Man, Past and Present - Part 14
Library

Part 14

But in some groups mu is also plural, the chief dialectic variants being, _Ama_, _Aba_, _Ma_, _Ba_, _Wa_, _Ova_, _Va_, _Vua_, _U_, _A_, _O_, _Eshi_, as in Ama-Zulu, Mu-Sarongo, Ma-Yomba, Wa-Swahili, Ova-Herero, Vua-Twa, Ba-Suto, Eshi-Kongo. For a tentative cla.s.sification of African tribes see T. A. Joyce, Art. "Africa: Ethnology," _Ency.

Brit._ 1910, p. 329. For the cla.s.sification of Bantu tongues into 44 groups consult H. H. Johnston, Art. "Bantu Languages," _loc. cit._

[225] _Eth._ Ch. XI.

[226] _Le Naturaliste_, Jan. 1894.

[227] _Tour de Monde_, 1896, I. p. 1 sq.; and _Les Bayas_; _Notes Ethnographiques et Linguistiques_, Paris, 1896.

[228] D. Randall-MacIver, _Mediaeval Rhodesia_, 1906. But R. N. Hall, _Prehistoric Rhodesia_, 1909, strongly opposes this view. See below, p.

105.

[229] Even Tipu Tib, their chief leader and "Prince of Slavers," was a half-caste with distinctly Negroid features.

[230] "Afilo wurde mir vom Lega-Konig als ein Negerland bezeichnet, welches von einer Galla-Aristokratie beherrscht wird" (_Petermann's Mitt._ 1883, V. p. 194).

[231] The Ba-Hima are herdsmen in Buganda, a sort of aristocracy in Unyoro, a ruling caste in Toro, and the dominant race with dynasties in Ankole. The name varies in different areas.

[232] _Journ. Anthr. Inst._ 1895, p. 424. For details of the Ba-Hima type see _Eth._ p. 389.

[233] J. Roscoe, _The Northern Bantu_, 1915, p. 103. Herein are also described the _Bakene_, lake dwellers, the _Bagesu_, a cannibal tribe, the _Basoga_ and the Nilotic tribes the _Bateso_ and _Kavirondo_.

[234] J. Roscoe, _loc. cit._ pp. 4, 5.

[235] "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," _Journ. Roy. Anthr.

Inst._ XLIII. 1913, p. 390.

[236] _Handwerk und Industrie in Ostafrika_, 1910, p. 147.

[237] "Die erste Ausbreitung des Menschengeschlechts." _Pol. Anthropol.

Revue_, 1909, p. 72. Cf. chronology on p. 14 above.

[238] _Ethnology_, p. 199.

[239] Uganda is the name now applied to the whole Protectorate, Buganda is the small kingdom, Baganda, the people, Muganda, one person, Luganda, the language. H. H. Johnston, _The Uganda Protectorate_, 1902, and J. F.

Cunningham, _Uganda and its Peoples_, 1905, cover much of the elementary anthropology of East Central Africa.

[240] The legend is given with much detail by H. M. Stanley in _Through the Dark Continent_, Vol. I. p. 344 sq. Another and less mythical account of the migrations of "the people with a white skin from the far north-east" is quoted from Emin Pasha by the Rev. R. P. Ashe in _Two Kings of Uganda_, p. 336. Here the immigrant Ba-Hima are expressly stated to have "adopted the language of the aborigines" (p. 337).

[241] Sir H. H. Johnston, _op. cit._ p. 514.

[242] Except the Lung-fish clan.

[243] J. Roscoe, _The Baganda_, 1911.

[244] For the _Wa-Kikuyu_ see W. S. and K. Routledge, _With a Prehistoric People_, 1910, and C. W. Hobley's papers in the _Journ. Roy.

Anthr. Inst._ XL. 1910, and XLI. 1911. The _Atharaka_ are described by A. M. Champion, _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLII. 1912, p. 68. Consult for this region C. Eliot, _The East Africa Protectorate_, 1905; K.

Weule, _Native Life in East Africa_, 1909; C. W. Hobley, _Ethnology of the A-Kamba and other East African Tribes_, 1910; M. Weiss, _Die Volkerstamme im Norden Deutsch-Ostafrikas_, 1910; and A. Werner, "The Bantu Coast Tribes of the East Africa Protectorate," _Journ. Roy. Anthr.

Inst._ XLV. 1915.

[245] _Official Report on the East African Protectorate_, 1897.

[246] _Vocabulary of the Giryama Language_, S.P.C.K. 1897.

[247] _Travels in the Coastlands of British East Africa_, London, 1898, p. 103 sq.

[248] A. Werner, "Girijama Texts," _Zeitschr. f. Kol.-spr._ Oct. 1914.

[249] Having become the chief medium of intercourse throughout the southern Bantu regions, Ki-swahili has been diligently cultivated, especially by the English missionaries, who have wisely discarded the Arab for the Roman characters. There is already an extensive literature, including grammars, dictionaries, translations of the Bible and other works, and even _A History of Rome_ issued by the S.P.C.K. in 1898.

