[128] Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, i. 244, 418.
The deceitfulness of many African peoples is undoubtedly in some degree a result of their intercourse with foreigners. In Sierra Leone, says Winterbottom, the natives on the sea coast, who are chiefly engaged in commerce, “are in general shrewd and artful, sometimes malevolent and perfidious. Their long connection with European slave traders has tutored them in the arts of deceit.”[129] The Yorubas, according to Burton, are eminently dishonest only “in and around the cities.”[130] Among the Kalunda those who live near the great caravan roads and have had much to do with foreign traders are suspicious and false.[131] And the Hottentots, of whose truthfulness earlier writers spoke very highly, are nowadays said to be addicted to lying.[132]
[129] Winterbottom, Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, i. 206.
[130] Burton, Abeokuta, i. 303.
[131] Pogge, Im Reiche des Muata Jamwo, p. 236.
[132] Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika’s, p. 307 sq.
It has also been noticed that mendacity is favoured among children by much intercourse with strangers, when “first impressions” are consciously made, as also by frequent change of environment, or of school or residence, as such changes give rise to a feeling that “new leaves” can be easily turned.[133]
[133] Stanley Hall, in American Journal of Psychology, iii. 70.
When a social unit is composed of loosely connected sub-groups, the intercourse between members of different sub-groups resembles in many respects that between foreigners. Social incoherence is thus apt to lead to deceitful habits, as was the case in the Middle Ages. The same phenomenon is to be observed in the East; perhaps also among the Desert Arabs and the Fuegians, who live in small parties which only occasionally meet and soon again separate.
Another factor which has favoured deception is social differentiation. The different classes of society have often little sympathy for each other, their interests are not infrequently conflicting, deceit is a means of procuring advantages, and, for the inferior classes especially, a means of self-protection. As Euripides observes, slaves are in the habit of concealing the truth.[134] In Eastern Africa, says Livingstone, falsehood is a vice prevailing among the free, but still more among the slaves; “one can scarcely induce a slave to translate anything truly: he is so intent on thinking of what will please.”[135]