Man, Past and Present by Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (free reads .TXT) 📕

[140] Even a tendency to polysynthesis occurs, as in Vei, and in Yoruba, where the small-pox god Shakpanna is made up of the three elements shan to plaster, kpa to kill, and enia a person = one who kills a person by plastering him (with pustules).

[141] The Nilotic languages are to a considerable extent tonic.

[142] A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples, etc., 1887, pp. 327-8. Only one European, Herr R. Betz, long resident amongst the Dualas of the Cameruns district, has yet succeeded in mastering the drum language; he claims to understand nearly all that is drummed and is also able to drum himself. (Athenaeum, May 7, 1898, p. 611.)

[143] Cf. H. S. Harrison, Handbook to the cases illustrating stages in the evolution of the Domestic Arts. Part II. Horniman Museum and Library. Forest Hill, S.E.

[144] E. T. Hamy, "Les Races Negres," in L'Anthropologie, 1897, p. 257 sq.

[145] "Chaque fois que j'ai demande avec intention a un Mande, 'Es-tu Peul, Mossi, Dafina?' il me repondait invariablement, 'Je suis Mande.' C'est pourquoi, dans le cours de ma relation, j'ai toujours designe ce peuple par le nom de Mande, qui est son vrai nom." (L. G. Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de Guinee, 1892, Vol. II. p. 373.) At p. 375 this authority gives the following subdivisions of the Mande family, named from their respective tenne (idol, fetish, totem):

Of each there are several sub-groups, while the surrounding peoples call them all collectively Wakore, Wangara, Sakhersi, and especially Diula. Attention to this point will save the reader much confusion in consulting Barth, Caillie, and other early books of travel.

[146] Travels, Vol. IV. p. 579 sqq.

[147] "La chaine des Montagnes de Kong n'a jamais existe que dans l'imagination de quelques voyageurs mal renseignes," Du Niger au Golfe de Guinee, 1892, I. p. 285.

[148] Bertrand-Bocande, "Sur les Floups ou Feloups," in Bul. Soc. de Geogr. 1849.

[149] A full account of this literature will be found in the Rev. C. F. Schlenker's valuable work, A Collection of Temne Traditions, Fables and Proverbs, London, 1861. Here is given the curious explanation of the tribal name, from o-tem, an old man, and ne, himself, because, as they say, the Temne people will exist for ever.

[150] There is also a sisterhood--the bondo--and the two societies work so far in harmony that any person expelled from the one is also excluded from the other.

[151] Reclus, Keane's English ed., XII. p. 203.

[152] "Da Njoe Testament, translated into the Negro-English Language by the Missionaries of the Unitas Fratrum," Brit. and For. Bible Soc., London, 1829. Here is a specimen quoted by Ellis from The Artisan of Sierra Leone, Aug. 4, 1886, "Those who live in ceiled houses love to hear the pit-pat of the rain overhead; whilst those whose houses leak are the subjects of restlessness and anxiety, not to mention the chances of catching cold, that is so frequent a source of leaky roofs."

[153] Right Rev. E. G. Ingham (Bishop of Sierra Leone), Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years, London, 1894, p. 294. Cf. H. C. Lukach, A Bibliography of Sierra Leone, 1911, and T. J. Alldridge, A Transformed Colony, 1910.

[154] This increase, however, appears to be due to a steady immigration from the Southern States, but for which the Liberians proper would die out, or become absorbed in the surrounding native populations.

[155] H. H. Johnston, Liberia, 1906.

[156] Possibly the English word "crew," but more probably an extension of Kraoh, the name of a tribe near Settra-kru, to the whole group.

[157] Sierra Leone after a Hundred Years, p. 280.

[158] Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 1899, pp. 54-5.

