In Africa: Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country

by John T. McCutcheon

Outlined Against the Sky

A Reception Committee

Kavirondo had restored the baby! There was an instant impulse to rush down to see the glad reunion, but better counsel prevailed. Such a charge, en masse, even though friendly, might frighten the natives away. So Akeley alone went down and assured the father and mother that we were friendly and that nothing would harm them. And when he came back it was to report that the parents and the little baby were peacefully installed in their forest home again.

She Threw Her Baby Away

Early in the morning we went down to see our strange friends. They had greatly increased in number during the night. There were now one man, two of his wives, an old woman, and eight children, and the tiny baby. All fear had vanished, and they seemed certain that no harm was likely to come to them.

The man was a good-looking, strongly built native with fine honest eyes. The women were comely and the children positively handsome. I have never seen such a healthy, fine-eyed, well-built assortment of childhood, ranging all the way from three months up to eight or nine years of age. He was the president of the Anti-Race Suicide Club. We gave them all presents—beads to the children and brass wire to the women. We also made up a little fund of rupees for the baby, although money seemed to mean nothing to any of them. They had never seen white men before and probably knew nothing of metal money. Beads and brass wire were the only currency they knew. We tried to photograph them, but the shades in the forest were deep and the light too was bad for successful pictures.

Little by little we got their story.

There was warfare between the forest people and the savage Kara Mojas to the north. Neither side could ever tell when a band of the foe would swoop down upon them, killing the men, stealing the sheep and seizing the women. Only a few months before one of the Kara Mojas had come in and stolen some sheep and in return our Wanderobo friend had sallied forth, killed the Kara Moja, and captured his wife. It was the latter who was now the mother of the little baby, and she seemed quite reconciled to the change.