CHAPTER CLXIII.
AFRICA—Continued.
THE MANYUEMA COUNTRY.
LIVINGSTONE’S DEPARTURE FROM UJIJI — LORD OF THE PARROT — GRAPHIC PICTURE — MOENÉKUSS AND HIS SONS — FEAR OF THE MANYUEMA — THEIR HORRIBLE DEEDS — REMARKABLE BEAUTY OF THE COUNTRY — AGRICULTURE OF THE PEOPLE — THEIR VILLAGES — DWELLINGS — THE WOMEN CLEVER TRADERS — THEIR VALUE AS WIVES — RITE OF CIRCUMCISION — LARGE POPULATION — THE CHITOKA — VIVID DESCRIPTION OF MARKET-DAY — DREADFUL MASSACRE.
The Manyuema country, for which Livingstone set out on the 12th of July, 1869, from Ujiji, the Arab settlement on Lake Tanganyika, had till then never been visited by any white man. It will be seen that its people differ from any of the tribes on the East Coast. Thinking that this portion of Africa, hitherto untravelled by foot of civilized man, must abound in ivory, the Arab merchants were desirous of securing the rich stores awaiting the earliest adventurers. Livingstone accompanied the first of these bands of Ujijan traders who entered this new field. The distance from Lake Tanganyika to Bambarré or Moenékuss (the paramount chief of the Manyuema) is about forty days’ travel.
The light-gray parrot with red tail which is so common in this region, and which is called Kuss or Koos, gives this chief his name, which means Lord of the Parrot. The pronunciation by the Manyuema is Monanjoose. This district is in the large bend of the Lualaba River, which is much larger here than at Mpwéto’s, near Moero Lake.
The course taken by the great explorer led over a very uneven country. It was up and down hills perpetually; now into dells filled with enormous trees, some of which were twenty feet in circumference and sixty or seventy feet to the first branches; then, rising upon some commanding height, the vast valley Jorumba lay before him with all its remarkable beauty. There were many villages dotted over the slopes of these mountains. One had been destroyed, showing by the hard clay walls and square form of the houses that it belonged to the Manyuema. A graphic picture of the country and its scenery is given by Dr. Livingstone. “Our path lay partly along a ridge, with a deep valley on each side. On the left the valley was filled with primeval forests, into which elephants, when wounded, escape completely. The bottom of this great valley was two thousand feet below us. Then ranges of mountains, with villages on their bases, rose as far as they could reach. On our right there was another deep but narrow gorge, and mountains much higher than on the ridge close adjacent. Our ridge wound from side to side, and took us to the edge of deep precipices,—first on the right, then on the left, till down we came to the villages of chief Monandenda. The houses were all filled with fire-wood, and each had a bed on a raised platform in an inner room.
“The paths are very skilfully placed on the tops of ridges of hills, and all gulleys are avoided; otherwise the distance would be doubled and the fatigue greatly increased. The paths seem to have been used for ages; they are worn deep on the heights, and in the hollows a little mound rises on each side, formed by the feet tossing a little soil on one side. Many villages teeming with a prodigious population were passed on the route.”
Approaching a village they were met by a company of natives beating a drum. This is a signal of peace: if war be meant the attack is stealthy. The people are friendly if they have not been assailed and plundered by the Arabs. The arrows used are small, made of strong grass-stalks, and poisoned; those for elephants and buffaloes are large and poisoned also. The two sons of Moenékuss, who had lately died, had taken his place. As there were signs of suspicion on their part, the ceremony of mixing blood was performed. This consists in making a small incision on the forearm of each person and then mixing the bloods and making declarations and vows of friendship. Moenembagg, the elder of the two sons, and the spokesman on all important occasions said, “Your people must not steal: we never do,”—which was no unwarrantable claim in behalf of his tribe. Blood in a small quantity was then conveyed from one to the other by a fig-leaf. “No stealing of fowls or of men,” said this chief. “Catch the thief and bring him to me. One who steals a person is a pig,” said Mohamad. Stealing, however, began on our side, a slave purloining a fowl. “They had good reason,” says Livingstone, “to enjoin honesty upon us. They think that we have come to kill them; we light on them as if from another world; no letters come to tell who we are or what we want. We cannot conceive their state of isolation and helplessness, with nothing to trust but their charms and idols, both being bits of wood.”
The village huts are very inconvenient, with low roofs and low door-ways. The men build them, but the women have to keep them well supplied with fire-wood and water. They carry their burdens in large baskets hung to the shoulders, like some of the fish-women in European cities.
Other tribes live in great terror of the Manyuema, whom they represent as man-eaters. A woman’s child crept into the corner of the hut to eat a banana. The mother, having missed him, at once suspected that the Manyuema had kidnapped him to eat him. She ran in a frenzy through the camp, screaming “Oh, the Manyuema have stolen my child to make meat of him! Oh, my child eaten! Oh! Oh!”
