fowl or the like, dipped
in the gravy. No spoons are used except the large wooden ladles, often
neatly carved, which serve to remove the porridge from the pot. On the
Lake, shells are sometimes used for the same purpose. Salt is put into
the food when cooking, if it is to be had at all; it is greatly valued
because rather scarce, especially in the western part of the Upper Shiré
district, where men, women, and children suffered from an insufficiently
nutritious diet and consequent poorness of blood. One result of this was
a great craving for salt; they gladly accepted a few spoonfuls as payment
for work or provisions brought for sale; another was the formation of a
virulent ulcer every time a person stubbed a toe or barked a shin. The
need for salt is not the same among people who, like the Zulus, have
plenty of fresh meat and milk. Language affords a curious corroboration
of this: there is no native Zulu word for salt—they call it _usaoti_,
from the Dutch _zout_. There are genuine Bantu words for it in Yao,
Nyanja, and all the neighbouring languages. The method of making salt
will be described in treating of Industries.
I do not know of any other condiment, strictly so called, used by
natives, except Chile peppers, which are common on the River and near the
Portuguese settlements, but rare up-country. They are called _sabola_,
which is the Portuguese _cebola_, ‘an onion.’ The word is used in its
proper sense as well, and probably, to the native mind, conveys the idea
of ‘flavouring’ simply.
The only sort of bread known to the natives of this part of Africa is a
kind of roll called _mkate_, made of maize-flour, bananas, and honey.
I have neither seen nor eaten it, but it appears to be either baked by
being put on the fire, in a pot without water, or rolled in leaves and
dried in the sun.
Food, cooked or uncooked, is stored within the hut in baskets or bags
of various kinds, but maize, and also millet, beans and ground-nuts,
are kept in the _nkokwe_ already described. It can only be the unhusked
millet that is so kept; I have never, myself, seen anything but maize
come out of a _nkokwe_. Some of the Middle Zambezi people tie up grain
in bundles of grass, plaster them over with clay, and keep them on low
sand islands in the river. The Badema, near Kebrabasa Falls, who in
Livingstone’s day were much harassed by their enemies, used to make
cylindrical bins out of the bitter bark of a certain tree, which mice
and monkeys will not touch, to put their grain in, and bury them in the
ground. The Anyanja have large narrow-necked baskets, which they hang up
to the rafters of the hut, and use for storing grain, beans half-cooked,
manioc-leaves, and other things, and beans are also put into bags. The
seed corn is left in the ear, and hung up, or laid on the stage over the
fireplace, where the smoke keeps the insects from it, or sometimes sealed
up with clay in earthen jars.
In building a house, the first thing is to drive in the posts, which
are, so to speak, its skeleton. They are set in a circle about a yard
apart, and forked at the top to support a circle of split bamboo which
forms the top of the wall; then the interstices are filled with grass
and bound with circles of bamboo perhaps a foot apart. A space is left
for the doorway, and sometimes small shuttered loopholes,[20] about four
feet from the ground—more for the purpose of letting the inmates see
what is going on outside than of admitting light. Most huts have only
one door, but at times and in places where raiding is habitual, they are
constructed with two—to facilitate escape from enemies.
A strong central pole is planted to support the roof, which is made
separately, like a huge basket, and afterwards hoisted into position. A
number of sharpened bamboos are stuck, at an angle of about 45, into a
bunch of grass, which is to form the point of the roof, and is sometimes
plaited into fanciful shapes, or covered with an inverted pot, to finish
up the construction and prevent the rain from running into the ends of
the straws. The radiating spokes are united by concentric hoops made of
twisted grass placed at regular intervals, and tied at the crossings with
bark soaked in water, which of course tightens as it dries.
The roof is always made to project at least three feet beyond the walls,
and its edges are supported by posts. The space under the eaves makes
quite a small verandah, and is banked up with clay to the height of a
foot so as to form a step or low platform running round the house. The
walls are not more than four feet high, perhaps less; the centre of the
hut may be twelve feet. Small huts have a diameter equal to their height,
or even less, and require no support inside; larger ones are wider than
they are high, and the roof is supported by a strong central post, and
extra ones, if necessary, in proportion to the increased diameter. The
walls are plastered with clay at the beginning of the cold (and dry)
season; this plaster (at any rate in the lower-lying districts) is either
removed during the summer, or not renewed when it drops away of itself.
It is always done by the women, who also do the floor of the hut in the
same way as the verandah, and mould it into a circular ridge about two
feet in diameter for the central fireplace. Sometimes one or more oblong
platforms are made for sleeping-places; but many people simply spread
their mats on the floor, and some make regular bedsteads (or, as it has
been described, a ‘family sleeping-shelf’) by fixing stout sticks in
the ground and spreading a mat on top of them. Whatever the sleeping
arrangements, people lie with their feet to the fire, which is fed at
night with one or more logs laid end on to the fireplace, and kindled at
the inner end, so that whoever happens to wake in the night can, without
any trouble, put on fuel by merely pushing the outer. The fire is not
much used for cooking except in wet or windy weather; and in fact the
hut is mainly a place for sleeping and storing things in. The fireplace
is generally surrounded by four posts supporting a stage or shelf
(_nsanja_), which serves all the purposes of a storeroom and larder.
Strips of meat and fish are hung on it to dry; provisions, cooked and
uncooked, are placed there in pots and baskets, and the seed corn is kept
there in the smoke, where the weevils and other insects will not attack
it.
Other things—spears, bows and arrows, the spindle and weaving-stick, bags
of beans, the gourds for drawing water, etc.—are hung from the rafters or
stuck in the thatch. Cloth and beads are stored away in baskets. Besides
the articles already mentioned, a few cooking-pots, a carved wooden
pillow or two, a few skins, perhaps one or two small logs to sit on, or
even a stool made out of the root of a tree, and a jar of water with a
gourd dipper to drink it from, will about complete the inventory of the
furniture.
Some of the people on Mlanje ornament the plastering of their houses with
figures of animals in black, white, and red, but I have not seen any of
these. A hut I saw at Ntumbi had the walls plaited in a neat sort of
basket-pattern and daubed inside with black mud in a way that suggested
an attempt at ornamentation; one of the circular rafters, too, was neatly
decorated with small white feathers, stuck on at regular intervals.
The smoke is left to find its way out through the thatch; consequently
the inside of the roof, with the _nsanja_ and everything on it, is
black and shiny, and any article which has come out of a native hut
may be known at once by a peculiar smell, compounded of wood-smoke and
castor-oil.
Square houses, which are often built not only by people at missions but
by Yaos who brought the notion from the coast, are much less typical, and
from a practical point of view less satisfactory; they are always stuffy
and frowsy, in a way the round huts are not. The latter seem to ventilate
fairly well through the thatch, and the smoke, which might be expected to
make the atmosphere quite impossible, is avoided if you do as the natives
do and sit on the floor. The square house, too, has corners in which
rubbish can accumulate, and though it has something by way of windows,
they neither admit air enough to sweeten, nor light enough to see, the
interior. Besides, a new and well-made hut has an artistic completeness
of its own, and pleases the eye, as a lop-sided, straggling _nyumba ya
gome_ can never do.
Each wife has her own hut, where her children sleep with her—the boys
till they are old enough to go to the _gowero_, or dormitory, the girls
till they leave for homes of their own. The father of the family has
sometimes his own separate hut, sometimes he lives in the others, turn
about, or in the head-wife’s house (_kuka_), which is the proper centre
of the home. Frequently, however, his mother is the real head of the
family and occupies the _kuka_, though she may also have a house of her
own apart.
In a large village, the _bwalo_ or ‘forum’ may be the space round
which all the huts are grouped; in other cases it is a place by itself
outside all the enclosures. The sacred fig-tree which marks it is often
apparently a very old one; so that, no doubt, the site is a more or
less permanent one, round which the shifting kraals group themselves in
various rearrangements. I have a sketch of the great fig-tree at Chona’s
which stood between the village and the maize-gardens. Various articles
were hanging on this tree—gourd-dippers and a mouse-trap—but whether as
votive offerings, or as a mere matter of convenience, I never made out.
The blacksmith’s forge stood on one side of this _bwalo_, and very often
mats were spread at the foot of the tree for men to sit in the shade.
Here one sees the rows of holes for the _mchombwa_ game scooped in the
ground; here, too, dances are held, whether ceremonial or merely for
amusement, and cases are tried, or in native idiom ‘the _mlandu_ talked.’
The ground is swept every day by a man whose business it is to look after
it, and who is called ‘the master of the _bwalo_.’ He also receives
strangers (the etiquette is for them to go and sit down in the _bwalo_ as
soon as they arrive), and informs the village chief that they have come.
He used to receive as his perquisite the heads of all goats killed in the
village. Sometimes there is a shed in the middle of the _bwalo_, known as
the ‘strangers’ house,’ where they eat and sleep during their stay; the
villages west of Lake Nyasa have structures exactly like band-stands for
this purpose.
Natives are sometimes thought not to have much family affection, because
they are not as a rule very demonstrative in words, but this is a
mistake. I remember the touching distress of an old man who thought his
wife had been carried off by the Machinga and would have to drudge at
pounding corn for strangers in her old age. Fortunately she turned up
safe and sound, along with some other women who had been hiding in the
bush. A woman who lived about twelve miles from Blantyre, hearing that
her son, a boarder at the Mission, was ill, walked in and carried him
home on her back—a big lad of thirteen or fourteen. ‘The boy is the
light of the mother’s eye. When he goes off on a journey she awaits his
return anxiously; sometimes, it may be, making a vow not to shave her
head till he returns; on his return she goes through a wild dance of joy,
often casting white ash or flour over herself and making a shrill noise,
_lululuta_. She clasps her child round the body, sometimes round the
neck, herself kneeling; she sees nothing of onlookers ... then she must
be poor indeed if she cannot cook porridge enough for him and a friend or
two.’ The elasticity which makes those carried into slavery—especially
young people—forget their troubles is sometimes thought to be a proof
of callousness; but the eagerness with which they will seize any chance
of returning home after years of separation, or follow up any clue to a
lost relation, is sufficient disproof. There is a pathetic belief in some
parts that slaves going to the coast find a plant in the hills, which
they eat ‘to make them forget the friends of their youth,’ lest their
grief should be too great. It loses its efficacy as soon as anything
happens to remind them of home, or they get a chance of returning. The
often-made assertion that parents will sell their children into slavery
has very little foundation, as far as Anyanja and Yaos are concerned.
This only happens in very exceptional cases: in the extremity of famine
(and even then it is condemned by public opinion), or to redeem an
important member of the clan, as in the following instance: ‘An old
fellow at Msumba was seized by the Angoni together with his younger
brother, and the joy of the little community was taken away; they had no
one to speak for them “in the gate.” Better a few go into captivity than
the head of the clan be disgraced.’ A woman and a boy were sent up as
ransom, and, it appears, went willingly. ‘Another time a son by a slave
woman was paid for the ransom of his father; it was managed by the clan,
and the father was not asked.’
One sometimes hears that, though mothers are very fond of their children,
the fathers care little about them, and indeed cannot be expected to,
because they have so many. This, again, is untrue, and the alleged
reason will not hold, as—except chiefs like Mombera and Ramakukane—few
men have more than they can easily keep count of. The impression has
gained ground partly because, as already remarked, the native parent is
not particularly demonstrative, and partly because it is not easy for
travellers, even if observant and sympathetic persons, to arrive at the
details of intimate family matters like this. Nearly every one who writes
on the subject comes across some unmistakable instance of affection,
and immediately records it as a remarkable exception. The fathers of my
acquaintance were certainly not indifferent to their children.
The position of women, too, has been greatly misconceived. I cannot do
better than quote the words of a competent observer at a time when native
manners could have been very slightly, if at all, modified by European
influence. The Rev. H. Rowley, whose experience was gained in 1861,
says: ‘The position of the woman with the Manganja and Ajawa was in no
way inferior to that of the man.... Men and women worked together in the
fields, and the special occupations of the women were thought to be no
more degrading than the specialities of our women are to our own women
at home. The men seemed to have much kindly affection for the women; such
a thing as ill-usage on the part of a man to his wife I did not once
hear of. Frequently the position of the woman seemed superior to that
of the man; in their religious observances, for instance, the principal
performer was generally a woman.’
Some of the native folk-tales give interesting glimpses of everyday
experience, and especially of the relations between man and wife. They
show the native husband, not as a savage monster, but a very ordinary
human being, sometimes selfish, sometimes greedy, very sensitive to
ridicule, so that he will make any concessions to his wife rather than be
laughed at by the neighbours; and yet again solving the difficulties of
domestic life with shrewd good sense. A Nyanja story of ‘A Man and his
Wives’ brings out this last characteristic:—
‘Once upon a time a man married two wives. And he hoed two rice-patches,
and made a boundary between them, and assigned one to each. Both women
sowed rice, and when it was time to keep off the birds, one of the women
took her water-jar and placed it on the boundary as a drinking-place
(for the use of those watching the crops?). And her companion planted
some pumpkin-seeds near the other woman’s water-jar. And a shoot of
the pumpkin plant grew over the rim of the jar, and so a pumpkin got
inside the jar and grew big, and they could not get it out again, for
the jar was too narrow at the mouth. So one day the woman who owned the
water-jar said to the owner of the pumpkin, “I say, I want my jar to take
to the village. Go and take out your pumpkin.” The other woman went and
tried to break it up inside the jar, saying, “Let me get it out in bits.”
But the owner forbade her, saying, “Don’t do that.” So she said, “Well,
shall I cook it inside the jar?” But she refused. “No, no, I won’t have
you making my jar all grimy!” So the other said, “Well, take the pumpkin
and the jar too.” But she refused again. “Not I! do you think I am hungry
and want your pumpkin?” So there was a quarrel about it between these two
women.
‘Now, what was the husband to do to make peace between his wives? He
wanted to break the jar and throw away the pumpkin. But the wife who
owned the jar said, “If you want to break my jar, let me go too. I shall
go home and stay there and have nothing to do with you.” The husband
said, “Woman, you are a bad lot.” She answered, “Am I really a bad lot?
Yet I am only vexed about my jar, and want nothing else beside.”
‘Now, just see the husband’s clever trick. He feigned sickness, and in
the evening pretended he was very ill indeed. Both his wives slept in the
same house that night because their husband was seriously ill. And they
tried to cook dainty dishes. “Let us see if we can cook for a sick man.”
But he would not eat at all, enduring his hunger till the morning.
‘In the morning his mother arrived, and began to cry bitterly because her
son was sick; and she asked, “My son, would you like us to cook you some
food?” He said, “I want no other sort of food, but if there is a pumpkin
I do want you to get it and buy salt and cook it, and I think I may eat
it to-day.” Those two women were there on the spot, and one of them, the
owner of the jar, took the head of the man and laid it in her lap, and
the owner of the pumpkin took his feet and laid them in her lap. And the
first, when she heard that the man wanted a pumpkin, said to the other
woman, “Go at once and break the jar, and bring the pumpkin, and let us
cook it, so that our husband may eat.” She ran and got the pumpkin, and
cooked it, and gave it him to eat, and he got well of his sickness. And
so the trouble ended.’
A Yao story tells how a man and his wife contrived, each in the absence
of the other, to secure for themselves, in order to eat it alone (a
flagrant breach of good manners), a leg of the partridge that was being
cooked for the family. Both having retired to eat the morsel into the
dark interior of the hut, they came into violent collision and broke
their plates. ‘She said, “Eating a relish alone! I was only tasting it!”
He said, “And I was tasting it too!” The man took goods and gave the
woman, saying, “Do not bring disgrace on me!” The woman brewed beer and
gave the man, and the matter ended.’
Something like this is the tale of ‘The Man with the Bran-Porridge.’ A
man who had told his wife that he never ate bran-porridge went to the
coast with a caravan, sold his ivory to advantage and had a red fez given
him into the bargain. The party reached their home and were met with
the usual rejoicings; and the man, wearing his new fez, sat down to wait
while his wife prepared him a meal. This was, as usual, a long business;
the woman first pounded the maize, then put the bran on a plate, and took
the grain down to the stream to wash it before the second pounding. The
husband, growing more and more hungry as he waited, forgot his scruples
or his fastidiousness, took the bran, poured it into his fez, poured some
water on it, stirred it up and began to eat it. While he was doing so he
saw his wife coming, and put the fez half full of bran and water on his
head to hide what he had been doing. His wife, however, was too quick for
him and asked, ‘What is that on your head that you are hiding?’ He said,
‘Medicine that I prepared for the journey.’
Whether she believed this or not is not recorded, but in any case, the
fib availed him little, for very soon the bran-porridge began to trickle
down his face. He said, ‘Oh! my wife, hunger, hunger! Some hunger eats
weeds of the field, some hunger eats what is bad. My wife, do not tell
people that I was seen with bran-porridge on my head, and I will pay you
with goods.’ So he paid her with goods. But she must have been provided
with a dangerous weapon in the event of future quarrels.
The first of these stories makes mention of a separation. This, in fact,
sometimes takes place—perhaps for some quite trivial cause. An unfaithful
wife is divorced (or, if a slave, sold), and goes back to her uncle or
other guardian. If a Yao woman’s children all die, her husband may leave
her; among the Wankonde, public opinion is said to decree that it is
best in such a case to kill himself. Sometimes a wife demands a divorce
because her husband does not sew her calico properly (which may mean that
she is going to be neglected for a younger rival), or the husband because
the wife is lazy about hoeing.
‘When they separate, the wife takes away the few domestic utensils which
she brought with her, none of which are used by the man.’ She does not
return the cloth given her from time to time, because she is considered
to have rendered an equivalent service by cooking his porridge. ‘In all
separations, except for serious causes, the one party gives the other a
token, which may be cloth, arrow-heads, beads, or such current money.
The one that begins the strife and is the cause of the separation, pays
the other.’ On the Lake, the ceremony of divorce is accomplished by the
man breaking a reed before witnesses on both sides and declaring that he
renounces his wife. The woman is not free till this is done.
CHAPTER VII
FUNERAL RITES
Wailing and mourning. The grave. Inheritance. The cause of
death. Ordeal.
I have already mentioned the _Nkalango_ thickets or groves, where the
Anyanja bury their dead. I have entered several of these, but saw no
signs of recent use—or anything to indicate the nature of the place
beyond a few broken pots—except in one case. This was at Blantyre; it
lay at some distance from the main road, and, so far as I could see,
no path led to it. Seeing it in the distance one day, when I was out
by myself, and could discover nobody in sight whose feelings might be
hurt, I determined to visit it. I only reached it after a struggle
through burnt grass (it was in September) which blacked me all over, and
a scramble across the dried-up bed of a stream. There may have been a
more convenient access, but I doubt it, and fancy that a path would be
cleared when wanted. It is not the native custom to visit the graves of
dead friends, though, as we have seen, this does not imply that they are
forgotten; on the contrary, communications from them are expected and
even hoped for. But it is not at the grave they are sought; that is an
uncanny place, haunted by other presences than that of the departed; and
persons found there, or seen going thither, might expose themselves to
serious suspicions.
The first thing I saw gave me something of a shock. It was an object
wrapped in a reed mat, and slung from a pole, supported between two
trees, the cords supporting it passed under the shoulders and knees,
so that the latter were slightly flexed by the weight of the body, and
allowed one just to perceive a human shape through the rigid outline of
the _bango_ mat. Looking round, I saw a number of graves—some fairly
recent—but no other interment like the above. The mounds were not like
ours, but nearly as broad as long, and looked more like rough garden-beds
than anything else. On them were laid broken sifting-baskets, handles of
hoes (or axes), and pots, these last with a hole in the bottom of each.
Pots of all sorts and sizes were scattered all over the grove, some of
them seemingly very old. There was nothing else to mark the older graves,
which were now level with the surrounding soil. I noticed two or three
shallow pits near the mounds; these were not half-completed graves (for
the digging is not begun till the corpse is actually on the spot), but
traps to catch the wizards, in case they should arrive with the views
indicated in a former chapter.
There are two possible explanations of what I saw, neither of which I
succeeded in obtaining at the time. One is that people dying of smallpox
(and perhaps other infectious diseases) are not buried in the earth,
but the corpse is ‘hung up to let the disease fly away with the wind,
instead of keeping it about the place.’ The intention is thus excellent
from a sanitary point of view, if the result is unfortunately rather wide
of the mark. As it happened that the disease had just about that time
been brought down from the Lake by some Atonga, and several people in the
Blantyre neighbourhood had died of it, this was probably the reason in
the above case. (_See note at end of chapter._)
Some clans of the Atonga appear to have been in the habit of burying
their dead in trees, placing the corpses in their mats on convenient
forked branches; and, as there were a good many Atonga temporarily in the
district, it is just possible that the man so buried may have belonged to
one of the clans in question; though the grove was commonly known as ‘the
Chipeta burying-ground,’ and used, I believe, by members of that tribe
only—or at least by dwellers in the villages called by their name. The
Anyanja and Yaos bury with the legs bent; the Atonga, apparently, lay the
body stretched at full length.
As soon as any one is known to be dead, the wail is raised by the women
about the hut. Sometimes (among the Atonga) some of the nearest friends,
when the end is seen to be at hand, come out of the hut and cry silently
till told that all is over.
The ‘first mourning’ takes place inside the hut, where the wife or mother
holds up the dead in her arms, or the body is laid across the knees of
the mourners as they sit on the ground. The wailing is kept up till
the ‘undertakers’ (_adzukulu_, or _awilo_) enter to prepare the corpse
for burial, when every one else leaves the hut. These may or not be
relatives—more usually they are not—but are thenceforth considered as
connected with the family by a special tie. They close the eyes (a dead
man who has no friends to do this for him is said ‘to lie with glaring
eyes’—_kutuzuka maso_), wash the corpse, swathe it in calico, and lay it
on a mat, which is then rolled round it and tied up with bark-string.
When they have finished they wash their hands in ‘medicine-water,’
because they handled a corpse.
All this time ‘the mourning at the door’ is going on. It lasts two,
three, or sometimes five days; in the case of a chief who is buried
inside his hut, perhaps for weeks. In the hot climate of the Tonga
country the burial is the same day, if the death takes place in the
morning; but if not, it is felt to be more decent to wait till next day,
so as to avoid all appearance of hurrying things over.
The spaces between the verandah-posts are filled in, so as to make small
rooms, in which the family sleep till the mourning is over—sometimes on
leaves spread on the ground instead of the usual mats. The women keep up
the ‘keening,’ seated on the ground, or walk about, calling on the dead,
‘Alas! alas! (_mai ine_), my father! Ah! Pembereka!’—or whatever the name
may be. They put earth, ashes or flour, on their heads, tie bands of
plaited grass or palm-fibre round their heads and arms (these are worn
till they drop off), and let their hair grow; all ornaments are laid
aside, and old, soiled clothes put on.
The death is reported to the village chief, while the preparations for
burial are begun, and at the same time messengers are sent to relatives
at a distance, each of whom carries a present—perhaps a fowl or a
hoe; the acceptance of this means that no suspicions of foul play are
entertained. With the Atonga, a payment (sometimes quite a large one) is
made, on their arrival, to those relations who come to the funeral; after
they have received it, they go to view the body, and give permission for
burial. If they do not consider the amount sufficient, the undertakers
will not close the door of the hut (a sign that the preparations are
complete) till more has been given.
During the mourning at the door, the drums are kept going day and night,
to keep the witches from the body. The lamentations go on, interspersed
with praises of the dead man—his greatness, his kindness, and generosity.
‘That man gave us to eat,’ they will say; ‘we ate at his hands, he killed
his fattest; were it riches, he was always giving; his mourning has gone
forth far and wide; we feasted at his hands.’ Guns are fired, where
available, at frequent intervals, to let people at a distance know that
there is mourning at the village.
When all is ready for the burial, the ‘undertakers’ fasten the body
in its mat shroud to a long bamboo pole, and so carry it between them
on their shoulders. The nearest relative does not as a rule go to the
funeral, nor any one under age—_i.e._ who has not yet been to the
mysteries; but there is a large following of other people. The men carry
hoes and baskets for lifting out the earth; the women, who walk in the
rear, carry the funeral offerings of porridge and beer. The site of the
grave is marked out by the principal man present, and the body is laid
aside under a tree while the digging goes on. When the grave is deep
enough, stakes are driven in all round the sides, and two forked poles
planted in the bottom, to receive the ends of the carrying-pole when the
body is lowered into the grave, so that it is suspended without touching
the ground. The space is covered in with cross bars on top before
filling in the earth. These precautions are intended to prevent witches
from getting at the dead, but are by no means universally observed. The
Anyanja ‘cover with a little earth, then tread it down, then pour in much
and cover it up fully’; and the Atonga, after filling in the grave, break
the pole in the middle, and plant one-half at the head, and the other at
the foot.
The deceased’s personal possessions are put into the grave with him
before the earth is filled in. Ivory and beads, if buried with their late
owner, are first ground to powder between stones, to make them useless
to witches and perhaps to more prosaic resurrectionists, if any such can
be found to brave the terrors of the place and the risks of prosecution.
When all is finished, the women lay the offerings on the grave, also the
deceased’s water-jar, in which a hole is made, and gourd drinking-cup,
which is broken. The ‘undertakers’ sometimes eat the offerings, but no
one else touches them; it is believed that any one doing so would be
seized with madness.
We have already seen that some Atonga clans suspend the corpse instead of
burying it; others bury in the usual way, except in the case of persons
of high rank, where they lay the body on the ground and erect a fence
round it, covering in the top with heavy logs.
Young children of a few days old are not formally mourned for, and are
buried by the women only. People who die of the _mwavi_ ordeal are not
buried at all; they are looked on as accursed and their bodies thrown
away into the bush to be eaten by hyenas. This is also sometimes done
with slaves. Men killed in battle, if their friends can get possession of
the body at all, are not taken home, but buried on the war-path.
Slaves used to be sacrificed at the death of a Yao chief, but only in
certain clans (the Abanda, Amilansi, and perhaps others); ten for an
important chief, or fewer for one of less standing. The master’s death
was kept secret for a time, till the required number had been secured in
slave-sticks. They were killed at the grave-side and thrown in before the
body was lowered. Sometimes they were buried alive, and this was done
till recently by the Atonga, who, if one slave was buried with a chief,
made him lie in the grave, clasping the dead man in his arms. If there
were several, they sat in the grave facing each other, and the corpse was
laid across their knees. If any of them sneezed after taking his place
in the grave, his life was spared, as it was believed that the spirit
thus signified his refusal of that particular victim. Mr George Pirie
says of the Babemba, that the people so sacrificed died willingly; and
indeed slaves are often sufficiently attached to their masters to make
such devotion possible. The funeral ceremonies of the Atonga include
some interesting details not mentioned above; some of them may be Yao and
Nyanja also, but I cannot find any record of them. I quote the account of
the Rev. A. C. MacAlpine:—
‘In taking the body out of the hut, exit was not made by the door, for
by that the living only passed out, and they must not slight the dead by
treating him as if he were still alive. So they broke down the back wall
of the hut opposite the door, and through the hole so made passed out
with the body. The children of the village had meanwhile been told to
hide out of the way, although the children of the deceased were brought
up to the bier and lifted over it by the _azukuru_.[21] Before they bore
the corpse away, they swung it to and fro outside the hut, where it had
passed out, chanting the while, “We are leaving to-day; we follow our
fellows.” In front of the procession walked a man blowing a reed whistle,
while other mourners followed the bier carrying weapons, utensils,
trinkets, and offerings to be buried in the grave or laid on the top.
Last of all went a woman with a hoe and a basket, into which she dropped
various roots growing beside the path which the funeral had followed, and
which she had dug up with the hoe. These were hurriedly prepared by her
as a charm with which to purify the party on their return from the graves
to the village.
‘On arrival at the graveyard, the people begun to shout and clap their
hands to warn the spirits supposed to be about.’ After the grave was dug
and the body lowered into it, the chief undertaker (called _chimbwi_, or
hyena, because he is not afraid to approach the dead), ‘descended into
the grave and untied the fastenings round the dead, exposing the face
for a few minutes; whatever had been brought to be buried along with
the dead was arranged about the corpse according to custom, and finally
arranging the grave-clothes and re-covering the face, the _chimbwi_
climbed out again. The nearest relatives, one on each side of the grave,
kneeling down and doing homage to the dead, pushed the first earth into
the grave, using their elbows to do so. After a little, the whole company
assisted in filling up the grave.... Prayers to the dead, conducted by
the _chimbwi_, with responses from the other mourners, completed the
obsequies at the grave, all the company having paid respect to the dead
by falling from a sitting position on to their backs, clapping their
hands.’
On their return from the grave, the whole party wash in ‘medicine-water.’