[159] Since the establishment of British authority in Nigeria (1900 to 1907) much light has been thrown on ethnological problems. See among other works C. Partridge, The Cross River Natives, 1905; A. G. Leonard, The Lower Niger and its Tribes, 1906; A. J. N. Tremearne, The Niger and the Western Sudan, 1910, The Tailed Head-Hunters of Nigeria, 1912; R. E. Dennett, Nigerian Studies, 1910; E. D. Morel, Nigeria, its People and its Problems, 1911, besides the Anthropological Reports of N. W. Thomas, 1910, 1913, and papers by J. Parkinson in Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVI. 1906, XXXVII. 1907.

[160] The services rendered to African anthropology by this distinguished officer call for the fullest recognition, all the more that somewhat free and unacknowledged use has been made of the rich materials brought together in his classical works on The Tshi-speaking Peoples (1887), The Ewe-speaking Peoples (1890), and The Yoruba-speaking Peoples (1894).

[161] N. W. Thomas classifies Yoruba, Edo, Ibo and Efik as four main stocks in the Western Sudanic language group. "In the Edo and Ibo stocks people only a few miles apart may not be able to communicate owing to diversity of language" (p. 141). Anthropological Report of the Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Part 1. 1913.

[162] The Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 332 sq.

[163] Feitico, whence also feiticeira, a witch, feiticeria, sorcery, etc., all from feitico, artificial, handmade, from Lat. facio and factitius.

[164] Du Culte des Dieux Fetiches, 1760. It is generally supposed that the word was invented, or at least first introduced, by De Brosses; but Ellis shows that this also is a mistake, as it had already been used by Bosman in his Description of Guinea, London, 1705.

[165] The Tshi-speaking Peoples, Ch. XII. p. 194 and passim. See also R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, 1904.

[166] That is, from a wax mould destroyed in the casting. After the operation details were often filled in by chasing or executed in repousse work.

[167] "Works of Art from Benin City," Journ. Anthr. Inst. February, 1898, p. 362 sq. See H. Ling Roth, Great Benin, its Customs, etc., 1903.

[168] A. Featherman, Social History of Mankind, The Nigritians, p. 281. See also Reclus, French ed., Vol. XII. p. 718: "Les cavaliers portent encore la cuirasse comme au moyen age.... Les chevaux sont recouverts de la meme maniere." In the mythical traditions of Buganda also there is reference to the fierce Wakedi warriors clad in "iron armour" (Ch. IV.). Cf. L. Frobenius, The Voice of Africa, II. 1913, pl. p. 608.

[169] Du Niger au Golfe de Guinee, 1892, I. p. 377.

[170] Early in the fourteenth century they were strong enough to carry the war into the enemy's camp and make more than one successful expedition against Timbuktu. At present the Mossi power is declining, and their territory has been parcelled out between the British and French Sudanese hinterlands.

[171] Also Sonrhay, gh and rh being interchangeable throughout North Africa; Ghat and Rhat, Ghadames and Rhadames, etc. In the mouth of an Arab the sound is that of the guttural [Symbol], ghain, which is pronounced by the Berbers and Negroes somewhat like the Northumberland burr, hence usually transliterated by rh in non-Semitic words.

[172] It should be noticed that these terms are throughout used as strictly defined in Eth. Ch. I.

[173] Barth's account of Wulu (IV. p. 299), "inhabited by Tawarek slaves, who are trilingues, speaking Temashight as well as Songhay and Fulfulde," is at present generally applicable, mutatis mutandis, to most of the Songhai settlements.

[174] As so much has been made of Barth's authority in this connection, it may be well to quote his exact words: "It would seem as if they (the Sonrhay) had received, in more ancient times, several institutions from the Egyptians, with whom, I have no doubt, they maintained an intercourse by means of the energetic inhabitants of Aujila from a relatively ancient period" (IV. p. 426). Barth, therefore, does not bring the people themselves, or their language, from Egypt, but only some of their institutions, and that indirectly through the Aujila Oasis in Cyrenaica, and it may be added that this intercourse with Aujila appears to date only from about 1150 A.D. (IV. p. 585).

