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Table of Contents

Distribution in Past and Present Times.

Present Range. Bantu: S. Africa from the Sudanese frontier to the Cape; Negrillo: West Equatorial and Congo forest zones; Bush.-Hot.: Namaqualands; Kalahari; Lake Ngami and Orange basins.

Physical Characters.

Hair. Bantu: same as Sudanese, but often rather longer; Negrillo: short, frizzly or crisp, rusty brown; Bush.-Hot.: much the same as Sudanese, but tufty, simulating bald partings. Colour. Bantu: all shades of dark brown, sometimes almost black; Negrillo and Bush.-Hot.: yellowish brown. Skull. Bantu: generally dolicho, but variable; Negrillo: almost uniformly mesati; Bush.-Hot.: dolicho. Jaws. Bantu: moderately prognathous and even orthognathous; Negrillo and Bush.-Hot.: highly prognathous. Cheek-bones. Bantu: moderately or not at all prominent; Negrillo and Bush.-Hot.: very prominent, often extremely so, forming a triangular face with apex at chin. Nose. Bantu: variable, ranging from platyrrhine to leptorrhine; Negrillo and Bush.-Hot.: short, broad at base, depressed at root, always platyrrhine. Eyes. Bantu: generally large, black, and prominent, but also of regular Hamitic type; Negrillo and Bush.-Hot.: rather small, deep brown and black. Stature. Bantu: tall, from 1.72 m. to 1.82 m. (5 ft. 8 in. to 6 ft.); Negrillo: always much under 1.52 m. (5 ft.), mean about 1.22 m. (4 ft.); Bushman: short, with rather wide range, from 1.42 m. to 1.57 m. (4 ft. 8 in. to 5 ft. 2 in.); Hot.: undersized, mean 1.65 m. (5 ft. 5 in.).

Mental Characters.

Temperament. Bantu: mainly like the Negroid Sudanese, far more intelligent than the true Negro, equally cruel, but less fitful and more trustworthy; Negrillo: bright, active and quick-witted, but vindictive and treacherous, apparently not cruel to each other, but rather gentle and kindly; Bushman: in all these respects very like the Negrillo, but more intelligent; Hot.: rather dull and sluggish, but the full-blood (Nama) much less so than the half-caste (Griqua) tribes.

Speech. Bantu: as absolutely uniform as the physical type is variable, one stock language only, of the agglutinating order, with both class prefixes, alliteration and postfixes[223]; Negrillo: unknown; Hot.: agglutinating with postfixes only, with grammatical gender and other remarkable features; of Hamitic origin.

Religion. Bantu: ancestor-worship mainly in the east, spirit-worship mainly in the west, intermingling in the centre, with witchcraft and gross superstitions everywhere; Negrillo: little known; Bush.-Hot.: animism, nature-worship, and reverence for ancestors; among Hottentots belief in supreme powers of good and evil.

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

Main Divisions.

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

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

Bushmen: Family groups; no known tribal names.

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

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

The Sudanese-Bantu Divide.

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

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

Frontier Tribes—The Bonjo Cannibals.

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

The Baya Nation.

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

A "Red People."

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

The North-East Door to Bantuland.

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

Semitic Elements of the Bantu Amalgam.

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

Malay Elements in Madagascar only.

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

Hamitic Element everywhere.

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

The Ba-Himas.

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

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

Pastoral and Agricultural Clans.

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

The Bantus mainly a Negro-Hamitic Cross.

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

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

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

The Lacustrians.

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

Their Traditions—The Kintu Legend.

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

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

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

The Ba-Ganda, past and present.

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

Political and Social Institutions.

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

Totemic System.

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

Bantu Peoples between L. Victoria and the Coast.

No direct relations appear to exist between the Lacustrians and the Wa-Kikuyu, Wa-Kamba, Wa-Pokomo, Wa-Gweno, Wa-Chaga, Wa-Teita, Wa-Taveita, and others[244], who occupy the region east of Victoria Nyanza, between the Tana, north-east frontier of Bantuland, and the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro. Their affinities seem to be rather with the Wa-Nyika, Wa-Boni, Wa-Duruma, Wa-Giryama, and the other coast tribes between the Tana and Mombasa. All of these tribes have more or less adopted the habits and customs of the Masai.

