The women are clad like the Golos and Bongos, but are more reserved and retiring than the latter. Both men and women dress their hair, grown long, in various styles. Beards are cultivated and are greatly admired if long.
Of cannibalism amongst the Nyam Nyams there is not much heard, but it is a fact that they eat their enemies who have fallen in battle and those who die. They eat dogs when they can get them. Schweinfurth considers this custom as allied to cannibalism.
Lighter coloured than the other tribes, they consider themselves “white men.”
Country, etc.Both Tembura and Yambio have a fine country, perhaps the cream of the Bahr El Ghazal, well watered by flowing streams, undulating, and growing many lulu, banana, and other fine trees. The country teems with many kinds of game: elephant, eland, rhinoceros, and buffalo all being numerous, the former especially so. The Nyam Nyams manufacture a white cotton cloth, similar to fine sacking. They are practically all clothed, and would probably readily purchase cloth.
Their arms are bows, arrows and spears, but both these sultans now possess a considerable number of rifles.
They were formerly, in the old Government days, converts to Islam, but they (Tembura at any rate) both now merely believe in the existence of a God, without participating in any form of religion.
Mittu, Madi and Wira.The Mittu, Madi, and Wira Tribes.—These tribes, living on the eastern border of the Nyam Nyams, resemble the Bongos, but are physically inferior to the latter. They have suffered too, in the same way as the Bongos, from the raids of the Nyam Nyams.
The Madi and Wira tribes are really sub-tribes of the Mittu, and they all speak the same Mittu dialect.
Teeth.Regarding the teeth of the different tribes:—
Jurs and Dinkas extract the lower incisors; the Nyam Nyams file the upper incisors to a point; Golos, Ndoggos, Bongos, and Belandas file the upper incisor only on the inner aspect. But many of the latter, who have been brought up in the Nyam Nyam country, have the tooth-marks of that tribe. In fact, the tooth distinction is becoming less characteristic, owing to interchanging of tribes.