Sometimes, on the way back, they gather the leaves of a particular shrub,
and prepare it for themselves; but sometimes special men are called in
from a distance to make the medicine. Atonga mourners go to bathe in a
running stream before entering the village; after this, the _chimbwi_
fetches a torch of grass pulled from the roof of the dead man’s hut,
lights it at the fire in the same hut, jumps over it himself, and then
holds it a few inches from the ground for the whole party to jump over,
one by one. As they do so, the woman who has gathered the roots rubs
them on back and breast of each person; and they are then sufficiently
purified to come home.
The Babemba seem to make some attempt at mummifying the corpses of their
chiefs, by rubbing the body all over with boiled maize, repeating the
process till the whole skin becomes dry and shrivelled.
The following is an account, by an eye-witness, of the funeral of the
Angoni chief, Mombera, who died in 1891:—
‘Men were there from all parts of the tribe, sitting in the
cattle-kraal—an immense enclosure open to the sky. Before the grave
was dug, one of his brothers jumped up, and placing his hands behind
his head, advanced towards the place of burial, mourning all the time
and performing a sort of waltzing movement. All the men at the same
moment jumped to their feet and stood mourning. After this subsided,
the digging of the grave was proceeded with. It was not finished till
next day. Meanwhile, companies of people were coming and going, and on
entering the village, stood mourning and crying at the top of their
voice, “_Baba be! Baba be!_”[22] Before the body was brought out, there
was a curious procession of his wives on their hands and knees to the
grave, decorated with great bunches of feathers that only the chief is
allowed to wear. Soon after, the body was brought in, rolled in cloth,
and deposited in the grave in a sitting posture with his face to the
east. This was the signal for all jumping up, and closing round the grave
in a big circle, and there mourning and rending the air with cries.
Only men were allowed in the kraal at this time. (The Zulus never allow
women in the cattle-kraal at any time.) They stood with their shields
over their heads, crying out. Afterwards the young men came marching in
in companies and stood mourning for a little, then retired. Meanwhile
they were depositing in the grave along with him an immense amount of
calico, dresses, etc.—I dare say the accumulation of years; cooking-pots,
drinking-vessels, mats, and pipes also went in. During this time, the
women were mourning in their own style and causing a fearful din. They
appeared as if bereft of their senses, catching one another, and going
through some queer movements.’
Among the Anyanja of the Lake (at Likoma and on the east side), the place
of the sacred grove is taken by something like a mausoleum. A small house
is built over the grave (instead of the grave being dug within the house
occupied when living), or it is planted round with a hedge of euphorbia;
these fashions may perhaps have been borrowed from the coast men. I have
seen the grave of a Yao chief near Domasi, covered with what looked like
a flat slab of concrete, but was probably an earthen mound smoothly
plastered over with mud. It was enclosed in a high reed fence. The idea
of this, too, was probably imported.
The subject of offerings to the spirit, which are sometimes made at the
grave, has been discussed in a former chapter. As there stated, they are
more usually presented elsewhere, unless the deceased has been buried
inside his own house. But, though avoided by the relations, the grave is
held sacred, and lawsuits may arise out of its desecration. One of the
worst acts of sacrilege that can be committed—in fact, an act amounting
to social suicide—is ‘to break a pot at the grave of some family not your
own ... the offender’s life is forfeited, and he lives only as the slave
of the grave-owners till redeemed.’
The next step after the burial is to destroy the house occupied by the
deceased. It is burned or pulled down, and the foundation dug over. The
thatch and other things are carried away and burned at the cross-roads,
and what is not burned is buried; the site is swept all over, and fresh
earth spread on it. Children are warned not to play there. ‘A pot is put
down to receive offerings of beer, and when any special offering is given
to the deceased, it is usually presented here. If this place become too
public (as when children play near and send dust into the pot), the pot
will be removed and placed under a tree at a little distance from the
village.’
If the man is buried in his own house, as is sometimes done with chiefs,
it is not taken down, but shut up and left to decay. A large part of the
dead man’s stock of calico is draped over the roof, and offerings are
presented under the verandah. A local head-man named Matope died near
Blantyre in 1893, and the white roof of his hut was a landmark visible
for miles throughout the following year. In such cases, a hole is first
dug in the floor, then a niche is made in the side of the hole. The
position of this niche is carefully concealed from all except those
immediately concerned, and no two graves of this kind have it in the same
place.
On the day when the house is taken down, the mourners, in some cases,
have their heads shaved, and some of the hair is buried on the site of
the house. This is only where there are _two_ shavings; where there is
only one, the hair is allowed to grow till the end of the mourning. It is
thought that the hair which the deceased has seen must not remain after
he is buried, or at any rate after the subsequent ceremonies are finished.
The mourning may last for two or even three months longer. Its duration
is decided by the most influential relative. The survivors do not wash or
oil themselves; in some cases they are forbidden to eat warm food, to use
salt, or to drink beer. Yet beer is sometimes brewed during this period,
to be drunk at the mourning dances which take place from time to time.
The Atonga keep a fire burning all this time in front of the dead man’s
house (which seemingly they do not destroy), called the ‘forbidden fire,’
because it may not be used for any ordinary purposes. It has been kindled
by the chief undertaker from the fire within the deceased’s house, with
a wisp of grass out of the roof—like the torch already mentioned. If
a fire is wanted for cooking, a light must be fetched from one of the
houses of the living. When the mourning is over, the first thing done
is to brew a large quantity of beer, and, when that is ready, to kill
fowls and cook porridge—in fact, to hold the funeral feast, which in
other parts of the world takes place immediately after the burial. This
is intended to convey that sorrow is not to last for ever; but the dead
is not forgotten—on the contrary, he is especially remembered, and his
spirit is supposed to share in the festivities. Regular drinking-songs
are sung in chorus. The undertakers attend and superintend the shaving of
the mourners’ heads, taking off a little piece of hair in front and one
behind for each person, and leaving the rest to be done by others. The
hair is buried on the site of the house; the Atonga burn it in a fresh
fire made by rubbing two sticks,[23] and the ‘forbidden fire’ is put out.
On the day of this shaving, what corresponds to the proving of the will
is done—the deceased’s affairs are settled, and his property, if any,
handed over to his successor. With the succession to the chieftainship we
shall deal in another chapter. A man’s next heir is his eldest surviving
brother, or failing brothers, his sister’s son. We have already said that
the dead man’s wife or wives are inherited by his successors; but this
requires some qualification. What really happens, among one section at
least of the Anyanja, is this:—‘The relations, after a decent interval’
(it is the rule that, during the period of mourning, nothing must be said
about the disposal of the property or re-marriage of the widows), ‘take
a corn-stalk, break it into as many pieces as there are eligible men in
the family, and send them to the woman by the hand of the chief of the
bearers[24] (who are chosen from outside the family). She may take one up
from the ground and show it, saying, ‘I want so and so.’ The man so named
becomes the heir. If the woman refuses all the men, she will have to
repay the original marriage gifts which her husband made to her family,
and often much more. If the man chosen refuses the woman, he sends her
an arrow or a fowl, or some other small present, but usually an arrow,
and tells her to marry some other man. If so, he gets no marriage gifts
returned to him.’
Some of a man’s property is, as we have seen, buried with him. Out of
the rest, his successor has to pay the funeral expenses, including heavy
fees to the undertakers, who, besides, have partaken of the offerings and
the funeral feast. There may also be a prosecution for witchcraft to be
paid for out of the estate, though this may be compensated by damages.
If, however, the deceased had himself been prosecuted and had died of
the ordeal, his heir has to pay damages to the bewitched person or his
representatives.
There are certain well-understood causes of death which are not supposed
to require any investigation, though, according to some, every death
is put down to witchcraft. The witch is believed to kill a person, and
then, when his relations have buried him, to send out messengers to find
out where the grave is. When they come back, they tell their master that
they have seen the meat (the ‘game’—_i.e._ the corpse), and say, ‘Come
along.’ Then the owl ‘which sits on the head of the chief’ goes out and
summons all the witches to the feast. The animals lead the way to the
grave, a fire is made, and the chief asks who it was that killed the
person they are about to eat. One answers, ‘It was I,’ and the chief
tells him to ‘bring the meat out.’ ‘So the man who killed him sounds
a rattle and calls him by his early name’—the name he bore before he
attended the mysteries, which has a compelling power over him—and he
comes out. The wizard then reproaches him for real or imaginary insults
and injuries—possibly there are unhealthy-minded persons who will brood
for years over fancied wrongs, and when the man they are nursing a grudge
against dies, imagine that they have killed him—and finally kills him
over again. ‘Then they take the meat and divide it, and take it with them
to their village; the _mfiti_ cooks it at night and eats it, and takes
a pot and digs to conceal it in the deserted house of the deceased, and
leaves and goes to his own house as if nothing had happened.’
If all the energy expended to prevent these proceedings counts for
anything, it may well be believed that they never happen at all. When the
circumstances of a death seem to warrant suspicion, the witch-detective,
whose methods are described elsewhere, is sometimes called in, and the
people pointed out by her are either killed at once or compelled to drink
_mwavi_. But the ordeal is sometimes put in operation without resorting
to her. Persons who feel themselves under suspicion may demand it in
order to clear their character. So firmly do they believe that it will
not hurt them if innocent, that no one, unless conscious of guilt, ever
seems to shrink from the trial.
The Yaos hold that it should not be administered to a free person without
grave cause—_i.e._ unless suspicion is definitely directed to some one
person. The Angoni and Makololo chiefs, whose government (at least as
regards the subject tribes) was more despotic, used to order wholesale
_mwavi_-drinkings, trying a whole village or district to discover the
supposed culprit. In these cases, the poison was often taken by proxy and
given to fowls or dogs—each animal being tied by a string to the person
whom it represented, and whose guilt or innocence was decided by its
death or recovery. There was a _cause célèbre_ of this kind at Chekusi’s
kraal, about twenty years ago. Chekusi’s mother had been suffering from
rheumatism, and had been treated for it by Dr. Henry, of the Livingstonia
Mission. Shortly afterwards, unfortunately, she committed suicide in
a fit of depression, and, naturally, things looked very black for the
doctor. However, there were two other possible culprits, and a trial
took place with three sets of fowls, one for the Europeans at Livlezi
Mission, one, I think, for Mponda, with whom Chekusi was then more or
less at war, and the third for the other suspected party. The proceedings
were complicated by the number of victims demanded by the importance
of the occasion: had one been allotted to each defendant, the decision
would have been quite clear; as it was, some of each set died and some
recovered, and the issue was such hopeless confusion that the case was
dropped without arriving at a verdict.
The poison used throughout the Shiré Highlands, on the Lake, and by the
Angoni appears to be the same; it is the pounded bark of a tree known to
science as _Erythrophleum guineense_. Its effect is fatal within an hour
or two, unless it causes sickness; this symptom is therefore held to be
a sign of innocence. Its different action on different people probably
arises from the strength of the dose being varied by accident or design.
When a trial of this sort is decided on, the _mapondera_, or ‘pounder,’
is sent for. He prepares the poison in the _bwalo_, before the assembled
people, by pounding the bark, steeped in water, in a small wooden mortar,
with a pestle which has a cover fixed round it to prevent the liquid
splashing out. The result is a red infusion, said by those who have
been fortunate enough to taste it and recover, to be very bitter. This
information I had from a man who complained that he was not well, and
to whom, finding that he seemed to have feverish symptoms, I offered a
dose of quinine. After tasting it—and retiring out of sight to reject it
with decency—he declined any more, on the ground that it was exactly like
the _mwavi_ he had been compelled to drink a month ago. The usual dose
is about half a pint; the accused come up one by one to drink, and then
sit down on the ground to wait till it takes effect. This, as stated,
is usually within an hour or two. In cases where public feeling is very
strong against the accused, the end is not always waited for, but he or
she is lynched as soon as the symptoms seem likely to be fatal.
It is said that the accused has a voice in the selection of the
professional who is to mix the draught; but most natives believe so
firmly in the infallibility of the _mwavi_-test, that in practice it
matters little to them who compounds it. Of course, the _mapondera_
has opportunities of diluting the dose, as his own inclinations or
hints previously received from interested parties may prompt; and this
is probably the reason why the greater number of those who submit to
the test usually escape. I remember an occasion when several families
escaping from the war which was going on between Chekusi’s men and
Bazale, near Lake Malombe, halted at a village near Ntumbi, where a
child belonging to one of them died. They accused the people of the
place of bewitching them, and called on them to drink _mwavi_, which was
immediately done. One child of the village died; it is likely that it
succumbed to a dose which was not strong enough to kill the adults. But
the matter did not end here. The people who had demanded the ordeal were
subjects of Chekusi’s brother Mandala, who was also the over-lord of
certain kraals in the neighbourhood, while the villagers who had drunk
the poison were under the immediate jurisdiction of Chekusi himself. The
latter thought that his rights had been infringed, and insisted that some
of his brother’s subjects should take _mwavi_ in their turn. I do not
know how many did so this time, but the number of deaths was two.
Two other cases came to my personal knowledge—one a wholesale affair
of the kind already referred to. Chekusi had been ill; and Mandala
(apparently just then on exceptionally good terms with him) sent for
a number of people to the royal kraal, and administered the ordeal to
find out who had bewitched him. Among those who went from Ntumbi were
two old men mentioned in a previous chapter—Pembereka and Kaboa. The
former died—Kaboa either recovered or he did not drink the poison, which,
however, is unusual, and, I fancy, unprecedented; and, if I understood
him rightly, it is surprising that he should have been allowed to depart
without further trouble. What he said to me was, ‘I refused’ (_ndakana_),
which might, however, conceivably mean that his system had rejected the
drug. The mourning for poor old Pembereka continued at his kraal for two
or three days, and subsequently his family went up to Chekusi’s to finish
the mourning there and (we were told) to drink _mwavi_, but on what
grounds I never made out: in any case there was no further fatality. As
we have already seen, those who die by _mwavi_ are not usually buried,
but cast out to be eaten by wild beasts; we gathered from rumours which
reached us that this was not done in Pembereka’s case, but that he was
buried at Chekusi’s.
The other case was a local one: a young girl died suddenly—possibly
of pneumonia or rapid consumption; she was delicate, but seemed in
fairly good health when we last saw her, about three months before her
death. Her father, the Ntumbi head-man, made a number of people drink
_mwavi_, and one young man died—_chifukwa wodiera antu_, as my informant
said—‘because he was an eater of men.’ It is possible, however, that
there might have been more deaths in this case but for the action of an
English planter who heard of the matter in time and came to the rescue
with ipecacuanha.
A case which all the older residents in British Central Africa will
remember took place at Blantyre. Mr. John Moir, at that time manager
of the African Lakes Company, got wind of the trial and arrived on the
scene when matters were already so far advanced that it seemed best
to act first and explain afterwards. Accordingly, he began by kicking
over the doctor’s mortar, and then set forth his views on the subject.
He succeeded in getting the proceedings quashed, but—and this is the
interesting feature in the story—the rescued victim considered himself
ever afterwards to have a standing grievance against Mr. Moir. He was a
local head-man of some standing, and complained that, as he had not been
allowed the opportunity of clearing his character, he was under a cloud
and likely to remain so for the rest of his life. His people were leaving
him and settling elsewhere—no one cared to be associated with a person of
such doubtful reputation—in short, he was a ruined man!
The administration of the ordeal-poison is a very solemn ceremony;
commonly, as we have seen, it takes place in the _bwalo_, or village
forum, but Livingstone speaks of some Batoka head-men making a pilgrimage
to the graves of their ancestors for the purpose.
‘The ordeal by the poison of the muave is resorted to by the Batoka as
well as by the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for
the supposed witch. Near the confluence of the Kafue the Mambo, or chief,
with some of his head-men, came to our sleeping-place with a present;
their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual seriousness
marked their demeanour. Shortly before our arrival they had been accused
of witchcraft; conscious of innocence, they accepted the ordeal. For this
purpose they made a journey to the sacred hill of Nchomokela, on which
repose the bodies of their ancestors; and after a solemn appeal to the
unseen spirits to attest the innocence of their children, they swallowed
the muave, vomited, and were therefore declared not guilty.’[25]
NOTE.—The Rev. H. Rowley says that the Mang’anja distinguished
between deaths brought about by Mpambe (_i.e._ those resulting
from old age or ‘the ordinary diseases of the country’), and
those caused by the _mfiti_. The former were buried; the
latter, as being accursed, rolled in mats and hung up in
trees. One cannot help suspecting some confusion here—more
especially as violent deaths are reckoned as the work of
the _mfiti_,—a word which this writer translates by ‘evil
spirit’—thus introducing another element of misconception. Dr.
Hetherwick, in a communication received since this chapter
has been in type, says: ‘The Yaos lay their dead with their
faces to the east, and with the knees bent to the chin. This
is the invariable rule, and so the niche which they make in
the side of the grave to receive the corpse is dug out on the
_west_ side of the pit. The turning of the face to the east is
interesting. At old Kapeni’s funeral one of his men went into
the grave after the body was laid in its place, and fired an
arrow up into the air. I have never found any explanation of
this rite. It is not done on any other occasion that I have
note of.’
CHAPTER VIII
ARTS, INDUSTRIES, ETC.
Agriculture: Maize, tobacco, gardens, etc. Hunting, trapping.
Ant-catching. Fishing. Weaving. Basket-making. Bark cloth.
Ironwork. Wood-carving. Pottery. Salt.
The principal crops cultivated in British Central Africa are maize,
millet (of several kinds), rice, ground-nuts, beans, sweet potatoes,
cassava, yams, pumpkins, several kinds of gourds, and tobacco. Bananas
are planted near most villages in the Shiré Highlands, and are the staple
crop of the Wankonde; they are less common west of the Upper Shiré.
Cotton and sugar-cane are grown in some places; also the saccharine
sorghum (the _imfe_ of the Zulus); but no sugar is made—both kinds of
cane are only used for chewing. Sesamum (_chitowe_) is grown in order
to extract the oil from the seeds, and _chamba_ (Indian hemp) for
smoking. In villages near Blantyre, a few papaw-trees, pine-apples, and
grenadillas are grown; but most of the fruits eaten by natives are wild
ones.
A certain number of plants are utilised which grow with little or no
cultivation. Most villages are surrounded by castor-oil bushes; tomatoes
(and, where they have been introduced, Cape gooseberries) grow like
weeds among the other crops; so does a tiny kind of grain (_Eleusine_,
I believe), like small bird-seed, which is called _maere_, and is so
troublesome to husk and prepare, besides not being very palatable, that
it is not gathered except in times of scarcity. Various plants which grow
wild, or spring up like weeds in the gardens, are eaten as vegetables in
time of scarcity; the commonest is a kind of Prince of Wales’s feathers
(_Amaranthus caudatus_), which when boiled is not unlike spinach.
Maize was probably introduced into Africa by the Portuguese, three
hundred years ago. The Anyanja would seem to have obtained it from the
Yaos, and the Yaos from the coast, if we may judge from the etymology
of the name—in both languages, _chimanga_; Manga being the name for the
coast. Nearly all Bantu languages have distinct words for it, showing,
either that they did not derive it from each other, or that the name did
not travel with the thing.
Sweet potatoes, tobacco, beans, and some of the minor crops are grown
in, or close to, the villages, in among the huts of the more scattered
ones, or outside the reed fences of the kraal enclosures. The tubers of
the sweet potato are planted in flat mounds, about six feet by four or
five, and the convolvulus-like stems and leaves trail over the ground.
Cassava is sometimes planted close to the villages, sometimes in the
regular gardens; it is grown from cuttings; a piece of the stem about
a foot long, and cut off sloping at each end, is stuck into the ground
and grows into a handsome shrub about six feet high, with light green,
palmate leaves. These are used as a vegetable, being boiled like spinach.
This plant is supposed to have been introduced by the Portuguese; a great
number of varieties are cultivated; that usually seen is the sweet kind,
which requires no special preparation, and can be eaten raw. Some of the
others are buried for some time before being taken up, then steeped in
water to get rid of the poisonous juice, and allowed to dry before being
pounded.
Of beans there are endless varieties; one kind, often grown close to
villages, is a small shrub with yellow flowers; these beans are gathered
and eaten green.
Tobacco is grown both for home consumption and for sale. A good deal
of attention is paid to the plants, the leaf-buds being pinched out to
make the rest of the leaves grow larger. When ready, they are gathered,
soaked in water till they turn brown, and spread in the sun to dry. The
Yaos plait them into twists; the Shiré Anyanja pound them with water,
and make them up into balls; the Chipetas and Angoni make theirs into
pyramids. Tobacco is used for smoking, but more frequently in the form
of snuff. To make this, the leaves are dried by the fire in a potsherd,
and then ground on stones. When tobacco is chewed, it is mixed with lime
got by burning snail-shells. Smoking is not a continuous process as with
Europeans, but a large pipe is passed round, and each man takes a pull
or two at it. This is the usual method of refreshment, when halting for
a short time on a journey. Men will also smoke the intoxicating hemp
(_chamba_ or _dakha_), which they say is ‘instead of food and drink’ to
them when they are tired, though they likewise admit that it ‘catches
their legs.’ The plant grows about the villages without any special
cultivation. Its use seems to be older than that of tobacco; it was
smoked by the Bushmen before the Bantu penetrated into South Africa.
[Illustration: GRINDING SNUFF]
The gardens proper may be a short distance from the villages, or they may
be three or four miles away. The people begin by hoeing the land close
to their dwellings; when the soil is exhausted, they move farther out,
and so on, from year to year. When the gardens come to be inconveniently
far away, the village is moved; and thus the population is continually
shifting from place to place, and one sometimes finds sites of old
gardens in what one had thought was untouched bush.
When a man has selected a site for a new garden, he marks the place, and
bespeaks, or as the natives say, ‘betroths’ the ground, by tying some
bunches of grass into knots, or, if there are trees on the spot, twisting
some grass round their trunks. He is perfectly free to choose, so long
as the land is not in cultivation, or has not been bespoken by some one
else; and, once marked, no one can interfere with it. The grass is then
burnt off at the end of the dry season, and with the rains, in November,
or the early part of December, the hoeing begins.
Where there are bits of alluvial soil close to a watercourse, which are
either kept moist by the stream or can be easily irrigated, maize is
sown during the dry season, so as to be gathered green early in the year
when no other is to be had.
Some people break up the ground for their gardens during the winter or
dry season, but the earth is then very hard, and most consider that it is
no use doing so till after the rains have begun. If the garden is a new
one, the ashes of the burnt grass (or the grass itself, if any has sprung
up before the hoeing begins) are hoed into the soil for manure; if maize
was grown in it the previous year, the dry stalks are carefully burnt for
the same purpose.
The universal agricultural implement is the hoe, which, in this part of
Africa, has a short handle, so that the person wielding it has to stoop,
but also gains much more power for the stroke than one has with a long
handle. The blade is leaf-shaped, rounded to a blunt point in front, and
tapering to a spike at the back, which is driven into the handle, and, if
it projects at the back, hammered down. The blade was formerly made by
native blacksmiths, but is now generally bought at a trader’s store and
fixed into a handle by the purchaser, who chooses a stout piece of wood
with a knob at the end—either a root of a tree, or a strong branch with
a piece of the fork it springs from. Wooden hoes are still used in some
remote places among the hills. They have very long, rather narrow blades,
set into the handle at an acuter angle than the usual iron hoe, but, like
it, suggesting the origin of the implement from the primitive forked
branch with one of its ends cut short. Where hoes are unattainable, as
in the case of refugees cultivating ‘scratch’ gardens in the bush in time
of war, a still older instrument is used—the sharp-pointed digging-stick
of bamboo. There are stories which seem to point to a time when this was
in general use, and speak of the introduction of hoes.
[Illustration: WOMEN WEEDING MAIZE-GARDEN
Note the pumpkins between the rows of maize]
Maize is sown in rows about six feet apart, the soil being gathered into
heaps, and three or four grains sown on the top of each. I have seen a
man and his wife doing this together, one making the holes with a pointed
stick, while the other dropped the grains in. Pumpkins and gourds are
sown on the same heaps with the maize, and spread out between the rows.
The garden is then left alone unless the growing maize-plants require
earthing up a little from time to time, till the rains are over, when
it is time for the ‘second hoeing,’ to get rid of the weeds which have
sprung up. ‘The time of hunger’ comes after the rains, when the last
year’s corn is eaten, and the new is not yet ripe—about March. This is
not altogether due to improvidence, as some would have it, but partly to
the difficulty of storing large quantities of provisions. The _nkokwes_
hold just about enough for the year, and even so are tithed by rats and
weevils which cannot be kept out; and the insect-proof accommodation in
the smoke of the _nsanja_ does not suffice for much more than next year’s
seed-corn. Besides this, large accumulations, in a country likely at any
time to be ravaged by war, are scarcely a sign of prudence, but rather
the reverse.
It is at this hungry time that the pumpkins and gourds come in, and the
first ears of green maize from the _dimba_ patches of rich, damp soil
by the stream-sides are eagerly looked for. Several sorts of cucumbers
and marrows are cultivated, and some grow wild, or half wild; one
small round gourd is a really delicious vegetable, almost equal to our
custard-marrows. But these are not always sufficient, or there may be an
interval before they are ready, and the women ransack the country-side
for wild herbs and roots which are not used except as a last resort,
while the young people bring home all sorts of strange tit-bits in the
shape of grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, and grubs. Between the
scarcity and the green food, this is usually a season of sickness.
The maize grows to a great height in rich, alluvial soil like that of
the Ntumbi plain, and the _mapira_ is even taller. This is a different
variety from the _amabele_ of Natal, with its stiff, brush-like heads,
generally standing about four feet; the ear of the _mapira_ being a
graceful, drooping plume. It is sown about the same time as the maize,
but thinned out and transplanted in January. The weeding in both cases
has to be kept up from time to time till the corn is ripe.
We have already mentioned how the crops are guarded by ‘medicine’—a
bundle of leaves, a snail-shell, a little horn on the top of an upright
stick, or various other objects. While the corn is ripening, there are
other dangers to be averted by less esoteric means. In most gardens,
especially if at any distance from the village, and if there are any
patches of brush within easy reach, you may see a platform mounted on
poles, with a little hut or shelter on it. Here watchers are stationed
day and night to drive away marauders—the baboons who come in troops,
and the wild pigs, who are still more destructive, rooting up as well
as gathering. In March one heard a continual drumming on whatever metal
objects were available, to drive away the pigs; I think this was done
in the villages as well as by the men in the watch-huts. One of the few
offences for which boys are likely to get a really severe beating is
letting the baboons get into the maize. The hippopotamus is very fond of
maize, and gardens within reach of his haunts are protected by a reed
fence—he is so wary that he will not go near what he thinks may be a
trap—though he could tread it down in a moment. The women also frighten
him off by making little sham traps out of the huge sausage-like fruits
of the _mvunguti_ tree.
Maize and mapira are ripe in May; the former is broken off by hand, and
the cobs put into _mtanga_ baskets; there is a special term for the
operation of inserting them point downward so as to make the basket hold
as many as possible. It is dried on the _nsanja_, over the household
fire, before being put into the _nkokwe_. The mapira is cut with a large
knife or a reaping-hook. These small sickles are much used for cutting
grass; but I am not sure whether they are of recent European introduction
or not; a straight knife is also used.
Beans and ground-nuts, with the _nzama_, which is very like a ground-nut
and grows in the same way, the seed-vessel burying itself in the
earth after flowering, are planted in patches by themselves beside
the maize-garden. These are boiled and eaten, green or ripe, and the
ground-nuts are also used for oil. They are pounded, boiled, and the oil
skimmed from the top of the water. Castor-oil is procured in the same
way; it is not used as medicine, but only for anointing the head and body.
Hoeing and weeding are sometimes got through more quickly, when time
is pressing (as when the first rains have fallen) by means of a ‘bee.’
The owner invites all his neighbours, men and women, and prepares large
quantities of beer, with which they regale themselves after a hard
morning’s work. Sometimes the pots are carried out to the garden, and the
party consume the refreshment there. Each person has a certain piece of
ground allotted to him or her—a ‘row to hoe,’ and the work is got through
with singing and mirth. When the chief sends for a number of villagers to
hoe his gardens, he entertains them royally with meat and beer.
After the harvest is gathered in comes the _mpakasa_ season, which might
be rendered ‘autumn’; the deciduous trees lose their leaves; the grass is
dry and ready for burning, and, as the people say, ‘the wind blows and
says _pi_!’ After this comes the real winter (_malimwe_), when people
walk abroad and sit and drink beer, saying, ‘At present there is no
hoeing to do, only odds and ends of work about the house’—though, even
then, ‘some break up the new hoeing-ground.’ Then comes the time of the
grass and bush-fires, when the air is full of flying soot, and then the
_kokalupsya_—the driving rain which sweeps away the burnt grass—and then
the last interval of waiting, when the new leaves show themselves in
vivid green, red, and yellow, the thorn-trees burst into golden bloom and
‘Mpambe thunders’ in distant mutterings along the horizon.