[175] Hacquard et Dupuis, Manuel de la langue Songay, parlee de Tombouctou a Say, dans la boucle du Niger, 1897, passim.

[176] "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Soc. XLIII. 1913, p. 386.

[177] Barth, IV. pp. 593-4.

[178] The Ischia of Leo Africanus, who tells us that in his time the "linguaggio detto Sungai" was current even in the provinces of Walata and Jinni (VI. ch. 2). This statement, however, like others made by Leo at second hand, must be received with caution. In these districts Songhai may have been spoken by the officials and some of the upper classes, but scarcely by the people generally, who were of Mandingan speech.

[179] Barth, IV. p. 414.

[180] Ib. p. 415.

[181] Carried captive into Marakesh, although later restored to his beloved Timbuktu to end his days in perpetuating the past glories of the Songhai nation; the one Negroid man of letters, whose name holds a worthy place beside those of Leo Africanus, Ibn Khaldun, El Tunsi, and other Hamitic writers.

[182] "Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio." Hor. Epist. II. 1, 156-7.

The epithet agrestis is peculiarly applicable to the rude Fulah shepherds, who were almost barbarians compared with the settled, industrious, and even cultured Hausa populations, and whose oppressive rule has at last been relaxed by the intervention of England in the Niger-Benue lands.

[183] "One of their towns, Kano, has probably the largest market-place in the world, with a daily attendance of from 25,000 to 30,000 people. This same town possesses, what in central Africa is still more surprising, some thirty or forty schools, in which the children are taught to read and write" (Rev. C. H. Robinson, Specimens of Hausa Literature, University Press, Cambridge, 1896, p. x).

[184] See C. H. Robinson, Hausaland, or Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central Soudan, 1896; Specimens of Hausa Literature, 1896; Hausa Grammar, 1897; Hausa Dictionary, 1899. Authorities are undecided whether to class Hausa with the Semitic or the Hamitic family, or in an independent group by itself, and it must be admitted that some of its features are extremely puzzling. While Sudanese Negro in phonology and perhaps in most of its word roots, it is Hamitic in its grammatical features and pronouns. But the Hamitic element is thought by experts to be as much Kushite, or even Koptic, as Libyan. "On the whole, it seems probable," says H. H. Johnston, "that the Hausa speech was shaped by a double influence: from Egypt, and Hamiticized Nubia, as well as by Libyan immigrants from across the Sahara." "A Survey of the Ethnography of Africa," Journ. Roy. Anthr. Soc. XLIII. 1913, p. 385. Cf. also Julius Lippert, "Ueber die Stellung der Hausasprache," Mitteilungen des Seminaers fuer Orientalische Sprachen, 1906. It is noteworthy that Hausa is the only language in tropical Africa which has been reduced to writing by the natives themselves.

[185] Campaigning on the Upper Nile and Niger, by Lt Seymour Vandeleur, with an Introduction by Sir George Goldie, 1898. "In camp," writes Lt Vandeleur, "their conduct was exemplary, while pillaging and ill-treatment of the natives were unknown. As to their fighting qualities, it is enough to say that, little over 500 strong (on the Bida expedition of 1897), they withstood for two days 25,000 or 30,000 of the enemy; that, former slaves of the Fulahs, they defeated their dreaded masters," etc.

[186] The Kano Chronicle, translated by H. R. Palmer, Journ. Roy. Anthr. Inst. XXXVIII. 1908, gives a list of Hausa kings (Sarkis) from 999 A.D.

[187] For references to recent literature see note on p. 58. Also R. S. Rattray, Hausa Folk-lore, 1913; A. J. N. Tremearne, Hausa Superstitions and Customs, 1913, and Hausa Folk-Tales, 1914.

[188] By a popular etymology these are Ka-Nuri, "People of Light." But, as they are somewhat lukewarm