To the north of the Gallas, between Abyssinia and the coast (from Cape Jibuti to Hamfila Bay), are the Afar (in the plural Afara) or Danakil (Dankali is in the singular), who form the bulk of the population of the French colony of Obok-Tajura. Physically they resemble the Somalis, but they are less Arabised. To the north of the Danakil there is a population akin, it is said, to the Agaw, or aborigines of Abyssinia, and known by the name of Saho or Shaho. It occupies the southern part of the country of Massowah, the northern being taken by the Ethiopian tribes known by the collective name of Massowans.[498]
From the somatological point of view, the Ethiopians are characterised by a rather high stature (1 m. 67 on the average), a brownish or chocolate-coloured complexion with a reddish tinge, by an elongated head (average ceph. ind., 75.7 to 78.1 on the living subject, according to Chantre), frizzy hair, intermediate between the curly hair of the Arabs and the woolly hair of the Negroes, and lastly by the face elongated to a perfect oval, and the prominent, straight or convex, very narrow nose.[499] Thin and slender, the Ethiopians have fine ankles and wrists, long and very sinewy limbs (especially the fore-arm), broad shoulders, and conical-shaped trunk like the ancient statues of Egypt. In short, they are good representatives of the Ethiopian race.
III. Fulah-Zandeh Group.—Under this term we include the whole series of populations resulting from the intermingling of the Ethiopians and the Nigritians (or Sudanese Negroes), and extending from east to west across the whole of Africa, over a belt of 5 to 6 degrees in width. This belt passes through the following regions, starting from the east: The country of the Masai (between Lake Rudolf and the 6th degree of latitude S.); the region comprised between the upper valleys of the right-hand tributaries of the Bahr-el-Arab on the one hand and the basin of the Ubangi-Welle on the other; Darfur, Dar-Runga, Wadai, Baghirmi, and Bornu; Dar Banda and the upper basin of the Shari; a good part of the basin of the Niger-Benue and the whole of the basin of the Senegal. This territorial zone may be divided from the ethnographical point of view into two distinct portions by the line of the watershed between the basins of the Nile and Congo on the one hand and the basins of the Chad, Niger, and Senegal on the other. To the east of this line dwell, in compact groups, the Zandeh or Niam-Niam, Masai, and other populations who have sprung from the intermingling of the Ethiopians with the Negroes of the eastern Sudan (Nilotic Negroes), and in some rarer cases with the Negrilloes and Bantus. To the west, on the contrary, we find, scattered over an immense tract, isolated groups of one population only, that of the Fulahs or Peuls, sprung from the crossings of Ethiopians with the Negroes of the central and western Sudan, and further impregnated with a strain of Arabo-Berber blood.
In the eastern group, which I propose to call provisionally the Zandeh group, we find the Masai and the Wakuafi peoples of an Ethiopian type modified by intermingling with the Nilotic Negroes of the north, with the Bantus and perhaps with the Bushmen of the south, to judge by the photographs published by Luschan. The Masai speak a Nilotic-Negro language. On the north-east they touch the habitat of the Gallas, and are surrounded on every other side by Bantu tribes, except on the north-west, where, between Lake Rudolf and the upper Bahr-el-Jebel, exist populations still imperfectly known, the Latukas, the Turkan, the Lurems, who are probably half-breeds in various degrees of Ethiopians and Nilotic Negroes,[500] as are the Drugu and the Lendu of the region of the sources of the Ituri, the Loggos and the Momvus or Mombuttus (who must not be confounded with the Mangbattus) of the upper valley of the Kibali.[501]
To the west of these tribes, in the basin of the Ubangi-Welle, we find a compact group of several peoples who, under various names, have however a certain family likeness in their physical type, manners and customs, and language. These are, in the first place, the Niam-Niam or Zandeh, who with their congeners the Banja dwell to the north of the Welle. They extend beyond the ridge which divides this river from the White Nile, in the upper valleys of the Sere, the Jubé, and other tributaries of the great river. We also find a few isolated Zandeh groups to the south of the Welle, but the greater part of the country watered by the left tributaries of this waterway is the domain of the Ababuas, the Abarmbos, and the Mangbattus or Monbuttus, remarkable for their light skin, as well as the lighter shade of their hair compared with that of the other Zandehs (fair hair in five per cent.). The Niam-Niam extend to the eastward to the country of the Makaraka (tribes of Bombeh, Idio, etc.), where they intermingle with the Mundus and the Babukurs. On the north-west the Zandeh are in contact with tribes still little known, like the Krej (basin of the upper Bahr-el-Arab), the Bandas, and the N’Sakkaras, who, however, seem to be closely related.[502]
The Niam-Niam and the Mangbattus, who may be taken as types of Zandeh populations, suggest physically the Ethiopians; however, strains of Nilotic-Negro blood are manifest among them. They have a civilisation well characterised by several traits in their material life: anthropophagy (see p. [147]), garments of bast (p. [183]), ornaments worn in the nostrils and in the lips perforated for the purpose, spiral-shaped bracelets, weapons of a particular kind (pp. [259] and [269]), partly borrowed from the Egyptians, as were perhaps their harp, bolster, and so many other objects. They are cultivators using the hoe (p. [192]), fetichists partly converted to Islamism and forming little despotic states.[503]
The populations encountered by the travellers Crampel, Dybowski, and Maistre westward of the countries peopled by the Zandeh, between the Ubangi and the Grinbingi (one of the principal branches of the Shari), must also be connected with the Zandeh group. These are, going from south to north, the Bandziri, the Ndris, the Togbo, the Languassi, the Dakoa, the Ngapu, the Wia-Wia, the Mandjo, the Awaka, and the Akunga. The physical type of these tribes suggests that of the Niam-Niam, except the stature, which is higher, (1 m. 73, according to Maistre). The language common to all these peoples, Ndris, differs from the Bantu dialects spoken on the Congo, and appears to approximate to the Zandeh language. As to their material culture and civilisation, these are almost the same as among the Zandeh tribes.[504]
FIG. 139.—Yoro Combo, fairly pure Fulah of Kayor (Futa-Jallon);
height, 1 m. 72; ceph. ind., 68.3; nas. ind., 81.2.
(Phot. Collignon.)