[Illustration: WOMEN CARRYING BASKETS OF MAIZE]
The soil is exhausted by maize in two years, or three at the most; after
that new ground is broken up, and the old is planted with beans and other
less important crops for another year or two. This seems to have gone on
for centuries, the forest closing up again over the deserted gardens, as
if they had never been; it is this repeated cutting down, together with
the bush-fires, which has changed so much of the primeval forest into
straggling scrub.
HUNTING
None of the tribes of British Central Africa can be said to live by
hunting, or even to make it one of their principal occupations. The
nearest approach to a hunting tribe are the Apodzo, or Akombwi, of
the Lower Zambezi, who are professional hippopotamus-hunters, and are
sometimes spoken of as a clan, but as they speak a language of their own,
they should perhaps be reckoned as a separate people.
Forty-five years ago, game seems to have been scarce in the Shiré
Highlands proper, though abundant near the Lake and west of the Shiré.
The subsequent wars and famine allowed it to increase again; and of late
years some of the protected kinds have actually come back to their old
haunts. The native who wishes to hunt now has to take out a gun-licence,
and can no longer dig pitfalls for elephants, or set snares for buck, as
he did in the old days.
No close time was recognised, but nature took care of that, for it is
impossible to see or pursue animals through the thick grass of the
spring and summer. Where game was at all abundant, hunting parties were
organised: a long line of men would advance in a semicircle on the
patch of grass or bush to be surrounded. The leader, who carried the
‘medicines’ for luck, was in the middle, and with those on either side
of him would wait till the ends of the two ‘wings’ had met on the other
side. When the circle was complete, the signal was given by whistling,
and the hunters advanced all at once. These men would probably be armed
with spears; perhaps a few of them with guns. The Chipetas and Mang’anja
shoot a great deal with bows; they do not seem to be first-class
marksmen, though I have heard that some of the boys from the Katunga’s
district were very expert in bringing down birds flying. The only archer
whose exploits I ever had the opportunity of witnessing seemed unable
to hit a bird which I suppose to have been a white heron at a moderate
distance. But it may have been an unlucky day with him. The bow was used
as a weapon of war (with or without poisoned arrows) before the Angoni
introduced the shield and stabbing spear. War arrows are a yard long
and tipped with iron; blunt cane or wooden arrows are used for shooting
birds. The iron arrow-heads are of a great many different patterns; some
are smooth, others have as many as half a dozen barbs below the point.
[Illustration: BOY WITH BOW]
Many natives now have guns, usually flint-locks, which have come into
the country through the Portuguese trade. I remember examining one of
these guns belonging to a Ntumbi villager; it was immensely long in the
barrel and had ‘Tower’ and ‘G.R.’ engraved on the lock. They imply the
elsewhere obsolete powder-horn, which one sometimes sees very neatly
carved, and where a more advanced stage of weapon has been reached, the
percussion-caps are carried in the hollowed head of a club made of some
hard wood, which receptacle has an opening fitted with a lid or stopper
on one side, and a small hole at the top through which they can be shaken
out one by one.
The Yaos observe a certain amount of ritual before starting on a
hunting expedition, or, in fact, any journey; this is fully detailed in
_Africana_. The man intending to set out goes to his chief, who consults
the oracle of the _ufa_ cone on his behalf, and tells him to defer the
journey, if the answer is unfavourable. Dreams are also, as already
stated, much relied on in deciding matters of this sort, and unfavourable
omens, such as kicking against a stump, or meeting a snake, may send the
party back even after it has started. If all is well, however, the chief
gives the applicant a talisman to keep him safe—either a thread to be
tied round his head or arm, or a small vessel of oil to be carried with
him. While he is absent, his wife must not bathe, nor anoint herself with
oil, nor even wash her face, and if she has a dream during this period,
must be very careful about presenting an offering to the spirits.
The Angoni sometimes hunt with dogs—a better class of animals than the
miserable, yelping mongrels which infest the villages. A boy who sold me
a pair of tusks of the bush pig (_Potamochoerus_, a smaller and lighter
animal than the European wild boar) told me with great pride that the
_nguluwe_ had been killed by his dog. This same dog, if I remember
rightly, once attended school with his master—I suppose to keep him out
of harm’s way, as an impi of the Machinga was supposed to be on the
war-path. He was black, about the size of a small setter, with longer and
rougher hair than most of the village dogs (which look like remote and
degenerate descendants of fox-terriers, and are white or yellow, or both
mixed), and in shape he was more like an Eskimo dog than anything else
I can think of. He had on a hide collar, and was led by a string, and
altogether seemed valued and well treated. Some young men in one of these
same villages told me that they hunted elephants with dogs ‘in Chekusi’s
country,’ and usually lost a great many. Men carry whistles, made of a
small buck’s horn, to call dogs with.
Traps for game are of many kinds and varying degrees of ingenuity. For
large animals, such as the elephant, hippo, or buffalo, there is the
pitfall, dug with sloping sides, and sometimes planted with sharp stakes
at the bottom, which is such a frequent cause of accident to unwary
travellers. It is covered over with reeds and the ground made to look as
natural as possible. Old disused pits are no less dangerous, because the
grass and shrubs grow over them and hide them from view. They are dug
right in the track of the animal in a place where it is found to pass
often—as in going down to a stream to drink. In former times, fences
(sometimes extending over miles of country) were made to guide buck into
these pits.
Another trap for lions or leopards is made by erecting two parallel
fences of stout stakes. A heavy log is supported at the further end
between the fences and the bait placed beneath it, so that it cannot
be seized without pushing aside the slight support; the animal is then
killed by the falling log. Smaller traps are set for the different kinds
of wild-cat, and baited with mice. Another trap often set for hippos
or elephants is a heavy log hung vertically above the pathway, with a
poisoned spear fixed in its lower end; the animal treads on a catch which
releases the string holding the weighted spear. The poison for spears and
arrows is in most cases strophanthus.
Going along one of the paths leading through the bush, one sometimes
notices a curious little arrangement of sticks and string, like a narrow
gate, about eighteen inches high. This is a _msampa_ trap, designed
to catch a buck by the leg, or smaller animals, which run close to the
ground, by the neck. A cord with a running noose at one end is made fast
by the other to the top of a springy sapling, which is bent down and kept
in position by an easily released catch; the noose is then stretched open
between the upright sticks, but so as to slip off easily as soon as the
animal treads on the catch, when the sapling flies up and immediately
tightens the cord.
Several kinds of smaller traps are set for field-rats and mice; one is
a long narrow funnel, woven of slips of bamboo, with the ends pointing
inwards at the mouth, so that a rat can get in but not out again; the
stretching of the slips narrows the entrance, and there is no room to
turn round. Some of these traps are woven of _mapira_ stalks or palm
fibre. It might be supposed that any mouse could easily gnaw its way out;
but the trap is not set and left; it is placed in the creatures’ run, and
the grass is beaten to drive them into it, when they are at once taken
out and despatched. Sometimes the animal is driven into a trap like this
by a dog.
Another mouse-trap is made of a hollowed pumpkin, or the fruit of the
_kigelia_ (_mvunguti_) tree, which looks like a huge woody cucumber.
It is baited with roasted maize or ground-nuts, and has a noose at the
opening kept stretched by a bent stick, much on the same principle as the
_msampa_.
The Apodzo, already mentioned, hunt the hippopotamus from canoes. Three
go out at a time, with two men in each—one to paddle, and one to throw
the harpoon. This consists of a strong barbed head, loosely inserted
into a wooden handle to which it is attached by a stout cord, wound
closely round the whole length, and uncoiling when the weapon is thrown;
so that, when the wounded brute dives, the wood floats and shows his
whereabouts. When he has been struck three times, the ropes are gathered
up and twisted together, being then strong enough to hold him, and slowly
hauled in till he can be despatched with spears.
Although not to be reckoned as hunting, the capture of wild honey, and of
swarming white ants (neither an unimportant item in the native larder),
may be mentioned here. The wild bees (some kinds of which, but not all,
are stingless) make their nests in hollow trees, which are frequently
pointed out to passing hunters or travellers by the small bird known as
the honey-guide. They make a fire, cut a hole in the tree large enough
to pass the arm through, smoke the bees out with lighted wisps of grass,
and carry away the honeycombs in pieces of bark. The River people hang
hives on trees—small cylindrical boxes made of bark, in which the bees
build,—and remove them when full.
White ants, when they swarm, are fat yellow insects, an inch or more in
length, which fill the European with unconquerable loathing, when they
make a sudden irruption into the house, blunder into the lamps, crack
the glasses, and get down the back of your neck in the dark. It is the
small and much more insignificant workers who do the damage in houses,
eating wood-work and plastering walls with their galleries; but they do
not excite the same antipathy. The native, however, regards the _inswa_
in a very different light; in fact, one of the Blantyre catechists has
been known to use them with great effect in a sermon, as a simile for
the delights of this world! Sometimes a large ant-heap is found close to
or actually among the huts of a village; it never struck me at the time
to ask whether this was accidental, or whether the responsible person
had purposely located his abode close to this desirable game preserve.
Passing by such a place one day soon after the rains had begun, I found
two or three youths busy catching termites. They had dug in the heap a
short trench, which, as they had roofed it over with grass, looked for
all the world like a grave; and into this the swarming insects collected.
At one end was a round opening with a cover, which was lifted off from
time to time, and the _inswa_ taken out by handfuls. They are roasted
over the fire in an earthen pot, ‘like coffee,’ said my informant.
FISHING
Fish are caught with rod and line, nets, traps, and weirs, and sometimes
speared. There are two kinds of fish-spear—the _momba_, with a straight
point for striking the fish, and the barbed _chikolongwe_, or gaff, for
hooking it out. Weirs are usually made at the mouth of a stream; a fence
is built right across with only one opening left in it, and behind it is
placed a large _mono_, or basket-trap, constructed on the principle of a
lobster-pot, and perhaps five feet long. The weir in the illustration is
at Ngofi, on the eastern side of Lake Nyasa.
Smaller traps of the same kind are sunk in the water, like lobster-pots.
Nets are sometimes set overnight and anchored with a couple of stones,
the upper edge being kept on the top of the water by a line of floats.
Other nets are cast from canoes; sometimes they are hauled in and the
fish scooped on board with the canoe-balers, sometimes the ropes are
taken on shore and the net hauled up on the beach like our seines. This
is done with the largest kind of net, requiring twenty men to handle it.
Another is chiefly used at night: the net is lowered between two canoes,
while a third is paddled towards it with a lighted torch on board to
attract the fish. The men alternately show the torch and knock loudly
on the sides of the canoe, which seems to daze the fish and drive them
towards the net. Hand-nets are also used, like shrimping-nets, with
handles working over each other scissor-wise, but kept in place by a
cross-bar which is not in the European implement. Nets are generally made
of the _Bwazi_ fibre. Net-making and canoe-patching are (or were) the two
great industries of Likoma island; and the whole lakeside population is
more or less engaged in fishing.
Fishing with rod and line may often be seen on the Shiré, where, in
some places, small platforms are built out from the bank, so that the
angler can cast his hook in deep water and free of reeds or bushes. The
hook is large, not barbed, but bent in towards the shank, to make it
more difficult to slip off; it is made of iron wire and sharpened on
a stone. The bait is usually maize-paste. After throwing the line, the
angler strikes the top of the water sharply a few times with his rod, to
agitate it, and call the attention of the fish. Poison is sometimes put
into a pool to stupefy the fish, when they come to the surface and can be
gathered out of the water by hand; a species of euphorbia, and a large
shrub (_ombwe_) with bean-like pods and white blossoms, are used for this
purpose, and can often be seen growing in the villages.
CANOE-MAKING
Canoes are made wherever there are trees of sufficient size growing
where they can be brought down to the water without too much difficulty.
‘The tree,’ however, ‘may be chosen far up on the hills, in which case
it is drawn down by great numbers of men with ropes of thick creepers.
A great thickness of bottom is left for the purpose, and rollers of
bamboo or stick are spread across the path to facilitate the dragging.’
The commonest form of canoe is the ‘dug-out,’ made from a single log of
_mbawa_ or some other hard wood, but there are some made of a large sheet
of bark sewn at the ends. Hewing out a canoe with axe and adze is slow
work, and it is no wonder that it is considered matter for rejoicing and
brewing of beer when finished.
[Illustration: CANOES AT LIWONDE’S (UPPER SHIRÉ)]
If the vessel is for the chief’s own use, he often attends, to see how it
is progressing and cheer up his men with libations of _moa_. There is not
much variety in the shape; but some have incurved gunwales like those
in the illustration, some straight. The paddles are short, with oblong
blades, about the size and shape of an ordinary spade. In low water,
the canoe is propelled with punting-poles, which are always necessary
because the level of the river changes very quickly and sand-banks shift
their places from season to season. Canoes are kept at the regular
crossing-places of rivers by men who will ferry passengers over for a
consideration. When not in use, the paddles and poles are carefully
hidden, to prevent the canoe being summarily ‘borrowed.’ The largest
canoes are, perhaps, thirty or forty feet long, and have ten or twelve
paddlers, who work sitting, and sing in time to their strokes.
WEAVING
We have already said that spinning, weaving, and sewing are considered
emphatically men’s work, as they were by the ancient Egyptians. The
material spun is most frequently cotton, though, in the Chipeta
country, south-west of the Lake, the fibre of the _bwazi_ (_Securidaca
longipedunculata_) is more in use. This fibre is very strong, and is used
for fishing-nets; but native cloth, whether cotton or _bwazi_, is not
often seen now, since European material (very inferior to it in quality)
has been easier to obtain. The spinning-wheel is unknown, and the process
of twisting the thread by hand and then spinning it on the _njinga_, a
wooden spindle with a whorl or reel of tortoise-shell (or hard wood), is
a very leisurely one. Three or four bobbins full of thread are used to
‘set’ the loom, which consists of four posts driven into the ground and
connected by cross-bars. It is set up in the open space near the owner’s
hut, or perhaps in the _bwalo_. The web is never very large; two yards
long by a yard in width appears to be the outside. The process has often
been described, and can be seen in the illustration. There are also two
excellent photographs of it in Sir H. H. Johnston’s book.
[Illustration: 1. MAT-MAKING.
2. NATIVE LOOM]
Sewing is now done almost everywhere with European needles, which are
very much in demand. Nine times out of ten, the requests of your carriers
desiring extra tips, or of casual beggars (whom, however, I never found
either as numerous or as troublesome as frequently represented), were for
needles or soap (_sopo_ or _sabao_ according as British or Portuguese
influence predominated in the experience of the speaker). Native needles
and awls are either iron, or sharpened bamboo splinters; I have once or
twice seen these, but the large ones, for thatching, are still in common
use. Many men sew very neatly; they have an ingenious way of mending
holes in their calicoes which is not like our darning, but consists in
button-holing round the edge of the hole and continuing round and round
inward, till it is filled up. Some seemed to aim at decorative effect,
as in darning a blue cloth with red thread. The more artistic kinds of
sewing, and such flights as the cutting out and making of Arab shirts,
have probably been learnt on the coast, or from men who have been there;
but the men, in general, are neat-fingered and take to these things
almost instinctively, while to their wives, who are gathered into sewing
classes at the missions, by way of making them ‘womanly,’ they are mostly
pain and grief. One of a husband’s duties is to sew his wife’s calico;
if he neglects this it is held to be a sufficient ground for divorce.
It is curious to notice the sort of convention that has grown up about
these things. Originally, I suppose, these and similar occupations were
looked on as light and elegant relaxations for gentlemen who came back
weary from the wars, or from hunting, or from a six months’ trip to the
coast, and so gradually became exclusively appropriated to them. I once
in my ignorance asked an old woman if she could make me a basket, and she
replied in a slightly shocked tone that it was _nchito ya amuna_—men’s
work. I imagine, though I never heard the point raised, that it would be
little if at all short of improper for a man to set about making pots.
The word _ruka_, ‘to weave,’ is used both for the weaving of cloth and
the making of mats and baskets; but in these last there is a certain
distinction observed, _ruka_ being applied to what is properly woven or
inter-plaited, while another word, _pika_, describes the plaiting of the
_nkokwe_, where the strands all run one way, and are twined in and out
between the uprights, but the rows are not linked into one another. There
is also a kind of mat made with bundles of reeds laid side by side and
connected by strips of cane twined in and out between them in pairs. This
process is called by English basket-makers ‘pairing,’ as distinct from
‘weaving.’
Baskets are of many kinds, each with its own use and name, and it is
characteristic of the native habit of mind (one illustrated in all
primitive languages), that there is no _general_ term for a basket pure
and simple without reference to its kind or use. This, I fancy, touches
on the old controversy between Nominalists and Realists. But that the
Bantu are not incapable of the degree of mental abstraction implied in
general notions is shown by the fact that they have words for ‘tree’ and
‘bird,’ quite irrespective of the species of either, all of which have
their own proper names.
One of the commonest kinds of basket is the _mtanga_, used for bringing
in maize from the harvest-field, for carrying provisions or anything else
that will go into it (being of convenient size and shape for carrying
on the head), and, very often, for storing things inside the hut. It is
made of flat slips of bamboo, woven at first as if for a mat; when a
square of a little more than a foot across is finished, the slips are
turned up, the corners rounded, and the upright part of the basket woven
in a circle, which is finished by cutting off the ends at the top and
enclosing the rim between two thin bamboo hoops, sewn on with strips of
bark. _Mtangas_ are made in several sizes, being both larger and smaller
than the above; the diameter is always about equal to the height. They
are very strong and serviceable, and Europeans find them useful in many
ways. The _mtungwi_ is a double basket with flat wooden rims, one of
which fits into the other; it is made of split bamboo, like the _mtanga_,
but the slips are narrower, and both halves are rounded, instead of
beginning as a square. The rims are of white wood, often charred or
otherwise blackened, and ornamented with patterns cut out on it with a
knife. Small flat baskets (_nsengwa_), from four to eight inches across,
are used as plates, or to bring eggs, or other small articles for sale.
They sometimes have an ornamental rim, worked in herring-bone pattern
with a certain fibrous root, alternated with the rind of cane. The large
flat baskets used for winnowing or sifting are eighteen inches or two
feet across, and three or four inches deep in the middle; they slope
more from the rim than the _nsengwa_, which is flat-bottomed. Bags
of different shapes and sizes, which men wear round their necks on a
journey, are woven out of palm-fibre. A much rougher construction is the
coop or crate made for the transport of fowls, which is sometimes round,
sometimes cylindrical.
[Illustration: MAKING “MTANGA” BASKET]
[Illustration: BOY WITH CRATE OF FOWLS]
The universal sleeping-mat, made of the _bongo_ reed (_Phragmites_), is
sewn rather than woven; the edge of the mat is formed of a length of
peeled bamboo, to which strings are fastened at regular intervals; then
these are passed through the split reeds by means of a bamboo needle. The
yellow, shiny surface of the canes makes these mats very attractive when
new, but they splinter easily, and do not last long as a floor-covering
in European houses. They will roll up tightly, with the upper surface
outward (not the reverse way, as the curves of the canes are all on one
side), and are so carried on a journey, as the Angoni have them in Plate
23. Finer and softer mats are made of palm-fibre; these are really
woven, as are also the _fumbas_, or sleeping-bags, used by the River
natives as a protection against mosquitoes; they are woven round two
ends and one side, leaving the other side open. The man gets in, draws
the edges together, turns over so as to get the opening underneath him,
and sleeps soundly, untroubled by ventilation, or the lack of it. Of
course, the fabric is not close enough to exclude the air, but a person
unaccustomed to it would find his breathing seriously impeded, and I have
never been able to understand how natives are able to sleep wrapped head
and all in blankets, and looking more like chrysalids than anything else.
The making of bark-cloth is another vanishing industry; but formerly
it was the only fabric known in many districts where cotton was not
cultivated, and the other fibre-plants not utilised for weaving. The bark
used is that of the fig-tree, or the _myombo_ (_Brachystegia_), which has
a leaf like the ash. The hard outer bark of the tree is first taken off,
and then a large sheet of the inner carefully removed, by first cutting a
long upright line, and then two parallel circles. It is scraped, and then
beaten with a mallet made of ebony or some other hard and heavy wood,
which has its face deeply scored with lines crossing one another, so as
to present almost a toothed surface. It is folded, hammered, folded to
a smaller compass, and hammered again, till it is beaten out to a yard
in width and a tolerably even thickness. It is usually of a terra-cotta
colour, but sometimes dyed black by steeping in a certain kind of mud
found in the swamps. This dye does not always last, but wears off and
leaves the cloth pale grey. The dyeing is done before beating. There is
also white bark-cloth, which I have not seen; it is made by burning off
the hard bark from the tree, which heats and bleaches the inner. Good
bark-cloth is very soft and pliable, and very warm in cold weather. Even
after the introduction of English cloth, women were often seen wearing
bark-cloth above their calico on cold or wet days. As already remarked,
it continues to be worn ceremonially in the mysteries.
IRONWORK AND WOOD-CARVING
The Mang’anja, like the Mashona and other Makalanga tribes, have been
distinguished from time immemorial as workers in iron. The Zulus do
not appear to have practised this art to any great extent, though it
was handed down in certain families, who probably learnt it from the
Makalanga. It is not common among the Baronga, and M. Junod, in giving
a woodcut of a knife in a carved sheath (of the kind very common on
the Zambezi and elsewhere), which he obtained from a travelled native,
remarks that it is ‘pièce rare et qu’on m’a dit provenir de la tribu
des Bandjao’—a distant tribe in the north-west; it is quite possible
that this was really a Mashona knife. The Zulus do not appear to have a
distinct word for a knife, either calling it _umkonto_ (a weapon, or tool
in general), or using the Dutch word _mes_.
Livingstone, when first visiting the Shiré Highlands in 1859, found that
‘Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple
trade of the southern highlands. Each village has its smelting-house, its
charcoal-burners and blacksmiths. They make good axes, spears, needles,
arrow-heads, bracelets, and anklets, which are sold at surprisingly
low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of
about the value of fourpence.’ In 1876 there was a smelting-furnace
within a few hundred yards of Blantyre station, and ‘a smithy in an old
hut beside the station was daily patronised.’ The furnaces have mostly
disappeared, and the smiths do not often make hoes or axes, preferring
to hammer scraps of imported iron—for instance, pieces of the hoops from
packing-cases—into small knives or the like. I made a rough sketch of
the smithy beside the _bwalo_ at Ntumbi; it was in a very dilapidated
condition, and I never saw the smith at work there, though he sold me
a small razor of his own manufacture, which is now in the Ethnological
Museum at Cambridge. The forge contained the usual fireplace, with a
ridge of earth banked up round it, rather higher than the ordinary
fireplace in a hut. On the further side of the hollow were two upright
clay-pipes, into which the two openings of the goat-skin bellows were
fixed when at work; they communicated below with another pipe opening
into the midst of the embers. A split bamboo is used as tongs, and the
smith keeps a pot of water beside him to quench the ends when they
take fire. The anvil is a flat stone, and a large stone is used as the
forge-hammer; iron hammers are used in later stages of the process. The
characteristic Nyanja knife is two-edged, with carved wooden handle and
sheath, as shown in the illustration. The one shown in the illustration
is not a very elaborate specimen, but they are sometimes beautifully
carved, and of all sizes, from six inches and under to about a foot, but
the tiny ones sometimes seen are only made for sale to travellers as
curios, on the Lower Shiré and Zambezi. These knives serve every possible
purpose of a pocket-knife, and are worn round the neck, or under the left
arm, by a string passing over the right shoulder, or, if small, tied on
the upper left arm. The sheath is made with a projecting ear or loop for
the string to pass through.
[Illustration: 1. “MBENGO” (“Angoni Handkerchief”) and NYANJA SHEATH-KNIFE
2. YAO KNIFE, WITH HANDLE OF HIPPOPOTAMUS IVORY
In the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge]
The Yaos prefer another style of knife, with one edge, and two or
three grooves on the blade; the specimen in the cut has a handle of
hippopotamus ivory.
The illustration shows another product of the smith’s art—that known as
an ‘Angoni handkerchief’; it is worn round the neck, and used (with a
vigour calculated to strike amazement into the unsophisticated beholder)
to remove the results of toil from the forehead, or even to perform the
ordinary office of a handkerchief for the nose.
Wood-carving is of a primitive sort, though often very neatly done.
The patterns on the knife-sheaths above mentioned mostly consist of
triangles, chevrons, and lozenges, and are not nearly so elaborate as
some specimens of Mashona and Zambezi work. Indeed, the former seem,
at least in some cases, to have originated in unskilful copying of the
interlaced pattern usually called Celtic, which is found in some of the
latter, and probably introduced in the first instance by the Portuguese.
The carving on blackened wood, which is very popular among the Yaos, is
confined to the same elementary designs, and is done with very little
relief, and no attempt at modelling of surface, the only object being to
show the white figures on the dark ground.
Pillows or neck-rests of the Mashona or ancient Egyptian pattern are in
use, but I never saw one being made, nor came across a new one. But it
must be remembered that the people of the Shiré Highlands were, ten years
ago, comparatively unused to the experience of a settled life, in which
you can begin an important piece of carving with a reasonable prospect
of being able to finish it. The country west of the Shiré has not been
quite free from alarms and excursions for even so long as that. Quaint
figures of birds are sometimes attempted by adventurous artists, but
these are not very common, and I do not even remember coming across a
stick with the top carved into the likeness of a human head, except the
_tsanchima_ staff mentioned in a previous chapter, which must have been
of considerable age.
POTTERY
There are many kinds of pots—large water-jars, the large cooking-pots
used for making porridge, and the small ones for boiling its
accompaniments. The women, having procured the right kind of earth, break
it up on a stone and knead it with water till it attains the proper
consistency; then they mould a round lump, make a hole in the middle and
work away at it with their hands and now and then a bamboo splint. No
wheel or mould is used. Sometimes an incised pattern is made while the
clay is soft. When finished, the pot is stood in the shade for a day;
then they put it out into the sun, and when dry, burn it in an open wood
fire. I am nearly sure, however, though, most unfortunately, I did not
make a note of the fact at the time, that I once saw something like a
small oven in use for the purpose. Pots not expected to stand the fire
are considered fit for use after drying in the sun, and will hold water
satisfactorily, though apt to grow soft if kept continuously wet. Smaller
pots are sometimes coloured red by mixing oxide of iron with the clay;
sometimes they have quite a good glaze, and the red surface is variegated
with black bands. A large water-jar always stands inside the hut, which
is filled up every day when the women fetch water from the nearest
stream. They carry a large earthen or calabash jar on their heads; on the
River this is balanced on a thing called a _ngoti_, which is a little
wooden stand, with a saucer-shaped depression above and one below,
something like a flat double wine-glass (the frontispiece will give a
better idea of it than any description), the upper concavity fitting the
jar, and the lower one the head. I suppose this eases the pressure on the
head, like the grass rings or pads (_nkata_) used by all who carry heavy
loads; but at first sight it seems as if it would add to the difficulties
of carriage.
A long-handled gourd is carried along as a dipper, to ladle the water
into the jar, and after it is full, a few leaves, or a twist of grass,
are put on the top to keep the water from spilling. I have seen flat
wooden crosses used (I think in Cornwall) for the same purpose.
In places where there is danger from crocodiles, as in some parts of the
Shiré, the women carry a gourd at the end of a long pole, so that they
can dip the water from the top of a high bank, and run no risk of being
seized. Accidents of this kind have frequently happened to women stooping
at the water’s edge to fill their jars. The crocodile seems to turn round
and knock people over with a swing of his tail, if he cannot get near
enough to seize them with his jaws. A letter written in English by a
native a few years ago, related a tragic occurrence of this sort—how a
man, going down the river with his wife, and camping for the night on a
sandbank, awoke in the morning to find that ‘the woman had gone away with
a crocodile!’
SALT-MAKING
Salt is so much in demand, for reasons already adverted to, in this part
of Africa, that its production is an important industry. Its principal
centre is near Lake Chilwa, but inferior salt is made in places at a
distance from that lake, for home consumption, by burning various grasses
and other plants. In either case the process is the same. The ashes, or
the salt earth dug up from the banks of the lake, are put into a flat
basket, preferably an old, worn _nsengwa_, and water slowly poured on and
allowed to drain through into a pot placed beneath to receive it. ‘The
water so strained through is saltish,’ says the Rev. H. Barnes, speaking
of Likoma, ‘and is used with food to flavour it. In some parts this
water is boiled till it is boiled away, and the result is a very white
salt.’ Sometimes the water is allowed to evaporate without boiling; I do
not know if this is done at Chilwa, but the salt brought from thence is
distinctly grey—certainly not white. People come in small parties from a
distance, and live at the _kulo_, or salt-pit, where the earth is dug,
till they have finished making all they want. The process is a slow one;
it usually takes a month to make eighty pounds of salt, as large numbers
of people do not engage in the work at once. They pack it in matting bags
holding about twenty pounds’ weight apiece, and carry it down to Blantyre
and elsewhere for sale. A ‘salt _ulendo_’ is always sure of a speedy sale
for its wares.
