The Wahuma: the exact opposite of the Dwarfs: their descendants—Tribes nearly allied to the true negro type—Tribes of the Nilotic basin—The Herdsmen—The traditions of Unyoro—My experiences of the Wahuma gained while at Kavalli—View of the surrounding country from Kavalli camp—Chiefs Kavalli, Katto, and Gavira unbosom their wrongs to me—Old Ruguji’s reminiscences—The pasture-land lying between Lake Albert and the forest—The cattle in the district round Kavalli: their milk-yield—Three cases referring to cattle which I am called upon to adjudicate—Household duties of the women—Dress among the Wahuma—Old Egyptian and Ethiopian characteristics preserved among the tribes of the grass-land—Customs, habits, and religion of the tribes—Poor Gaddo suspected of conspiracy against his chief, Kavalli: his death—Diet of the Wahuma—The climate of the region of the grass-land.
1889.
July.
The
Wahuma.
The Wahuma are the most interesting people, next to the Pigmies in all Central Africa. Some philological nidderings have classed them under the generic name Bantu, and every traveller ambitious of being comprehended among the scientific, adds his testimony and influence to perpetuate this most unscientific term. Bantu is an Inner African word of which the translation is Men. We are therefore asked seriously to accept it as a solemn fact, upon scientific authority, that the Wahuma, like the Pigmies, are men.
The Wahuma are the exact opposite of the dwarfs. The latter are undersized nomads, adapted by their habits to forest life; the former are tall, finely-formed men, with almost European features, adapted from immemorial custom and second nature to life in pastoral lands only. Reverse their localities, and they pine and die. Take the Pigmies out of their arboreal recesses and perpetual twilight, and from their vegetable diet, and plant them on a grass-land open to the winds and the sunshine, feed them on beef and grain, and milk as you may, and they shrink with the cold and exposure, refuse their meat, and droop to death. On the other hand, deport the Wahuma into the woods, and supply them with the finest vegetables, and always with plenty of food, and the result is, that they get depressed, their fine brown-black colour changes into ashen gray, the proud haughty carriage is lost, they contract an aspect of misery, and die in despair and weariness. Yet these two opposites of humanity are called Bantu, or men, a term which is perfectly meaningless, and yet as old as the story of the Creation. In North America we see to-day Esquimaux, English, Irish, German, French and Spanish Americans, and Indians, and, after the scientific manner, we should call them Bantu. Interest in the various human families is not roused by comprehending them under such unphilosophical terms.
The Wahuma are true descendants of the Semitic tribes, or communities, which emigrated from Asia across the Red Sea and settled on the coast, and in the uplands of Abyssinia, once known as Ethiopia. From this great centre more than a third of the inhabitants of Inner Africa have had their origin. As they pressed southward and conquered the negro tribes, miscegenation produced a mixture of races; the Semitic became tainted with negro blood, the half-caste tribes inter-married again with the primitive race, and became still more degraded in feature and form, and in the course of ages lost almost all traces of their extraction from the Asiatic peoples. If a traveller only bears this fact in mind, and commences his researches from the Cape of Good Hope, he will be able easily, as he marches northward, to separate the less adulterated tribes from those who are so nearly allied to the true negro type as to bear classification as negroid. The kinky, woolly hair is common to all; but even in this there are shades of difference from that which is coarse almost as horse-hair, to that which rivals silken floss for fineness. The study of the hair may, however, be left; the great and engrossing study being the Caucasian faces under the negro hair. From among the Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabeles, Basutos, Bechuanas, or any other of the fierce South African tribes, select an ordinary specimen of those splendidly-formed tribes so ruthlessly denominated as negroes, and plant him near a West African, or Congoese, or Gabonese type, and place a Hindu between them, and having been once started on the right trail of discovery, you will at once perceive that the features of the Kaffir are a subtle amalgamation of the Hindu and West African types; but if we take a Mhuma of mature age, the relation to the Hindu will still more readily appear. Advancing across the Zambezi towards the watershed of the Congo and Loangwa, we observe among the tribes a confusion of types, which may be classed indifferently as being an intermediate