[725]. H. Schinz, op. cit. p. 166. Compare J. Irle, Die Herero, p. 77.
[726]. J. Hahn, op. cit. iv. (1869) p. 500, note.
[727]. C. J. Andersson, Lake Ngami, pp. 228 sq. The ceremony is described more fully by the Rev. G. Viehe, “Some Customs of the Ovaherero,” (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) pp. 61 sq., from whose account some of the details in the text are borrowed.
[728]. The distinction is made also by Mr. J. Irle. According to him, while the fire-sticks are called ozondume (plural of ondume), the sticks which represent the ancestors are called ozohongue and are made from the omuvapu bush. In every chief’s house there is a bundle of about twenty of these ancestral sticks. When a chief dies, the sticks are wrapped in a portion of the sacred bull (omusisi) which is slaughtered on this occasion, and a new stick is added to the bundle. At the same time Mr. Irle tells us that the fire-sticks (ozondume) also represent the ancestors and are made like them from the omuvapu bush. See J. Irle, Die Herero, pp. 77, 79.
[729]. Bensen, quoted by J. Kohler, “Das Recht der Herero,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, xiv. (1900) p. 305.
[730]. Rev. G. Viehe, or his editor, op. cit. i. (1879) p. 39. The otyiza (otyiya) is the female fire-stick. See above, p. [218] note 1.
[731]. Rev. G. Viehe, in (South African) Folk-lore Journal, i. (1879) p. 61.
[732]. Ibid. p. 43, compare p. 50.
[733]. J. Irle, Die Herero, p. 79.
[734]. I have assumed that the ancestral sticks, whatever their origin, represent only men. This is plainly implied by Dr. Brincker, who tells us that “each of these sticks represents the male member of generation and in the Bantu sense a personality, which stands for the presence of the deceased chief on all festive occasions and especially at religious ceremonies” (“Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwestafrikas,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 74). In savage society women are of too little account for their ghosts to be commonly worshipped. Speaking of the Bantu peoples, a writer who knows them well observes: “This lack of respect for old women is a part of the natives’ religious system, and is connected with their conception of a future life, in which women play a subordinate part, their spirits not being able to cause much trouble, and therefore not being of much account” (Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 23).