People who make salt at home—it is generally the women—do not, as a rule,
take the trouble to boil or evaporate it, but use the liquor as it is for
cooking.
Besides Lake Chilwa, there are some places near the mouth of the Ruo,
whence salt is obtained, and some is said to come from the neighbourhood
of Lake Nyasa, but this last is bitter and more like saltpetre. Sir A.
Sharpe describes the process of salt-making in the saline swamps of
Mweru, in very much the same way as the above, only the apparatus is
different—‘funnels made of closely woven grass rope’ taking the place of
baskets. Evidently these funnels or strainers are specially made for the
purpose, showing that the industry is more specialised.
CHAPTER IX
LANGUAGE AND ORAL LITERATURE
Structure of the Bantu languages. Riddles. Songs. Music and
dancing. Story-telling.
The languages spoken in British Central Africa belong to the great
Bantu family, which, as is now known, occupies (with a few exceptions)
the whole continent of Africa south of a line drawn from the Gulf of
Cameroons to the mouth of the Tana River on the east coast. Those spoken
within the Protectorate are Nyanja, Yao, the Lomwe dialect of Makua,
Tonga, Tumbuka, Nkonde, and a Zulu dialect spoken by the Angoni clans.
In Northern Rhodesia we may mention Bisa, Bemba, Luba, and Lunda as the
principal languages.
All the Bantu languages are as closely related together as English,
Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian dialects. There are several
points about them which are extremely interesting to the comparative
philologist. They have no grammatical gender—the same pronoun is used
for a man and a woman; and, accordingly, most natives who learn English
come to grief on this point, like Winwood Reade’s interpreter who asked:
‘What you say when him son be girl?’ On the other hand, nouns are divided
into eight or ten classes, each with its own plural inflection, and
adjectives and pronouns agreeing with it as they agree with each of the
three genders in Latin. This agreement extends also to the verbs.
The Bantu languages further differ from those with which most of us are
familiar, in that their inflections are indicated, not by suffixes, but
by prefixes—a fact which first meets us in the various and perplexing
forms assumed by the names of tribes and countries. Thus _Myao_ is ‘a
Yao’ (man or woman), _Wayao_ is ‘Yaos,’ and _Chiyao_ the Yao language.
Each noun-class has its own prefix (sometimes much atrophied or even
dropped altogether) for singular and for plural, and though these
prefixes vary greatly in the different languages, they are always
recognisable as having come from the same original, just as we know that
the English _oak_, the German _Eiche_, the Dutch _eik_, and the Danish
_eeg_ are all derived from one primitive form. The inflectional prefixes
of adjectives and verbs are derived from the noun-prefixes, though not
always identical with them in form; and the pronouns are modifications
of the prefix. In fact, broadly speaking, the prefix may be called a
pronoun, and the group of languages under consideration are sometimes
called the prefix-pronominal languages.
The careful reader may think that a somewhat Hibernian assertion has
been made above—viz. that the prefix is recognisable even where it has
been dropped; but this is in fact the case: the pronoun, which _must_ be
inserted before the verb, always shows what the lost prefix of the noun
has been. Thus we have in Nyanja the word _njoka_, ‘a snake’; it has no
prefix as it stands, but when used in a sentence we find it takes the
pronoun _i_: _njoka i luma_, ‘the snake bites.’ Now in Zulu, which has
kept its prefixes better than Nyanja, we find that ‘snake’ is _inyoka_.
This principle of agreement, by which all the words governed by the noun
repeat its prefix in some form or another at their beginning, is called
the _alliterative concord_, and may be illustrated by the following
sentences:—
NYANJA
_Mtengo_ _watu_ _u-li_ _wotari_, _u-dza-gwa_.
Tree our it is high it will fall.
The pronoun for the class to which _mtengo_ (anciently _umtengo_) belongs
is _u_, which is quite clearly seen before the verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to
fall.’ In the possessive pronoun and the adjective, it is a little
disguised, because it becomes _w_ before another vowel (_watu_ = _u_ +
_atu_).
The plural of this is:
_Mitengo yatu i-ri yetari, i-dza gwa._
Here the pronoun is _i_, or, before a vowel, _y_. _R_ and _L_ are
interchangeable; the verb ‘to be’ is usually _li_ after _a_ and _u_, _ri_
after _i_.
Another class is thus exemplified:
_Chiko_ _chánga_ _chabwino_ _chi-dza-sweka_.
Gourd my good it will be broken.
In the plural:
_Ziko zanga zabwino zidzasweka._
YAO
_Lu-peta_ _a-lu_ _lu-li_ _lu-angu_ _ngunu-lu-jasika_, _lu-enu_
Basket this is mine not it is lost yours
_’lu-la lu-jasiche._
that is lost.
Here the prefix is _lu_.
(‘This basket is mine, it is not lost; yours is lost.’)
In the plural: _Mbeta asi sili syangu, nginisijasika, syenu ’sila
sijasiche._ The plural prefix corresponding to _lu_ is _izim_ (_isim_),
or _izin_, and _p_ following this prefix changes to _b_; hence
(_isi_)_mbeta_ is the plural of _lupeta_.
There are very few adjectives in the Bantu languages; their place may
be supplied by a noun preceded by the possessive particle corresponding
to the word ‘of’: thus _chiko chabwino_ is literally ‘a gourd of
goodness.’ There are a good many verbs which can be used where we should
use adjectives, as _ku ipa_, ‘to be bad’ (_ku_ is the sign of the
infinitive); _ku uma_, ‘to be dry,’ etc.
Verbs can express, by means of changes in the stem, a number of
modifications in their meaning which we have to convey by separate words.
These modifications are usually called ‘forms,’ but are really extensions
of the principle of ‘voice.’ We have to be content with two voices—the
active and passive, with traces of a middle; Hebrew has seven; some Bantu
languages have as many as nine or ten; while, counting the secondary and
tertiary derivatives, and the compounds, the late W. H. Bentley reckoned
out over three hundred forms of one verb, _all actually in use_, in the
language of the Lower Congo.
The aspirate exists neither in Yao nor Nyanja, and when heard in English
words is often turned into _S_; thus the name Hetherwick becomes
Salawichi. But the people west of the Shiré use it in words and names
borrowed from the Zulus, and seem to find no difficulty with it. _L_
and _R_ are interchangeable, as already stated, or rather it would be
more correct to say that the sound intended is really distinct from both
and heard by some Europeans as _l_, by others as _r_. There are no very
difficult sounds, except perhaps _ng_ (pronounced as in ‘sing’) when it
comes at the beginning of a word. There are no clicks in any language
used in the region under consideration, except the Zulu spoken by some
of the Angoni, and in this they tend to disappear. The accent is almost
invariably on the penultimate.
The Bantu languages have, of course, no written literature—for we can
hardly count the translations, etc., produced by missionaries and their
pupils, or even the two or three native newspapers appearing in Cape
Colony and Natal. But like most primitive tongues, they are rich in
traditional tales, songs, proverbs, etc. Of the folk-stories we shall
give some examples in the next chapter. Here are some specimens of Nyanja
proverbs:—
‘If you are patient, you will see the eyes of the snail.’
‘Speed in walking in sand is even.’ (‘_Bei Nacht sind alle Katzen grau._’)
‘You taste things chopped with an axe, but meat cut up with a knife you
don’t get a taste of.’ (The sound of the axe directs passers-by to the
place where the food is being prepared—perhaps inside the reed-fence of
the kraal—when, of course, they must be asked to partake; had a knife
been used, they would have heard nothing, and gone on.)
‘If your neighbour’s beard takes fire, quench it for him’—_i.e._ you may
need a similar service some day.
‘When a man or a reed dies, there grows up another.’ (‘_Il n’y a pas
d’homme nécessaire._’)
‘Sleep has no favourite.’
‘Lingering met with liers in wait.’
Riddles, as already mentioned, are very popular. They are usually of the
simple kind which describes some well-known object in more or less veiled
and allusive language, something after the style of
‘Walls there are as white as milk,
Lined with skin as soft as silk,
Within a fountain crystal-clear,
A golden apple doth appear;
but much more crudely expressed.
‘I built my house without a door’ is one which has the same answer as the
above—viz. ‘an egg.’
Others are:—
‘Spin string that we may cross the river.’—A spider.
‘The people are round about, their chief is in the centre.’—A fire, and
the people sitting round it.
‘I saw a chief walking along the road with flour on his head.’—Grey hair.
‘Such an one built his house with one post only.’—A mushroom.
‘A large bird covering its young with its wings.’—A house—referring to
the roof with its broad eaves.
‘My child cried on the road.’—A hammer.
‘The sick man walks, but does not want to run, but when he sees this,
he runs against his will.’—A steep hill (which forces people to run in
descending it).
At Likoma they have a set form for riddle-contests, as thus: A. begins,
‘A riddle!’ The rest reply in chorus, ‘Let it come!’ A. ‘I have built my
house on the cliff!’ All guess; if their guesses are wrong, A. repeats
his riddle. If they still cannot guess right, they say, ‘We pay up oxen.’
A. ‘How many?’ They give a number. If A. is satisfied, he will now
explain his riddle—‘the ear’ being the answer to the one given above. If
any one guesses right, all clap their hands, and another player asks a
fresh riddle.
Another popular amusement might be described as a ‘debate.’ Boys and
grown men both delight in it, though with the former it is sometimes the
prelude to a fight. One of a party sitting round the fire, or wakeful in
the dormitory, will say, ‘_Tieni, ti chita mákani_’—‘Come, let us have a
discussion,’—and will start it, perhaps, by asking whether a hippopotamus
can climb a tree. The arguments for and against the proposition are then
advanced with the greatest eagerness, till the point is settled, amid
volleys of laughter, or the company tired out.
I have never, in Nyanja, come across any of the curious _itagu_
(‘catch-word compositions’) which the Yaos delight in, and which are
recited by two or more speakers. The following specimen of a duologue is
given by Mr. Duff Macdonald:—
First Speaker. Second Speaker.
Nda. Nda kuluma.
Kuluma. Kuluma mbale.
Mbale. Mbale katete.
Katete. Katete ngupe.
Ngupe. Ngupe akane.
Kane. Kane akongwe.
Kongwe. Akongole chimanga.
Chimanga. Chimanje macholo.
Macholo. Gachole wandu.
It will be seen that the second speaker repeats the word given by the
first (or something like it), and adds another to it, while the first in
like manner catches up his last word, or part of it, sometimes giving
it a different sense. It is almost impossible to translate this sort of
thing, but the following composition on the same lines may serve to show
how it is done.
A. B.
Ten. Tender and true.
True. Truth shall prevail.
Veil. Veil thy diminished head.
Head. Head of the clan.
Plan. Plant a new city, etc. etc.
Here, of course, there is no pretence of connection, but the _itagu_
are really connected stories. The language of these _itagu_ is very
difficult; either because they are very old, or because words are
purposely distorted.
Songs are numerous, and continually improvised afresh as wanted, though
many old traditional ones are current, some of which are embodied in
tales, and sung in chorus by the audience when the narrator comes to
them. Natives nearly always sing when engaged in concerted work, such as
paddling, hauling a heavy log, carrying a hammock, etc. They sometimes
sing in unison, but not unfrequently in parts. Very often one sings
the recitative, another answers, and others add the chorus. There is
no metre, properly so called, in the songs, but there is a sort of
rhythm, and they usually go very well to chants. Both Yao and Nyanja are
exceedingly melodious languages, and it is possible, though not easy,
to write rhymed verses in them, especially in trochaic metres, which
violate no rule of accent or construction. Many, if not most, however,
of the European tunes which have been adapted to native words in mission
hymn-books are hopelessly unsuitable, and the result, as regards the
accentuation of the words, is sometimes nothing short of grotesque.
No systematic study has yet been made of the native melodies by means
of phonographic records; a few of the Nyanja and Chikunda songs have
been written down, more or less tentatively by ear, and a good many
Chinamwanga tunes have been noted down by Mrs. Dewar, of the Livingstonia
Mission. These last, which are all associated with stories, come from a
district outside the bounds of the Protectorate, about half-way between
Nyasa and Tanganyika.
In general the character of all Bantu music is much the same; the
singing has a curious, monotonous, droning effect, which, however, is
not without its charm, when heard amid the proper surroundings. It is
sometimes said that all the melodies are in the minor key; but this is
a mistake. M. Junod, who has made a very careful study of the music of
the Baronga, says that the effect which gives rise to this impression is
produced by the songs beginning on a high note and descending; and this
turns out, on examination, to be the case with many of those collected
by Mrs. Dewar, though the height of the opening note is often only
comparative. As a specimen, I give the melody (as written down by Mrs.
Pringle of Yair) of the famous canoe-song _Sina mama_.
[Music:
Si-na ma-ma Si-na ba-bai Si-na ma-
ma Ma-ri-ya si-na ba-bai, si-na ma-ma.
Si-na ma-ma wa-ku le-wa na-ye, si-
na ma-ma, ma-ma ndi-we Ma-ri-ya.]
The meaning of the words (collated from two printed sources and my
own notes) is: ‘I have no mother, I have no father; I have no mother,
Mary, I have no father; I have no mother, to be nursed by her; I have
no mother—thou art my mother, O Mary!’ This song is often heard on the
Shiré; but, containing as it does, a faint echo of Romanist teaching,
probably originated in one of the Portuguese settlements on the Zambezi.
Another Shiré boat-song is _Wachenjera kale_, which, when I heard it,
I took for a very _à propos_ improvisation, having, I suppose, utterly
forgotten the following passage from Livingstone’s _Zambezi Expedition_,
which I must have read, but which struck me as quite new when I came
across it a few months later. ‘In general they [the men of Mazaro or
Vicenti on the Lower Zambezi] are trained canoe-men, and man many of the
canoes plying to Senna and Tette; their pay is small, and, not trusting
the traders, they must always have it before they start.... It is
possible they may be good-humouredly giving their reason for insisting
on being invariably paid in advance in the words of their favourite
canoe-song, “Uachingere [uniformity in spelling African words is, even
now, not much more than a pious aspiration], uachingere kale,” “You
cheated me of old,” or “Thou art slippery, slippery truly.”’ I prefer the
former rendering; and, moreover, my men repeated the _Wachenjera_ thrice.
There seemed to be no more of the song.
A very pretty corn-pounding song heard at Blantyre is as follows:—
Gu! gu! ndikatinka nkasinja.
Mai! tate! Zandia, gu!
Mwanawe uliranji?
Kuchenjera kwa amako,
Kundikwirira pa moto,
Kuti ine ndipsyerere.
It is not easy to get a satisfactory translation of this, though the
words, on the face of them, are not very difficult. ‘_Gu! gu!_ (the sound
of the pestle descending into the wooden mortar)—I am going to pound
corn; father! mother! Zandia! _gu!_ (I take Zandia to be a proper name).
You, child, why are you crying?—They are clever (or, they cheated me) at
your mother’s—to cover me up on the fire that I might be burnt—Zandia!’
The ‘child’ addressed is perhaps the corn in the mortar, which cries out
and complains of being crushed (‘burnt’), or it may be meant of some
maize-cobs put down to roast while the pounding is going on, which may be
heard popping and crackling.
Several songs I have taken down are full of allusions to local chiefs
and events of which I did not succeed in getting the explanation; they
show, at all events, how passing incidents are commemorated and kept in
mind. One speaks of ‘Mandala, who ran away from the flag’ (_mbendera_—the
Portuguese _bandeira_), and ‘Gomani (_i.e._ Chekusi), who died (or,
no doubt, “was kilt entirely”—he being still alive at the time of
recitation) in the _dambo_.’ This may refer to one of the many wars
between Chekusi and Chifisi, or Bazale.
Some of the songs are difficult to understand, as, even if not very old,
they abound in unfamiliar words and constructions, and also in local
allusions, which need explanation to outsiders. One I have written
down seems to be about Chekusi’s marriage, and brings in the names of
several chiefs. Another says that ‘I have seen Domwe’ (a mountain in
Angoniland)—‘Ntaja is dead,—we are ravaged this year.’ Another obscure
effusion, after stating that something or other is at Matewere’s (a son
of the famous Mponda), goes on to say that ‘I refuse (him or them) the
oxhide shield,’ or, maybe, the oxhide to make a shield.
These are ‘Angoni’ songs, and recognised as such on the other side of the
river, though the language is not Zulu, but ordinary Nyanja. The original
text of the last named is this:—
_Ta iye (?) zi ri kwa Matewere chinkumbaleza—Ga da o ho!_
_Ndimana ine, ndimana cha ng’ombe chikopa tu!_
The rhythm of the songs is rather indefinite; it resembles that of
some sailors’ chanties—_e.g._ the well-known _Rio Grande_. They often
consist of only a few words, repeated _ad infinitum_, with a refrain of
meaningless syllables, sometimes mere open vowel sounds—as: _e_, _e_,
_e_, _e_, _o_, _o_, _o_, _o_—_wo ya yo ho_, etc. In canoe-songs and the
like, time is marked by the beat of the paddles, the rise and fall of the
women’s pestles, and so on; at a dance, it is given by the drums. Some
soloist usually leads off with an improvised line, which is either taken
up and sung in chorus, or a response to it is so sung, and the principal
performer continues till he has exhausted his idea. If the song ‘catches
on,’ it is remembered and repeated, and passes into the common stock.
Some dances have their recognised songs, as ‘_Kanonomera e! e!_’ at the
Angoni women’s _kunju_ dance, and ‘_Leka ululuza mwana hiye!_ (Stop
winnowing, child!)—_e! e! e! e!—o! o! o! o!_’ at the _chamba_ dance.
[Illustration: THE DANCING-MAN]
Singing, music, and dancing, or other rhythmic action, are very much
mixed up together, as is always the case in the elementary stages
of those arts; and a combination of all three is practised by the
itinerant poet known as the ‘dancing-man.’ Of his instrument, the
_chimwenyumwenyu_, Mr. Barnes says that ‘performers on it are rare and
are most welcome guests in any village.’ It is a primitive kind of
fiddle, with one string and a gourd resonator, played with a bow, which,
when made, has its string passed over the string of the instrument, and
so can never be taken off. The man in the illustration, however, appears
to be playing on the _limba_, which has six strings strung on a piece of
wood across the mouth of a large gourd, and is played with both thumbs.
The gourd is hung round with bits of metal or of shells, to jingle and
rattle when it is shaken. The ‘dancing-man’ teaches the children the
chorus of his songs, and then, ‘carries on a dialogue of song with his
audience, with the excitement and rhythm of an inspired improvisatore.’
Another kind of _limba_ is that shown in the illustration, which was
obtained from some Atonga:—a shallow wooden trough with a handle at one
end, and pierced at top and bottom with six holes, through which a cord
is strung backwards and forwards, and tightened up by winding round the
handle. Like the other kind of _limba_, it is played with the thumbs. But
the word _limba_ is of wide application; it (or its plural _malimba_,
_marimba_) sometimes denotes the xylophone or ‘Kafir piano’ (Ronga
_timbila_), while natives use it for a harmonium, organ, or piano.
Other stringed instruments are the _pango_, resembling the dancing-man’s
_limba_, but played with a stick or plectrum instead of the thumbs; the
_mngoli_, the body of which is made like a small drum—it has one string
with a bridge, and is played with a bow; the _kalirangwe_, with one
string and a gourd resonator, played either with the fingers or a bit
of grass; and the very primitive one (_mtangala_) represented in the
illustration, which is played by women only, and is simply a piece of
reed, slightly bent, with a string fastened at one end and wound on the
other, so that it can be tightened up at pleasure. One end of this is
held in the mouth and the string twanged with the finger, producing a
very slight but not unpleasant sound, which, as Bishop Colenso remarked
of a somewhat similar instrument in Natal, ‘gratifies the performer and
annoys nobody else.’
The _sansi_ has a set of iron keys fixed on a wooden sounding-box, and
played with the thumbs; it has a piece of metal fixed on the front of
the box, to which are attached small discs cut from the shells of the
great _Achatina_ snail, so as to clash when shaken, like the bells on a
tambourine. A very similar instrument has the keys made of bamboo.
[Illustration: MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
1. _Limba_ (Atonga)
2. _Sansi_
3. Reed (_mtangala_)
From Specimens in the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge]
A flute (_chitoliro_) is made out of a piece of bamboo about a foot long,
cut off immediately above and below the joints, so that it is closed at
both ends, and from three to six holes bored in the side, some of which
are closed with the fingers while playing. Bvalani, the boy with the
coronet, used to play on this flute a pretty, though somewhat monotonous,
little tune, consisting apparently of three or four notes, repeated over
and over again; but neither I nor any other _mzungu_ has yet succeeded in
getting a sound out of the one in my possession. It has one hole at one
end, to blow into, and three at the other.
Whistles, made out of a small goat’s or antelope’s horn, and used for
calling dogs and perhaps for signalling to each other on the road, are
worn round the neck by Angoni and Chipetas; and Pan-pipes are made of
reeds. Trumpets are made of gourds, sometimes fixed with wax on a long
reed; the same word, _lipenga_, is used for a horn employed in the same
way, or for a European key-bugle, or (in hymns) for the _Tuba mirum
spargens sonum_ of the Last Day. Some of the people near the south end
of Tanganyika have huge trumpets cut out of a large tusk of ivory, like
those used on the Upper Congo and elsewhere. One such is figured in Sir
H. H. Johnston’s book, p. 465.
The instrument above referred to as the ‘Kafir piano’ is, in a modified
form, very popular throughout the Shiré Highlands and on the Lake, and
may often be seen in the village _bwalo_. The Delagoa Bay _timbila_ is
portable (see the figure in M. Junod’s _Chants et Contes des Baronga_,
p. 27), with the wooden keys fixed on a flat frame—elsewhere, the frame
is curved into the arc of a circle, so that the performer can easily
reach all the keys when the instrument is slung round his neck. In both
cases, resonators, made of gourds, or the hard shells of the _matondo_
fruit, are attached to the keys. I once saw a very elaborately made and
beautifully finished specimen which had come either from Delagoa Bay or
Inhambane, and had polished iron keys padded with leather; but this was a
sophisticated _timbila_, scarcely the genuine article. The Nyanja form of
it, variously called _magologodo_, _mangondongondo_, _mangolongondo_, and
_mangolongodingo_, usually has to be played _in situ_, or, if removed,
must be carried away in pieces. Two logs of soft wood (banana-stems are
the best), perhaps a yard long, are laid on the ground a certain distance
apart, and on these are arranged six, or sometimes seven, cross-bars
(the Ronga ‘piano’ has ten) cut from the wood of certain trees, and
carefully trimmed to shape. Sometimes they are merely laid on the logs,
sometimes there are short pegs to keep them in place. The keys on the
Ronga instrument are carefully tuned, and each one is cut away underneath
in such a way as to make it give a different sound; but some of those I
saw at Blantyre seemed to be merely rough bits of wood which fulfilled
no condition beyond that of making a noise when struck. It is played by
striking the keys with two sticks; the performer holds one in each hand
and squats on his heels in front of it: sometimes there are two players,
who face each other; the first leads, and the second is said to ‘make a
harmony with the one who is playing.’
But the drum is perhaps the commonest and most characteristic instrument,
and the one which has been brought to the greatest perfection. There
are many different kinds, from the little _kandimbe_, a mere toy for
children, four or five inches across, and tapped with the fingers, to
the great _mpanje_ and _kunta_, five feet or more in length, or the
_mgulugulu_ war-drum, which is beaten with sticks to call the people
together. None of them have two heads; the body is made of a single piece
of wood hollowed out, and the head of goat-skin, or perhaps oxhide; some
small drums (more like tambourines) are covered with snake or lizard
skin. The sound of the large ones can be heard five or six miles away.
Some are beaten with sticks, some with the hand—either with the fist (as
the big _mpangula_, which is supported on a forked piece of wood), or the
open palm, or the fingers. Some of the smaller drums are held against
the chest and beaten with the open hands, which gives a peculiar, soft,
booming sound; one kind is held under the arm; another is laid lengthwise
on the ground, and the drummer sits astride it. Still another has legs
like a small round stool, and is beaten with two sticks as it stands on
the ground. The _mfinta_ drum (large, but not the largest kind) calls
the people together when the _mabisalila_ is investigating a case of
witchcraft; it is also used in a dance where the performers carry hoes
and strike them together. There is a wonderful variety in the notes; ‘the
smaller drums are made to answer the big ones, the rapid and slower beats
blending in the most perfect time.... There are skilled drummers who go
to the dances like a piper at a Scotch wedding’ (Scott).
Drums are tuned when necessary by leaving them in front of a fire, or
burning some grass inside them to dry the skin and draw it tighter. The
skin is fastened on by small wooden pegs, and has a piece of rubber
fastened to the middle of its underside.
Besides the drums, most dances require an additional sound-producing
agency in the shape of rattles. These are worn on the arms and legs of
the dancers, or shaken in their hands. The commonest kind are made of a
hard-shelled fruit called _tseche_, about two inches or less in diameter;
it is allowed to dry till the seeds shake about inside it, and then four
or five are strung on a stick, and several of these sticks attached
round the ankles of the dancers. Women never wear these _maseche_ at
their _chamba_ dance, above referred to; but men always do at their
corresponding one, called _chitoto_.
The subject of dances is a large one, celebrating, as they do, every
important event in life, from birth to death, besides ordinary
merrymakings which have no particular motive beyond cheerfulness and
sociability. In place of attempting to enumerate all the varieties, which
would be wearisome and convey no particular impression, I shall content
myself with extracting one or two descriptions from my notes. ‘Passing
through Mlomba’s village (near Blantyre) found a grand _masewero_[26]
going on. The dancing man was performing, but not singing—calico turban
on his head, leather belt under his arms, with a great bunch of long
feathers stuck into it in front, some falling down over his waistcloth,
others reaching to his shoulders, a wild-cat skin hanging down his back,
and dance-rattles on his legs. This dance is called the _tseche_. There
were also six drummers: one sat on the ground and beat his drum (the kind
with legs like a stool) with two sticks; the rest held theirs against
their chests and beat them with both hands, the drum being supported
by a piece of twine passing under it and looped over both wrists. They
were well-made, muscular fellows, and danced pretty hard while drumming:
this, it seems, is called the _nkonde_. Two younger boys came forward at
intervals and danced _pas seuls_, and at the end a collection was taken
up, chiefly in fowls.’ Sometimes the beads contributed by a gratified
audience are put into a hole in the gourd of the _chimwenyumwenyu_.
[Illustration: PREPARING FOR THE DANCE]
I remember the drums going all night long for the _chamba_ dance at
Ntumbi (which, by the bye, in spite of the name, has nothing to do with
the smoking of the pernicious Indian hemp), and the ball was still
in full swing between 7 and 8 A.M., when some of our boys and girls
requested permission to go down before school hours and ‘see the Angoni
playing.’
Another dance which I witnessed at a Yao village near Blantyre, I am not
sure whether to class as a diversion or a ritual solemnity. I think it
was the latter, but not (as I was at one time inclined to suppose) the
_chimbandi_, or ‘great _unyago_,’ which precedes the birth of a woman’s
first child (see Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 128), unless the latter has
been considerably modified. In the first place, my friend Chewilaga, who
appeared to play the principal part, had a baby about six weeks old; in
the second, so far from only women being present, there were three men
and a boy working the drums, and one man among a few casual spectators
who gathered from outside; and there were other points of difference.
Eight or ten women (two of them quite young girls) took part in the
dance, led by Chewilaga; they were all freshly anointed, almost dripping
with oil, and had on their best calicoes, and (apparently) all their
beads, and wore rattles on one leg only. The drummers sat in a row on
a form made out of a split log: the three men held their drums against
their chests and beat them with their hands; the boy had a four-legged
standing drum, which he beat with two sticks. The women—one with a baby
tied to her back—stood in front of the band in a semicircle, ‘marking
time,’ then formed in couples and ‘set to partners,’ then marched round,
in Indian file, then bent forward from the hips, and all danced together
in a kind of jigging step; then formed in semicircle again, and so _da
capo_. The song (sung by the dancers) consisted of a few words only,
which I failed to catch.
Some of the dances for amusement are confined to one sex; in others, both
take part. In one, partners are chosen and led out into the middle; in
another, the man who beats the big drum leaves it at intervals and dances
alone in the centre of the ring, while every one claps hands to fill up
the gap.
The war-dance of the Angoni—executed, perhaps, by hundreds of men leaping
into the air at once and beating their shields—is very striking; the Yaos
and Anyanja also have one, though the latter are not a particularly
warlike race. ‘One in the war-dance,’ says a native account, ‘comes and
stretches his leg, stamping down his foot, _di!_ and his gun, _di!_
before his chief, saying, “Chief, we are here, none can come to kill you,
for we are not dead yet.”’
