Other tribes live in great terror of the Manyuema, whom they represent as man-eaters. A woman’s child crept into the corner of the hut to eat a banana. The mother, having missed him, at once suspected that the Manyuema had kidnapped him to eat him. She ran in a frenzy through the camp, screaming “Oh, the Manyuema have stolen my child to make meat of him! Oh, my child eaten! Oh! Oh!”
Two fine-looking young men made a visit to Livingstone one day. After preliminary questions about his country, such as “Where is it?” they asked whether people die there, and where they go after death. “Who kills them? Have you no charm (buanga) against death?” They were told that his people pray to the Great Father Mulungu, and he hears them, all which seemed to satisfy their curiosity as very reasonable.
The bloody and murderous propensity of the Bambarré people is evinced by the most horrible deeds. If a man be at work alone in the field he is almost sure of being slain. When they tell of each other’s deeds the heart sickens at the recital. Kandahara, brother of old Moenékuss, murdered three women and a child and also a trading-man, for no reason but to eat their bodies.
“The head of Moenékuss is said to be preserved in a pot in his house, and all public matters are gravely communicated to it, as if his spirit dwelt therein; his body was eaten; the flesh was removed from the head and eaten too. His father’s head is said to be kept also. In other districts graves show that sepulture is customary, but here no grave appears. Some admit the existence of this practice, but others deny it. In the Metamba country, adjacent to the Lualaba, a quarrel with a wife often ends in the husband killing her and eating her heart mixed up in a huge mess of goat’s flesh; this has the charm character. Fingers are taken as charms in other parts, but in Bambarré alone is the depraved taste the motive for cannibalism.”
The country inhabited by the Manyuema, which means forest people, is surpassingly beautiful. Livingstone gives this description in his journal: “Palms crown the loftiest heights of the mountains and their gracefully bended fronds wave beautifully in the wind; and the forests, usually about five miles broad between groups of villages, are indescribable. Climbers, of cable size, in great number, are hung among the gigantic trees; many unknown wild-fruits abound, some the size of a child’s head, and strange birds and monkeys are everywhere.
“The soil is very rich, and the people, although isolated by old feuds that are never settled, cultivate largely. They have selected a kind of maize that bends its fruit-stalk round into a hook, and hedges, some eighteen feet high, are made by inserting poles which sprout, like Robinson Crusoe’s hedge, and never decay. Lines of climbing plants are tied so as to go along from pole to pole, and the maize-cobs are suspended to these by their own hooked fruit-stalk. As the corncob is forming, the hook is turned round so that the fruit-leaves of it hang down and form a thatch for the grain beneath or inside of it. This upright granary forms a solid looking wall round the village. The people are not stingy, but take down maize and hand it to the men freely. Plantains, cassava, and maize are the chief food.
“The hoeing of the Manyuema is very superficial, being little better than the scraping of the soil. They leave the roots of maize, dura, ground-nuts, sweet potatoes, to find their way into the soft, rich earth. There is no need of plowing for ground-nuts, and cassava will resist the encroachments of grass for years. Rice will yield one hundred and twenty fold of increase, showing the wonderful fertility of the land. If kept free from weeds, the soil yields its grains and roots in the rankest profusion; pumpkins, melons, meleza, plantains, bananas, all flourish most abundantly. The Bambarré, however, are indifferent husbandmen, planting but a few things. The Balégga, like the Bambarré, rely chiefly upon plantains and ground-nuts. Their principal amusement is playing with parrots.
“It is the custom among this people to make approaches to the villages as difficult as possible. The hedges, which sprout and grow into a living fence, are covered with a sort of calabash, with its broad leaves, so that nothing appears of the fence outside.
“The villages are perched in the talus of each great range, so as to secure quick drainage. The streets generally run east and west in order that the heat of the sun may rapidly dissipate the moisture. The houses are mostly in line with meeting-houses at each end, fronting the middle of the street. The walls of these houses are of well-beaten clay, protected from the weather by the roof, the rafters of which are often the leaf-stalk of palms, split so as to be thin. The roofs are low, but well thatched with a leaf resembling that of the banana, but more durable. The leaf-stalk has a notch made in it of two or three inches lengthwise. This hooks to the rafters.”
These dwellings inside are very comfortable, and until the Arabs visited this tribe, vermin were unknown. Bugs and vermin go wherever the Arabs and Suaheli go.