In looking over Wilkinson’s ‘Ancient Egyptians’ the other day I was much struck with the conservative character of the African, for among the engravings I recognize in plate 459 the form of dress most common among the Wahuma, Watusi, Wanyambu, Wahha, Warundi, and Wanyavingi, and which were in vogue thirty-five centuries ago among the black peoples who paid tribute to the Pharaohs. The musical instruments also, such as are figured in plates 135, 136—a specimen of which is in the British Museum—we discovered among the Balegga and Wahuma, and in 1876 among the Basoga. The hafts of knives, the grooves in the blades and their form, the triangular decorations in plaster in their houses, or on their shields, bark clothes, boxes, cooking utensils, and in their weapons, spears, bows, and clubs; in their mundus, which are similar in form to the old pole-axe of the Egyptians, in the curved head-rests, their ivory and wooden spoons; in their eared sandals, which no Mhuma would travel without; in their partiality to certain colours, such as red, black, and yellow; in their baskets for carrying their infants; in their reed flutes; in the long walking-staffs; in the mode of expressing their grief, by wailing, beating their breasts, and their gestures expressive of being inconsolable; in their sad, melancholy songs; and in a hundred other customs and habits, I see that old Egyptian and Ethiopian characteristics are faithfully preserved among the tribes of the grass-land.
The boys have games similar to those of “marbles” and ball and backgammon with us. As the ancients bore their watering-pots for irrigating their fields, so the Wahuma convey the milk to their chiefs; and the oil of their castor berries, and butter, serve to perpetuate the custom of old antiquity in their ablutions; and in the respect paid to the elders and their chiefs by the modern youth of Inner Africa may be observed that reverence which was so often inculcated in the olden time. These people, having no literature, and undisturbed by advent of superior influences among them, have only learned what has been communicated to them by their parents, who had received from their progenitors such few functions and customs as were necessary for existence and preservation of their particular tribal distinctions. Thus the unlettered tribes of these long unknown regions are discovered to be practising such customs, habits and precepts, as must have distinguished the ancestors of the founders of the Pyramids in the dark prehistoric ages of Egypt.
No traces of any religion can be found among the Wahuma. They believe most thoroughly in the existence of an evil influence in the form of a man, who exists in uninhabited places as a wooded, darksome gorge, or large extent of reedy brake, but that he can be propitiated by gifts; therefore the lucky hunter leaves a portion of the meat, which he tosses, however, as he would to a dog, or he places an egg, or a small banana, or a kid-skin, at the door of the miniature dwelling which is always found at the entrance to the zeriba.
Every person wears a charm around the neck, or arm, or waist. They believe in “evil eyes” and omens, but are not so superstitious as the Waganda, probably because they are so scattered. Witchcraft is dreaded, and the punishment of a suspected person follows swiftly.
Poor Gaddo, a good-looking, faithful young fellow who accompanied Mr. Jephson as lake pilot to Mswa Station soon after his return to Kavalli’s village, was suspected of conspiring against his chief. Gaddo came to me and reported that he was in danger, and he was advised to remain in my camp until we should leave. The elders proceeded with a fowl to a distance of about a hundred yards beyond the camp, and opened the breast. They were seen whispering together over what they had discovered, and it was presently known that the jury had found Gaddo guilty of evil practices against Kavalli, and this was doom. As Gaddo was as guiltless as the babe unborn, a messenger was sent to the chief to say that if he were injured Kavalli would be held responsible. Yet Gaddo felt so uncomfortable in the vicinity of the village, as public opinion had already condemned him, that he sought to escape to Katonza’s by the lake, but on the brow of the plateau fate found him. It was reported circumstantially that while standing on a rock he had fallen over and broken his neck. It was very sad to hear the young wife and children and sisters wailing for the dead, and Kavalli was markedly good and amiable in those days.
The diet of the Wahuma is principally milk. The sale of their butter and hides now and then enables them to purchase sweet potatoes, millet, and bananas, but it is with a peculiar pride they say they are not “hoemen.” The sorghum of the tribes around them is of the red variety. The Indian corn, or maize, is of an inferior quality. It is planted in the latter part of February at the same period as the beans. In two months the latter are fit to be eaten. A month later the corn comes into ear, and in the fourth month it is mature. In September the millet is sown and is ripe for cutting in February. Every village owns extensive tracts planted with sweet potatoes, and along the edges of their plantain groves they grow colocassia, or helmia; but the latter are not favourites with strangers, as ignorance in the art of cooking them leaves them nauseous.