The _zinyao_ dances have been already touched on in connection with the
mysteries, and the mourning dances in the chapter on funeral ceremonies.
The Rev. D. C. Scott thus describes the latter, and at the same time
successfully conveys the impression produced by all: ‘The heavy, deep
_di! di!_ of the great bass drum, with silence succeeding, broken by
the responsive wail and clapping of hands, then with the rapid call of
the small _garanzi_ drum, and again with the deep hollow bass, and the
never-ceasing circling of the dance, produces a weird sensation only
possible in Africa.’[27]
CHAPTER X
FOLK-STORIES
Methods of story-telling. Animal stories. _Brer Rabbit._
Borrowed tales. Value of native folk-lore.
We have mentioned that one of the great amusements, both of children and
grown-up people, is story-telling—_ku imba ntanu_. This means literally
‘to sing a story,’ and points to the way in which tales are usually told.
Most of them contain short pieces which are sung, and are known to every
one—so that, when the narrator comes to them, the audience all join in.
Steere points out that these sung parts are very common in the Swahili
tales, and that the language found in them is older than what is usually
spoken, or than the rest of the story.
Another curious point is that, when a man is telling a story late at
night—say, beside the camp-fire or on a journey—at every pause in his
narrative the hearers exclaim in chorus, ‘We are all here!’ As the tale
goes on, the responses become fewer and fewer, and at last, when no one
is left awake to answer, the recitation stops.
The stories told by the Bantu of British Central Africa are, broadly
speaking, of three kinds. First, we have legends about the origin of men
and things, such as we noticed in the fourth chapter, with which may be
grouped the traditions telling whence the different tribes came, and how
they reached their present homes. About these last I shall have something
to say in the next chapter. Secondly, we have the kind of animal story so
well exemplified in _Uncle Remus_. And, thirdly, tales in which people,
animals, and sometimes preternatural beings are mixed up together in a
series of more or less marvellous incidents—like our own fairy stories,
in fact. Some of these we can trace as imported; but they are none the
less curious on that account.
The animal stories seem to be the commonest and best known among the
Anyanja—at least, nearly all the stories I could induce natives to tell
me were of this kind. The tales collected by Mr. Macdonald, and published
in _Africana_, however, belong largely to the first and second classes.
Some are like very faint and far-off echoes of the _Arabian Nights_;
these have probably been heard on the coast by Yaos who have gone down
with trading-parties, and retold in the villages on their return. An
example of this kind is ‘The Story of the Chief,’ which will be given
later on.
Every one knows the delightful _Uncle Remus_ tales, and will remember the
cunning and resourcefulness of ‘Brer Rabbit,’ who, with his family, ‘wuz
at de head er de gang when any racket wuz on hand, en dar dey stayed!’
It is now generally agreed that these stories came from Africa; and
wherever any Bantu folk-tales have been written down, there we are pretty
sure to find Brer Rabbit, under one alias or another. The Anyanja call
him _Kalulu_, the Yaos _Sungula_—generally _Che Sungula_, ‘Mr. Rabbit’;
though naturalists remind us, by the bye, that he is not properly a
rabbit but a hare. One comes across the Kalulu by himself in the bush,
and he makes a form in the grass, not a burrow in the ground. If I can
trust my recollection of him, he is a little smaller than an English hare.
I cannot help feeling surprised that some writers on African folk-lore
have chosen to ‘translate’ _sungula_, or its equivalent in other Bantu
languages, by ‘fox,’ because the character assigned to the hare is in
their opinion more appropriate to the fox. By doing so, we spoil one of
the most characteristic features in the stories, and, moreover, lose an
important distinction; for the place given by the Bantu to the Hare is
occupied in Hottentot folk-lore by the Jackal.
Of course the animals in _Uncle Remus_ are not all the same as those
in the African tales; as some of the latter do not live in America,
better-known ones have been substituted for them. Thus the Elephant,
the Hippopotamus, the Lion, and the Python have disappeared, so has
the Crocodile (‘Uncle Remus’ lived in Middle Georgia, where there are
no alligators); and I fancy that Brer Wolf and Brer Fox have taken the
place of the Hyena, who sometimes gets the better of the Hare for a time,
but is always worsted by him in the end. The Tortoise (a land and not
a water tortoise, usually) is as clever as Brer Terrapin, but is more
bloodthirsty and vindictive—a kind of Shylock. The Baboon (_nyani_) does
not seem to have an American counterpart, and the Cat, the Cock, and the
Swallow, though one does not see why, have also dropped out.
A somewhat puzzling creature in the Nyanja tales is the Dzimwe, sometimes
translated ‘elephant,’ though the native explanations are rather hazy,
and leave one with the impression that he is a kind of bogey—perhaps
akin to Chiruwi. One boy actually states that _dzimwe_ (or, in the
Likoma dialect, _jimwe_) sometimes means ‘an elephant,’ and sometimes ‘a
spirit.’ In the present case, it seems more satisfactory to take it as
the former; though in one or two stories we have the elephant under his
proper Nyanja name of _njobvu_. In neither case does he act up to his
reputation for wisdom, for in the end he is always cruelly victimised by
the Hare.
The latter’s manners, I think, must have been softened by his sojourn in
the States; for only on rare occasions—as when he puts an end to Brer
Wolf with the boiling kettle—are his actions really cruel. We cannot say
the same of the Kalulu; yet it would be a mistake to conclude, from the
enjoyment with which these stories are received, that the African natives
are a bloodthirsty and ferocious race. What they enjoy is the cleverness
with which the tables are turned by the weaker party on the stronger,
who seemed to have him entirely in his power. And, after all, generation
after generation of English children have been fascinated by _Jack
the Giant-Killer_, without being precisely horrified by the murderous
stratagem practised by Jack on the Cornish giant.
The native does not recognise such a clear distinction between animals
and human beings as we do. Animals do not speak, it is true, but, for
all he knows, there may be nothing to prevent their doing so if they
choose. He believes (and acts on the belief) that certain human beings
can change themselves into animals and back again. So, in telling stories
about animals, he seems continually to forget that they are not human,
or perhaps, rather, he assumes that their habits, abodes, and domestic
arrangements are very much the same as those of his own people.
One of the most typical of the Kalulu stories is the following, told me
by one of the Blantyre native teachers. Being an educated man, accustomed
to composition and dictation, he was able to give it in a very clear
and connected form; whereas it is difficult, and sometimes impossible,
to make sense of those written down from the dictation of village
children, who perhaps did not know the stories very well to begin with,
and continually lost the thread when entreated to go slower or repeat a
phrase.
‘The Hare and the Elephant were once friends, and the Hare said, “Come,
man, and let us go and look for food.” And they went to a village and
said, “We want to hoe for you, if you will give us food”; and the
head-man said “Good.” And he let them hoe in his garden, and gave them
some beans to eat there in the garden (in the middle of the day). And
they went to the garden and cooked those beans. (They could make a fire
as soon as they arrived, and put on the pot with the beans, so as to
let them cook slowly while they worked.) When they had finished hoeing,
the beans were done, and the Elephant said, “I am going to the water to
bathe, do you look well after the beans, and we will eat them together
when I return.” Then he went away and took off his skin, and ran, and
came to the place where the Hare was. (We are to understand that he was
quite unrecognisable in this condition.) When the Hare saw him, he was
afraid, thinking that he was a wild beast, and he ran away; and the
Elephant ate up those beans, and went back to the water, and put on his
skin again, and returned, and said, “Have you taken off the pot with the
beans?” And the Hare said, “No, my friend, there came here a terrible
wild beast, and I ran away, and it ate those beans.” And the Elephant
said, “No, you are cheating me—you ate those beans yourself—it was not
a wild beast, no!” And the next day they went again to hoe, and cooked
their beans. When the beans were nearly done, the Elephant said to the
Hare, “I shall go and bathe—we will eat the beans when I return.” And
he did just the same as before. When he returned and asked if the beans
were ready, the Hare answered, “The wild beast came again to-day and has
eaten the beans.” The Elephant said, “My friend, it is very deceitful of
you to eat the beans twice over, and not let me have any!” And the Hare
said, “Now, I am going to make a bow—if it comes again I will shoot it.”
Next day, they put on their beans again; and the Elephant took the bow
which the Hare had made, and said, “You have not made it well—give it to
me; I will make it right for you.” And he kept on paring and shaving it,
a little here and a little there, till he had made it too thin in one
place, and said, “Now it is good; if the wild beast comes, you can shoot
it.” Then he went down to the water, and took off his skin, and ran, and
came where the Hare was. When the Hare saw that wild beast coming, he
took his bow to shoot it, and the bow broke. So he ran away again, and
the Elephant ate the beans, and came back as before, and asked, “Did you
shoot the wild beast?” And the Hare answered, “No, my bow broke, and I
ran away.” Next day they put on the beans once more, and the Hare went
aside and made his bow, and hid it. When the Elephant went away to bathe,
the Hare took his bow and held it in his hand, and took a barbed arrow,
and when the wild beast came once more, he shot him through the heart,
and the Elephant said, “_Mai! mai! mai! mai!_ (mother!) Oh! my friend,
to shoot me like this, because of those miserable beans! I meant to have
left some for you to-day, that you too might eat!” And the Hare said,
“Ha! my friend!—then it was you who finished up those beans by yourself,
and I thought it was a wild beast!” The Elephant said, “Ha! to shoot me
with a barbed arrow!—you have hurt me, my friend!—and how shall I get
this out?” And he tried to pull out the arrow, and died. And the Hare ate
the beans by himself, and went home.’
Another story in which these two figure is given by Mr. Macdonald under
the title of ‘The Fox and the Hyena’; but this is in two parts—in the
first, the Hyena plays a series of tricks on a long-suffering creature
called the _mbendu_, apparently a kind of civet-cat; in the second, he
tries to repeat these tricks on the Hare (for this is a case where ‘fox’
is used to translate _sungula_), and fails. In my version, the Hare is
cheated at first, and learns by bitter experience; the closing incident,
too, is different. The Hare and the Dzimwe went on a journey together,
begging food (as native travellers do) at all the villages they came to.
At the first, the Elephant said, ‘Let us ask for sugar-cane and _bango_
reeds’ (which are uneatable); he then took the sugar-cane and gave the
Hare the _bango_. At the next village he acted in the same way with
millet and pebbles. At the next, the people had been cooking porridge;
and the Elephant, in order to secure both the Hare’s portion and his
own, sent the latter back to gather some ‘medicine’ leaves from a tree
he had noticed on the way, saying that the _nsima_ would not be good
without them. The Hare, however, produced some from his bag; he had run
back on the road, just after passing the tree, saying that he wanted to
look for an arrow he had dropped, and had then picked the leaves. The
Dzimwe was so disgusted at being outwitted that he would not eat, but
left all the _nsima_ to the Hare. Next day, however, when they reached
another village, he contrived to get him out of the way for a time,
and, on his return, refused to share his porridge with him (an almost
unheard-of thing in native manners), alleging that, in the interval,
‘many strangers’ had arrived, and eaten up all the cooked food in the
village, so that there was barely enough for himself. The Hare then
retired, stripped off his skin, tied _maseche_ rattles to his legs, and
came and danced at the door of the hut where the Elephant was eating. The
latter, thinking that he was a _chirombo_, fled and left him to finish
the porridge. Subsequently, he was induced, by a stratagem not detailed
in my version, to strip off his own skin, which the Hare hid while his
back was turned. ‘And he said, “Who has taken my skin?” and since he was
without a skin, he died of the heat.’
Brer Rabbit’s methods of disguise are less drastic. ‘He slip off en git
in a mud-hole, en des lef’ his eyes stickin’ out’; and when Brer B’ar
passed by and said, ‘Howdy, Brer Frog, is you see Brer Rabbit go by?’
answered, without turning a hair, ‘He des gone by.’ He plays the same
trick on Mrs. Cow; but this time by hiding in a ‘brier-patch.’ In a
Basuto story, he cuts off both his ears and pretends to grind meal on a
flat stone; the hyenas in pursuit of him fail to recognise him, and ask
him where the Hare has gone.
The trick by which the Hare induced the Elephant to destroy himself, is
repeated with endless variations in other stories. In fact, it is found
in all countries and all ages. The Cornish giant, already referred to,
is one of the best known examples, and no doubt the men who chipped
flints in Kent’s Hole laughed themselves into fits over something of the
same sort. In one Nyanja story the Swallow invites the Cock to dinner,
and pretends to fly into the pot where the pumpkins are cooking. In
reality he disappears into the shadows of the _nsanja_, and then shows
himself up aloft, afterwards alleging that his temporary presence in the
pot has greatly improved the flavour of the pumpkins. The Cock, when
returning the invitation, tries the same experiment, and is cooked most
effectually. In another tale, the _ntengu_ bird treats the wild-cat in
the same way.
Apparently the Hare meets his match in the Tortoise—though the famous
race is by the Anyanja related as taking place between the Tortoise
and the Bushbuck (_mbawala_). On one occasion these two hoed a garden
together, and the Hare cheated the Tortoise out of his dinner, as, on
another occasion, the Elephant cheated him. The Tortoise, however, had
his revenge a little later, when they were sowing ground-nuts; he crawled
into the Hare’s seed-bag, as it lay on the ground, and ate up the supply.
The Hare took this defeat so much to heart that he ‘went away and cried.’
All over the world we find tales intended to explain how animals came by
this or that peculiarity which is striking enough to catch the attention,
but has no obvious use. Thus, the Calabar people tell how the Tortoise
fell off a tree and broke his shell to pieces, and had it stuck together
again, so that the joins are visible to this day; and the Hottentots say
that the Hare has a split lip because the Moon threw a piece of wood at
him. We know how Brer Rabbit lost his long, bushy tail, through letting
it hang in the water while fishing. The Anyanja also think that the Hare
once had a long tail, and there is a story which relates how he had a
piece cut off it at every village he passed through; but I have never
been able to secure it in detail. There is a Yao tale to the effect that
baboons are descended from a woman who ran away to the Bush because the
chief had killed one of her children. She refused to shave her head (in
mourning), and hair subsequently grew all over her body.
The Spider, who on the Guinea Coast is the principal figure in the
animal stories, is, so far as I know, almost absent from Bantu folk-lore.
One exception I have already referred to, in a Yao creation-myth; in
another Yao tale he crosses a stream and makes a bridge for a chief to
escape from his enemies. Here, however, he does not take a specially
prominent part, being only one of four helpers provided by the spirit
of the chief’s elder brother. The Spider is very prominent in the
folk-lore of the Duala, who have probably borrowed him from their western
neighbours.
We have mentioned that the natives see nothing strange in men assuming
the forms of animals—they believe that it happens every day. Their
stories give us many instances of the converse process—animals taking
human shape whenever it suits them. Thus a girl marries a lion who has
turned himself into a man, and, finding out his real nature, runs away
from him. Another I give as I have it written down.
‘A person (a girl) refused (all) men; there came a baboon; he took off
the skin from his body and was turned into a man. The Angoni woman
married the baboon, and he hoed the crops, and his companions came from
the Bush and ate the crops of his mother-in-law’s garden, and (so) he
went (with them) into the Bush.’
But a better example still is that of the ‘Girl and the Hyena,’ which
Mr. Macdonald thinks is intended as a warning to girls not to be too
fastidious in their choice of husbands, and to accept those first
suggested to them, lest worse befall. It might equally well be a warning
against marrying a stranger from a distance, and certainly shows the tie
between brother and sister in a very pleasing light. Here it is, as told
me by Katembo at Blantyre.
‘There was a woman who refused all husbands, and at last there came a
hyena, and she said, “I want this one.” (So they were married), and the
husband said, “My wife, let us go home.” Her brother, who had sore eyes,
followed after them, and she (saw him and) said, “Where are you going?”
The brother crouched down and hid in the grass, and when they were out
of sight he followed them again, till he came to the village. When his
sister found he was there, she hid him in the hen-coop. When it was quite
dark, a number of hyenas came outside the hut and sang:
“Here is meat, we will eat it; but it is not fat enough yet.”
‘The girl was asleep, but her brother heard them, and as soon as it was
light he went and told her that they meant to eat her. She would not
believe it, so he told her to tie a string to her little finger that
night before she went to sleep, and leave the end outside the hut, so
that he could take it with him into the chicken-house. In the middle of
the night the hyenas came again, and, when he heard them, he pulled the
string and woke his sister; so she, too, heard them singing:
“Here is meat, we will eat it; but it is not fat enough yet.”
‘In the morning she said, “I heard them, my brother.” Then he said to
her husband, “Brother-in-law, lend me an adze, I want to make myself a
big wooden top” (_chinguli_).[28] When he had finished it, he put it
into his sister’s baskets (the luggage she had brought from home), and
fastened it firmly, and put his sister into the baskets, and sang:
“_Chínguli chánga, nde, nde, nde,_
_Mpérekezéni, nde, nde, nde,_
_Kúli amái, nde, nde, nde,_
_Chínguli chánga, nde, nde, nde._”
That is, “My top! take her home to her mother!”
‘It flew up and flew away over the Bush, and the hyenas followed; but he
repeated the same song again, and they flew on till they were just above
their mother’s village. Then he sang again, _Chínguli chánga_ (and so
on, as above), and the people heard it in the air over their heads, and
looked up, and saw them; and the _chinguli_ came to a stop, and let them
down right on top of the grain-mortar. And then the brother said, “My
sister wanted to send me back because I had sore eyes; but they would
have eaten her at that village, and I have brought her home.”’ In another
version, the mother follows this up with some more good advice, pointing
out what she owes to her brother, and warning her ‘never to do it again.’
A favourite Yao story is that of the python (_Sato_) who was befriended
by a man when caught in a bush-fire. He appealed first to a passing herd
of buck to stop and save him, but they, considering that he had just
eaten one of their number, not unnaturally refused. Then a man passed by
with a hoe in his hand, and, on being assured that the python would not
devour him, hoed up a piece of ground all round him, and thus saved him
from the fire. The grateful python told him to come back in four days’
time, which he did, and found that it had changed into a young lad, who
took him home, entertained him with plenty of beer, and finally presented
him with two pieces (1 piece = 16 yards) of calico and a magic bottle,
which was to be opened in presence of his enemies.
When the man went home, he found there was war; his family had fled, and
the enemy were occupying the village. He opened his bottle, and they were
immediately annihilated. He then went to hoe in the gardens, leaving his
bottle and other property in his hut. Another detachment of the enemy
arrived—they took possession of the village and all that was in it,
pursued him to his garden, and took him prisoner. He was tied up, with
his neck in a gori-stick, with a view to being killed next day. During
the night he felt a rat gnawing his feet, and asked it to go to the
chief’s house and bring the bottle. The rat did so, and the man said, ‘I
will pay you in the morning.’ When the people were all assembled, and the
man was brought out into the _bwalo_ to be killed, he opened his bottle.
‘The people who sat there when he held it up were dead and gone’—there
was no one there! So he rewarded the rat with two cows.
Animal stories sometimes vary in having one or more of their characters
replaced by human beings: thus there is one in which the Antelope sets a
trap and catches a Leopard in it. He spares the Leopard’s life, but meets
with no gratitude, for the latter eats all his children, and then his
wife. He appeals for help to a number of animals in succession, without
getting it, till the Hare takes the case in hand, and induces the Leopard
to put his head once more into the trap, and show how he was caught. Once
in, the Hare advises the Antelope to kill him. Now the same story is
told to explain why there should be a standing feud between crocodiles
and men. The Crocodile behaved very much in the same way as the Leopard,
and finally jumped on the man’s back and made him carry him. The Hare
intervened, heard the whole story, and then asked the Crocodile to show
him how he got into the trap, with results as above.
The Yao tale of the Hyena and the Bees is a version, with animal actors,
of a story which, in various shapes, is probably found throughout the
whole of Bantu Africa. The Basuto tell it of a girl called Tselane, who
was carried off by a cannibal. He put her into a bag, which he threw
over his shoulder, and started for home. On the way he stopped at a hut,
which turned out to be her uncle’s, and laid down his sack while he went
in to rest. Tselane’s relatives discovered her plight, let her out, and
put in a dog and a quantity of venomous ants in her place. Consequently
the cannibal, when he had shut himself up in his hut to enjoy his feast
alone, died a miserable death. In the Yao story, the Hyena steals the
fox’s (or jackal’s) cubs, and puts them into a bag; but the mother
contrives to substitute a swarm of bees for them before he carries them
off. ‘So the Hyena and his brethren died.’
There is a rather curious Nyanja story, introducing a being very like the
_Chiruwi_ mentioned in Chapter III. Some children went out into the Bush
to gather _masuku_ fruit. While they were out, it came on to rain, and
the stream which they had crossed easily was full when they reached it on
the way home, and too deep to ford. While they were considering what to
do, there came along ‘a big bird, with one wing, one eye, and one leg,’
and carried them over, strictly charging them to tell no one at home that
it had done so. One boy, however, told his mother what had happened; the
rest all denied it, and asked people not to listen to him, saying they
had crossed in the ordinary way. Next time they went to look for _masuku_
they forded the stream, and some of them held out a branch to the boy who
had talked, to help him over; it was rotten, and broke, and he was swept
away by the current. They called out after him, ‘You told.’
Mr. Macdonald gives a story which in some respects reminds one of Grimm’s
‘Frau Holle,’ though not so much as does a Ronga one given by M. Junod
under the title of _La Route du Ciel_. Both of these, though differing
greatly from one another, are evidently the same tale. In the Yao one,
a woman who has been persuaded by a trick to throw her baby into the
water, and has seen it swallowed by a crocodile, climbs a tree in her
distress, and says, ‘I want to go on high.’ The tree grows up with her
and carries her to a strange country, where she meets, first, leopards,
then the _Nsenzi_ (a large kind of water-rat, or perhaps a bird), and
lastly, some great fishes, who all show the way to Mulungu. When she
reached ‘the village of Mulungu,’ she told her story. ‘Then Mulungu
called the crocodile, and it came. Mulungu said, “Give up the child,”
and it delivered it up. The girl received the child and went down to her
mother. Her mother was much delighted and gave her much cloth and a good
house.’
Her wicked companions were now envious, and, wishing to enjoy like good
fortune, began by throwing their babies into the water. They climbed
the tree and reached Mulungu’s country, but gave rude answers to the
leopards, the _nsenzi_, and the fishes. ‘Then they came to Mulungu.
Mulungu said, “What do you want?” The girls said, “We have thrown our
children into the water.” But Mulungu said, “What was the reason of
that?” The girls hid the matter and said “Nothing.” But Mulungu said,
“It is false. You cheated your companion, saying, ‘Throw your child into
the water,’ and now you tell me a lie.” Then Mulungu took a bottle of
lightning, and said, “Your children are in here.” The girls took the
bottle, and the bottle made a report like a gun. The girls both died.’
In the Ronga version, likewise, the wicked sister is killed by lightning.
‘Le ciel fit explosion et la tua.’ This story, which might almost be
classed among religious legends (as, in fact, is done by Mr. Macdonald)
has, in its simple way, something very pathetic about it.
The imported stories are interesting, as showing how their ideas and
incidents have been translated, so to speak, into African. ‘Rombao,’ in
Mr. Macdonald’s collection, told by a native of Quillimane, is perhaps
of European origin. The names are Portuguese, and the theme is the
familiar one of the Goose-girl; but it may be an Arab or Indian story
which has acquired a Portuguese colouring on the Mozambique coast. M.
Junod’s ‘Bonawasi’ is one of the Arab ‘Abû Nuwâs’ stories, which seem
to be current all down the Swahili coast. Most of the Swahili tales in
Steere’s collection are Arab, and some can be recognised in the ordinary
editions of the _Arabian Nights_. It is curious to watch the gradual
changes in the details, as these stories travel farther and farther
into the interior. Harry Kambwiri, the Yao teacher who dictated the
Hare story already given, once told me one which, he thought, must be
‘a story of the Azungu.’ He had got it from a Yao boy who had been to
Zanzibar. I recognised it afterwards as the story of ‘The Three Blind
Men,’ in _Kibaraka_. The Sultan’s treasure-chamber has become simply
‘the chief’s money,’ and the story is somewhat obscured by the loss of
the distinctively Mohammedan touches. The ‘Story of a Chief,’ already
referred to, was written down by one of the Yao boys educated at Domasi.
It runs as follows:—
‘There was a chief who had ten sons, and three of them were poor. And
the father brought three tusks of ivory to give to his three poor sons.
The sons then said, “Let us go to the coast, let us buy goods.” And they
called up men to carry their goods. Then they set off on their journey
and came to the coast. When they arrived, they built a grass house and
slept there one day. In the morning one of them set off with his tusk to
buy goods, but his brothers did not know that he had gone to buy goods.
And he bought a precious glass for looking into every land.
‘Then the second one set off and bought a mat for flying with into every
land. Then the third bought a medicine for making people dead or alive.
But each of these did not know that the others had gone to buy goods.
‘Afterwards, he who had the glass began to look into it. When he looked,
he saw that in the land of his home there had died his friend. Then he
told the others that there was a mourning, and they asked, “How do you
know that at our home some one has died?” And he answered, “Because I
looked in my glass.” Then he gave them the glass that they might look,
and they saw their friend dead. Afterwards they began to grumble, saying,
“If only we had medicine for flying”; and the second brother produced his
mat. The others said, “Make us fly that we may reach our home to-day,
that we may be at the funeral, because he was a friend of ours.” And he
placed them on the mat, and they flew, and came to their village on the
same day.
‘When they arrived, they again began to grumble, saying, “If only we had
medicine to make this man alive, we would make him alive.” Then came the
one who had medicine for making alive, and made the man alive again.
‘But afterwards there arose a dispute as to whom the man should belong.
The one who had the glass said, “He is mine, because I saw him.” The one
who had the mat answered, “I flew and conveyed you.” Then answered he who
had the medicine, saying, “Did I not come and make him alive?” But the
one with the mat said, “Could you have brought the man to life without
him who carried you there?” The sons were then about to quarrel and came
to the father, bringing the man with them. And the father said, “You have
all done foolishly, because you bought precious things which take away
all peace; you wished to excel beyond all men, but you have failed.”’
This story, it was found on inquiry, had long been known to several of
the Domasi villagers. We see that the trading voyage has become the usual
journey to the coast, and the magic carpet a mat; the claiming of the
man as a slave (regardless of the fact that he is previously spoken of
as a friend to be mourned), is a local touch. On the Lower Congo (see
Dennett, _Folk-Lore of the Fjort_) we find a tale which is evidently
the same as this, of two wives who between them brought their husband
back to life. It is found in M. Junod’s collection under the title of
_Les Trois Vaisseaux_; we have also a Swahili version, and one from the
Kru coast in West Africa. The excellent moral does _not_ suggest the
_Arabian Nights_; but whether it is due to some shrewd old villager who
had had sad experience of squabbles over the proceeds of prosperous
‘Coast _ulendos_,’ or is a reflection added by Peter Mlenjesi on his own
account, may be left undecided.
There is yet another kind of story, which may be dismissed very briefly,
as specimens of it have occurred in another connection. It contains
nothing miraculous or even very wonderful, and is usually of a more or
less humorous character, turning on absurd incidents of daily life, the
little failings of husbands and wives, quarrels between neighbours, and
the like; and might almost be considered as a rudimentary novel or farce.
‘The Man with the Bran-Porridge’ (Yao), and ‘The Man with Two Wives’
(Nyanja), are good examples of this.
These Bantu folk-tales are sometimes contemptuously dismissed as
pointless and inane; and so, perhaps, they are, in translation, for it
requires great skill in the language and knowledge of native ways to
translate them intelligently, even when they are fairly well told. So
much has to be supplied, or explained, which, in the original, is simply
taken for granted, or has to be gathered from gesture and intonation. But
though their literary value may be small, they are always instructive
as a picture of native manners and ideas, which they illustrate by many
little graphic touches. Besides, they furnish a kind of mental training
to the people themselves. I have no hesitation in introducing here a
quotation from M. Junod, because, though he is speaking of the Delagoa
Bay natives, it will also apply to other Bantu tribes.
‘Every young man, every girl, knows one or two tales which he or she is
always willing to repeat. Sometimes, even, they are expected to amuse the
company with a story, told by way of forfeit, when they are the losers
in a game. Beginners often get confused and break down. They mix up the
incidents, or lose the thread of the narrative. “That is too much for
you!” (literally, “that has overcome you,”) says the audience, and a more
skilled reciter then takes the stage. Next time, the novice will acquit
himself better. Besides, when the young people have come to an end of
all they know, there remain the old women, who are the real repositories
of tradition. Some of them know ten, twenty, or thirty tales, and I
know more than one who could go on the whole evening, every day for a
fortnight, without completely exhausting her stock.... Children exercise
their memory in this way, and accustom themselves to speak in public;
and it is perhaps to this custom that the South African races owe their
extreme facility in expressing themselves.’[29]
CHAPTER XI
TRIBAL ORGANISATION, GOVERNMENT, ETC.