family between the West African and the Kaffir; an improvement on the former, but not quite up to the standard of the latter. If we extend our travels east or west we will find this to be a far-spreading type. It embraces the Babisa, Barua, Balunda, and the tribes of the entire Congo basin; and to the eastward, Wachunga, Wafipa, Wakawendi, Wakonongo, Wanyamwezi, and Wasukuma. Among them, every now and then, we will be struck with the close resemblance of minor tribal communities to the finest Zulus, and near the eastern littoral we will see negroid West Africans reproduced in the Waiau, Wasagara, Wangindo, and the blacks of Zanzibar. When we return from the East Coast to the uplands bordering the Tanganika, and advance north as far as Ujiji, we will see the stature and facial type much improved. Through Ujiji we enter Urundi, and there is again a visible improvement. If we go east a few days we enter Uhha, and we are in the presence of twin-brothers of Zululand—tall, warlike creatures, with Caucasian heads and faces, but dyed darkly with the sable pigment. If we go east a little further, among those mixtures of pure negroes, with Kaffir type of ancient Ukalaganza, now called Usumbwa, we see a tall, graceful-looking herdsman with European features, but dark in colour. If we ask him what he is, he will tell us his occupation is herding cattle, and that he is a Mtusi, of the Watusi tribe. “Is there any country, then, called Utusi?” and he will answer “No; but he came from the north.” We advance to the north, and we find ourselves travelling along the spine of pastoral upland. We are in the Nilotic basin. Every streamlet trends easterly to a great inland sea called now the Victoria Nyanza, or westerly to the Albert Edward Nyanza. This upland embraces Ruanda, Karagwé, Mpororo, Ankori, Ihangiro, Uhaiya, and Uzongora, and all these tribes inhabiting those countries possess cattle; but the people are not all herdsmen. Many among them are devoted to agriculture. After journeying hither and thither, we are impressed with the fact that all those occupied with tending cattle are similar to that graceful Mtusi whom we met in Usumbwa, and who vaguely pointed to the north as his original home, and that all the agriculturists are as negroid in feature as any thick-lipped West Coast African. By dwelling among them, we also learn that the herdsmen regard those who till the soil with as much contempt as a London banking clerk would view the farm labourer. Still advancing to the north we behold an immense snowy range. It is an impassable barrier; we deflect our march to the west, and find this Mtusi type numerous, and stretching up to the foot of the mountains, and to dense, impenetrable forests unfit for the herding of cattle; and at once the Caucasian type ceases, and the negroid features, either coppery, black, or mixed complexion—the flat nose, the sunken ridge, and the projecting of the lower part of the face—are dumb witnesses that here the wave of superior races was arrested. We retrace our steps, ascend to the upland and skirt the snowy range eastward, and over a splendid grazing country called Toro, Uhaiyana, and Unyoro, we see the fine-featured herdsmen again in numbers attending their vast herds, and the dark flat-nosed negroid tilling the land with hoes, as we saw them further south. After passing the snowy range on its northern extremity, we proceed west across the flat grassy valley of the Semliki to other grassy uplands parallel with Unyoro, but separated from it by the Albert Nyanza; and over this pastoral region are living together, but each strictly adhering to his own pursuit, the herdsmen and the tillers of the soil. During our travels from Usumbwa the herdsmen have changed their names from Watusi to Wanyambu, Wahuma, Waima, Wawitu, and Wachwezi. That is, they have accepted these titles in the main from the agricultural class, but whether in Ankori, or among the Balegga and Bavira, or dwelling with the Waganda or in Unyoro, they call themselves Watusi, Wahuma, or Wachwezi. In Karagwé, Ankori, or Usongora, they are the dominating classes. Their descendants sit in the seat of power in Ihangiro, Uhaiya, Uganda, and Unyoro; but the people of these countries are an admixture of the Zulu and West African tribes, and therefore they are more devoted to agriculture. When, as for instance, tribes such as Waganda, Wasoga, and Wakuri have been left to grow up and increase in power and prosperity, we have but to look at the sea-like expanse of the Victoria Nyanza, and we see the reason of it. No further progress was possible, and the wave of migration passed westward and eastward, and overlapped these tribes, and in their progress southward dropped a few members by the way, to become absorbed by the members of the agricultural class, and to lose their distinctive characteristics.
