Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution

by Charles Morris

The possession of a weapon so deadly as this, together with the agility and daring and the unerring marksmanship of the forest dwarfs, seem sufficient to give them absolute control of the animals of the African wilds. The lion, the elephant, and the buffalo, the largest and fiercest of the beasts of field and forest, are powerless before the virulent venom of the arrows of the Pygmies, and doubtless for ages they have held dominion as the fearless rulers of wood and wild. Captain Burrows says of the skill with the bow of the Pygmy that "he will shoot three or four arrows, one after the other, with such rapidity that the last will have left the bow before the first has reached its goal."

The bow and spear are not their only means of obtaining food. They have certain of the arts of the trapper, perhaps original with them, perhaps borrowed from their larger neighbors. They sink pits in the pathways of their game, covering them with light sticks and leaves and sprinkling earth over the whole. They build hut-like structures, and lay nuts or plantains beneath, for the purpose of tempting chimpanzees, baboons, or other apes. A slight movement causes the hut to fall on the incautious animals. Bow traps are placed along the tracks of civets, ichneumons, and rodents, which snap and strangle them. The Pygmies do not hesitate to attack the elephant, spearing it from beneath, and hunting it for its ivory, which they trade with the settled tribes. In short, they are of unsurpassed agility, and are the best of woodsmen and hunters, their skill being taken advantage of by the settled tribes, who trade with them vegetables, tobacco, spears, knives, and arrows for meat, honey, the feathers of birds, the ivory of the elephant, and other forest spoil. So destructive are they of game that they would soon denude the surrounding forest if they stayed long in one spot, so that they are compelled to move frequently. Schweinfurth speaks of them as cruel and fond of tormenting animals.

They serve the settled natives in other ways, acting as scouts and informing them of the coming of strangers while still distant. Every forest road runs through their camps, their villages command every crossway, and no movement can take place in the forest without their knowledge, while they are [adept] in the art of concealment.

The superior woodcraft, the malicious disposition, and the poisoned arrows and good marksmanship of these forest folks make them formidable enemies, and the settled tribes hold them in dread and are glad to keep on good terms with them. Yet they find them much of a nuisance, since their dwarfish neighbors claim free access to their gardens and plantain fields, where they help themselves to fruit in return for small supplies of meat and furs. In short, they are human parasites on the larger natives, who suffer from their extortions, yet fear to provoke their enmity. Burrows says that they will never steal, but that they pay very inadequately for the plantains they take, leaving a very small package of meat in return for an ample supply of food.

The Pygmies build their camps two or three miles away from the negro villages, living in groups of sixty to eighty families. A large clearing may have eight to twelve of these Pygmy camps around it, with perhaps two thousand inmates. Their dwellings are of the shape of an oval cut lengthwise, and are built in a rude circle, the residence of the chief occupying the centre. The doors are two or three feet high. On every track leading to the camp, at about one hundred yards' distance, is a sentry house large enough to hold two of the little folks, its doorway looking up the track from the camp. While wandering in the forest they build the flimsiest of leaf shelters.

The intelligence of the Pygmies is of a very low order. In the arts which they have been developing for ages they are experts, they are thoroughly familiar with the habits of animals, and as hunters they are unsurpassed. But in intellect they are decidedly lacking. They are destitute of agriculture, possess no animals except a few dogs, and have none of the elements of culture. The Bushmen, for instance, can count only up to two; all beyond that is "many." Yet this low tribe of desert nomads is, as we have said, skilled in the art of drawing, its sketches of men and animals being widely distributed through Cape Colony.

The Pygmies seem greatly lacking in the social sentiments. Burrows, in his "Land of the Pygmies," says that they do not possess even the most ordinary ties of family affection. Such common and natural feelings of affinity as those between mother and son, brother and sister, etc., seemed to be wanting in them.

It is a fact of great interest that the Pygmy race does not seem confined to Africa, for tribes of men resembling the Pygmies in stature and in various other particulars are found in widely removed localities, as in Malacca, the Andaman Islands, and the Philippine Archipelago, while there are indications that they once spread widely over this island region of the earth. Those of the Philippines, known as Negritos or Aetas, have been somewhat closely observed and may be briefly described.

The Negritos are similar in stature to the Pygmies of Africa, the men averaging four feet eight inches high, and they are like them in general appearance. They are darker in complexion, some being as sable as negroes, and all of them darker than the African Pygmies. Their features are coarse and ill-shaped, their nose depressed, lips full, hair black and frizzled. In body, like the Pygmies, they are thin and spindle-legged. The calf of the leg is not developed in any of these dwarfish people. The Negritos possess one marked and significant characteristic,—the separation of the great toe. This, while it has not the full power of movement shown in the apes, is much more separated from the others than in the whites, and can be readily used in grasping. By its aid the Negrito can not only pick up small objects, but can descend the rigging of a ship head downward, holding on like a monkey by his toes. It may be said that among uncivilized and barefoot people the great toe is usually very mobile. The artisans of Bengal can weave, the Chinese boatmen can row, with its aid, and it adds much to facility in climbing.

The Negritos wear little clothing, have no fixed abodes, and pass a wandering life in the forests, living on game, honey, wild fruits, roots of the arum, and other forest food. Their weapons consist of a bamboo lance, a bow of palm wood, and a quiver of poisoned arrows. It is certainly a striking fact that, wherever found, from South Africa to the Far East, the Pygmy tribes possess the art of poisoning their weapons. This art is not practised by the surrounding peoples, and is the strongest evidence of a community of origin. It seems to point back to a remote period when the Pygmy peoples spread far through the tropics of the Eastern hemisphere, though in the region now under consideration they have almost vanished through the assaults of the Malays.