Circumcision among the Hamites of East Africa is particularly elaborate. As an example we may take the pastoral tribe of the Nandi. These people used to circumcise boys every seven and a half years, and celebrated the occasion with great festivals. Since 1905 circumcision takes place at shorter intervals. The usual age for circumcision is from the fifteenth to the nineteenth year. Younger boys are only circumcised if they are rich orphans, or if their fathers are old men. The ceremony begins at the time of the first quarter of the moon. Three days before the operation the boys are given over by their fathers or guardians into the charge of old men, called moterenic, as many as ten boys going to two of these men. The moterenic and their boys betake themselves to a neighbouring wood, where they build a hut, in which they spend the six months after the circumcision. The boys have their heads shaved and are given a strong aperient of Arsidia sp. Warriors visit the hut, and take away all the boys' clothes and ornaments. Then young girls visit the boys and give them a part of their clothing and ornaments. After the boys have put these on they inform their relations of the forthcoming circumcision. There is dancing on the next day, after which the warriors draw the boys aside to discover from their expressions whether they will behave cowardly or bravely at the circumcision. After this examination the boys receive necklaces from their girl friends, with which they decorate themselves. After sunset they must listen to the sharpening of the operating knife. Warriors are present, and tease the boys. Later on all undress, and a procession is formed with a moterenic at the head and rear of it. Four times they have to crawl through a small cage, where warriors are stationed at the entrance and exit with nettles and hornets. With the former they beat the boys in the face and on the sex organs; the hornets they set on their backs. A fire is kept burning in the middle of the room, around which old men are seated. Each boy has to step before them and beg for permission to be circumcised. He is questioned about his early life; and if the old men think that he has told an untruth or is hiding something, he is put among nettles. If the old men are satisfied with his words, the price of the circumcision has to be arranged, whereupon the boys are led back to their huts. There the warriors and elders assemble the next morning, and at dawn the circumcision begins. The boy to be circumcised is supported by the senior moterenic, the others sitting close by and looking on. The operator kneels before the boy, and with a quick cut performs the first part of the operation; the foreskin is drawn forward and cut off at the tip of the glans penis. The surrounding men watch the boy's face in order to see whether he winces or shows any sign of pain. If this is the case, he is called a coward, and receives the dishonourable nickname of kilpit; he is not allowed to be present at later circumcisions nor at the children's dances. The brave boys receive bundles of ficus from the women, who welcome them with cries of joy when they return the necklaces which they have previously received from their girl friends. The foreskins are collected and placed in an ox horn. Friends and relatives make merry together, while the second part of the operation begins. At this only sterile girls may be present, and also women who have lost several brothers and sisters at short intervals. Many boys become unconscious during this part of the operation. The wounds are only washed with cold water, and the boys are led back to their huts, where they spend some weeks quietly. During the first four days they are not allowed to touch food with their hands; they must eat either out of a half-calabash or with the help of some leaves. They get what they like, also milk and meat. But, apart from their moterenic, nobody may come near them for four days. Afterwards the hand-washing ceremony is performed; the foreskins are taken out of the ox horn, sacrificed to their god, and then buried in cowdung at the foot of a croton tree. Now the boys may eat with their hands again, but still no one may see them except the young children who bring them food. Three months later, when the boys are quite well again, they have to go through a new ceremony, during which they have to dive repeatedly into the river. If one of them should meet with an accident, his father has to kill a goat. Only now may the boys move about freely, but they still have to wear women's clothes (as hitherto) and a special head-dress that hides their faces. They must not enter a cattle kraal nor come near the cattle, nor are they allowed to be outdoors when the hyena howls. This period of semi-seclusion lasts about eight weeks. Its conclusion is celebrated by a feast. Still more ceremonies follow, and again a feast, after which the boys finally enter the status of manhood.
Girls are circumcised when some of them in the settlement have reached marriage age. They are shaved, given aperients, have to put on men's clothes, which they receive from their lovers, and take their clubs, loin bells, etc. After three days' ceremonial the circumcision is performed in the morning, at which the mothers and some old women are present; men are only admitted when they have lost several brothers and sisters in succession. The mothers run about crying and shouting during the operation. Only the clitoris is cut out. If a girl behaves bravely, she may return the clothes and other things of her lover, otherwise they are thrown away. The girls, too, must not touch food with their hands for four days; afterwards they are put into long dresses with a kind of head mask, and have to go through a period of seclusion. After the completion of various other formalities they are fit for marriage (Hollis, 1909, pp. 52 et seq.).
No satisfactory explanation has so far been forthcoming of the purpose of these elaborate circumcision customs. Similar customs are observed by other Hamites of Eastern Africa.