Totemistic clans. Kinship counted through women. The
paramount chief: his powers. Succession to the chieftainship.
Administration of justice. Crime and punishment. Slavery.
Both Yaos and Anyanja trace descent through the mother, and cannot marry
within their own clan, which is, of course, the mother’s. The Yao clans
are still clearly known and named. Mr. R. S. Hynde says: ‘The Yaos
are divided among themselves into sub-tribes, stocks, or totemistic
clans,[30] each with its own distinctive name, _e.g._ the Amwale, the
Asomba, the Apiri clan. If you question them on the subject, they will
usually be able to tell you this clan name, unless the person questioned
be a slave, who, from various causes, may not know it.’ _Somba_ means ‘a
fish,’ and _mwale_ ‘a girl’; _piri_ in Nyanja is ‘a mountain,’ though I
have been unable to discover its significance as a Yao word. Thus, if
Mwepeta, of the _Somba_ clan, marries Ndiagani, of the _Mwale_, their
children will be _Mwale_, and none of them can marry a _Mwale_. Their
nearest relation and natural guardian will be their mother’s brother,
who (if the grandfather is dead) will be head of the family. But his
children will be no relatives of theirs, as they belong to their mother’s
clan, and she (by the rule) cannot be a _Mwale_. Any of Mwepeta’s sons or
daughters will therefore be free to marry any of these cousins; but they
could not marry the children of Ndiagani’s sisters, who would be _Mwale_.
Some tribes of Anyanja east of the Lake have, in addition to this, a
system of agnatic descent, through the father, called _chilawa_. This may
be borrowed from the Zulus (who always count descent in this way, though
the importance assigned to the maternal uncle is probably a survival of
a former state of things), and the more southern tribes call it ‘the
Angoni system.’ These last do not appear to have surnames; but those who
recognise _chilawa_ do; these names descend in the male line, and show
at once to what family a man belongs on his father’s side. ‘Although a
person’s surname is not generally known to those who are not his near
relations or intimate acquaintances, because, so to speak, he does not
make personal use of it, and is not called by it, yet every one knows his
own surname, and is ready to give it at once, if asked for it.’ The late
Bishop Maples, who put the above facts on record, was of opinion that, in
spite of the close relationship existing between the sister’s son and the
mother’s brother, the father is really the head of the Nyanja family, and
arrived at the conclusion that a distinction must be made between ‘kin’
and ‘blood’: ‘the mother preserves to her offspring the tie of kinship,
the father that of blood.’
The Yao chief, Kapeni, belonged to the Abanda clan, and was succeeded
on his death, not by any of his sons (who, of course, were not Abanda),
but by the son of his sister, born of the same mother. Had any younger
sons of his mother survived, they would have had the preference; but
half-brothers or sisters (children of the same father, but not of the
same mother), are not counted as relatives—except that they cannot marry.
According to the Yao system of descent, a man should be able to marry his
father’s sisters, but this is seldom done, and is, in fact, considered
very wrong; but he may marry their daughters. Where _chilawa_ prevails,
however, these too are forbidden—they are really reckoned as sisters.
Native terms of relationship are often very puzzling. _Mbale_ is a word
which may be applied to a brother, sister, cousin, or relative of almost
any sort—sometimes even to a friend. There is no word for ‘sister’ or
‘brother’; but there are words meaning ‘elder brother (or sister)’ and
‘younger brother (or sister)’; and these are never used apart from their
possessive pronouns. There is a word which means ‘sister’ when used by
a brother, and ‘brother’ when used by a sister, but is never applied to
one of the same sex as the speaker. A man will call all his father’s
brothers ‘father,’ and all his mother’s sisters ‘mother’; and the term
‘grandparents’ may include all the great-uncles and great-aunts.
Mr. Duff Macdonald well shows the process by which a family may grow
into a small state. A man wishing to found a new village asks permission
of his chief—which in most cases is readily granted—and moves out into
the bush with his wives and children. Temporary shelters are built, and
then the man cuts down the trees, while his wives hoe up the ground for
gardens; and, when these are ready, and planted, more permanent dwellings
are erected. If there are daughters old enough to marry, the village is
soon enlarged by the sons-in-law who come and build their huts there. The
new chief may be accompanied by his younger brothers, or by friends who
call themselves by that name, and place themselves under his authority.
As the new settlement grows in power and importance, it will be joined by
others, and may grow wealthy by trading.
In general, the Bantu have everywhere much the same system of government:
the same features can nearly always be traced, even when modified by
local circumstances. The Anyanja, when they first became known to
Europeans, lived in small villages (as they do now), each under the
control of its own head-man. A district, containing a large number of
villages, was ruled by a sub-chief: such were Chinsunzi and Kankomba,
in the Shiré Highlands, in 1861; and over the whole country was the
Paramount Chief, or _Rundo_ (_Lundu_), who at the same period was
Mankokwe.[31] Mankokwe’s dominions appear to have extended from Lake
Chilwa to the Shiré, and down the latter river as far as the Ruo; below
the Ruo was another paramount chief, Tingani. Above the confluence of
the Shiré and the Zambezi, between Kebrabasa and Zumbo, were two other
independent Nyanja chiefs, Sandia and Mpende. All these chiefs seem at
one time to have been ‘united under the government of their great chief,
Undi, whose empire extended from Lake Shirwa to the River Loangwa; but
after Undi’s death it fell to pieces, and a large portion of it on
the Zambezi was absorbed by their powerful southern neighbours, the
Banyai.’[32] This process has been repeated over and over again in the
history of Africa. The Anyanja, being an agricultural (and on the whole a
peaceable) people, kept up no national life outside their little village
communities, but tended more and more to what German historians call
_Particularism_. Consequently, they were unable to withstand the shock
of an invasion; and their organisation, such as it was, went to pieces
before the onslaught of Yaos, Makololo, and Angoni.
_Women chiefs_ are mentioned several times by Livingstone as ruling in
various parts of this region: Chikandakadzi, near Morambala (her position
with regard to Tingani is not stated); Nyango, who seems to have ranked
as _Rundo_ in part of the Upper Shiré Valley, and Mamburuma, near Zumbo
on the Zambezi; also Manenko and Nyamosana in the Lunda country. More
recently, we find Nalolo, a sister of Liwanika, occupying the position
of a chief in the Barotse country. The present Kazembe appears to be
a woman. Sebituane, the Makololo chief, appointed his daughter as his
successor, ‘probably,’ says Livingstone, ‘in imitation of some of the
negro tribes with whom he had come into contact.’ She, however, soon
resigned what proved a distasteful position; for her father, unwilling
that she should transfer her power to a husband, directed her not to
marry, but to contract any number of temporary alliances. It may be,
however, that this feature of the situation was due, not so much to
Sebituane’s Bechuana ideas of the husband necessarily being ‘the woman’s
lord,’ as to some lingering Rotse and Lunda traditions of polyandry;
and a writer in the _Livingstonia Missionary Magazine_ characterises
the present Kazembe as ‘a thoroughly bad woman—a woman of Samaria over
again,’ which may be due to a misunderstanding of a very peculiar
institution.
It is impossible not to connect these scattered indications with those
afforded by the Yao system of kinship, and marriage customs, as to the
state of things in an earlier period of which we have no record.
The Yao tribal organisation is in itself much the same as that of the
Anyanja, but it was more closely knit, owing to the exigencies of war;
and the relations of the conquerors to the conquered tribes must be
distinguished from those which obtained among themselves. But it must
be remembered that the Yaos were not an aggressive tribe, organised
for conquest, under a chief like Tshaka or Mziligazi. In their own
country—between Lake Chilwa and the Upper Rovuma—they seem to have
been both a pastoral and an industrial people. ‘Yao-land proper,’ says
Archdeacon Johnson, ‘had plenty of smelting-furnaces, cattle, and peas
and beans, plenty for man and beast.’ They cultivated ‘down both sides of
the Lujenda, till the valleys were full of Indian corn, and settlement
extended its fields to those of the next settlement.’ The Machinga,
who occupied this country, were dislodged by the Alolo (Makua) from
the south-east, who themselves expelled from the north by the (Zulu)
Magwangwara, drove them into the country of the Mangoche, forcing the
latter into the Shiré Highlands. This was the so-called invasion of 1861.
There are five branches of the Yao nation: the Makale, near the sources
of the Rovuma; the Namataka (or Mwembe people), on the hills west of the
Lujenda; the Masaninga, Mangoche, and Machinga. The last three were the
tribes who entered the Shiré Highlands. Their chiefs seem to have been
quite independent of one another; Kapeni of Sochi was perhaps the most
powerful.
The chieftainship is hereditary, and passes, as already stated, to
the deceased’s younger brothers in succession, or, failing those, to
the eldest son of his sister. The new chief takes, at the same time,
his predecessor’s official name, so that there is always a Kapeni, or
Malemya, or Mponda, as the case may be. The Angoni chiefs, however,
observe the Zulu rule of inheritance, and are succeeded by the eldest
son of the principal (or ‘official’) wife, who is the one married after
accession—earlier ones do not count.
But there are some chiefs who have not succeeded to their position by
right of birth, but attained it by superior cleverness and energy.
Such a man may even be a slave, as was said to have been the case
with Chibisa, who, in the early sixties, had much more real power than
his neighbour Mankokwe, the Rundo of the Shiré Highlands. This man
began by representing himself as possessed by the spirit of Chibisa, a
deceased prophetess of note among the Nyungwe tribe, near Tete, whose
name he assumed. The Nyungwe believed him, and he gradually obtained a
complete ascendency over their chief, Kapichi, finally inducing part of
the latter’s people to secede with him and settle at the foot of the
Murchison Cataracts. His history may be read in the Rev. H. Rowley’s
_Story of the Universities’ Mission_, where it is related how, at last,
he fell in battle, fighting Terere, though without mention of the
sand-bullet which killed him—the only thing against which he had no charm.
The unexpected rise of a man like this has often been the agency in
breaking up Bantu ‘empires’ like that of Undi. But the new power is
seldom permanent, as it does not often happen that such parvenu chiefs
leave behind them successors of equal ability; while, having no backing
but their own immediate followers, they lack that support of custom and
tradition which in normal times will keep a mere average ruler in his
place, so long as he does not forfeit it by any act of his own.
The customary order of succession is sometimes set aside, not so much
by the tribe collectively (though it, too, being represented by the
head-men, has a share in deciding the question), as by the household of
the late chief. As both wives and slaves have a personal interest in
the appointment of the successor, it is but just that they should have a
chance to express their objections, if any. When Malemya of Zomba died,
in 1878, his slaves, and many of his head-men, disliked the obvious heir,
his younger brother Kumtaja, while the widows openly preferred a nephew,
Kasabola. The head-men announced that, if Kumtaja were appointed, the
people of the chief’s village would all leave and go to live elsewhere.
Kasabola, accordingly, was installed, and took the name of Malemya, while
Kumtaja left, taking with him such head-men as would go, and founded a
new village not far off. Malemya, finding him an inconvenient neighbour,
called in the Angoni, who came and raided Kumtaja’s village in August
1884. He fled first to Lake Chilwa, and then to the Upper Shiré, where he
died some years ago.
When the new chief is appointed, some little time is allowed to pass
before he is formally inducted. The day is then fixed for him to assume
his official title (literally, ‘to enter the name’), after which his
old name is never heard again. He is lectured on his duties to his
people—which are held to consist chiefly in exercising hospitality, and
not beating them too much; and, if he is a Yao of certain families, he
is invested with the _lisanda_, a white head-band with hanging ends.
Some Yao chiefs are not entitled to wear the _lisanda_; while, on the
other hand, the right is enjoyed by some minor head-men who belong to the
privileged families. It is henceforth worn on all solemn occasions—and
sometimes at beer-drinkings—and the chief’s first appearance in it is
hailed with songs of rejoicing. The proceedings, as might be expected,
end with feasting.
On the Lake a special oblong house, with one side open, is built for the
chief’s investiture. The insignia of royalty are here, a red blanket, and
a red fez, called _chisoti cha zindi_—both probably imported.
The chief’s powers are not despotic;[33] he is not supposed to act
without consulting his head-men, who represent the general views of the
tribe; and he seldom disregards their opinion to any serious extent.
Should he persist in doing so, his career would either come to a sudden
and violent end, or his people would leave him to seek some more
congenial ruler, and he would find himself lord of deserted villages.
This is a recognised and constitutional remedy for grievances, and no
chief refuses an asylum to such refugees; indeed, it is to his interest
to welcome them. Fugitive slaves, on the other hand, are often returned
to their masters.
The village head-man settles all local matters, usually with the
assistance of the elders or heads of families, who are called his
‘younger brothers.’ He consults them before engaging in war, or
undertaking any public work, such as constructing a stockade round the
village; but he cannot summon them to work on his own private account,
nor exact tribute from them. He settles any disputes among them, but if
they are not satisfied with his decision, they can appeal to a higher
head-man, or sub-chief, or to the chief himself.
Graver matters are reported by the head-man to the sub-chief, and by him,
if necessary, to the chief. The latter holds the head-man responsible
for any wrong-doing of his people which may come to his ears, just as
the chief in his turn will be held responsible for any aggression of his
head-men against outsiders. So far is this principle carried that, when
a man has been injured by an inhabitant of a certain village, he and his
friends are quite satisfied if they can catch any other man belonging to
the same village, whom they will either put to death or hold to ransom
till reparation is made.
The _mlandu_ and the _ordeal_ are the two great judicial institutions of
Bantu Africa. With the ordeal we have partly dealt elsewhere, but there
will be a little more to say about it presently.
_Mlandu_ is a word which may be variously rendered as ‘lawsuit,’
‘complaint,’ ‘discussion,’ ‘crime,’ and otherwise, according to the
context. It is the same thing known as a ‘palaver’ in West Africa, and an
_indaba_ by the Zulus. Civil cases are thus settled. The head-man and his
‘younger brothers’ take their seats in the _bwalo_, and, as a rule, the
whole village is assembled, the men sitting on one side, and the women—a
little apart—on the other. The accuser speaks first, then the accused,
and the various members of the council give their opinions in turn. The
speeches are often long and eloquent, and the case may extend over days
or even weeks before the head-man gives his decision, or, as the natives
say, ‘cuts the case.’ If no decision is come to, or if either party
wishes to appeal, the case is transferred to a higher court, and ‘the
_mlandu_ spoken’ before the sub-chief or the chief. An important case of
this sort is sometimes attended by hundreds of people. The successful
party in the suit makes the judge a present out of the damages.
Matrimonial cases are settled before a court of this kind—if, for
instance, a wife feels herself aggrieved and returns to her relatives.
She is represented before the court by her ‘surety.’ The husband may also
bring an action for divorce in this way.
Criminal charges, too, in the first instance, are brought before the
chief’s or head-man’s court. A man caught stealing may, by native law,
be killed, and his death entails no prosecution. He may be caught alive,
and would then be put into a slave-stick for safe-keeping, till ransomed
by his friends; and killed, or kept as a slave, if no ransom were
forthcoming.
When a theft has been committed, without suspicion falling on any
particular person, the diviner or the _mabisalila_ is consulted, and
the person pointed out by him or her accused before the court. The
prosecutors demand restitution of the stolen goods; the defendant pleads
not guilty, and offers to drink _mwavi_ to prove it. His friends, if
they believe him innocent, will demand the ordeal on his behalf; if they
have misgivings, they will be afraid to run the risk, convinced, as they
are, that the guilty party invariably dies, and knowing that, in such a
case, they will have to pay the full value of whatever was stolen. If
guilty, a man will probably confess rather than risk the ordeal—he, or
his relations, will have to make restitution and pay a fine besides, the
head-man of his village being held responsible. These payments also have
to be made for him, if his confidence in the judgment of the ordeal turns
out to have been misplaced—his death, in the native view, conclusively
proving his guilt. If, on the other hand, he survives, the accusers have
to pay over a fine to him, and the sorcerer is assumed to have been
mistaken. Some try a second sorcerer, but he must not point out the man
just acquitted, as no man can be made to drink _mwavi_ twice on the same
charge.
Theft, if brought into court at all, is always punished by a fine; but
sometimes the thief is handed over as a slave to the injured party. Other
ordeals are sometimes used besides the _mwavi_—plunging the hand into hot
water, or touching red-hot iron—but the principle is the same: injury
to the hand proves guilt. It will be noticed that the head-man is held
responsible for thefts committed by his villagers, in accordance with the
principle already stated. (He may, in fact, be the receiver of the stolen
goods.) If he refuses to take the matter up when it is brought to his
notice, war may be the result.
A murderer, if caught red-handed, may be killed by the friends of his
victim; or they may put him in a slave-stick till slaves have been paid
over for his ransom. Some of these are sometimes sacrificed to the
_manes_ of the victim. If the actual slayer cannot be caught, a man
from the same village may be captured and held to ransom in the same
way. In some cases, no distinction is made between accidental homicide
and murder; sometimes a gun which has been the cause of an accident is
seized instead of the owner, and held till he pays several slaves for it.
Sometimes, however, the view is taken that the man or his gun may have
been bewitched, and steps are taken to find out and punish the person
who has done this. The man who kills his own slave, or even his younger
brother, or other ward, is not amenable to justice, but—unless he can
protect himself by a charm—he is afraid of the mysterious _chirope_ which
overtakes those who shed blood within the tribe. The chief, to whom he
goes if he has committed such a murder, procures the charm for him from
his own medicine-man, and uses it himself as well, ‘because of the blood
that has been shed in his land.’
Adultery is theoretically a capital crime with most Bantu tribes; that
is, the man may be (and frequently is) shot or speared by the husband;
the wife is frequently let off with a warning the first time, but for a
second offence either killed or divorced and sent back to her relatives,
who in such a case must return whatever present was made at the marriage.
Sometimes she drinks _mwavi_, and is, of course, accounted guilty if she
dies. But in practice, the matter is often arranged by paying damages, or
the guilty man may be sold into slavery. Still there can be no question
that (where they have not been corrupted by outside influences, or their
customs and institutions disorganised by war, etc.) they look on it as a
very serious affair.
Slave wives are more summarily dealt with, and are often either killed
or sold. I have seen one ‘Angoni’ woman who had had her nose and ears cut
off, but seemed to be living on in her husband’s (or master’s) family, as
before,—though evidently doing most of the heavy work. But such cases are
not common, except perhaps among the coast Arabs, who have large slave
harems and rule them by terror.
From what has already been said, it will be seen that in ordinary
procedure formal executions are not common; if the criminal has not
been killed red-handed, or if he does not undergo the ordeal, the trial
usually ends in a fine, or in his being handed over as a slave to
his accusers. But where the chief orders a man to be executed, he is
usually stabbed or has his throat cut. Sometimes a wizard is shot at
once on being detected by the Mabisalila, and sometimes, when convicted
by the ordeal, the crowd fall upon him and lynch him without waiting
for the poison to do its work: an outbreak of panic ferocity which has
its parallel, in a more deliberate form, in the records of English and
Scottish witch-trials.
Witches were in former times sometimes burned alive by the Yaos; but Mr.
Macdonald says that in his time this was only done if they refused the
_mwavi_ test, which was not likely to happen. It was done also by the
Anyanja at Likoma, and the stake where these executions took place stood
on the site of the present Cathedral. But by far the greater number of
cases were left to be decided by the issue of the poison.
At one time, the Yaos used to torture the person pointed out by the
witch-detective by squeezing his head between two pieces of wood, till
he pointed out where the horns were buried; but in later times the
Mabisalila found the horns (as already described) as well as naming
the witch. But I do not think that this, or judicial torture to extort
confession of ordinary crime, is common.
An act of sacrilege held to be penal is when a free man sets fire to
grass or reeds near a lake supposed to be the abode of a tutelary spirit,
in which case he would be thrown into the lake. This perhaps would be
rather a sacrifice than an execution.
Imprisonment as a punishment is scarcely known, and indeed scarcely
possible, though, as has been said, men are sometimes detained in the
slave-stick till ransomed or otherwise disposed of. It is a small log
with a fork at one end, long enough for the other end to rest on the
ground when a man’s neck is inserted into the fork and secured with an
iron pin. Slaves are confined in these sticks on the march (as in the
familiar picture in Livingstone’s _Zambezi Expedition_), or when they are
likely to run away,—or sometimes as a punishment. Debtors, adulterers,
and thieves may be put in the slave-stick till their debts or fines are
paid up. Slaves, when thus confined, sometimes have the other end of the
stick fastened up to a tree, so that they can do their usual work of
pounding corn, or the like. There is also a form of stocks called in Yao
_ugwalata_, consisting of a hole in the verandah-part of a hut, through
which a man’s arm or leg is passed, and secured so that he cannot draw it
back. Slaves are sometimes severely beaten.
The Makololo chiefs approach more nearly the idea of an irresponsible
despot than any others in this part of Africa; but this is owing to a
special set of circumstances, and they cannot be taken as typical. It is
the more necessary to bear this in mind, because the chapter of horrors
which Mr. Macdonald gives under the heading, ‘A Slave Government,’
may seem to contradict some of the statements we have made. These
chiefs, then, were placed in a very exceptional position. They were
a small minority of warriors in the midst of an unwarlike population
whom they regarded with contempt, but who were strong enough to make
them think they must secure their position by ruthless severity. Some
of them had actually been slaves themselves, though the only Makololo
among them, Ramakukane, was of good family. Cruelty is not a Makololo
trait, though Sebituane and Sekeletu could act with firmness and even
harshness when the occasion seemed to demand it. But some unusually
barbarous punishments seem to have been used in the Barotse valley where
the Makololo had settled, and to which some of these chiefs belonged
by birth. They may have brought some of these customs with them; and
their becoming possessed of virtually unlimited power, while at the
same time their footing was but a precarious one, did the rest. None
of them was subject to the others; they were far enough apart to be
quite independent; but they acted together in face of a common enemy.
It is a pleasing fiction that their despotism was on the whole of a
benevolent character, and voluntarily submitted to by the Mang’anja,
who welcomed them as protectors against the Yaos; but this illusion
is dispelled by a closer acquaintance with the facts. Even before the
departure of the Livingstone expedition, they had begun to tyrannise over
the Shiré population; but it was only after that event that their power
became fully established. Several of them were undoubtedly men of fine
qualities; but a careful examination of their careers before and after
(roughly speaking) 1861, leads to the conclusion that some at least must
have degenerated sadly.
They took advantage of the famine of 1862-3 to enslave the Mang’anja, and
‘their power increased every day till they could claim all on the Lower
Shiré for their subjects.’ They had no council of head-men, and though
each village had a head-man, he was not a responsible local ruler, but
a mere taskmaster appointed by the chief. Forced labour and oppressive
tribute were exacted. No woman had a ‘surety,’ as with the Yaos, but
the chief disposed at will of his subjects’ daughters—assigned them to
husbands of his own choosing, or took them into his harem, as he felt
disposed. Wholesale _mwavi_-drinkings took place, at which no one was
allowed to refuse the cup; and judicial torture was frequent.
The ordinary tribute paid to chiefs varies in different tribes, but is
not in general excessive. In some parts, when an elephant is killed,
the chief claims ‘the ground tusk’—_i.e._ the one which touches the
ground when it falls; elsewhere this is not insisted on. Presents are
usually expected from strangers passing through the country, but they get
something in return; and a chief (though in practice he may fall short
of the ideal) is always supposed to be generous. Yao local head-men send
their chief a percentage of the ivory when they kill elephants, and (if
they live near enough) a haunch of any large animal (such as an eland)
which they may shoot. It is also the custom for them to invite him to a
beer-drinking at least once in the year. Sometimes the chief sends for
the village head-men, or orders them to find men, to do some work for him
at his village—hoeing, or building huts. This was frequently done by the
Angoni chiefs, who also (as has been said before) made periodical levies
of their subjects’ sons to herd their cattle, and of their daughters for
the harem.
There is no regular priestly class. The professional diviners and
medicine-men to a certain extent occupy the same position, and a Yao
chief sometimes appoints a ‘sacrificer,’ whose duties are of a somewhat
miscellaneous character. Besides taking the omens before a battle, he
has to carry the banner and lead the army—the chief himself, like David
in later life, not going into action. (He stays behind to ‘supply powder
and deal with deserters.’) The ‘sacrificer’ tastes the beer offered to
the chief’s guests, to show that it is not poisoned, and beats one of the
drums at witch-dances, where he represents the chief, if the latter is
unable to be present. Whether he is the same as the chief’s medicine-man
is not clear.
But the strictly religious functions of a priest, as we have seen, are
performed by the chief on behalf of his tribe, by the head-man for the
village, by the father for the family, and (in private matters) by the
individual for himself.
We have seen how the chief presides over, or at least takes part in,
public prayers for rain; but the Yaos and Anyanja do not at present seem
to have anything corresponding to the ‘feast of first-fruits’ among the
southern Bantu, where the chief ceremonially ‘tastes’ the first of the
new crops before the people are allowed to gather them. There are traces
of such a rite among the Yaos, and I am inclined to think that the Angoni
keep up something of the kind, or did a few years back, because I was
informed at one of the Ntumbi kraals, about the beginning of the harvest
season, that the father of the family was away at Chekusi’s, ‘eating
maize,’—an expression of which I did not at the time grasp the probable
bearing. The Zulus keep the _ukutshwama_ with great solemnity, and the
Angoni would have brought the custom with them from the south, though I
do not know how they observe it in detail.
The chief is supposed to be the owner of all the land, but in strictness
he cannot alienate it without the consent of the tribe. It seems,
however, as if, apart from European or Arab influence, the idea of
permanent property in land scarcely existed. No one is supposed to own
land except so long as he actually cultivates it; and, owing to the
method of agriculture, it is abandoned every few years. Any member of the
tribe can make a fresh garden where he likes, provided no one else has
bespoken the ground; but a stranger would require the chief’s permission
to settle. The chief’s land is well defined, and has recognised
boundaries, but there seem to be no definite limits to the territory
occupied by a tribe.
The Mang’anja used to recognise certain animals as _nyama ya lundu_,
‘king’s meat,’ not allowed to be eaten by the people in general. Among
these were the _nkaka_, or scaly ant-eater, whereof the Rev. D. C. Scott
was on one occasion invited to partake by Ramakukane, and a certain kind
of large frog or toad called _tesi_, said to be very delicate eating.
It remains to speak of slavery, which has always been, in varying
proportions, a feature of Bantu society. The outside slave _trade_ does
not so much concern us here, as (in this part of Africa, at any rate) it
is entirely an exotic thing, introduced and fostered by the Portuguese on
one side and the Arabs on the other. And though this has been largely, if
not wholly, done away with (it is certain that there was some smuggling
going on, twelve years ago), yet domestic slavery, which is very
difficult for governments to interfere with, still continues in fact, if
not in name, and will only die out gradually. The proportion of slaves to
free people is probably not large—unless all the Anyanja subject to the
Angoni are counted as slaves—which is not, strictly speaking, correct;
they are rather in the position of serfs or villeins.
Slavery may be a matter of birth; the children of slaves, or of a
slave mother and free father, are slaves also. Some slaves are persons
taken prisoners in war, or sold (probably to pay a debt) by father,
grandfather, or elder brother. Others may have been condemned to slavery
as criminals, or bewitchers, or possessed of ‘the evil eye,’ and these
are sold to some one at a distance—to get rid of them. Or they may
be seized on account of a debt they cannot pay; or, lastly, they may
voluntarily become slaves, in time of famine, in order to get food.
The owner has the power of life and death over his slaves, but subject
to the moral restraint already mentioned. Slaves may be beaten—sometimes
cruelly—or confined in _gori_-sticks, at the will of their masters, but
as a rule they are kindly treated, and, in fact, to an outsider, are
often indistinguishable from the family. In speaking of or to them,
the master says _mwana_ (‘child’), or _mnyamata_ (‘boy’), rather than
_kapolo_ (‘slave’). Some of the families at Nziza and Ntumbi had Yao
slaves who must have been captured in the raids across the Shiré a few
years before, and who seemed quite contented with their lot.
Slaves are employed about the usual work of a house and garden: the women
are generally the master’s junior wives, and share the household labours
among them; the men sometimes relieve them of part of the heavy work,
such as pounding corn, or fetching wood and water, but are also engaged
in more strictly masculine pursuits. They are supplied with guns and go
out hunting; they spin, weave, sew, make baskets, etc.; and sometimes
they are sent to carry loads for a trading party, or accompany their
master to war. A man may even send a confidential slave to the coast to
trade on his account. A chief often gives considerable authority to his
principal slave, who may attain a position of great importance, and
cases are not unknown where such a slave has become a chief.