We learn from Sir A. Harding[245] that in the British East African Protectorate there are altogether as many as twenty-five distinct tribes, generally at a low stage of culture, with a loose tribal organisation, a fully-developed totemic system, and a universal faith in magic; but there are no priests, idols or temples, or even distinctly recognised hereditary chiefs or communal councils. The Gallas, who have crossed the Tana and here encroached on Bantu territory, have reminiscences of a higher civilisation and apparently of Christian traditions and observances, derived no doubt from Abyssinia. They tell you that they had once a sacred book, the observance of whose precepts made them the first of nations. But it was left lying about, and so got eaten by a cow, and since then when cows are killed their entrails are carefully searched for the lost volume.

The Wa-Giryama.

Exceptional interest attaches to the Wa-Giryama, who are the chief people between Mombasa and Melindi, the first trustworthy accounts of whom were contributed by W. E. Taylor[246], and W. W. A. Fitzgerald[247]. Here again Bantus and Gallas are found in close contact, and we learn that the Wa-Giryama, who came originally from the Mount Mangea district in the north-east, occupied their present homes only about a century ago "upon the withdrawal of the Gallas." The language, which is of a somewhat archaic type, appears to be the chief member of a widespread Bantu group, embracing the Ki-nyika, and Ki-pokomo in the extreme north, the Ki-swahili of the Zanzibar coast, and perhaps the Ki-kamba, the Ki-teita, and others of the interior between the coastlands and Victoria Nyanza. These inland tongues, however, have greatly diverged from the primitive Ki-giryama[248], which stands in somewhat the same relation to them and to the still more degraded and Arabised Ki-swahili[249] that Latin stands to the Romance languages.

Primitive Ancestry-Worship.

Mulungu and the Shades.

But the chief interest presented by the Wa-Giryama is centred in their religious ideas, which are mainly connected with ancestry-worship, and afford an unexpected insight into the origin and nature of that perhaps most primitive of all forms of belief. There is, of course, a vague entity called a "Supreme Being" in ethnographic writings, who, like the Algonquian Manitu, crops up under various names (here Mulungu) all over east Bantuland, but on analysis generally resolves itself into some dim notion growing out of ancestry-worship, a great or aged person, eponymous hero or the like, later deified in diverse ways as the Preserver, the Disposer, and especially the Creator. These Wa-Giryama suppose that from his union with the Earth all things have sprung, and that human beings are Mulungu's hens and chickens. But there is also an idea that he may be the manes of their fathers, and thus everything becomes merged in a kind of apotheosis of the departed. They think "the disembodied spirit is powerful for good and evil. Individuals worship the shades of their immediate ancestors or elder relatives; and the k'omas [souls?] of the whole nation are worshipped on public occasions."

Although the European ghost or "revenant" is unknown, the spirits of near ancestors may appear in dreams, and express their wishes to the living. They ask for sacrifices at their graves to appease their hunger, and such sacrifices are often made with a little flour and water poured into a coconut shell let into the ground, the fowls and other victims being so killed that the blood shall trickle into the grave. At the offering the dead are called on by name to come and partake, and bring their friends with them, who are also mentioned by name. But whereas Christians pray to be remembered of heaven and the saints, the Wa-Giryama pray rather that the new-born babe be forgotten of Mulungu, and so live. "Well!" they will say on the news of a birth, "may Mulungu forget him that he may become strong and well." This is an instructive trait, a reminiscence of the time when Mulungu, now almost harmless or indifferent to mundane things, was the embodiment of all evil, hence to be feared and appeased in accordance with the old dictum Timor fecit deos.

At present no distinction is drawn between good and bad spirits, but all are looked upon as, of course, often, though not always, more powerful than the living, but still human beings subject to the same feelings, passions, and fancies as they are. Some are even poor weaklings on whom offerings are wasted. "The Shade of So-and-so's father is of no use at all; it has finished up his property, and yet he is no better," was a native's comment on the result of a series of sacrifices a man had vainly made to his father's shade to regain his health. They may also be duped and tricked, and when pombe (beer) is a-brewing, some is poured out on the graves of the dead, with the prayer that they may drink, and when drunk fall asleep, and so not disturb the living with their brawls and bickerings, just like the wrangling fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream[250].