Among the Masai there exists the belief that circumcision was introduced by the command of God (Merker, p. 60). After the circumcision boys and girls are considered grown up. The former have to be circumcised as soon as they are strong enough to take part in a war expedition. The circumcision of sons whose parents have no property and of poor orphans takes place last of all. For the meat banquet which the newly circumcised hold every one present has to supply an ox. Poor boys must first acquire it by working for it. The circumcision is a public affair, and is arranged by the witch doctor in certain years. The old men consult in all the districts, and fix a day for the circumcision of the first batch of boys. All the boys circumcised during a certain number of years form an age class with a particular name (as among the Nandi). Several weeks before the circumcision the boys, adorned with many ornaments, dance and sing in their own and neighbouring kraals, in order to express their joy at their approaching admission into the warrior class. On the day before the circumcision the boys' heads are shaved. On the appointed day itself the boys and the warriors who are present at the operation assemble before dawn at the place chosen by the operators. The boys pour cold water over each other, so as to become less sensitive. After the operation the wounded member is washed with milk; no remedy for stopping the bleeding is applied. Later on all the men of the neighbourhood assemble in the kraal, where they are regaled with meat and honey beer by the parents of the newly circumcised boys. The girls are circumcised as soon as signs of puberty become evident, sometimes even earlier. The operation consists in a complete abscission of the clitoris. The wound, as with the boys, is washed in milk. The girl remains in her mother's hut until the wound is healed. As soon as the man to whom the girl is promised as bride hears of her recovery he pays her father the remaining part of the bride-price, and nothing more stands in the way of the marriage.
Among the Somals in North-east Africa the boys are circumcised when six years old, and the girls are infibulated at three or four years of age. The infibulation is preceded by the shortening of the clitoris and the clipping of the external labia. The operation is performed by experienced women, who also sew up the inner labia (except for a small aperture) with horse-hair, bast, or cotton thread. The girls have to rest for several days with their legs tied together. Before marriage the above-mentioned women or the girls themselves undo the stitching, which, however, is in most cases only severed completely before the confinement (Paulitschke, p. 24).
In Western Africa most peoples practise the circumcision of boys. The age at which this takes place varies greatly. The Duala in Cameron have the boys circumcised when four or five years old, the Bakwiri as late as the twelfth to fourteenth year, and the Dahomey even postpone the circumcision to the twentieth year. But it always takes place before marriage, as women would refuse to have relationship with uncircumcised men (Buschan, "Sitten," III., p. 40).
A peculiar disfigurement of the sex organs is customary among the Hottentots, Bushmen, and many Bantu tribes of Middle and South Africa. This consists in the artificial elongation of the small labia. It was first observed among the Hottentot women, and therefore the elongated labia were called the "Hottentot apron." Among the Jao, Makonde, and other East African Bantu tribes, the girls at the ages of seven, eight, or nine years are instructed by old women about sex intercourse and their behaviour towards grown-up people. At the same time they are encouraged to systematically alter the natural shape of the genital organs by continually pulling at the labia minora and thus unnaturally lengthening them. Karl Weule has seen such disfigured organs from 7 to 8 centimetres long. According to the assertion of numerous male natives, the elongated labia assume such dimensions that they hang half-way down to the knee. The main purpose of this disfiguration seems to be erotic; it is said to excite the men. The assumption that the labia minora are naturally exceptionally large among the Hottentots is certainly wrong. Karl Weule is right when he definitely maintains that his proof of the artificial elongation of the labia among the East Africans establishes it as an indubitable fact that the famous Hottentot apron is also an artificial product. Le Vaillant established this independently almost 100 years before Weule; but the error dragged on from decade to decade, chiefly because nobody troubled or had the good fortune to study the puberty rites as Weule did. It is time at last to give up this erroneous idea.
Among the Jaos the operation of the boys consists in a combination of incision with circumcision so that only a tiny piece of the under-part of the preputium remains. The boy must show courage at the operation. Screams, if they occur, are drowned by the laughter of the bystanders. Bleeding is stilled by bark powder. The boys have to lie down for about twenty days or more, until healing has taken place. As usual, circumcision is combined with instruction about sex behaviour.
In former times the Jaos are said to have imposed castration as a punishment on men for misbehaviour with the chief's wife (Weule, pp. 29, 35). Castration still takes place for this reason among other negro races, especially the Mohammedan Sudanese.
In North America the few Indians still living in a state of nature do not practise mutilation of the sex organs. In South America circumcision exists among the linguistically isolated tribes and the neighbouring Aruake and Karaib tribes of the north-west, also among the tribes on the Ucayali and the tributaries of the Apure (W. Schmidt, p. 1048). The Kayapo Indians on the Araguay river cut the frenulum of the penis with a taquara splinter, and the penis cuff is fastened on to the rolled-up foreskin (W. Kissenberth, p. 55).