We may now turn our attention to the Bongo games, which are as original and primitive as their music. One of these games, as forming excellent training for the chase, deserves some especial notice. A number of men are provided with pointed sticks made of hard wood, which they use as lances. They form a large ring, and another man who has a piece of soft wood attached to a long string, runs round and round within the circle. The others then endeavour with their pointed sticks to hit the mark whilst it is being carried rapidly round. As soon as it is struck it falls to the ground, and the successful marksman is greeted with a loud cheer. Another game requires no less calmness and dexterity. A piece of wood bent into a crescent has a short string attached to the middle; this wood is then hurled by the one end of it with such violence to the earth that it goes spinning like a boomerang through the air. The players stand face to face at a distance of about twenty feet apart, and the game consists in catching the wood by the string, a performance that requires no little skill, as there is considerable danger of receiving a sharp knock. Both games might, under some modifications, admit of being adopted into our rural sports.
Turning now to the national manners, customs, and ideas, I profess that they are subjects of which I must treat with considerable reserve, since my residence as a stranger for two years amongst these savages only gave me after all a very superficial insight into the mysteries of their inner life. Since, however, the accounts of eye-witnesses, who knew the land in its primitive condition, seem to accord with and to corroborate my own observations, as well as the information I obtained from the Bongo themselves, I am in a position to depose to some facts, of which I must leave the scientific analysis to those who are seeking to cultivate the untried soil of the psychology of nations.
Elsewhere, and among other nations with whom I became acquainted, the number of a man’s wives was dependent on the extent of his possessions, but amongst the Bongo it seemed to be limited to a maximum of three. Here, as in other parts of Africa, a wife cannot be obtained for nothing, even the very poorest must pay a purchase price to the father of the bride in the form of a number of plates of iron; unless a man could provide the premium, he could only get an old woman for a wife. The usual price paid for a young girl would be about ten plates of iron weighing two pounds each, and twenty lance tips. Divorces, when necessary, are regulated in the usual way, and the father is always compelled to make a restitution of at least a portion of the wedding-payment. If a man should send his wife back to her father, she is at liberty to marry again, and with her husband’s consent she may take her children with her; if, however, her husband retains the children, her father is bound to refund the entire wedding-gift that he received. This would be the case although ten years might have elapsed since the marriage. The barrenness of a woman is always an excuse for a divorce. In cases of adultery, the husband endeavours to kill the seducer, and the wife gets a sound flogging. Whoever has been circumcised according to the Mohammedan law, cannot hope to make a good match in Bongoland.
A Bongo woman, as a rule, will seldom be found to have less than five children: the usual number is six, and the maximum twelve. In childbirth she is supported with her arms on a horizontal beam, and is in that position delivered of the child; the navel-cord is cut very long with a knife, and always without a ligature. No festivities are observed on the occasion of a birth. The infants are carried on the mothers’ backs, sewn up in a bag of goat’s-hide, like a water-bottle. The children are kept at the breast until they have completed their second year, weaning being never thought of until they can be trusted to run about. In order to wean a child, the mother’s breast is smeared with some acrid matter, and the bruised leaves of some of the Capparidæ are mixed with water to a pulp, and have the effect of drying up the milk.
Among the Bongo and the neighbouring nations there is a custom, manifestly originating in a national morality, that forbids all children that are not at the breast to sleep in the same hut with their parents; the Bongo in this respect putting to shame many of those who would boast of their civilization. The elder children have a hut appropriated to themselves, but take their meals with the rest of the family. In addition to this custom there is the universal rule, as with ourselves, that no matrimonial alliance takes place until the youths are about eighteen and the girls about fifteen years of age.
BONGO EXEQUIES.
In the disposal of their dead, the customs of the Bongo are very remarkable. Immediately after life is extinct, the corpses are placed, like the Peruvian mummies, in what may be described as a crouching posture, with the knees forced up to the chin, and are then firmly bound round the head and legs. When the body has been thus compressed into the smallest possible compass, it is sewn into a sack made of skins, and placed in a deep grave. A shaft is sunk perpendicularly down for about four feet, and then a niche is hollowed to the side, so that the sack containing the corpse should not have to sustain any vertical pressure from the earth which is thrown in to fill up the grave. This form of interment is also prescribed in the law of Islam, which, in this and many other cases, has probably followed an African custom. The Bongo have a striking practice, for which, perhaps, some reason may be assigned, of burying men with the face turned to the north and women to the south. After the grave is filled in, a heap of stones is piled over the spot in a short cylindrical form, and this is supported by strong stakes, which are driven into the soil all round. On the middle of the pile is placed a pitcher, frequently the same from which the deceased was accustomed to drink his water. The graves are always close to the huts, their site being marked by a number of long forked branches, carved, by way of ornament, with numerous notches and incisions, and having their points sharpened like horns. Of these votive stakes I saw a number varying from one to five on each grave. The typical meaning belonging to these sticks has long since fallen into oblivion, and notwithstanding all my endeavours to become acquainted with the Bongo, and to initiate myself into their manners and customs, I could never discover a satisfactory explanation. The sticks reminded me of the old English finance-budgets in the time of William the Conqueror. In answer to my inquiries, the Khartoomers merely returned the same answer as they did to my predecessor, Heuglin; they persisted in saying that every notch denoted an enemy killed in battle by the deceased. The Bongo themselves, however, repeatedly declared that such was by no means the case, and quite repudiated the idea that they should ever think of thus perpetuating the bloodthirstiness of the dead. The neighbouring Mittoo and Madi adopt very much the same method of sepulture. The memorial-urns erected over the graves of the Musgoo remind the traveller of those of the Bongo. Whenever a burial takes place, all the neighbours are invited to attend, and are abundantly entertained with merissa. The entire company takes part in the formation of the grave, in the rearing of the memorial-urn, and in the erection of the votive stakes. When the ceremony is finished, they shoot at the stakes with arrows, which they leave sticking in the wood. I often noticed arrows that had been thus shot still adhering to the sticks.
The Bongo have not the remotest conception of immortality. They have no more idea of the transmigration of souls, or any doctrine of the kind, than they have of the existence of an ocean. I have tried various ways and means of solving the problem of their inner life, but always without success. Although the belief in immortality may be indigenous to Africa, I should question whether the ancient Egyptians did not in their religious development obey the promptings of the Asiatic East. At any rate, those statements are incorrect which would endeavour to explain the dull resignation displayed by the victims of human sacrifice in Dahomey by a theory of their belief in immortality. All religion, in our sense of the word religion, is quite unknown to the Bongo, and, beyond the term “loma,” which denotes equally luck and ill-luck, they have nothing in their language to signify any deity or spiritual being. “Loma” is likewise the term that they use for the Supreme Being, whom they hear invoked as “Allah” by their oppressors, and some of them make use of the expression, “loma-gobo,” i. e., the superior, to denote the God of the “Turks.” The almost incomprehensible prayers of the Mohammedans are called by the Bongo “malah,” which has evidently some connection with the word “Allah” that is generally repeated over and over again in all the devotions of the Nubians.
If any one is ill, his illness is attributed to “Loma,” but in the event of anybody losing a wager or a game, or returning from a hunting adventure without game, or coming back from war without booty, he is said to have had “no loma” (loma nya), in the sense of having no luck.
BONGO SUPERSTITION.