While on the subject of sheep-eating, it may be worth while to mention another of their peculiar superstitious practices, much encouraged by the medicine men, which was known by the somewhat unpleasant name of “vomiting sin.” When a man was sick, and went to the witch doctor to be cured of his illness, he was very often told that his illness was due to the anger of God at some sin he had committed, and that, if he wished to recover, the only thing to do was for him to go through an extremely unpleasant ceremony, which I will describe. If he agreed to do so—and I do not think that the man who refused would enjoy much good health afterwards—he brought a sheep to the witch doctor, who, having killed it, wound portions of the entrails round the patient’s neck, wrists, and ankles. Then, taking out the dung, he emptied it into a calabash, and mixed it with water, until it was quite liquid. Taking his place opposite the patient, who squatted on the floor with his mouth open, the witch doctor took a couple of small bundles of twigs with the leaves on, and commenced beating the mixture in the bowl with them, and splashing it into the patient’s mouth until he was violently sick, when the sin was supposed to be got rid of, and the patient would go away expecting to be quite well in a short time.
On my asking one of these old frauds what became of the sheep, he explained that he would eat it himself, as if any one else ventured to touch the meat, he would die at once. When I said that I should have no objection to eating a leg, and was certain that no ill consequence would follow, he replied: “Of course you could eat it quite safely. You are a great witch doctor like myself; but if any of these savages ate it, they would die at once!”
In the meantime, I made friends, by Pigasangi, with those natives with whom I had tried, on my first journey through the country, to make arrangements for that ceremony, and who said at the time, it will be remembered, they would wait. This enabled me to open up fresh food stations, and altogether my enterprise in that direction was progressing very satisfactorily. The only people who now caused me any trouble were the Kalyera, with whom I had always to be cautious when passing the borders of their country, as they were continually on the war-path, and I heard that they had lately extended their operations into close proximity to the railway, where they had been giving a lot of trouble by robbing and killing the Indians engaged on its construction.
Living, as I did, in close touch with the everyday life of the natives, I became well acquainted with their manners and habits of living, and I also managed to learn a good deal of their genealogy. I found that the Kikuyu tribe was divided into a number of clans, or mahirriga, each of which bore a distinctive heraldic sign on their shields. The origin of these clans was wrapped in mystery, none of the natives with whom I discussed the question being able to tell me how they originally came into existence, or what was their real purpose. The word “clan,” as we understand it, suggests unity and combination, but this certainly was not the interpretation of the term accepted by the members of these Kikuyu clans, the members of which were mixed up indiscriminately, and scattered all over the country. They all knew to which of the clans they belonged, and there the connexion seemed to end, so far as I could gather. The only similar instance of such “clans” that I can call to mind is the “clan” system which formerly existed among the Red Indians of North America, where men of different, and often hostile, tribes might belong to the same “clan,” the clans being known by the names of various animals, such as bear, wolf, fox, &c.
All the Kikuyu worship a god called Ngai, and I was given to understand that they had also another god, whom they called Ngoma, though this latter appeared to correspond more to our idea of the devil; for example, when a native went into a fit of hysterics at one of their war-dances, as I have previously stated was frequently the case, they said that it was Ngoma who had entered into him and caused it.
I noticed, in various parts of the country, quite a number of large trees which had been left standing alone, and which I took to have been left as landmarks when the ground had been cleared for cultivation. They were usually to be found on the top of a hill, and stood out prominently in the landscape. I found on inquiry, however, that these trees were looked upon as sacred, and had some religious or superstitious significance. The natives had many other curious beliefs and practices, and had many ways of seeking the favour of their god Ngai. Some of the chiefs, when things did not go right, were in the habit of killing a sheep, which they then took into the bush, and left there as a sacrifice to Ngai; and when a sheep had been sacrificed in this way, none of the natives would go near it, for fear of offending the god. When I remarked that Ngai did not eat, and therefore did not require food, they replied, “Oh, yes, in the morning everything is gone.” I took the trouble to find out what became of the sheep, and, as I expected, saw that the hyenas came during the night and ate it; and, to prove this, I shot a hyena one night while in the act of devouring the sacrificial sheep. But when I told them that this was the Ngai for whose benefit they were making these sacrifices, it did not alter their belief. Some of them told me that Ngai lived on the top of Mount Kenia; but others said that his habitation was on a mountain in the Kedong Valley, not far from Lake Naivasha. This mountain, on the summit of which is the crater of an extinct volcano, called Longanot, is known by the name of Kilemongai, which means “the mountain of God”; and it was said by the natives that any one going up this mountain would never come down again, as they were bound to die up there. This piece of superstition probably originated when the mountain was active, and there was every probability that any one going up would have but a poor chance of getting down alive.
When going down to Naivasha I had on various occasions noticed that the natives when they crossed certain streams used to leave a little food at a particular place, generally a few sweet potatoes broken up—sometimes it was left in the bush; and when I asked why they had done that, they gave me to understand that they were performing some religious rite, but I never managed to get any satisfactory explanation of it.
Still more curious, to my mind, were some huge heaps of stones to be seen at certain places as we passed along the caravan track. When we came within sight of one of these heaps a native would pick up a stone, or he had, perhaps, been carrying one for some time in anticipation of coming to the spot, and cast it on the heap, at the same time muttering some prayer to Ngai, as it was on these occasions that he would ask Ngai for anything that he was in need of. It struck me as very remarkable that in my later travels in Abyssinia I should come across the same kind of heaps of stones, while some of my Abyssinian followers went through a similar performance of adding to the heap. When I questioned an Abyssinian as to the meaning of the performance, he would reply by pointing in the direction of a church, which stood on the top of a hill away in the distance, and tell me that, not being able to go to the church to make his devotions, he threw a stone on the heap as a substitute for the performance of his religious duty; and I noticed that while putting the stone on the heap he would bow towards the church. The Abyssinians are, of course, members of a branch of the Coptic Church, and it struck me as possible that the idea had in some way travelled from them to the Kikuyu, who copied it, not knowing precisely what it meant, but understanding that it was some form of worship of Ngai.
I have already mentioned that the practice of spitting plays a large part in many of the Kikuyu customs, and I also found that the same thing prevailed among the people in the district up towards Lake Rudolph, and in fact it was the custom with the majority of the people up towards the north, as I found when I came in contact with them in my later travels. It might seem to Europeans a vulgar thing to enlarge upon, but it was by no means regarded in the same light by the inhabitants of East Africa, amongst whom it was regarded as the highest compliment you could pay a man if you spat on him, or, better still, on his children. On my first introduction to the big savage chief Wagombi, he asked me to spit on his children; and among both the Masai and Kikuyu a friendly introduction was not complete unless spitting had entered into it. They very seldom speak of their children without spitting, and I concluded that the practice denoted respect.
The Kikuyu had a great variety of dances; some were for men only and some for women only, while there were some in which it was the custom for both sexes to take part. There was also one particular dance, which was danced by all the young boys before they were circumcised, in which all who took part were painted white from head to foot, while each wore a kind of toy shield on the left arm and carried, in place of the usual spear of the warriors, a white wand, decorated with white goat’s hair. This band of whitewashed young savages went from village to village performing their dance, which they did very well, keeping remarkably good time, and as the postures were gone through each time in exactly the same way and in precisely the same order, it was evident that they had some recognized rule and method in their dancing.