“BOUND BY BLOOD”
About twenty miles to the east of our route, although perfectly hidden by the intervening rugged country and lines of forest-covered hills, is a very strongly defended Tanàla town called Ikòngo, a place which maintained its independence of Hova domination until the French conquest. With considerable difficulty and some personal risk, my friend, Mr G. A. Shaw, managed to gain permission to visit this stronghold and introduce Christian teaching. The native chief, who became very friendly, wished to become closely allied to him by the custom of fàto-drà, or fàti-drà. This is a curious ceremony, in use among many Malagasy peoples, by which persons of different tribes or nationalities become bound to one another in the closest possible fashion. The name for it of fàto-drà—i.e. “bound by blood”—denotes that its object is to make those entering into the covenant to become as brothers, devoted to each other’s welfare, and ready to make any sacrifice for the other, since they thus become of one blood.
The ceremony consists in taking a small quantity of blood from the breast or side of each contracting party; this is mixed with other ingredients, stirred up with a spear-point, and then a little of the strange mixture is swallowed by each of them. Imprecations are uttered against those who shall be guilty of violating the solemn engagement thus entered into. A few Europeans, who have overcome their natural disgust to the ceremonial, and to whom it has been a matter of great importance to keep on good terms with some powerful chief, have occasionally consented to make this covenant. Thus the celebrated French scientist, M. Alfred Grandidier, became a brother by blood with Zomèna, a chief of the south-western Tanòsy, in order to gain his good will and help in proceeding farther into the interior. But in his case the blood was not taken from the contracting parties, but from an ox sacrificed for the purpose; the ceremony is then called famaké. In this case, a pinch of salt, a little soot, a leaden ball, and a gold bead were put into the blood, which was mixed with water. Sometimes pulverised flint, earth and gunpowder are added to the mixture. In the case of Count Benyowski, who in 1770 was made king of a large tribe on the eastern coast, he and the principal chiefs sucked a little blood from each others’ breasts. The Hova formerly followed a similar custom, but with some variations; and so lately as 1897 a high French official made a somewhat similar covenant, with a principal chief in the extreme south of the island. The fàto-drà has doubtless been observed by the various tribes in all parts of Madagascar, but there appears to have been a good deal of difference in the details of the ceremonial attending it.
BÉTSILÉO HOUSES
We spent a day at Imàhazòny, the last Hova military post in this direction, before plunging into the unknown route across the forest to the coast. The people from the little vàla (homesteads) came running out to see us as we went by, most of them having never seen a white face before. We noticed how different the Bétsiléo dialect is from the Hova form of Malagasy; the n in the latter is always nasal (ng) in the former; while numerous words are shorter than their equivalents as spoken in Imèrina; and the consonantal changes are numerous. Besides this, the vocabulary is very different for many things and actions. About two hours’ ride on the following morning brought us to the large village of Ivàlokiànja. We went into a house, the best in the village, for our lunch; it was the largest there, but was not so large as our tent (eleven feet square), and the walls were not six feet high. The door was a small square aperture, one foot ten inches wide by two feet four inches high, and its threshold two feet nine inches from the ground; so that getting into most Bétsiléo houses is quite a gymnastic feat, and it is difficult to understand how people could put themselves to so much needless inconvenience. Close to it, at the end of the house, was another door, or window (it was difficult to say which, as they are all pretty much the same size!), and opposite were two small openings about a foot and a half square. The hearth was opposite the door, and the fixed bedstead was in what is the window corner (north-west) in Hova houses. In this house was the first example I had seen of decorative carving in Malagasy houses; the external faces of the main posts being carved with a simple but effective ornament of squares and diagonals. There was also other ornamentation, much resembling the English Union Jack. The gables were filled in with a neat plaited work of split bamboo. The majority of the houses in this and most of the Bétsiléo villages are only about ten or twelve feet long by eight or nine feet wide, and the walls from three to five feet high. Hereabouts, the doors seem generally to face the north or north-west, and the house runs nearly east and west. Hova houses of the old style, on the contrary, are always placed with their length running north and south, and their single door and window facing the west—that is, on the lee-side of the house.
Types of carved ornamentation used by the Bétsiléo Malagasy in their burial memorials and their houses.
Types of carved ornamentation used by the Bétsiléo Malagasy in their burial memorials and their houses.
AN UNPLEASANT RIDE