Two fine-looking young men made a visit to Livingstone one day. After preliminary questions about his country, such as “Where is it?” they asked whether people die there, and where they go after death. “Who kills them? Have you no charm (buanga) against death?” They were told that his people pray to the Great Father Mulungu, and he hears them, all which seemed to satisfy their curiosity as very reasonable.
The bloody and murderous propensity of the Bambarré people is evinced by the most horrible deeds. If a man be at work alone in the field he is almost sure of being slain. When they tell of each other’s deeds the heart sickens at the recital. Kandahara, brother of old Moenékuss, murdered three women and a child and also a trading-man, for no reason but to eat their bodies.
“The head of Moenékuss is said to be preserved in a pot in his house, and all public matters are gravely communicated to it, as if his spirit dwelt therein; his body was eaten; the flesh was removed from the head and eaten too. His father’s head is said to be kept also. In other districts graves show that sepulture is customary, but here no grave appears. Some admit the existence of this practice, but others deny it. In the Metamba country, adjacent to the Lualaba, a quarrel with a wife often ends in the husband killing her and eating her heart mixed up in a huge mess of goat’s flesh; this has the charm character. Fingers are taken as charms in other parts, but in Bambarré alone is the depraved taste the motive for cannibalism.”
The country inhabited by the Manyuema, which means forest people, is surpassingly beautiful. Livingstone gives this description in his journal: “Palms crown the loftiest heights of the mountains and their gracefully bended fronds wave beautifully in the wind; and the forests, usually about five miles broad between groups of villages, are indescribable. Climbers, of cable size, in great number, are hung among the gigantic trees; many unknown wild-fruits abound, some the size of a child’s head, and strange birds and monkeys are everywhere.
“The soil is very rich, and the people, although isolated by old feuds that are never settled, cultivate largely. They have selected a kind of maize that bends its fruit-stalk round into a hook, and hedges, some eighteen feet high, are made by inserting poles which sprout, like Robinson Crusoe’s hedge, and never decay. Lines of climbing plants are tied so as to go along from pole to pole, and the maize-cobs are suspended to these by their own hooked fruit-stalk. As the corncob is forming, the hook is turned round so that the fruit-leaves of it hang down and form a thatch for the grain beneath or inside of it. This upright granary forms a solid looking wall round the village. The people are not stingy, but take down maize and hand it to the men freely. Plantains, cassava, and maize are the chief food.
“The hoeing of the Manyuema is very superficial, being little better than the scraping of the soil. They leave the roots of maize, dura, ground-nuts, sweet potatoes, to find their way into the soft, rich earth. There is no need of plowing for ground-nuts, and cassava will resist the encroachments of grass for years. Rice will yield one hundred and twenty fold of increase, showing the wonderful fertility of the land. If kept free from weeds, the soil yields its grains and roots in the rankest profusion; pumpkins, melons, meleza, plantains, bananas, all flourish most abundantly. The Bambarré, however, are indifferent husbandmen, planting but a few things. The Balégga, like the Bambarré, rely chiefly upon plantains and ground-nuts. Their principal amusement is playing with parrots.
“It is the custom among this people to make approaches to the villages as difficult as possible. The hedges, which sprout and grow into a living fence, are covered with a sort of calabash, with its broad leaves, so that nothing appears of the fence outside.
“The villages are perched in the talus of each great range, so as to secure quick drainage. The streets generally run east and west in order that the heat of the sun may rapidly dissipate the moisture. The houses are mostly in line with meeting-houses at each end, fronting the middle of the street. The walls of these houses are of well-beaten clay, protected from the weather by the roof, the rafters of which are often the leaf-stalk of palms, split so as to be thin. The roofs are low, but well thatched with a leaf resembling that of the banana, but more durable. The leaf-stalk has a notch made in it of two or three inches lengthwise. This hooks to the rafters.”
These dwellings inside are very comfortable, and until the Arabs visited this tribe, vermin were unknown. Bugs and vermin go wherever the Arabs and Suaheli go.
“Where the southeast rains abound, the Manyuema place the back side of their houses to this quarter, and protect the walls by carrying the low roof considerably below the top of the walls. These clay walls will last for ages, and men often return after long years of absence to restore the portions that may have been washed away. Each housewife has from twenty-five to thirty earthen pots strung to the ceiling by neat, cord-swinging trestles, and often as many neatly-made baskets hung up in the same way, filled with fire-wood.”
The women are good traders, and ready for a bargain, bringing loads of provisions to exchange for beads. They are very strong, one basket three feet high being a woman’s load. They wear no dress, and their hair is plaited in the form of a basket behind. It is first rolled into a very large coil, then wound around something till it is eight or ten inches long, projecting from the back of the head.
