Native life in East Africa

by Karl Weule

The task of the two gentlemen I have mentioned is purely geographical, consisting in the examination of the interesting volcanic area situated between Kilimanjaro and the Victoria Nyanza, while I am commissioned to bring some order into the chaos of our knowledge concerning the tribes who occupy approximately the same region. It must be remembered that the country surrounding Lakes Manyara and Eyasi, and extending to a considerable distance south of them, swarms with tribes and peoples who, in spite of the fact that our acquaintance with them dates more than twenty years back, still present a variety of ethnological problems. Among these tribes are the Wasandawi, whose language is known to contain clicks like those of the Hottentots and Bushmen, and who are conjectured to be the forgotten remnant of a primæval race going back to prehistoric ages. The Wanege and Wakindiga, nomadic tribes in the vicinity of Lake Eyasi, are said to be akin to them. In the whole mass of African literature, a considerable part of which I have examined during my twenty years’ study of this continent, the most amusing thing I ever came across is the fact that our whole knowledge up to date of these Wakindiga actually results from the accident that Captain Werther had a field-glass in his hand at a given moment. This brilliant traveller, who traversed the district in question twice (in 1893 and 1896), heard of the existence of these people, but all that he saw of them was a distant telescopic view of a few huts. As yet we know no more of them than their bare name, conscientiously entered in every colonial or ethnological publication that makes its appearance.

Another group of as yet insufficiently-defined tribes is represented by the Wafiomi, Wairaku, Wawasi, Wamburu and Waburunge. All these are suspected of being Hamites, and some of them have evolved remarkable culture-conditions of their own. But, under the onrush of new developments, they are in danger of losing their distinctive character still more rapidly than other African peoples, and, if only for this reason, systematic observations are needed before it is too late. The same may be said of the Wataturu or Tatoga, who are undoubtedly to be looked on as the remnant of a formerly numerous population. They are said to speak a language related to Somali, but now live scattered over so wide a territory that the danger of their being effaced by absorption in other races is, if possible, still greater than in the case of the others. The last of the tribes which specially concern me are the Wanyaturu, Wairangi and Wambugwe. All of these belong to the great Bantu group, but have, in consequence of their isolation, preserved certain peculiarities of culture so faithfully that they too will be well worth a visit.

IN THE EUROPEAN QUARTER, DAR ES SALAM

With regard to the original home of the African race, this is a question to which ethnologists have not hitherto devoted very much attention. The Hamites, who occupy the north-eastern corner of the continent, are supposed by all writers without exception to have come from Asia across the Red Sea. Most authorities have been content with comparatively short periods in estimating the date of this migration—indeed, the most recent work on the subject, Captain Merker’s book on the Masai (whom, by the bye, he claims as Semites) asserts that both date and route can be accurately calculated, and places the former about 5,000 years ago.

Not only for these, moreover, but also for the great mass of the population of Africa, the Sudanese and Bantu negroes, an original home outside the continent is very generally assumed; and both these groups are supposed to have penetrated to their present abodes from Asia, either by way of the Isthmus of Suez, or across the Straits of Bab el Mandeb.

This theory I had the pleasure of combating some years ago. There is absolutely nothing to show that the ancestors of the present negro race ever lived elsewhere than in the region which, in the main, they occupy to-day. No branch of this large group can be shown to have possessed any nautical skill worth mentioning; and none has ever ventured far out to sea.

It may be said that no great knowledge of navigation was needed for crossing the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, even if the migration did not take place by way of the Isthmus. The problem, however, is by no means to be solved in this simple fashion. Modern anthropology demands for human evolution periods as long as for that of the higher animals. Diluvial Man has long since been recognized by our most rigid orthodoxy; and people would have to get used to Tertiary Man, even if the necessities of the case did not make him an indispensable postulate. As the youth of mankind recedes into early geological periods, the problem of race-development is seen to require for its solution not merely measurements of skull and skeleton, but the vigorous cooperation of palæontology and historical geology. So far as I can judge, the sciences in question will probably end by agreeing on three primitive races, the white, black and yellow, each having its centre of development on one of the old primitive continents. Such a continent in fact existed through long geological ages in the Southern Hemisphere. A large fragment of it is represented by modern Africa, smaller ones by Australia and the archipelagoes of Indonesia and Papua. The distribution of the black race from Senegambia in the west to Fiji in the east is thus explained in a way that seems ridiculously easy.

To account for the great groups of mixed races, too, we must for the future, in my opinion, have recourse to the geological changes of the earth’s surface. Whence do we derive the Hamites? and what, after all, do we understand by this term, which, curiously enough, denotes a zone of peoples exactly filling up the geographical gap between the white and black races? Furthermore, how are we to explain the so-called Ural-Altaic race, that mass of peoples so difficult to define, occupying the space between the primitive Mongol element in the East and the Caucasian in the West? Does not, here too, the thought suggest itself that the impulse to the development of both groups—the North African as well as the North Asiatic—came from a long-continued contact between the ancient primitive races which, according to the position of affairs, i.e., judging by the geological changes which have taken place, both in the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean, and in the east of Northern Europe—was only rendered possible by the junction of the old continents formerly separated by seas? In fact the land connection in both these places is, geologically speaking, very recent.

To come back from dreary theory to cheerful reality, I may mention that I have taken a few successful photographs of Cape Guardafui. From the north this promontory does not look very imposing. The coast seems quite near, but in reality we are five or six miles away from it, and at this distance the cliffs, though nearly a thousand feet high, are reduced to insignificance.