The African native is a peasant, not only in his avocation, but in the way in which he sets about his courting. In no other department is his mental kinship with our own rustics so startlingly shown. To express it briefly: the native youth in love is too shy to venture a bold stroke for his happiness in person; he requires a go-between quite in the style of our own rural candidates for matrimony. This office is usually undertaken by his own father, who, under some pretext or other, calls on the parents of the bride-elect, and in the course of conversation touches on his son’s projects. If the other side are willing to entertain the proposition, the negotiations are soon brought to a satisfactory conclusion—that is to say, if the maid, too, is willing. Girls are not in reality so passive in the matter as we are apt to assume, but most certainly expect to have their wishes consulted; and many a carefully-planned match has come to nothing merely because the girl loved another man. In this respect there is not the slightest difference between white and black. Of course, not every native girl is a heroine of constancy and steadfastness; here and there one lets herself be persuaded to accept, instead of the young man she loves in secret, an elderly wooer who is indifferent to her, but in that case she runs the risk of incurring—as happens elsewhere—the ridicule of her companions. The old bridegroom, moreover, may be pretty certain that he will not enjoy a monopoly of his young wife’s society.
Marriage is a matter of business, thinks the African, quite consistently with his general character, and the contract is only looked upon as concluded when the two fathers have come to an agreement as to the amount of the present to be paid by the bridegroom. The people here in the south are poor—they have neither large herds of horned cattle, nor abundance of sheep and goats; the whole purchase—were it correct, which it is not, to call the transaction by that name—is effected by handing over a moderate quantity of calico.
Much more interesting from an ethnographic point of view than the Yao wooing just sketched, are the customs of the Makua and Makonde. In their case, too, negotiations are opened by the fathers; but this is, in reality, only a skirmish of outposts,—the main action is afterwards fought by the mothers, each supported by her eldest brother, or perhaps by all her brothers. The fact that the matriarchate is still flourishing here explains the part they take in the matter.
Nils Knudsen, by the way, can tell a pretty story—of which he is himself the hero—illustrating the constancy of native girls. During the years of his lonely life at Luisenfelde, he so completely adapted himself to native ways as to take a wife from among the Wayao. Even now, after the lapse of years, he never grew tired of praising the virtues of this chipini wearer;—she was pretty, and domestic, and a first-rate cook—she could make excellent ugali, and had all the other good qualities which go to make up a good housewife in the bush. One day he went off to the Rovuma on a hunting expedition; he was only absent a few days, but on his return she had disappeared. On the table lay a knotted piece of bark-string. He counted the knots and found that there were seventy; the meaning of the token, according to the explanation given by the wise men of the tribe being this:—“My kinsfolk have taken me away; they do not like me to live with the white man, and want me to marry a black man who lives far away on the other side of the Rovuma. But even if I should live as many years as there are knots on this string, I will not take him, but remain faithful to you, the white man.” This was Knudsen’s story, and he added, with emotion not untouched by the pride of a man who feels himself to be greatly sought after, the further statement that the girl was in fact keeping her vow. She was living far away, in the heart of the Portuguese territory, and near the man for whom she was destined, but even the strongest pressure brought to bear by her family could not make her give way. After all, there is such a thing as faithfulness in love.
The native wedding is a very tame affair—one might almost say that there is no such thing. Betrothal and marriage, if we may say so, coincide in point of time. When once the wooer has obtained the approval of the rightful authorities, there is no further hindrance to the union of the couple than the delay necessary for erecting a new hut for them. When this is done and they have taken up their abode in it, the young husband begins to work for his mother-in-law, in the manner aforesaid, which appears so strange to our European ideas, though we cannot deny that there is room for improvement in our manners in this respect.
Now, however, we have to consider the question of who may marry whom, or, in other words, the table of forbidden degrees. This question has its importance even in Europe—how much more among people so much nearer the primitive conditions of society. If it is for the wise men of an Australian tribe one of the highest problems of social science to determine with absolute correctness which girl among the surrounding families the young man A may marry, and who is eligible for the young man B, so neither are the matrimonially disposed in the Rovuma valley free to indulge their inclination in any direction they may choose.
It is late in the afternoon. In the baraza at Newala fifteen natives of respectable age are squatting, as they have done for some weeks past, on the big mat. From time to time one of these seniors rises, and leaves the building to stretch his cramped legs, but always returns after a short time. The place is hot, a fetid vapour hangs over the assembly, so that the European in khaki, writing so assiduously at his folding table, presses his hands again and again to his aching forehead. The company are obviously tired, but they have to-day been occupied with a very exhausting subject. Hour after hour, I—for I am the man with the headache—have been trying, in the first place, to make clear to Nils Knudsen the principles of human marriage customs, of the various tribal divisions, of totemism, of father-right and mother-right—in short, a whole series of points in sociology, but with no very satisfactory result, as is clearly shown by every question I put. Now the task before me is to elicit from the fifteen wise elders, with his help and that of the usually acute Sefu, everything they know on these subjects. All my small failures have made me quite savage, besides wearying me to the point of exhaustion; and it costs me an appreciable effort to fling a question into the midst of the learned assembly.
“Well, old Dambwala, lazy one, you have a son, have you not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Nantiaka, you have a daughter?”