The Manyuema buy their wives from each other. A pretty girl costs ten goats. When brought to the husband’s house, the new wife stays five days, then goes back and remains five days at home. The husband then goes for her again, and she remains with him afterward.
The remark is a common one among the Arabs, “If we had Manyuema wives, what beautiful children we should beget.” The men are usually handsome, and the women many of them are beautiful,—hands and feet, limbs and forms, perfect in shape, and the color light-brown. The women dress in a kilt of many folds of gaudy lambas. The orifices of the nose are widened by snuff-taking. Those addicted to the habit push the snuff as far up as possible with finger and thumb. The only filing of the teeth is a small space between the two upper front teeth. Yet with these disfigurements, Livingstone adds, “I would back a company of Manyuema men to be far superior in shape of head and generally in physical form too, against the whole Anthropological Society.”
Among all the Manyuema the rite of circumcision is performed upon the male children. If a head man’s son is to be operated on, an experiment is first made on a slave. Certain times of the year are regarded as unfavorable. If the trial prove successful, they go into the forest, beat drums, and have a feast. Unlike all other Africans they do not hesitate to speak about the rite even in the presence of women.
The inquiry very naturally arises, Whence came this custom? It seems to link this tribe, but lately unknown by all civilized peoples, dwelling in the interior of the great African continent, to a memorable people of whom this rite is the distinguishing characteristic. But, doubtless, somewhere and somehow along the centuries, this ancient rite of the Jewish people was communicated to this tribe.
Children in Manyuema do not creep, as those in civilized lands on their knees, but begin by putting forward one foot and using one knee; they will use both feet and both hands, but never both knees. An Arab child will do the same, never creeping, but getting up on both feet and holding on till he can walk.
The country swarms with villages. At some places the people are civil and generous, but at others, where the palm-trees flourish and palm-toddy is abundant, the people are consequently degraded and disagreeable, often inclined to fight on account of real or imaginary offences.
The Manyuema will not buy slaves, except females to make wives of them. They prefer to let their ivory rot than exchange it with the Arab traders for male slaves, who are generally criminals.
Iron bracelets are the usual medium of exchange and coarse beads and cowries. Copper is much more highly prized, and for a bracelet of this metal three fowls and three and a half baskets of maize are given.
Effigies of men made of wood may often be seen in Manyuema. Some are of clay, and cone-like, with a small hole in the top. They are called Bathata (fathers or ancients), and the name of each is carefully preserved. Ancient or later chiefs are thus kept in remembrance. The natives are very careful to have the exact pronunciation of the name. On certain occasions goat’s flesh is offered to them by the old men. No young person and no women are permitted to partake. The flesh of the parrot, though often eaten by old men, is forbidden to young men, with the belief that if eaten by them their children will have the waddling gait of this bird.
The banks of the Lualaba are thickly peopled. One of the best methods of judging in regard to the number of the inhabitants is a visit to the chitoka or market. This is attended principally by women. They hold market one day, and then have an interval of three days, going to other markets in other places. All prefer to buy and sell in the market rather than elsewhere. If one says, “Come, sell me that fowl or cloth,” the answer is, “Come to the chitoka,” or market-place. This market is an important and cherished institution in Manyuema. The large numbers inspire confidence, and also help to maintain or enforce justice between the traffickers. “To-day,” adds Livingstone, “the market contained over a thousand people carrying earthen pots and cassava, grass-cloth, fishes, and fowls. They were alarmed at my coming among them, and were ready to flee. Many stood afar off in suspicion.” At another time he counted over seven hundred passing his hut on their way to market. It is the supreme pleasure of these women to haggle and joke, to laugh and chaffer. The sight of the throng is a peculiar one: women, some old, some young and beautiful, are mingled together.
All chiefs claim the privilege of shaking hands; that is, they touch the hand held out with their palm, then clap two hands together, then touch again and clap again, and the ceremony is ended.
Livingstone gives this description of market-day in Manyuema: “The market is a busy scene; every one is in dead earnest; little time is lost in friendly greetings. Venders of fish run along with potsherds full of snails or small fishes, or young Clarias capensis, smoke-dried and spitted on twigs, or other relishes, to exchange for cassava-roots, dried after being steeped about three days in water; potatoes, vegetables or grain, bananas, flour, palm-oil, fowls, salt, pepper. Each is intensely eager to barter food for relishes, and makes strong assertions as to the goodness or badness of everything; the sweat stands in beads on their faces; cocks crow briskly even when strung over the shoulder, with their heads hanging down, and pigs squeal; iron knobs, drawn out at each end to show the goodness of the metal, are exchanged for cloth of the muabe-palm. They have a large funnel of basket-work below the vessel holding the wares, and slip the goods down, if they are not to be seen.
