“In and around Niuchi.”
“And you, Kumidachi,” I went on, turning to another old man, in a new embroidered fez, which marked him as a headman, “to what litawa do you belong?”
“Nanyanga,” was the prompt reply. Instantly the name is written down, and my eye rests questioningly on the next wise man. He, one of the quickest, already knows what is wanted, and does not wait to be asked, but calls out, “Wamhwidia.”
But I cannot go on in this way—I must find out, not only the names but their meanings. I have already discovered, in my study of personal names, how fond the natives are of discussing etymologies, and here, too, only a slight hint is needed to get the meaning of the clan-name as well as the name itself. I had translated Waniuchi as “the people of Niuchi;” but this interpretation did not satisfy these black philologists,—niuchi was “a bee,” they said, and the Waniuchi were people who sought honey in hollow trees. The Nanyanga were flute players in time of war, nanyanga being the name of the Makonde flute. The Wamhidia, they said, had their name derived from the verb muhidia, “to strike down,” from their warlike ancestors, who were continually fighting, and had beaten down everything before them.
That afternoon, the old men, in spite of their weariness, had to keep on much longer than usual: I had tasted blood and pumped them, till, about sunset, their poor brains, unaccustomed to such continued exertion, could do no more. They, however, received an extra tip, in return for their self-sacrificing help in this difficult subject. Even Moritz, the finance-minister, had to-day quite lost his usual hang-dog expression, and grinned all over his brown face when he came, after we had struck work, to hand my assistants their bright new silver pieces. Since then I have devoted all my efforts to the study of the clan system, and do not know what most excites my astonishment, the social differentiation of the tribes, their subdivision into innumerable matawa and dihimu (plural of nihimu), or the fact that, as I am forced to assume, none of my predecessors in this field of study has had his attention called to this arrangement. However, when I come to think it over, I have no reason to be surprised, for in the first place, I had been travelling about the country for months without suspecting the existence of the clan system, and in the second, it was a mere accident that, in the discussion just described, the answer happened to take just the form it did. Men are to a certain extent at the mercy of the unforeseen—the scientific traveller most of all.
Needless to say, immediately after this momentous discovery, I came back to the problem of the Yaos. After my Makua and Makonde men had for some time been dictating name after name with the most interesting explanations into my note-book, Nils Knudsen suddenly said, “The Yaos have something of that sort, too.” Ten minutes later, swift messengers were already on the way to fetch up from the plain any men of that tribe who had the slightest pretensions to intelligence. They all came up—Zuza, and Daudi, and Masanyara and the rest. Even now the examination was no easy task, either for me or for the subjects, but after honestly doing my best, I got enough out of them to be able to say, “Nils Knudsen is right, the Yaos, too, have something of the sort.” Not only so, but in their case I ascertained without much difficulty that there is a second division into large groups, quite independent of the system of matriarchal, exogamous clans.
Of the great groups of the Yao tribe, which is now spread over an extraordinarily large region of East Africa, since it extends from Lake Chilwa in the south almost to the gates of Lindi in the north, the following are known to us,—the Amakale, near the sources of the Rovuma, the Achinamataka or Wamwembe at Mataka’s, between the Rovuma and the Lujende; the Amasaninga, originally at the south end of Lake Nyasa; the Achinamakanjira, or Amachinga, on the Upper Lujende; the Mangoche in the neighbourhood of Blantyre. The indication of the residences of these great groups, as here given, has now merely a historic value. Through the gradual migrations already alluded to, the old limits of the groups are now quite effaced, and can no longer be definitely laid down on the map. The clans, too (here called ngosyo, plural of lukosyo), cannot possibly have any definite position assigned them on the map; and this is also true of the other tribes. Some clans, indeed, may have a recognizable centre of distribution, but in general, the same confusion prevails here as in the case of the larger divisions.
It was not merely curiosity which made me so persistent in inquiring into the meaning of clan names, but the desire to ascertain whether they convey any indications of totemism. It may not be superfluous to say that the word totem comes from North America, and was originally applied to the drawings of animals appended by the Iroquois chiefs to their treaties with the white man by way of signature, the animal represented being that from which the clan of the signatory traced its descent. Totemism was first studied among these North American Indians, but was afterwards discovered to exist in Australia, apparently, also, in Melanesia, and in a very marked form among the older populations of India, as well as in various other parts of the world. In most cases, the clans trace their descent from some animal, which is reckoned sacred and invulnerable and must not be hunted or eaten. In some isolated instances it is even considered the height of good fortune for a man to be eaten by his totem animal. Small and harmless creatures, as well as plants, are also chosen as totems—otherwise it would scarcely be possible to find enough; as, for example, in Southern India, where the totems are innumerable. I cannot here give the whole long series of clan names collected by me for all three tribes, but must refer the reader for this part of my results to the official publication. But it was interesting to find that though totemism no longer consciously exists among the natives, many a small trait witnesses to its former prevalence. To point out these traits in detail will be the task of later inquirers, I will here give only a few specimens of the clan names.
PHONOGRAPHIC RENDERING OF A NATIVE SONG