People kidnapped from another tribe may be, and sometimes are, ransomed
by their friends. After a fight it is common to send word that such and
such prisoners have been taken, so that a ransom may be sent. It does
not seem to be possible, in practice, for a slave to redeem himself; but
once free, there are no special disabilities attaching to his position.
A slave who runs away places himself under the protection of another
master, if he can find one to shelter him; but if he can escape being
caught, he _may_ achieve freedom for himself, as, apparently, Chibisa
did. But in general a masterless slave does not find the highroad a safe
place, and hastens to put himself under some one’s protection.
Slaves are not distinguished by any special mark, badge, or dress. They
may possess property (such as cloth, guns, and ivory), as their owner
frequently allows them to keep part of what they earn. They may even, in
some cases, own other slaves. The master gives the slave a wife—usually a
slave woman, but occasionally he may let him marry his daughter. The case
of a free woman marrying a slave husband is, however, rare; and he is
likely to be superseded at any time.
On the death of a slave-owner, such of his slaves as are not chosen to
accompany him (and this, as we have seen, is by no means universal) pass
into the possession of his heir. If a slave dies possessed of property,
it all goes to his master.
The Machinga, at Mponda’s on the Upper Shiré, made a raid on Ntumbi and
Nziza, in May 1894, for the purpose of capturing women and children, but
the men of the place frustrated this attempt, and took two prisoners, who
were sent up to Chekusi’s, but released (I believe) after their guns had
been taken from them. There is reason to believe that they had been more
successful on previous occasions, not so very long before, and that the
women in question had been smuggled across the Shiré, and, as there was
no safe opportunity of sending them down to the coast, bought by various
Yaos in the Shiré Highlands, who set them to work in their gardens, and,
if inquiry was made, passed them off as their wives. In Livingstone’s
time even the Anyanja, who have themselves suffered so much from the
slave-trade, at times kidnapped people and sold them to the Portuguese.
There is a special word for this (_fwamba_), and though practised it
seems to have been always more or less reprobated—or at any rate felt to
be wrong.
CHAPTER XII
TRADITIONS AND HISTORY
Probable origin of the Yaos. The Makalanga. Undi. Migrations of
the Angoni. The Tambuka.
The Yaos believe themselves to be descended from the same stock as the
Anyanja, Anguru, and Awisa, while they count the Angoni as a different
race, and do not profess to know whence they came. These four tribes,
therefore, must have kept together till a much later period than that
at which the Zulus separated from the main stock of the Bantu. The Yaos
imagined the tribes with whom they acknowledged kinship to have started
with them from Kapirimtiya, and gone in different directions.
The story of how Mtanga improved the Yao country in the beginning by
moulding it into hills and valleys, seems to bear out the opinion that
the mountainous region of Unangu was the early home of the race; but
how long they lived there, before the raids of the Magwangwara sent
them forth on their wanderings, is hard to say. Dr. M’Call Theal says:
‘There is not a single tribe in South Africa to-day that bears the same
title, has the same relative power, and occupies the same ground as its
ancestors three hundred years ago. The people we call Mashona are indeed
descended from the Makalanga of the early Portuguese days, and they
preserve their old name and part of their old country; but the contrast
... is striking.’
The more one studies the wars and migrations of the Bantu tribes, the
more one is reminded of the state of things in our own island between
(roughly speaking) 500 and 1000 A.D. We are apt to forget the length of
time over which this process extended, and that though the Bantu, so far
as we can tell, began it later, there seems no valid reason why it should
not, in their case, have a similar termination. However, as we have to do
with facts, not speculations, it seems futile to discuss a point which
only posterity will have an opportunity of deciding.
The Makalanga speak much the same language as the various tribes
comprehended under the general name of Anyanja, and may, at one time,
have formed a homogeneous body with them. The kingdom of the Makalanga,
as described by the Portuguese writers, would almost seem to have
been something more than an ordinary African state; but their way of
describing everything, so to speak, in terms of Europe, is somewhat
misleading. Probably it was not unlike the ‘empire’ of Undi at a later
date and fell to pieces much in the same way. These decentralised
agricultural tribes either fell victims to internal quarrels, or to
aggressive action on the part of some warlike neighbour—or, very
possibly, to both together.
It is not known when the Zulus moved southward into the territory they
now occupy, and where they must have been settled for some generations
before the beginning of the nineteenth century, as the graves of at
least four kings (some say eight), of earlier date than that epoch, are
still to be seen at Mahlabatini, in the valley of the White Umfolozi.
In 1687 they, and tribes allied to them, seem to have been in peaceful
occupation of Natal and Zululand, living so close together that migration
on a large scale was impossible. Yet, about the same time, the Amaxosa,
or ‘Cape Kafirs,’ who are very closely related to them, seem to have
been pressing on to the south; and they reached the Great Fish River
soon after the beginning of the eighteenth century. However this may be,
the Zulu king Senzagakona had, about 1800, risen to a position of some
importance, though still subject to Dingiswayo, chief of the Umtetwas in
Natal. His son, Tshaka, succeeded in 1810, and, after Dingiswayo’s death,
assumed a paramount position, his career resembling that of Napoleon,
or rather (since he may be said to have consolidated, if not erected,
a nation), Theodoric or Charlemagne. But what chiefly concerns us here
is the _northward_ migration of the Zulus which took place in his time.
Umziligazi, one of his captains, quarrelled with him and fled, taking his
clan with him. These are the people now known as the Matabele, having
settled in the early thirties between the Limpopo and Zambezi.
Another chief, Manukosi, seceded about 1819, and invaded the country
about Delagoa Bay, gradually subduing the Tonga tribes. This branch
of the Zulus is called Gaza; their last king, Gungunyana (Manukosi’s
grandson), was deposed by the Portuguese in 1896.
[Illustration: ANGONI WARRIORS]
The Angoni (Abanguni) were originally the tribe of Zwide, the son of
Yanga. He, too, rebelled against Tshaka (about 1820), and was defeated;
his people fled north—the only direction open to them—under Zwangendaba,
and, according to a native account, came first into the Tonga country,
where they fought with the people, and took many captives, then into the
Basuto country (meaning probably the Bapedi of the Eastern Transvaal),
where they did the same, and thence to the Karanga (Makalanga) country.
Here they were overtaken by Ngaba, one of Tshaka’s captains, with whom
they fought two battles, and then fled, crossing the Zambezi in 1825. The
date is fixed by the tradition of an eclipse, known to have occurred in
that year; and in the terror of that mysterious darkness, so inexplicable
to the native mind, Zwangendaba’s son, Mombera, was prematurely born.
This is the Mombera whose funeral was described in an earlier chapter.
He was a man of great shrewdness and force of character, and remained to
the last, in spite of some passing misunderstandings, a staunch friend
to Dr. Laws and the Livingstonia missionaries. He refused to be a party
to sending his own or his people’s children to school on the ground that
they would soon become wiser than their parents, and so learn to despise
them. If the missionaries liked to try their hand at teaching the grown
men, they were welcome to do so; and Mombera, not content with this
negative permission, took reading lessons himself, with praiseworthy
assiduity. Unfortunately, he began too late in life, and though he
mastered the alphabet quickly enough, he failed, in spite of all his
efforts, to grasp the principle of combining letters into syllables. He
would not, however, allow the blackboard used by his instructor (the Rev.
J. A. Smith, now of Mlanje) to remain at his kraal, for fear of magic.
A curious tradition about the crossing of the Zambezi was given by the
Ntumbi head-men, who said that, when the Angoni reached the river and
found no canoes to take them over, their chief, Chetusa, struck the
water with his staff, and it divided to let them pass. Then he struck it
again, and it returned to its place. It is only fair to add, that this
account was written down by one of the Blantyre teachers, and, if not
unconsciously coloured by him, may possibly contain an echo of his own
narratives. On the other hand, he had been but a short time in contact
with them, and these older and more responsible men, while well up in the
traditions of their own people, were less likely to have been impressed
by ‘the stories of the white men.’
This account then goes on to state that they went north, and came
‘to Magomero,’ and fought two days with the Atonga, ‘who dwell there
to this day’; and the Atonga ‘clasped their feet,’ _i.e._ submitted,
and acknowledged them as chiefs. The name of Magomero is given by the
Blantyre people to the Konde country at the north end of the Lake, as
well as to the place of that name, near to Lake Chilwa. As the word seems
to mean ‘the slopes,’ it may be of frequent occurrence. They then passed
round the north end of the Lake, and turned south again. Harry Kambwiri’s
written account says nothing of this, but it is evidently to be
understood, as the next fact mentioned is that they crossed the Rovuma.
Crossing the Lichilingo, and another stream called the Luli, they came
to Mwalija’s, where there were cattle, and intended to push on thence to
the Lujenda, but ‘found a desert without water,’—so they returned, lifted
Mwalija’s cattle, and struck off south-westward, wishing to return whence
they came. They reached the Shiré at Matope (the regular crossing-place,
a few miles north of the Cataracts), and wished to settle there; but one
Sosola cheated them into going on by showing them a basket of cow-dung,
and saying that cattle had passed by, but were now in the Chipeta
country. The raiders’ instinct at once rose to the bait, and they crossed
to Mponda’s, and went on north-westward to Mount Chirobwe. Finally, they
settled near Domwe Mountain, somewhat to the north of it, and while there
fought with Mpezeni, son of Zwangendaba, and defeated him. ‘Mpezeni’s
people ran away,’ and this must have been when they settled in the old
Undi country (near the present Fort Jameson), where Mpezeni died a few
years ago.
It is interesting to note that, in 1903, Madzimavi, a son of Mpezeni’s,
but not the one chosen as his successor, applied to the Native
Commissioner for permission to take the name of Zwangendaba (Sungandawa,
as spelt in the official document), on the ground that his grandfather’s
spirit had appeared to him in a dream, and ordered him to do so. His
request was refused, after discussion with the principal chiefs, a
majority of whom seemed to be of the opinion that such a step on
Madzimavi’s part was only preliminary to declaring himself independent,
if not ousting his brother altogether.
Champiti, the Ntumbi head-man, who seemed to be between forty and fifty
years of age, a tall, thin man, of a type common both among the Mashona
of the south and the Wahima of Uganda, said that his father came from
the south and crossed the Zambezi, with many of his people. They passed
by the district where he was then living, ‘but none of them died by the
way,’ and went on to the north, and round the top of the Lake. This might
very well be, even if Champiti’s father had been grown up in 1825—and
he need not have been, as it seems to have been a wholesale migration
of families. Or he might have been impressed as a mat-carrier for the
army; every Zulu warrior was attended by several of these boys, usually
under ten years old. Champiti himself was born somewhere on the northward
march. He mentioned passing through a country called Bena, up in the
north, where the people ‘had no clothes and howled like dogs’; they had
cattle there with long horns—the length of the walking-stick he carried
(about four feet). The Wabena, at the present day, live in German East
Africa, some sixty or seventy miles to the north of Lake Nyasa, though in
accordance with Dr. Theal’s principle, stated above, they may have been
anywhere in the middle of last century. But the absence of clothes, and
the possession of long-horned cattle—if not the howling like dogs—would
equally well fit the Wankonde.
Coming south again, Champiti’s people lived at Matengo, wherever that
may have been, till he was the age of a small boy whom he pointed out to
me—say, at a rough guess, eleven or twelve. Pembereka and Kaboa, whom
I have had occasion to mention more than once, accompanied the party
when they left Matengo, after which they passed Zomba, Lake Chilwa,
and Blantyre, and ‘crossed a big river with a great deal of sand in
it’—evidently the Shiré at, or above, Lake Malombe. After this they seem
to have settled pretty much where we found them.
The above is sufficient to show that the ‘Angoni’ are a very mixed
multitude; there were probably no Zulus in this particular band; and we
find in another account that Chiwere, one of the leading chiefs, was a
Senga, who detached himself from the main body because his people, being
regarded as a subject race, had been ‘treated badly’ by the Zulus. And,
while those who crossed the Shiré from the east brought some new elements
back with them, they left some of their own forces behind in the shape
of those ‘Magwangwara,’ who have been thorns in the sides of Yaos and
Anyanja ever since.
Other bands, under different names, penetrated still farther north, some
of them even reaching Lake Victoria.
The date of the crossing referred to is fixed at 1867, or soon after, by
the late Mr. E. D. Young, who, reaching Chibisa’s with the Livingstone
Search Expedition, in August of that year, found that the ‘Mazitu’ were
encamped on the hills at Magomero. They had taken the place formerly
occupied by the Yaos in the estimation of the Anyanja, and the former
foes united to oppose them. The Makololo, too, began to regard them as
a serious danger, and expelled their old adversary, Mankokwe, from his
position near Tyolo, lest he should make common cause with the Angoni.
The latter were at this time occupying the left, or eastern, bank of the
Shiré, and negotiating with the Anyanja to be ferried across, while the
Machinga Yaos were in possession of the right bank, from the Cataracts to
the Lake.
The Angoni are variously known as Mazitu, Mavitu (Maviti), and, in more
northern regions, as Magwangwara, Wamachonde, and Ruga-Ruga.
From this time forward, Chekusi’s Angoni raided Yaos and Anyanja
impartially for some years. The former fled to the hill-tops, the latter
to islands in the Shiré. When the invaders retired, they came from their
hiding-places and cultivated their gardens in the plains, but only to
have their crops swept off by fresh raids, as soon as they were ripe, and
(as we have previously mentioned) their women and children carried off as
slaves beyond the river. These raids occurred with unfailing regularity,
till the settlement of the Mission party at Blantyre in 1876. There was
an alarm in July 1877, but the invasion did not take place, probably
owing to the presence of the Europeans.
The last of these raids took place in 1884, but was brought to a
peaceable conclusion. The Rev. D. C. Scott, accompanied by Mrs. Scott and
Dr. Peden, visited Chekusi’s kraal and succeeded in coming to a friendly
understanding with that chief; and thenceforth the only Angoni hosts to
cross the river were gangs of porters, or of men seeking work on the
plantations. Chekusi died subsequent to the proclamation of the British
Protectorate in 1891; his son was executed by the British administration
after the ‘rising’ of 1896; and Mandala, whose village, after the
delimitation of 1901 was found to be in Portuguese territory, was taken
prisoner and died on the march to Tete. Mpezeni’s son and successor is a
minor, and Mombera has been succeeded by a chief who has but little real
authority, so that the prestige of these Zulu clans is now a thing of the
past.
We have already seen how the Makololo came to be settled on the Shiré.
The Tambuka, or Tumbuka, according to their own account, ‘came from
the north,’ where they were one tribe, ruled over by one chief, named
Chikulamayembe. This was in some indefinite time long ago, before the
Angoni had come. When they separated, they were living on the Rukuru
river, where it flows through a natural arch of rock. Here ‘they
worshipped a hill called Chikangombe; there is there a hot spring which
they worshipped also.’ They split up and went in different directions,
living much as the Mang’anja of the Shiré Highlands did before they were
displaced by invaders. ‘They lived separately. One said, “I am chief,”
and another said so also. They did not build big villages, but small ones
of a few huts, containing their slaves, wives, and others.’ When they
elected a chief, they anointed him with lion’s fat. ‘Chikulamayembe’
seems to mean ‘giver of hoes,’ and this chief was so called ‘because
they saw his kindness and bounty to the poor. When a person had no hoe,
he came to the chief and asked one, and he got it.’ Hoes are used as
money by some tribes—as by those of the Upper Congo, and formerly by the
Baronga of Delagoa Bay.
Chikulamayembe’s people moved on from the Rukuru to the hill Zabula,
which appears to have been regarded with superstitious awe. ‘The old
people of the tribe thought this hill could give rain.’ Here another
separation took place, and, soon after, they were attacked by the Angoni.
‘The Tambuka had many cattle and goats,’ says the native account, ‘but
the Ngoni hearing that they had cattle came and fought with them. The
Ngoni killed the Tambuka, took their cattle, and sent them to their chief
Zwangendaba. Thus the Tambuka failed to withstand the Ngoni, through
their living apart and being scattered.’ For a time the invaders carried
all before them; then they met with a temporary check, being defeated
by three Tambuka chiefs in succession. The last of these, Chigamuka,
inflicted such a crushing blow on them that, ‘to-day, if a Tambuka
reminds a Ngoni of Chigamuka, the latter will strike him, because the
Ngoni died and were beaten there.’
They recovered, however, after a time, and resumed their career of
conquest. ‘To-day,’ said Dr. Steele’s informant, in 1893, ‘they are
the masters of the Tambuka, Tonga, Chewa, Bisa, and Senga. There is no
chief of the Tambuka, but the Ngoni alone. The records of these wars
and migrations are necessarily very imperfect. They serve, however, to
explain the great mixture of types which attentive observation shows us
in most tribes of the Bantu race. Probably, if we may judge by analogy
from similar processes in the past, the ultimate result will be the
building up of several distinct nationalities, each with a well-marked
type of its own, and institutions modified by so much of European culture
as they can receive and assimilate. But such speculation belongs to the
future. Our business here is only with the present, and our attempt has
been to give some notion of these people as they now are, or (in cases
where they have been influenced by contact with Europeans) as they were
until lately.
NOTE.—It appears that there were really two Zulu migrations,
the second one led by Ngola, Chekusi’s predecessor. It was the
latter who fought with Mpezeni’s people, as stated on page
281, and Champiti’s account must probably be taken to refer to
them. It seems that at one time they even reached the sea at
Mozambique.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Sir H. H. Johnston, _British Central Africa_, p. 355.
[2] Sir H. H. Johnston.
[3] Livingstone, _The Zambezi and its Tributaries_, p. 198.
[4] _Du Zambèze au Congo Français_, p. 106.
[5] See Moffat’s _Missionary Labours and Scenes in Southern Africa_.
[6] Sir H. H. Johnston includes the Anyika among the Batumbuka, but Dr.
Elmslie says that the latter ‘have their teeth pointed.’
[7] Sir H. H. Johnston.
[8] This idea was suggested to me some years ago by Miss J. E. Harrison.
[9] Yao form of the name Anyanja.
[10] It has been derived from a word meaning ‘to nourish,’ but the above
seems more probable.
[11] This is the principal tree used for making bark-cloth. Livingstone
says, ‘It is a sacred tree all over Africa and India’; and I learn from
M. Auguste Chevalier that it is found in every village of Senegal and
French Guinea, and looked on as ‘a fetich tree.’
[12] Like the Zulu _isanusi_, who is a person of nervous, hysterical
temperament to begin with, and goes through a course of training
calculated to develop any ‘psychic’ gifts he or she may possess.
[13] ‘They have the firmest belief possible in ghosts, and will tell
long circumstantial stories about the “spooks” they have seen—prosaic
stories usually connected with daylight, as where a woman declares that
while winnowing or pounding corn in the noontide, she looked out in the
courtyard and saw the spirit of So-and-So passing along, looking exactly
as though he were alive.’—Sir H. H. Johnston, _British Central Africa_,
p. 449.
[14] ‘Among the tribes in the neighbourhood of Tanganyika ... a carved
image of a human being ... is set up in or near the village, and thus
becomes the village idol to which all prayers and sacrifices are
directed.’—_Life and Work in British Central Africa_, June-July 1900.
[15] See note at end of chapter.
[16] MS. communication.
[17] Popularly current as the feminine of _mzungu_ (‘white man’); it
has spread up the Shiré from the Portuguese settlements. People not
acquainted with the word address you as _mai_ (‘mother’), or _mfumu_
(‘chief’—common gender).
[18] The Wahima or Wahuma, the nomadic pastoral race believed to be akin
to the Abyssinians, whose blood predominates in the royal houses of
Uganda and Unyoro.
[19] See Chapter IV.
[20] I am not sure that these are usual, except where they are likely to
be needed for shooting.
[21] This is the same as the Nyanja word _adzukulu_.
[22] _Baba_ = ‘father.’
[23] This is not usually done except on ceremonial occasions, or in case
of great need, when fire can be procured in no other way. A fire is kept
up through the night, and there are sure to be at least some embers in
the morning, which can be blown into flame; or, if it should have gone
out in one hut, they can nearly always fetch fire from another.
[24] The ‘undertakers,’ or _adzukulu_.
[25] The _mapondera_ is paid for his services after the conclusion of
the trial, and those who recover, and so turn out to have been falsely
accused, are entitled to liberal compensation. This has to be paid by the
heir.
[26] Literally ‘playing’—the word is used both for games and dances.
[27] _Dictionary_, _s.v._ Masewera.
[28] I have never been able to discover any other meaning but this for
_chinguli_, which, moreover, I have never heard in any other connection.
The usual word for this kind of top is _nguli_, or _nanguli_; _chi_ being
the augmentative prefix. Another version says rather vaguely that ‘he cut
out a tree,’ and made his sister go into it. Evidently the function of
the _chinguli_ is the same as that of the magic carpet in the _Arabian
Nights_. In the Fiote story of ‘Ngomba’s Balloon,’ given by Mr. Dennett,
a basket of some sort seems to be endowed with magical powers. The song
should be read phonetically (giving the vowels their German or Italian
value), with the accents as marked: the _e_ in _nde, nde, nde_ (a
meaningless refrain) is like that in our word ‘end.’
[29] _Chants et Contes des Baronga_, pp. 70-71.
[30] Each of these clans appears to have a _mwiko_ with regard to some
animal, but the subject has not yet been sufficiently investigated.
[31] According to one authority, the unit is the _mzinda_, which
comprises all the villages having the same _unyago_ or _nkole_. Others
merely translate _mzinda_, ‘head village,’ or ‘capital’; but it seems to
be the capital not of the _Rundo_ but of the sub-chief.
[32] Livingstone, _Zambezi_, p. 198.
[33] ‘The chief may often have less influence than powerful head-men, and
we have known cases where he contented himself with grumbling when his
head-men acted contrary to his desire; and in many criminal trials he is
eclipsed by the sorcerers and pounders of poison’ (_Africana_, i. 155).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS MADE USE OF IN THE FOREGOING PAGES
LIVINGSTONE, DAVID, _Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi
and its Tributaries, and of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa
and Nyassa_, 1858-1864. London, John Murray, 1865. (Original
unabridged edition.)
ROWLEY, Rev. HENRY, _Story of the Universities’ Mission to
Central Africa_. London, 1866.
MACDONALD, Rev. DUFF, _Africana_, 2 vols. London, Simpkin,
Marshall and Co., 1882.
JOHNSTON, Sir H. H., K.C.B., _British Central Africa_. London,
Methuen, 1897.
SCOTT, Rev. D. C., _Cyclopædic Dictionary of the Mang’anja
Language_. Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1892.
BARNES, Rev. H. B. (U.M.C.A.), _Nyanja-English Vocabulary_.
London, S.P.C.K., 1902.
_Occasional Papers for Nyasaland_ (Likoma, 1893), afterwards
_The Nyasa News_ (Likoma, 1893-95). This periodical contains a
large amount of exceedingly valuable information. Some use has
also been made of two other magazines—_Life and Work in Central
Africa_ (Blantyre), and _The Aurora_ (Livingstonia Mission,
Bandawe).
ADDENDA
I. P. 74-5.—The Spider absent from Bantu folk-lore. This statement
requires some modification. Since writing the above, I have examined a
number of Duala animal-stories collected by Herr Wilhelm Lederbogen,
formerly of the Government School at Kamerun. The Duala are the most
north-westerly Bantu tribe, and have probably borrowed some of their
folk-lore from their Efik neighbours. As in most of the West Coast
stories, moreover, the place of the Hare is taken by a small species of
antelope, to which the English-speaking natives of Sierra Leone have,
for some occult reason, given the name of Cunnie Rabbit. (It is curious
that a Duala native, when telling a story in German, also called the
creature a hare, but explained that ‘it is not like [the hares] here, but
has little horns.’—See Elli Meinhof, _Märchen aus Kamerun_.) Mr. Dennett
also gives a Lower Congo story of ‘How the Spider won and lost Nzambi’s
Daughter.’—(See _Folk-lore of the Fjort_.)
II. P. 155-6.—This mode of burying those who have died of smallpox is not
invariable, or else the practice has been modified of late years. A more
recent native account says: ‘In this case a small reed is stuck into the
side of the grave. Along this reed the disease will creep and so escape
from the body into the open air. For they say that if they do not thus
allow the disease to escape, “they will only plant the disease in the
ground, and epidemics will be frequent.”’
The same authority states that a difference is made in case of violent
death: ‘One who has died from the effects of a gunshot wound or the
thrust of a spear is buried at once without the ordinary delay of a day
or two waiting for the relations to arrive. The body is not allowed to
be at the village even for one night, but is buried at once. Nor do the
_awilo_ in this case dig the grave to any depth. They say that if they
dig deeply they will be stabbed. One killed by a wild beast is treated in
similar fashion.’—(_Life and Work in British Central Africa_, Dec. 1905,
p. 4.)
The writer of the above is apparently a Yao. He does not specify whether
these remarks apply to Yao or Anyanja; but as, in other passages, he is
careful to point out where the practice of the two tribes differs, we may
no doubt understand him as referring to both.
III. P. 279.—Mombera. Dr. Elmslie (_Among the Wild Ngoni_, Edinburgh,
1901) gives an interesting picture of this chief. ‘Mombera had a dual
character. He was at his best in the early part of the day, before he
became intoxicated, and so by sunrise people with cases to be judged went
to see him. Then his affability and generous behaviour were pleasant to
see, but toward afternoon, when the beer he continually sipped began to
act, his civility was at an end for the day.’... Many natives, in later
life, when they find their digestive powers weakening, come to depend on
the nourishing _moa_ for their principal sustenance, with results (when,
like Mombera, they can command unlimited quantities) as above.
‘When sober, he delighted to play with his children, and manifested a
very pleasing interest in them and their mothers.... He had a great
interest in old people, of whom he had always a great number living in
huts within the seraglio. He treated them with respect, and provided
for them from his own table. If he was shown anything new and strange,
he would generally have it shown to the old people, and while they
knelt before him in due respect, one could notice with pleasure their
trustful attitude and how he would heartily respond to any observation of
wonder they might express.... He said they would have to report to the
ancestral spirits how many new and wonderful things had now become known
to the people....
‘... He was neither cruel nor bloodthirsty. He discountenanced the poison
ordeal which was adopted from the Tonga slaves, believing rather in their
own trial by boiling water, which at most only maimed the person and
did not destroy life as the _mwavi_ did. He was considered to be “too
soft” by the more degraded and fiery dispositions, and had no delight
in condemning to death. Only two instances of the death-penalty being
inflicted by Mombera came under my own observation during all the years
I lived under him. In one case he caused a man to be put to death for
cattle-stealing, after having pardoned him for the same offence.... The
other case was where a member of the royal family killed a slave who
had run away from him and put himself under the protection of another
master....’ (Pp. 115-117.)
GLOSSARY
OF NYANJA AND OTHER TERMS USED IN THIS BOOK
(_Unless otherwise stated, the language is Nyanja_)
_Abusa_, plural of _mbusa_, a herd-boy.
_Adzukulu_, grandchildren, also spelt _ajukulu_ and _azukuru_. But
it usually means the relatives or friends who make all the
arrangements for burying a deceased person.
_Afiti_, plural of _mfiti_, a wizard.
_Amabele_ (Zulu), ‘Kafir corn’—_Holcus sorghum_.
_Amadhlozi_ (Zulu), plural of _idhlozi_, ancestral spirits, when they
appear in the form of snakes.
_Amatongo_ (Zulu), ancestral spirits manifesting themselves in dreams.
_Antu_, plural of _muntu_, a person.
_Awilo_ (Yao). See _Adzukulu_.
_Bango_, a very common kind of reed—_Phragmites communis_.
_Bwalo_, the village place of assembly or ‘forum’; it is also used
(see p. 122) for the unmarried men’s house.
_Bwazi_, a shrub (_Securidaca longipedunculata_) and the fibre
procured from its bark.
_Bwebweta_, v., to rave or talk nonsense, as if possessed by spirits.
_Chagwa_, lit. ‘it has fallen’; name of a game. See p. 113.
_Chamba_, Indian hemp; also name of a dance.
_Chifukwa_, lit. ‘a fault,’ but used as a conjunction—‘because.’
_Chikolongwe_, a barbed fish-spear, or gaff.
_Chikonyo_, a cob of maize.
_Chimanga_, maize.
_Chinamwali_, the initiation ceremonies for girls.
_Chinangwa_ (Yao), cassava.
_Chipini_, a metal ornament, like a stud, worn by women in the nose.
_Chipongwe_, impudence.
_Chire_, the bush.
_Chiri_, a steep bank.
_Chirombo_, a wild beast, a monster; also an insect or a weed.
_Chirope_, madness caused by shedding blood. See p. 67.
_Chitalaka_, red porcelain beads, white inside.
