This work of tillage and of gathering the harvest is the sphere of the women, the men spending the day in lounging, talking, and smoking, except when engaged in war or the hunt. They avoid all labor. In the morning they may be seen reclining under the shade of the oil-palms upon their carved benches and regaling themselves with tobacco. In the middle of the day they betake themselves to the cool halls where they can give utterance to their opinions with entire freedom. These groups form an animated picture of the social life of these distant people. Their vivacity and gesticulation are truly visible in all these noonday gatherings of the Monbuttoo men.
The manufacture of pottery is also here confined exclusively to the women as in other parts of Africa. The men however are the smiths, and they share the work of basket-making and wood-carving with the women. The greater portion of the manual labor, it will be seen, is performed by the weaker sex. While, however, they are subjected to this servile labor, the relation of wives to their husbands is one of independence and authority.
The subjection of men was illustrated by the answer made when they were solicited to sell anything: “Oh, ask my wife; it is hers.” Polygamy prevails among this people, and very little regard is paid to the obligations of marriage. Considering their intelligence and general improvement in some of the arts of civilization, rendering them superior to most other tribes, the character of the women, in respect to deportment and chastity, is an anomaly. They suffer greatly in comparison with the Niam-niam women, who are modest and retiring. The conduct of the men and women toward each other is one of offensive laxity. Many of the latter indulged in gross obscenity, and the immodesty of this sex, generally, far exceeded anything Schweinfurth had seen among other tribes, even the lowest. The contrast of this general freedom and unchastity, with so much that is commendable and interesting in the character of the Monbuttoo, excited his surprise.
In the culinary arts they exhibit a very considerable superiority over the African tribes. Yet blended with this higher culture in the mode of preparing their food there is another horrid anomaly. Human fat is in universal use among them, and this leads us to consider their cannibalism. Among no people of the continent is the eating of human flesh so much a recognized and systematic custom as among the Monbuttoo. The testimony of Dr. Schweinfurth we give in his own language: “Surrounded as the Monbuttoo are by a number of people who are blacker than themselves, and who, being inferior to them in culture, are consequently held in great contempt, they have just the opportunity which they want for carrying on expeditions of war or plunder that result in the acquisition of a booty which is especially coveted by them, consisting of human flesh. The carcasses of all who fall in battle are distributed upon the battle-field, and are prepared by drying for transport to the homes of the conquerors. They drive their prisoners before them without remorse, as butchers would drive sheep to the shambles, and those are only reserved to fall victims on a later day to their horrible and sickening greediness. During our residence at the court of Munza, the general rumor was quite current, that nearly every day some little child was sacrificed to supply his meal. It would hardly be expected that many opportunities would be afforded to strangers of witnessing the natives at their repast, and to myself there occurred only two instances when I came upon any of them whilst they were actually engaged in preparing human flesh for consumption. The first of these happened by my coming unexpectedly upon a number of young women who had a supply of boiling hot water upon the clay floor in front of the doorway of a hut, and were engaged in the task of scalding the hair off the lower half of a human body. The operation, so far as it was effected, had changed the black skin into a fawny gray, and the disgusting sight could not fail to make me think of the soddening and scouring of our fatted swine. On another occasion I was in a hut and observed a human arm hanging over the fire, obviously with the design of being at once dried and smoked.
“Incontrovertible tokens and indirect evidence of the prevalence of cannibalism were constantly turning up at every step we took. On one occasion Mohammed and myself were in Munza’s company, and Mohammed designedly turned the conversation to the topic of human flesh, and put the direct question to the king, how it happened at this precise time, while we were in the country, there was no consumption of human flesh? Munza expressly said, ‘that being aware that such a practice was held in aversion by us, he had taken care that it should only be carried on in secret.’”
There was no opportunity granted to any of Schweinfurth’s caravan of seeing the Monbuttoo at their meals. The Nubians had conscientious scruples which forbade their partaking food with these cannibals. The others, belonging to inferior native tribes, as the Mittoo or Bonga servants, were regarded as unworthy, being uncircumcised and savages, to sit at meal with the Monbuttoo.
Schweinfurth bought, with pieces of copper, quite a number of human skulls, that are now in the Anatomical Museum, in Berlin,—the unquestionable proofs that this people are unsurpassed in their devotion to this degrading and horrible practice; yet they are a remarkable and in many respects a noble race of men, “who display a certain national pride, and are endowed with an intellect and judgment such as few natives of the African wilderness can boast, men to whom one may put a reasonable question and who will return a reasonable answer.”
CHAPTER CLXVIII.
AFRICA—Continued.
THE PYGMIES.
A TRADITION OF THE CENTURIES — AN ETHNOLOGICAL QUESTION SETTLED — DR. SCHWEINFURTH’S DISCOVERY OF THE AKKA RACE — HIS INTERVIEW WITH ADIMOKOO — WAR-DANCE OF THE LITTLE PYGMY — CORPS OF AKKA WARRIORS — DR. SCHWEINFURTH’S PYGMY PROTEGÉ, NSEWUE — PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE AKKA — THEIR RESEMBLANCE TO THE BUSHMEN — DR. SCHWEINFURTH’S CONCLUSIONS IN REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF THE PYGMIES.
One of the chief results of Dr. Schweinfurth’s travels in Africa is the solution of a problem that for thousands of years has remained without any satisfactory answer. The ethnological question respecting the existence of a dwarf race in Central Africa, which has occasioned so much discussion, this traveller has forever settled. The classical writers of the centuries gone make mention of the Pygmies. The poet of the Iliad alludes to them as though the fact of their existence had been long and well-known. Historians like Herodotus and Aristotle, as well as the poets, give similar testimony. For three or four centuries before the Christian era, the Greeks seem to have fully believed in the existence of a dwarf race in equatorial Africa.