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.
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.