This tribe is distinguished by the name of the A-Banga. They are said to have come across the wide desert, which bounds the territories of the two nations, and quite recently to have migrated into the lands of the Niam-niam, submitting themselves voluntarily to the sway of Wando. A very similar migration, resulting in the partial blending of the two people, seems to have occurred in the west, where the A-Madi,[49] driven out by over-population, their product of roots and plantains, which they obtained without toil, being inadequate for their support, resorted to the Gangarra hills of Indimma. Some chance few of the A-Madi were found intermixed with the A-Banga. Both of these could be thoroughly identified with the Monbuttoo by their habits and mode of life, but with regard to dialect, they would seem to have been much influenced by their intermixture with the bordering population of the Niam-niam. The last home which they occupied as a clan was the populous province which the Monbuttoo king Munza now possesses to the north of the Welle. As the greater part of the A-Banga are quite capable of speaking the Zandey (or Niam-niam) dialect, I had no difficulty by the aid of my interpreters in holding conversation with them; beyond the Welle, however, there were very few with whom they were able to converse.
The first hamlets of the A-Banga which we entered, made it at once clear that they adopted quite a different style of building their huts to what we had already seen. The conical form of the roofs, employed as it is in nearly every other region of Central Africa, here began to give place to the roof with a gable end which is universal farther south. The square huts themselves were sometimes constructed with posts and left open like sheds, and were sometimes enclosed by four walls.
The dress and war equipment of the A-Banga are the same as those of the Monbuttoo. The ears of both sexes are pierced so that a good thick stick can easily be run through the aperture, and for this purpose the concave portion of the ear is cut out. As a consequence of this custom both the A-Banga and the Monbuttoo have acquired from the Nubians the name of the Gurrugurroo (derived from the word gurgur which signifies “bored”) to distinguish them from the Niam-niam, which is their term to denote all cannibals. The A-Banga and Monbuttoo also practise circumcision, whilst the Niam-niam abstain entirely from any mutilation of the body.
An A-Banga.
Turned up into a high chignon, the hair is worn by the women of the A-Banga without any head-covering, the men commonly adopting the mode of the Niam-niam, who wear a straw hat without a brim. Some of the men, however, as in the accompanying portrait, make a compromise between the Monbuttoo and Niam-niam fashion, wearing the hair in the Monbuttoo style about the forehead and temples, and discarding the chignon for the tufts worn by the Niam-niam. The small apron which they wore was not, as with the Niam-niam, made of skin, but from the bark of the Rokko fig-tree. The shields did not consist of the oval wicker-work of rotang, but were four-cornered tables of wood of a length sufficient to protect the entire body. In place of the trumbash and Niam-niam lance, they carried the lances, scimitars, and bows and arrows of the Monbuttoo. The women go all but entirely naked, wearing nothing but a fragment of the bark of the fig-tree. Just under the arms, in the same way as the Monbuttoo women, they bind a stout and broad strip of some woven material, which when they sit upon their benches and low stools hangs across their lap, and serves as well for a girth in which to carry their little children.
CULTIVATION OF MANIOC.
In this intermediate district between the corn-lands and the lands in which roots or fruits were cultivated, the fertility was very wonderful, and the agricultural labour that was applied was very great. Besides eleusine and maize there were many patches of penicillaria: amongst earth-products I observed yams, helmia, colocasia, manioc, and the sweet-potato; amongst various other leguminous plants there grew the catyang or rawan-bean (Vigna sinensis), the horse-bean (Canavalia), the voandzeia, and the Phasæolus lunatus; the oily fruits included earth-nuts, sesame, and hyptis; whilst there still remained room for Virginian tobacco, for the sugar-cane, for the Rokko fig-tree, and for large numbers of plantations of plantains (Musa sapientium).
Manioc plays an important part amongst the plants cultivated in this region, both on account of the yield it gives and the small amount of labour required in its cultivation. Here, as in Guiana and Brazil, it seems to delight in a soil that is rather moist and somewhat shaded, and accordingly the position which is usually chosen for its culture is just on the border of the “galleries” on the open steppe. The end of April, at the real commencement of the rainy season, is the best time for planting it. The plant is of a leafy growth, it has hardly any wood, and attains a height varying from three to six feet; the mode of planting it consists simply of breaking off some pieces about a span long, and burying them in the soil which has been superficially broken up. It is quite unnecessary to trench it, since the soil is naturally very light and loose, being composed principally of rotten leaves. As the manioc is a year and a half or two years before it produces strong tubers, it is customary to use the ground between the rows, by planting, as is done elsewhere, various other crops, either of maize, colocasia, or yams. One great advantage connected with the manioc is the length of time for which the tubers may be left in the earth after their full development: provided only the ants can be kept from them, they will remain in good condition for two or three years; consequently they do not require to be housed, and their culture admits of leaving the granaries free for other provisions, in a way quite different from most tubers, which would soon perish if suffered to remain in the wet soil.