_Chitowe_, sesamum, the seed of which is used for making oil.
_Dambo_, a plain, or open grass-land in the Bush.
_Dimba_, a patch of alluvial soil beside a stream.
_Dzombe_, a locust.
_Fumba_, a sleeping-bag made of matting.
_Garanzi_, a small drum, beaten quickly.
_Gome_ (_nyumba ya_), a square house.
_Gowero_, boys’ house in a village.
_Gwape_ (_gwapi_), the klipspringer—_Oreotragus saltator_.
_Imfe_ (Zulu), a kind of sorghum with sweet juice (_S. sacharinum_);
Nyanja _msale_.
_Inswa_, ‘white ants,’ or termites.
_Isigcogco_ or _isicoco_ (Zulu), head-ring worn by men when of an age
and standing to be called to the chief’s council.
_Kokalupsya_, the early rains which sweep away the ashes of the burnt
grass and scrub (_lupsya_).
_Kombe_, the strophanthus creeper; the arrow-poison made from it.
_Konde_, keloids, or scars made by cutting, as tribal marks or for
ornament.
_Lisoka_ (Yao), the spiritual part of man; a ghost.
_Lobola_, v. (Zulu), properly, to arrange a marriage ‘by agreeing to
deliver a certain number of cattle’ to the girl’s father or
guardian.
_Lululuta_, v., or _luluta_, ‘to utter the cry called _ntungululu_ on
the return of men from war or hunting, or any other exciting
occasion. The sound is produced by vibrations of the tongue
intermitting the cry or whistle by the lips.’
_Lundu_ (_Rundo_), paramount chief.
_Lupsya_, burnt grass, etc. See _Kokalupsya_.
_Mabisalila_, the witch-finder woman. See p. 89.
_Maere_, a small kind of millet—_Eleusine_.
_Makani_, a debate or discussion.
_Malimwe_, the winter.
_Mankwala_, medicine.
_Mapira_, _Sorghum vulgare_.
_Mapondera_, the man who pounds the poison for the _mwavi_ ordeal.
_Maseche_ (plural of _tseche_), rattles made from the hard-shelled
fruits of a certain tree.
_Masuku_, the fruit of the _msuku_ tree—_Napaca kirkii_.
_Matekenya_, plural of _tekenya_, the jigger—_Sarcopsyllus penetrans_.
_Matondo_, fruit of the _mtondo_ tree.
_Mbawa_, the mahogany-tree—_Khaya senegalensis_.
_Mbidzi_, a zebra.
_Mbulu_, the wild dog—_Lycaon pictus_.
_Mchombwa_, the game of _msuo_ or _mankala_.
_Mdzi_, a village. Also _mudzi_. Zulu _umuzi_.
_Mdzodzo_, a kind of black ant emitting an offensive smell.
_Mfiti_, a wizard.
_Miiko_, plural of _mwiko_, which see.
_Mlandu_, a ‘case,’ discussion or trial.
_Mlungusi_, a kind of thorn-tree.
_Moa_, native beer.
_Momba_, a straight fish-spear.
_Mono_, a basket-trap for fish.
_Moto_, fire.
_Mpakasa_, autumn; the beginning of the dry season.
_Mpeza_, a kind of caterpillar.
_Mphiyu_ (Tonga), a kind of medicine for effecting the transformation
of people into animals.
_Mpingo_, the ebony-tree—_Diospyrus_.
_Mpini._ See _Konde_.
_Mpira_, india-rubber, or a ball made of it.
_Msale._ See _Imfe_.
_Msampa_, a kind of trap.
_Msuku_, the tree _Napaca kirkii_.
_Msuo._ See _Mchombwa_.
_Mtanga_, a kind of basket.
_Mtumbamtumba_, a large kind of black and white, strong-smelling ants.
_Mvula_, rain. Yao _ula_.
_Mvunguti_, a tree (_Kigelia_) with large cucumber-shaped fruits, 1
to 2 feet long.
_Mwavi_, the poison prepared from the bark of _Erythrophleum
guineense_; the ordeal in which it is used.
_Mwiko_, a prohibition of some particular food to an individual or
family.
_Myombo_, a tree like an ash—_Brachystegia longifolia_.
_Mzinda_, the head village of a district.
_Namwali_, a girl who has been initiated.
_Nchito_, work. _Nchito ya amuna_, ‘work of men (males).’
_Ndiwo_, anything eaten as relish with porridge.
_Ng’ama_, red oxide of iron.
_Nguluwe_, a bush-pig.
_Njinga_, a reel or spindle.
_Nkaka_, the scaly ant-eater, Pangolin.
_Nkalango_, a thicket; a clump of trees left standing to shelter the
graves.
_Nkata_, a grass ring or pad used in carrying loads on the head.
_Nkokwe_, a corn-bin or granary made of basket-work.
_Nkole_, the initiation ceremonies (the word used at Likoma). See
_Unyago_.
_Nsanja_, the shelf or stage above the fireplace in a Nyanja hut.
_Nsengwa_, a small round basket.
_Nsima_, porridge made of maize or _mapira_ meal.
_Ntengu_, a small blackbird.
_Nyanja_, a lake or river.
_Nyasa_ (Yao), a lake or river.
_Nzama_, a kind of bean, resembling a ground-nut.
_Peka_, v., to make fire by drilling.
_Pelele_, a lip-ring worn by women.
_Rundo._ See _Lundu_.
_Sonkwe_, a kind of hibiscus, from which fibre is obtained.
_Tengo_, the bush.
_Tsanchima_, a masked performer in the _zinyao_ dance.
_Ufa_, flour.
_Ulendo_, a journey; also a party making the journey, a caravan.
_Unyago_ (Yao), the initiation ceremonies for young people. See
_Nkole_.
_Wodiera_, an eater, literally ‘(one) of eating,’ contracted from _wa
ku diera_.
_Zikonyo_, plural of _chikonyo_, which see.
_Zinyao_, the dance at the mysteries, in which the performers dress
up with masks, etc., as animals.
[Illustration]
INDEX
Abanda (Yao clan), 160, 253.
Abstinence from certain foods, 94-6.
Achikunda (Chikundas), 24, 61, 95.
Achipeta, 25;
their tobacco, 178;
their country, 281.
Adultery, 152, 265-6.
Agnatic descent (_chilawa_), 253.
Ajawa. _See_ Yaos.
Alolo (Anguru), 24, 32, 33.
their tribe marks, 39.
Alunda, 25.
Alungu, 25.
Ancestral spirits, 48 _et seq._, 54, 62-66.
Angoni, 24, 29, 34, 35.
their prayers and sacrifices, 53.
harems of chiefs, 132.
chiefs order wholesale _mwavi_-drinkings, 170.
war-dance, 228.
migrations, 278-285.
raids, 283-4.
Animals as witches’ messengers, 84, 169.
in folk-lore, 231 _et seq._
reserved for chiefs’ eating, 272.
Ants, white (termites), 22, 191;
used as food, 137, 192.
omens drawn from, 94.
Ant-eater, 17, 272.
Anyanja, 24 _et seq._, 277.
subject to Angoni, 29, 35, 272.
conquered by Makololo, 37, 268-9.
their worship, 63.
their chiefs, ‘old gods of the land,’ 51, 58.
villages, 99 _et seq._
betrothal and marriage customs, 130 _et seq._
burial, 156, and Ch. VII. _passim_.
tales, 231, 233, 238 _et seq._
system of kinship, 253.
tribal organisation, 255-6.
raided by Angoni, 283-4.
Apodzo, hippo-hunters, 190-1.
Arrows, 187.
Astræa, myth of, 75.
Atonga, 33.
their beliefs, 56, 58.
burial customs, 157 _et seq._
conquered by Angoni, 280.
Awankonde, 22, 34.
their beliefs, 62.
prayers, 63.
marriage ceremonies, 131.
Awemba (Babemba), 25, 71.
human sacrifices, 160.
corpses of chiefs mummified, 163.
Babemba. _See_ Awemba.
Babies, 102 _et seq._
Baboons, 17, 121, 183.
Bachelors’ house, 122.
Ball-game, 113.
Bantu race, 3, 27;
kingdoms founded by, 256, 259.
language-family, 27, 208 _et seq._
folk-tales, 230 _et seq._
Bark-cloth, 200.
Barnes, Rev. H. B., quoted, 92, 207.
Baskets, 197-9.
used in salt-making, 206.
Batonga (Batoka), 25, 42, 175.
Batumbuka, 24, 33;
their history, 285-6.
Beads, 44, 108, 153.
Beer (_moa_), mode of making, 138.
offered to spirits, 47, 52.
used for divination, 53.
brewed after funerals, 166.
supplied by chief during hoeing, 184.
to canoe-makers, 194.
Bees, wild, 23, 191.
Bemba. _See_ Awemba.
Birds, 19, 20.
Blacksmiths, 145, 201.
Blood-guiltiness, curse of (_chirope_), 67-8, 265.
Boys, 119 _et seq._;
sent to herd for Angoni chiefs, 35, 128;
their initiation ceremonies, 124-6.
Bows, 186.
Bread (native), 140.
Buffalo, 16-17.
Burial, 156 _et seq._
Bush, character of, 8-9.
_Bwalo_ (‘forum’ or village green), 139, 145-6.
(young men’s dormitory), 122.
_Bwebweta_ (raving), 63, 65.
Calabar tale of tortoise, 239.
Calico worn by natives, 48, 107.
offered to spirits, 52.
sewn by men, 135, 153, 197.
draped over dead man’s house, 165.
Cannibalism, 85, 169.
Canoes, 194.
Canoe-songs, 217, 218.
Cassava, 177.
Chameleon, 72-4.
Champiti, head-man of Ntumbi, his narrative of the Angoni migrations,
282.
Charms, 79 _et seq._
Chekusi, the Angoni chief, 35, 170, 284.
Chekusi II. (Chatantumba or Gomani), 35, 172, 219.
Chesinka, his dream, 46.
Chevalier, M. Aug., quoted, 63 (note).
Chibisa, Nyanja chief, 82, 258.
Chief, paramount, 255;
his powers, 261.
performs religious ceremonies, 56, 271.
owns land, but cannot alienate, 271.
installation of, 260.
Chiefs, women, 256.
of Batumbuka, anointed with lions’ fat, 285.
of Awemba, mummified after death, 163.
of Atonga buried above ground, 160.
Chieftainship, succession to, 258-9.
Chigamuka, Tumbuka chief, defeated Angoni, 286.
Chigunda, Nyanja chief, takes part in prayers for rain, 56, 76.
Chikulamayembe, Tumbuka chief, 285.
Chikumbu, Yao chief, supposed invulnerable, 82.
Children, care and treatment of, 104 _et seq._
Chilwa, Lake (Shirwa), 5, 283;
salt-pits, 207.
_Chimbwi_, chief undertaker among Atonga, 162.
Chinsunzi, Nyanja chief, 255.
Chiperone, Mount, 7.
Chipetas. _See_ Achipeta.
Chipoka, Nyanja chief at Mlanje, 47, 66.
Chiradzulo, Mount, 7.
Chirobwe, Mount, 7, 281.
Chiromo, 2, 5.
_Chirope._ _See_ Blood-guiltiness.
Chiruwi (or Chitowe), 59, 60, 245.
Chiuta = Mulungu, 56-8, 72.
Chiuta, Lake, 5.
Clans among Yaos, 252.
Anyanja, 253.
Colenso, Bishop, quoted, 222.
Cooking, 136-7.
Copper, 8.
‘Coronation’ of chiefs, 260-1.
Corpses suspended on trees, 155-6, 159.
Creation myths, 70 _et seq._
Criminal charges, 263.
Crocodiles, 20, 206, 244.
Crops, 176 _et seq._
Cross, Dr. Kerr, quoted, 38.
Dances, 96-8, 116, 226 _et seq._
Dancing-man, 221, 226.
Darning, 196.
Dead ‘go to Mulungu,’ 55-6.
Debtors, 267.
Dennett, Mr. R. E., quoted, 242, 249.
Digging-stick, 181.
Divination by flour or beer, 53, 64-5.
by moving sticks, 90, 92.
by lot, 93.
by knife, or three sticks, 94.
Division of labour between men and women, 134-5.
Divorce, 152-3.
Dogs, used for hunting by Angoni, 188.
wild (_Lycaon pictus_), 18.
Dolls, 69, 113.
Dreams, 46, 64, 187.
Dress of children, 105-7.
Drums, 224-6.
Duff, Mr. H.L., quoted, 115.
Dzonze, Mount, 7.
Ear Ornaments, 41.
Earthquakes, theory of, 56.
Eland, 17.
Elephants, 16, 186, 188.
in folk-lore, 233 _et seq._
Elton, the late F. J., 16.
‘Empires,’ Bantu, 259.
Evil spirits, 61-2.
Family Affection, 146-8.
Fauna, 16-23.
Feast at end of mourning, 166-7.
Fences leading to game-pits, 189.
Ferns, 14.
Fire made by rubbing two sticks, 74, 167.
‘forbidden,’ 166.
due to witches, 88, 169.
First-fruits, 271.
Fish-spears, 192.
traps, 192.
Fishing-hooks, 193.
nets, 193
Flowers, 15.
worn as ornaments, 41, 108, 121.
Flute, 120, 222-3.
Food of infants, 105.
of older children, 108.
in general, 136 _et seq._
how stored, 141.
Forge, 145, 202.
Fowls, 101;
eaten at wedding, 131.
Fruits, wild, 15.
Game-pits, 189.
fences leading to, 189.
Games, 111 _et seq._
Gardens, 137, 177 _et seq._
new marked out, 179.
Ghosts, 66.
Girls, their games, 113, 121.
their work, 119.
initiation, 126.
betrothed in infancy, 129-30.
Goats, 101, 119.
Gold, 8.
_Gori_ (slave-stick), 267.
Government, 255.
Grain-store (_nkokwe_), 181, 182.
Graphite, 7.
Grass, 6, 7, 9.
bands of plaited, used in mourning, 157.
fired near lake, a criminal act, 267.
Grass-fires, 9-11.
Graves not visited, 154.
Groves used for burial, 99, 154.
Gun-medicine, 81-2.
Guns, 187.
fired at funerals, 158.
Hæmatite, 7.
Hairdressing, 43, 105, 107.
Hare in African folk-lore, 231 _et seq._
Harems of Makololo and Angoni chiefs, 132, 269.
Harvest, 183.
Head-band (_lisanda_) worn by Yao chiefs, 260.
Henry, Dr., treats Chekusi’s mother for rheumatism, 170.
Herd-boys, 119.
Hetherwick, Rev. A., quoted, 55, 69, 175.
Hippopotamus, 16, 183, 190-1.
Hoes, 180.
Honey, 191.
Horns buried by witches, 82.
by witch-detective, 89.
Hot springs, 6.
House of deceased abandoned or destroyed, 165.
Houses, square, 100, 144.
Hunters, customs observed by, 187.
Hunting, 185 _et seq._
parties, 186.
Husbands, native, 149.
Huts described, 100.
construction of, 141-2.
interior arrangement, 143.
Hyena, 18.
witches turn into, 84-5, 87.
in folk-lore, 236, 240, 244.
Hynde, Mr. R. S., quoted, 252.
Idols, 68.
Infants, burial of, 160.
Initiation—boys, 124;
girls, 126.
Insects, 21-23.
Interior of huts, 143-4.
Iron ore, 7.
Iron, workers in, 201.
Johnson, Ven. W. B. (Archdeacon of Likoma), quoted, 257.
Johnston, Sir Harry, quoted, 3, 16, 19, 20, 24, 28, 33, 34, 42, 66,
79, 86, 196, 223.
Junod, M. Henri A., quoted, 66, 78, 201, 223.
Kaboa, one of Ntumbi elders, 173.
Kambwiri, H., teacher of Blantyre Mission, 234, 280.
Kangomba, 48, 51.
Kankomba (Kangomba), Nyanja chief, 255.
Kapeni, Yao chief, 253, 258.
Kapirimtiya, starting-point of human race, 70.
Katunga’s, 5.
Keloids, 38-9.
Kidnapping, 275.
Kintu, Baganda myth of, 75.
Kirk Mountains, 7.
Klipspringer (_gwapi_), 17.
Knives, 201, 203.
Kumtaja, Yao chief, calls in Angoni, 260.
Land inalienable, 271.
Leopard, 18.
Levirate, 133, 167.
Leza = Mulungu, also = lightning, 58.
Lezi. _See_ Leza.
Lightning personified, 57.
Lindsay, Mr. J., quoted, 97, 125.
Lions, 18, 62, 64, 86-7.
Lipepete Mountain, 7.
Livingstone quoted, 4, 6, 25, 36, 37, 56, 64, 174, 201-2, 256, 267.
Local head-men, 255, 270.
Locusts, 23, 46.
Lomwe, 32. _See_ Alolo.
Loom, 155-6.
Luangwa River, 4, 25, 26, 42.
Luasi hills, 33.
Luchereng’anga = Mulungu, 71.
Lujenda valley, old home of Yaos, 257.
Lustration, after funeral, 162.
Lycanthropy, 86-7.
Lyke-wake, 157-8.
Mabisalila, witch-detective, 89 _et seq._, 263.
MacAlpine, Rev. A. G., quoted, 68, 85, 161, 166.
Macdonald, Rev. Duff, quoted, 48 _et seq._, 60, 65, 133, 227, 236,
240, 245, 247, 254, 266, 268.
Machinga (Yaos), 95, 258, 275, 284.
Madzimavi, son of Mpezeni, 281.
Magic defined, 76.
Magomero, 280.
Magwangwara (Zulus), 283.
Maize, 177;
how sown, 188.
Makalanga, 25, 277.
Makololo, 24, 36, 37.
chiefs, their harems, 132.
wholesale _mwavi_-drinkings, 170.
their despotism, 268-9.
Makua, 24, 39.
teeth filed, 42.
Malabvi Mountain, witch living on, 61.
Malemya, Yao chief at Zomba, 259-60.
Mandala, brother of Chekusi, 35, 172, 219.
Mang’anja. _See_ Anyanja.
Mangoche Mountain, old home of Yaos, 58;
tribe, 258.
Manis. _See_ Ant-eater.
Mankala game, 113, 146.
Mankokwe, Rundo of the Upper Shiré, 255.
Mapira (_Sorghum vulgare_), 182, 183.
Maples, Bishop, quoted, 253.
Mapondera, pounder of the _mwavi_, 171, 175.
Maravi, 25. _See_ Anyanja.
Marriage, 128 _et seq._
ceremony, 131, 134.
Masea, Makololo chief, 37.
Mashona, 25.
Masked dancers at mysteries, 98.
Matope, Yao chief, 53, 165.
Mats, 199.
Mausoleum, 164.
Mazitu. _See_ Angoni.
Mbasi, spirit of evil believed in by Wankonde, 62.
Mbona, 60, 61.
Mbudzi, Chigunda’s sister, leads prayers for rain, 56.
_Mchombwa._ _See_ Mankala.
Meals, 139.
Medicines (herbs and charms), 80 _et seq._
shown to people by Chiruwi, 59.
Men’s work, 134-5, 197.
Metamorphosis, 84, 85-7, 240.
Migrations of Angoni, 278 _et seq._
Minerals, 7-8.
_Mlandu_, 262.
Mlanje Mountain, 6.
Mlauri, Makololo chief, 37.
Moa. _See_ Beer.
Modelling, 117, 120.
Moffat, Rev. Robert, quoted, 36.
Moir, Mr. John, interrupts _mwavi_ trial, 174.
Monkeys, 17.
Mombera, Zulu (Ngoni) chief, 33, 279, 290.
his funeral, 163.
Morality, connection between religion and, 67-8.
Morambala Mountain, 1, 6.
Alolo living there, 32.
witch living there, 61.
Mourning, 156 _et seq._
Mpambe = Mulungu, 55, 56, 57, 185.
Mpende, Nyanja chief, 26, 255.
Mpezeni, Angoni chief, 281.
_Mphiyu_, medicine eaten in order to turn into an animal, 85-6.
Mtanga, Yao spirit, 58, 70.
Mulungu, 48, 53 _et seq._
name applied to spirits of dead when worshipped, 54, 62.
impersonal conception, 55.
as creator, 70-74.
driven from earth, 74.
sought by woman in Yao tale, 245-6.
Mummification of corpse among Awemba, 163.
Murchison Cataracts, 5.
Murder, 264.
of relation or dependent, how avenged, 67.
Music, 216-17.
Musical instruments, 221 _et seq._
Mvai Mountain, 7.
_Mwavi_ poison, 168, 171, 263, 265.
Mweru, Lake, salt swamps, 207.
_Mwiko_, prohibition, 94-6.
Mysteries, 123-8.
dances at, 97-8, 127-8.
Names, 103-4.
changed at mysteries, 126.
witches call dead person by his childish name, 88, 169.
Namzuruwa, Nyanja chief, 66.
Nchomokela, sacred hill of Batonga, 175.
Ndirande Mountain, near Blantyre, 8.
villagers of, 32.
tree with offerings on, 51.
haunted by spirit, 48, 51.
Neck-rests (pillows), 204.
Needles, 196.
Net-fishing, 193.
Nose-scrapers, 203.
Ntumbi, village of Upper Shiré district, 99, 133, 172.
forge at, 202.
head-men relate traditions, 280.
Nyambadwe Mountain, 7, 88.
Nyanja, language, 25, 210 _et seq._
Nyasa, Lake, 2, 3, 5.
changes in level, 5-6.
origin of, 75.
Angoni pass round north end, 281.
Offerings to spirits, 52.
at graves, 159, 164.
eaten by undertakers, 159.
Omens, 94, 187.
Oracle of _ufa_-cone, 53, 187.
of sticks, 90, 92.
of lot (_ula_), 93.
Ordeal by _mwavi_ poison, 90, 168, 175, 263.
people who die by it not buried, 160.
other ordeals, 264.
Owl, wizards’ messenger, 84, 169.
Palms, 14.
Pangolin. _See_ Ant-eater.
Parents and children, 108-110.
Peden, Dr., 284.
_Pelele_ (lip-ring), 26, 32, 40.
Pembereka, elder at Ntumbi, 101, 173.
died of _mwavi_, 173.
Pepper (Chile), 80, 140.
Periplus of Hanno, 10-11.
Piano (native), 223.
Pigeons, 101.
Pillows. _See_ Neck-rests.
Pirie, Mr. George, quoted, 160.
Plaiting wicker-work, 197.
Poison used in fishing, 15, 194.
(_mwavi_). See _Mwavi_ and Ordeal.
Polyandry, traces of, 257.
Polygamy, 132-3, 149.
Porcupine, 17.
Porridge, 136.
Potatoes (sweet), 177.
Pot broken at grave, 165.
Pottery, 204-6.
Pounding corn, 135-6.
Praises of the dead, 158.
Prayer, 49, 53, 62-3.
Prayer-tree, 62, 63.
Priestly functions exercised by chiefs, 271.
Priests (sacrificers), 270.
Property of deceased, how disposed of, 167-8.
in land, 271.
Prophets, 65.
Protectorate of British Central Africa, boundaries of, 1-3;
area, 4.
Pumpkins, 181.
Python, 21;
Yao tale of, 243.
Raids of Angoni, 284.
Rain, 10, 11, 179-80, 185.
prayers for, 51.
sent by Mpambe, 56-7.
people shouting for, 57.
Rainbow, 57.
Rain-charms, 77-80.
Rain-doctor, 79.
Ramakukane, Makololo chief, 37, 268.
Rats forbidden to some, 96.
in folk-lore, 243.
Rattles, 226.
Razors, 107.
Reid, Mr. J., quoted, 39.
Relationship, terms of, 254.
Reptiles, 20, 21.
Riddles, 121, 212-213.
Rod and line fishing, 193-4.
Ronga women’s ceremony for bringing rain, 78.
Roofs, 142.
Rowley, Rev. H., quoted, 29, 30, 31, 51, 55, 56, 60, 259.
Rundo (Lundu), Paramount Chief of Anyanja, 60, 255.
Ruo River, 2, 255.
Sacrifices, 47, and _see_ Offerings.
Sacrilege, 165, 267.
Salt, 139-40.
making, 206-7.
Sandia, Nyanja chief, 26, 255.
_Sansi_, musical instrument, 222.
Saurian, extinct, model of, constructed at mysteries, 97.
Scott, Rev. D. C., quoted, 66, 95, 229, 272.
visited Chekusi, 254.
Seasons. _See_ Rain.
Sebituane, Makololo chief, 36, 268.
Senzagakona, Zulu king, 278.
Sewing, 196.
Sharpe, Sir A., quoted, 207.
Shaving, 105, 107.
of hair in mourning, 166.
Shiré Highlands, 6-7.
River, 1-2;
name unknown to natives, 2;
flows out of Nyasa, 5.
Sipopo, Barotse chief, 36.
Slavery, 147, 272-5.
Slaves, murder of, 67, 265. See _Chirope_.
have a voice in appointment of chief, 259.
sacrificed at master’s death, 160.
Slave-stick. See _Gori_.
Smallpox, people dying of, not buried, 155. (See also note in
_Addenda_.)
Smith, Rev. J. A., quoted, 53.
Mombera takes lessons from, 279.
Smithy (_see_ Forge), 202.
Snakes, 21;
dead show themselves as, 64.
Sochi Mountain, 6, 46;
haunted, 51.
Songs, 216, 224.
Sosola cheats Angoni, 281.
Spider in African folk-lore, 74, 239-40.
Spirit-huts, 47, 48, 50.
Spirits propitiated, 46-49, etc.
kept in hut on Morambala, 61.
prayed to, 62.
possess and inspire the living, 63.
heard drumming and singing in Bush, 66.
Spoons (ladles), 139.
Stocks, 267-8.
Story-telling, 121, 230, 251.
String-making, 118.
Stringed instruments, 221-2.
Succession to chieftainship, 259.
Sugar-cane, 108, 176.
Sureties of husbands and wives, 132-4.
Tabu, 94-6.
Talismans carried by hunters, 188.
Tambuka. _See_ Batumbuka.
Tatuing. _See_ Keloids.
Teeth chipped, 41-43.
Temples, 63.
Theal, Dr. M’Call, quoted, 276.
Theft, secret, regarded with horror, 84.
punishment of, 264.
Thorn-trees, 15.
Thunder personified, 57.
Tingani, Nyanja chief, 255.
Tobacco, 178.
Torrend, Rev. J., S.J., quoted, 33.
Tortoise in folk-lore, 232, 239.
Traps, various kinds, 189-90.
sham, made by women to frighten hippos, 183.
Trees, 14-15.
sacred, 50, 52, 62, 101.
for canoe-making, 194.
Tribute paid to chiefs, 269-70.
Tshaka, Zulu king, 278.
Tuchila River, 7.
Tyolo Mountain, 7, 60.
_Uncle Remus_, 231 _et seq._
‘Undertakers’ (_adzukulo_ or _awilo_), 159, 161 _et seq._
Undi, Nyanja chief, 26, 256.
Unkulunkulu = Mulungu, 54.
_Unyago._ _See_ Mysteries.
Villages described, 99 _et seq._
Volcanic action, traces of, 6.
Wailing for dead, 157-8.
War, burial of men killed in, 160, 289.
War-arrows, 187.
War-dances, 228-9.
Watch-huts in gardens, 183.
Weaving, 195-6.
Weirs for catching fish, 192.
Whale represented in mysteries, 97.
Whistles, 188, 223.
Widows, re-marriage of, 167.
Witchcraft, 84 _et seq._, 168, 266-7.
Women preside over religious ceremonies, 56, 77.
their meals, 139.
position of, 148 _et seq._
work of, 135-6, 197, 204-6, 207.
Yao, captured and married by ‘Angoni,’ 133.
clean out wells to bring rain, 77.
chiefs, 256.
Wood-carving, 203.
Woodward, Ven. H. W. (Archdeacon of Magila), quoted, 22.
Yaos (Wayao or Ajawa), 24, 31, 51 _et seq._
tribe-marks, 39.
tooth-chipping, 42.
special deities, 58.
come from Mangoche Mountain, 58.
notions as to blood-guiltiness, 67.
birth-customs, 112.
betrothal and marriage customs, 129 _et seq._
man lives at wife’s village, 131.
language, 211.
tales, 234, 236, 239 _et seq._
trace descent through mother, 252.
their old home in Lujenda valley, 257, 276.
five branches of tribe, 258.
Young, E. D., quoted, 283.
Zambezi River, 1, 3, 4, 25.
crossed by Angoni, 280.
Zebra, 9, 17.
Zinyao dances, 97-8, 127-8.
Zomba, 7, 98, 259, 283.
Zulu spoken by Angoni, 35.
Zulus, 34, 35, 54, 72, 129, 271, 277-8.
Zwangendaba, Zulu chief, 279.
Zwide ka’ Yanga, Zulu chief, 278.
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