The Wa-Swahili.

Far removed from such crass anthropomorphism, but not morally much improved, are the kindred Wa-Swahili, who by long contact and interminglings have become largely Arabised in dress, religion, and general culture. They are graphically described by Taylor as "a seafaring, barter-loving race of slave-holders and slave-traders, strewn in a thin line along a thousand miles of creeks and islands; inhabitants of a coast that has witnessed incessant political changes, and a succession of monarchical dynasties in various centres; receiving into their midst for ages past a continuous stream of strange blood, consisting not only of serviles from the interior, but of immigrants from Persia, Arabia, and Western India; men that have come to live, and often to die, as resident aliens, leaving in many cases a hybrid progeny. Of one section of these immigrants—the Arabs—the religion has become the master-religion of the land, overspreading, if not entirely supplanting, the old Bantu ancestor-worship, and profoundly affecting the whole family life."

The Zang Empire.

The Wa-Swahili are in a sense a historical people, for they formed the chief constituent elements of the renowned Zang (Zeng) empire[251], which in Edrisi's time (twelfth century) stretched along the seaboard from Somaliland to and beyond the Zambesi. When the Portuguese burst suddenly into the Indian Ocean it was a great and powerful state, or rather a vast confederacy of states, with many flourishing cities—Magdoshu, Brava, Mombasa, Melindi, Kilwa, Angosha, Sofala—and widespread commercial relations extending across the eastern waters to India and China, and up the Red Sea to Europe. How these great centres of trade and eastern culture were one after the other ruthlessly destroyed by the Portuguese corsairs co' o ferro e fogo ("with sword and fire," Camoens) is told by Duarte Barbosa, who was himself a Portuguese and an eyewitness of the havoc and the horrors that not infrequently followed in the trail of his barbarous fellow-countrymen[252].

The Zulu-Xosas.

Former and Present Domain.

Beyond Sofala we enter the domain of the Ama-Zulu, the Ama-Xosa, and others whom I have collectively called Zulu-Xosas[253], and who are in some respects the most remarkable ethnical group in all Bantuland. Indeed they are by common consent regarded as Bantus in a preeminent sense, and this conventional term Bantu itself is taken from their typical Bantu language[254]. There is clear evidence that they are comparatively recent arrivals, necessarily from the north, in their present territory, which was still occupied by Bushman and Hottentot tribes probably within the last thousand years or so. Before the Kafir wars with the English (1811-77) this territory extended much farther round the coast than at present, and for many years the Great Kei River has formed the frontier between the white settlements and the Xosas.

But what they have lost in this direction the Zulu-Xosas, or at least the Zulus, have recovered a hundredfold by their expansion northwards during the nineteenth century. After the establishment of the Zulu military power under Dingiswayo and his successor Chaka (1793-1828), half the continent was overrun by organised Zulu hordes, who ranged as far north as Victoria Nyanza, and in many places founded more or less unstable kingdoms or chieftaincies on the model of the terrible despotism set up in Zululand. Such were, beyond the Limpopo, the states of Gazaland and Matabililand, the latter established about 1838 by Umsilikatzi, father of Lobengula, who perished in a hopeless struggle with the English in 1894. Gungunhana, last of the Swazi (Zulu) chiefs in Gazaland, where the A-Ngoni had overrun the Ba-Thonga (Ba-Ronga)[255], was similarly dispossessed by the Portuguese in 1896.

North of Zambesi the Zulu bands—Ma-Situ, Ma-Viti, Ma-Ngoni (A-Ngoni), and others—nowhere developed large political states except for a short time under the ubiquitous Mirambo in Unyamweziland. But some, especially the A-Ngoni[256], were long troublesome in the Nyasa district, and others about the Lower Zambesi, where they are known to the Portuguese as "Landins." The A-Ngoni power was finally broken by the English early in 1898, and the reflux movement has now entirely subsided, and cannot be revived, the disturbing elements having been extinguished at the fountain-head by the absorption of Zululand itself in the British Colony of Natal (1895).