[250] W. E. H. Barrett, "Notes on the Customs and Beliefs of the Wa-Giriama," etc., _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLI. 1911, gives further details. For a full review of the religious beliefs of Bantu tribes see E. S. Hartland, Art. "Bantu and S. Africa," _Ency. of Religion and Ethics_, 1909.

[251] The name still survives in _Zangue-bar_ ("Zang-land") and the adjacent island of _Zanzibar_ (an Indian corruption). _Zang_ is "black,"

and _bar_ is the same Arabic word, meaning dry land, that we have in _Mala-bar_ on the opposite side of the Indian Ocean. Cf. also _barran wa bahran_, "by land and by sea."

[252] _Viage por Malabar y Costas de Africa_, 1512, translated by the Hon. Henry E. J. Stanley, Hakluyt Society, 1868.

[253] In preference to the more popular form _Zulu-Kafir_, where _Kafir_ is merely the Arabic "Infidel" applied indiscriminately to any people rejecting Islam; hence the _Siah Posh Kafirs_ ("Black-clad Infidels") of Afghanistan; the _Kufra_ oasis in the Sahara, where _Kufra_, plural of _Kafir_, refers to the pagan Tibus of that district; and the Kafirs generally of the East African seaboard. But according to English usage _Zulu_ is applied to the northern part of the territory, mainly Zululand proper and Natal, while Kafirland or Kaffraria is restricted to the southern section between Natal and the Great Kei River. The bulk of these southern "Kafirs" belong to the Xosa connection; hence this term takes the place of _Kafir_, in the compound expression _Zulu-Xosa_.

_Ama_ is explained on p. 86, and the _X_ of _Xosa_ represents an unp.r.o.nounceable combination of a guttural and a lateral click, this with two other clicks (a dental and a palatal) having infected the speech of these Bantus during their long prehistoric wars with the Hottentots or Bushmen. See p. 129.

[254] See p. 86 above.

[255] See the admirable monograph on the Ba-Thonga, by H. A. Junod, _The Life of a South African Tribe_, 1912.

[256] Robert Codrington tells us that these A-Ngoni (Aba-Ngoni) spring from a Zulu tribe which crossed the Zambesi about 1825, and established themselves south-east of L. Tanganyika, but later migrated to the uplands west of L. Nyasa, where they founded three petty states. Others went east of the Livingstone range, and are here still known as Magw.a.n.gwara. But all became gradually a.s.similated to the surrounding populations. Intermarrying with the women of the country they preserve their speech, dress, and usages for the first generation in a slightly modified form, although the language of daily intercourse is that of the mothers. Then this cla.s.s becomes the aristocracy of the whole nation, which henceforth comprises a great part of the aborigines ruled by a privileged caste of Zulu origin, "perpetuated almost entirely among themselves" ("Central Angoniland," _Geograph. Jour._ May, 1898, p. 512).

See A. Werner, _The Natives of British Central Africa_, 1906.

[257] Rev. J. Macdonald, _Light in Africa_, p. 194. Among recent works on the Zulu-Xosa tribes may be mentioned Dudley Kidd, _The Essential Kafir_, 1904, _Savage Childhood_, 1905; H. A. Junod, _The Life of a South African Tribe_ (Ba-Thonga), 1912-3; G. W. Stow and G. M. Theal, _The Native Races of South Africa_, 1905.

[258] From _Mwana_, lord, master, and _tapa_, to dig, both common Bantu words.

[259] The point was that Portugal had made treaties with this mythical State, in virtue of which she claimed in the "scramble for Africa" all the hinterlands behind her possessions on the east and west coasts (Mozambique and Angola), in fact all South Africa between the Orange and Zambesi rivers. Further details on the "Monomotapa Question" will be found in my monograph on "The Portuguese in South Africa" in Murray's _South Africa, from Arab Domination to British Rule_, 1891, p. 11 sq.

Five years later Mr G. McCall Theal also discovered, no doubt independently, the mythical character of Monomotapaland in his book on _The Portuguese in South Africa_, 1896.

[260] _Proc. R. Geogr. Soc._ May, 1892, and _The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland_, 1892.

[261] D. Randall-MacIver, _Mediaeval Rhodesia_, 1906. But R. N. Hall strongly combats his views, _Great Zimbabwe_, 1905, _Prehistoric Rhodesia_, 1909, and _South African Journal of Science_, May, 1912. H.

H. Johnston says, "I see nothing inherently improbable in the finding of gold by proto-Arabs in the south-eastern part of Zambezia; nor in the pre-Islamic Arab origin of Zimbabwe," p. 396, "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," _Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst._ XLIII. 1913.

[262] G. W. Stow, _The Native Races of South Africa_, 1905.

[263] The British Protectorate was limited in 1905 to about 182,000 square miles.

[264] Cf. A. St H. Gibbons, _Africa South to North through Marotseland_, 1904, and C. W. Mackintosh, _Coillard of the Zambesi_, 1907, with a bibliography.

[265] The Ma-Kololo gave the Ba-Rotse their present name. They were originally Aalui, but the conquerors called them Ma-Rotse, people of the plain.

[266] _Ten Years North of the Orange River._

[267] Cf. G. M. Theal, _The History of South Africa_ 1908-9, and _The Beginning of South African History_, 1902.