As the traditions of Unyoro report that the Wachwezi came from the eastern bank of the Victoria Nile, we will cross that river, and we find that between us and Abyssinia there are no grand physical features such as great lakes or continuous ranges to bar the migration to the south of barbarous multitudes; that the soil is poor and the climate dry, and pasture unpromising, and that all the tribes are devoted to the rearing of cattle; that the indigenous races, such as we see in the Congo basin and near the littoral of east Africa, disparted by the waves of migrating peoples on their course south, have been so thoroughly extinguished by the superior Indo-African race that the vast area of the upland from the Victoria Nile to the Gulf of Aden simply repeats its long-established types, which we may call Galla, Abyssinian, Ethiopic, or Indo-African.[34] This too brief outline will serve to prepare the reader for knowing something more of the Wahuma, the true descendants of these Ethiopians, who have for fifty centuries been pouring over the continent of Africa east and west of the Victoria Nyanza in search of pasture, and while doing so have formed superior tribes and nations along their course, from the Gulf of Aden to the Cape of Good Hope—a vast improvement on the old primitive races of Africa.
I propose to illustrate the Wahuma by our experiences with those who recognised Kavalli as chief.
Looking westward from Kavalli’s we had a prospect of over 1,000 square miles. Though fairly populous in parts, the view was so immense that it suggested little of human presence except in the immediate foreground. Compared to the mountainous ridges and great swells of land, what were a few clusters of straw-coloured cotes, with generous spaces between showing the small arable plots of the Bavira soil-tillers? During the earlier days of our residence at Kavalli we enjoyed the free, uninterrupted, limitless view of pasture-land, swelling ridge, bold mountain, isolated hill, subsiding valleys, and extending levels. Undisturbed by anxiety from want of food, and satisfied with our diet of grass-land esculents and nourishing meat, it was exhilarating to the nerves to watch the countless grass blades stoop in broad waves before the gusty winds from the Nyanza, and see them roll and swerve in currents of varying green, after our long forest life.
Kavalli’s zeriba, wherein he herded his cattle and flocks every night, was in the centre of a gentle slope of turfy green. Constant browsing by the swarming herds of himself and Wahuma neighbours kept the grass short, and gave us unobstructed views and walks over delicious pasture. Even the tiny chicklings attendant on the mother hen might be numbered at a bowshot’s distance. Every few yards or so there rose an ant-hill from 3 to 12 feet high. They served happily enough for the herdsmen to keep watch over their herds and flocks of sheep and goats, and those near the kraals were the resort of the elders and gossips to discuss the events of the period. There at such times, in low converse with Kavalli and his aged men, I gained large insight into the local histories of the villages and tribes about him. Indeed, no more suitable spot could be found, for before us were mapped out nearly threescore districts.
Far to the west rose Pisgah, throned high above a hundred leagues of dark forest-land, and every yard of its contour distinct in delineation against the reddening sky. Lifted in lone majesty, a sombre mass, it attracted the attention in every pause of the conversation. From Pisgah, which to Kavalli was the end of the world, all beyond being fable and night, he would direct our gaze to Kimberri’s cones, a day’s march N.N.W. to the lofty peak of Kuka seen just behind, and then to the massy square-browed mount of Duki, and the flats below occupied by the Balungwa, of whose numerous herds he had much to say; and to Kavalli, be it remembered, there was no subject so worthy of talk as cattle. To the south of west a range of grassy mountains rose in Mazamboni’s country, and extending in a seemingly unbroken line to the verge of the gulf occupied by the Albert Lake, and its bordering plains, valleys, and terraces. The westerly portion is governed by Mazamboni, the easterly by Chief Komubi. The plain extending from the mountains as far as Kavalli is called Uzanza, and is occupied by the agricultural Bavira, who came originally from behind Duki, in the neighbourhood of Kuka Peak. Between Kavalli and Kimberri a great cantle of the plain is owned by warlike Musiri and his people.