North of the Negro are the Nuba Fulah group, apparently indigenous to Africa, but without any thing in common with the other indigenous groups. Their name, "Pullo," or "Fulah," means "yellow," and their color serves to distinguish them from the Negro. The Hottentot, Bantu, Negro, and Fulah, though distinct, have each of them the agglutinative forms of speech. The Hamites are found along the valley of the Nile, in Abyssinia, and portions of the Sudan. The Shemitic tribes occupy the larger part of the Sudan, bounded on the east by the Nile, and on the north by the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
About one-half of the population are Negroes proper, one-fourth Bantu, one-fourth Shemites and Hamites, a few Nuba Fulahs and Hottentots. The Negroes and Bantu are Pagans; the Shemites and Hamites, Mohammedans. There are, almost, innumerable tribes, speaking different languages or different dialects. Over six hundred tribes and languages have been classified by Shilo, yet each is generally unintelligible to the other. Practically speaking, there are but two great divisions,—the Negroes and Bantu, occupying equatorial and southern Africa; and the Hamites and Shemites, northern Africa. But there is no clear-cut line even between the Mohammedan and Negro. For many hundred years the Negroes have been taken as slaves, and carried into the north of Africa, and have furnished the harems with wives, and the families with servants. The servants are often adopted into the families, so that the Negro blood now largely predominates even among the Shemites and Hamites.
A broader and more practical distinction than that of language or blood is made by the religion of the African. The Mohammedan religion was probably brought from Arabia by the Shemites. They conquered the country along the coast, and exterminated or pushed to the south the former inhabitants. Then, more slowly but steadily, Mohammedanism forced its way south by the sword or by proselyting. Within the last thirty years it has re-assumed its proselyting character, and is now more rapidly extending than at any previous time.
Its missionaries are of a race nearly allied to the Negro. They live among them, adopting their customs, and often intermarrying with them. They teach of one God, whom all must worship and obey, and of a future life whose rewards the Negro can comprehend. They forbid the sacrifice of human victims to appease the wrath of an offended deity. They forbid drunkenness. They give freedom to the slave who becomes a Moslem, and thus elevate and civilize those among whom they dwell. The Christian missionary is of a race too far above him. He is a white man, his lord and master. He teaches of things his mind cannot reach, of a future of which he can form no conception; he brings a faith too spiritual; he labors with earnestness and devotion, even to the laying-down of his life. Yet the fact remains that Christianity has produced but little impression in civilizing and elevating the people, while the influence of Mohammedanism is spreading on every side.
In passing from the equator south, the tribes become more degraded. Sir Henry Maine enunciated the theory of the evolution of civilization from the lowest state of the savage. In Africa he could have found all stages of civilization; in the lowest scale, man and his mate, living entirely on the fruits of the earth, in a nude condition, his only house pieces of bark hung from the trees to protect him from the prevailing wind; the vulture his guide to where, the previous night, the lion had fallen on his prey, leaving to him the great marrow-bones of the elephant or the giraffe; his only arms a stick; belonging to no tribe, with no connection with his fellow-men, his hand against every man, the family relation scarcely recognized. It is the land of the gorilla, and there seems to be little difference between the man and the ape, and both are hunted and shot by the Boers. In ascending the scale, the family and tribal relation appears,—a house built of cane and grass or the bark of the tree; a few flocks; skill in setting traps for game; the weapon a round stone, bored through, and a pointed stick fastened in the hole. Then come tribes of a low order of civilization, that cultivate a little ground, having a despotic king, who has wives without limit, numbering in some cases, it is said, 3,000; wives and slaves slaughtered at his death, to keep him company and serve him in another life. With them, cannibalism is common. Then come tribes of a higher civilization, where the power of the chief is limited, where iron, copper, and gold are manufactured, and trade is carried on with foreigners, where fire-arms have been substituted for the bow and spear; next the Mohammedan; and last of all, on the shores of the Mediterranean, the civilization of the French and English.
It is a curious fact that many tribes that had made considerable advance in manufacturing iron and copper, have for some time ceased manufacturing; that others have retrograded, and have lost some of the arts they formerly possessed. This decline apparently took place after the Mohammedans had conquered North Africa, and sent their traders among the Negro tribes, who sold the few articles the Negro needed cheaper than they could manufacture them, and therefore compelled them to give up their own manufactures. Such was the effect of free trade on interior Africa. The Mohammedans also manufacture less than formerly, depending more and more upon European manufactures. The enterprise of the white race defies native competition, and stifles attempts at native manufactures: there is therefore among the natives a great falling-off in the progress of outward culture, and the last traces of home industries are rapidly disappearing.
SLAVE-TRADE.
One of the departments of this society is the geography of life. At the head of all life stands man: it is therefore within our province to investigate those questions which more intimately concern and influence his welfare.
Slavery and the slave-trade have, within the last two hundred years, affected African life more than all other influences combined; and this trade, with all its sinister effects, instead of diminishing, is ever increasing. It has had a marked effect not only on the personal and tribal characters of the inhabitants, but on their social organization, and on the whole industrial and economic life of the country. It has not only utterly destroyed many tribes, but it has made the condition of the other tribes one of restless anarchy and insecurity. It has been the great curse of Africa, and for its existence the nations of Europe have been, and are, largely responsible. The temper and disposition of the Negro make him a most useful slave. He can endure continuous hard labor, live on little, has a cheerful disposition, and rarely rises against his master.
There are two kinds of slavery,—home and foreign. The first has always prevailed in Africa. Prisoners taken in war are sacrificed, eaten, or made slaves. Slavery is also a punishment for certain offences, while in some tribes men frequently sell themselves. These slaves are of the same race and civilization as their masters. They are usually well treated, regarded as members of the family, to whom a son or daughter may be given in marriage, the master often preferring to keep his daughter in the family to marrying her to a stranger. This slavery is a national institution of native growth. It is said one half of the inhabitants are slaves to the other half. The horrors of the slave-trade are unknown in this kind of slavery.