“They deal fairly, and when differences arise they are easily settled by the men interfering or pointing to me; they appeal to each other and have a strong sense of natural justice. With so much food changing hands among the three thousand attendants, much benefit is derived. Some come from twenty to twenty-five miles. The men flaunt about in gaudy-colored lambas of many-folded kilts; the women work hardest; the potters slap and ring their earthenware all around, to show that there is not a single flaw in them. I bought two finely-shaped earthen bottles of porous earthenware, to hold a gallon each, for one string of beads. The women carry huge loads of them in their funnels above the baskets strapped to the shoulders and foreheads, and their hands are full besides. The roundness of the vessels is wonderful, seeing no machine is used. No slave could be induced to carry half so much as they do willingly. It is a scene of the finest natural acting imaginable,—the eagerness with which all sorts of assertions are made; the earnestness with which, apparently, all creatures above, around, and beneath are called on to attest the truth of what they allege; and then the intense surprise and withering scorn cast on those who despise their goods: but they show no concern when the buyers turn up their noses at them. Little girls run about selling cups of water for a few small fishes to the half-exhausted, wordy combatants. To me it was an amusing scene. I could not understand the words that flowed off their glib tongues, but the gestures were too expressive to need interpretation.
“Dugumbé’s horde tried to domineer over these market-women. ‘I shall buy that,’ said one. ‘These are mine,’ said another. ‘No one must touch these but me,’ said a third. They soon learned, however, that they could not monopolize nor coerce, but must deal fairly. These women are very clever traders, stand by each other, and will not submit to nor allow overreaching by any one.”
But this cheerful scene of eager and active life was doomed to be darkened by a dreadful deed of bloodshed and horror. We leave Livingstone to narrate in his graphic way the story of this merciless and unpardonable massacre of unoffending women:—
“It was a hot and sultry day, and when I went into the market I saw Adie and Manilla and three of the men who had lately come with Dugumbé. I was surprised to see these three with their guns, and felt inclined to reprove them, as one of my men did, for bringing weapons into the market; but I attributed it to their ignorance. It being very hot I was walking away to go out of the market, when I saw one of the fellows haggling about a fowl and seizing hold of it. Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun. Crowds dashed off from the place and threw down their wares in confusion and ran. At the same time that the three opened fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the market-place, volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women who dashed at the canoes. These, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek. The men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many. Men and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking. A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off. In going toward it they had put the left shoulder to the current of about two miles an hour. If they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land; as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish.
“Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing. Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly, while other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms; three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends until all went down together and disappeared. One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his head; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drowning. By and by all the heads disappeared; some had turned down stream toward the bank and disappeared. Dugumbé put people into one of the deserted vessels to save those in the water, and rescued twenty-one; but one woman refused to be taken on board, thinking that she was to be made a slave: she preferred the chance of life by swimming, to the lot of a slave. The Bagenya women are experts in the water, as they are accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down stream may have escaped; but Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between three hundred and thirty and four hundred people. The shooting parties near the canoes were so reckless they killed two of their own people; and a Banyamwezi follower who got into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then came up again, and down to rise no more.
“My first impulse was to pistol the murderers, but Dugumbé protested against my getting into a blood-feud, and I was thankful afterward that I took his advice.
“After the terrible affair in the water this party of Tagamoio’s, who were the chief perpetrators, continued to fire on the people and burn their villages. As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank over those who are there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in the depths of the Lualaba. Oh, let Thy kingdom come! No one will ever know the exact loss on this bright, sultry summer morning. It gave me the impression of being in hell. All the slaves in the camp rushed at the fugitives on land and plundered them; women were for hours collecting and carrying loads of what had been thrown down in terror.
“Some escaped to me and were protected. Dugumbé saved twenty-one, and of his own accord liberated them. They were brought to me and remained over night near my house. I sent men with our flag to save some, for without a flag they might have been victims, for Tagamoio’s people were shooting right and left like fiends. I counted twelve villages burning this morning. I asked the question of Dugumbé and others, ‘Now, for what is all this murder?’ All blamed Manilla as its cause, and in one sense he was the cause; but it is hardly credible that they repeat that it is in order to be avenged on Manilla for making friends with head men, he being a slave. The wish to make an impression in the country as to the importance and greatness of the new-comers was the most potent motive; but it was terrible that the murdering of so many should be contemplated at all. It made me sick at heart. Who could accompany Dugumbé and Tagamoio to Lomané and be free from blood-guiltiness?
“I proposed to Dugumbé to catch the murderers and hang them up in the market-place as our protest against the bloody deeds before the Manyuema. If, as he and others added, the massacre was committed by Manilla’s people he would have consented, but it was done by Tagamoio’s people and others of the party headed by Dugumbé.
“This slaughter was peculiarly atrocious as we have always heard that women coming to and from market have never been known to be molested. Even when two districts are engaged in actual hostilities ‘the women’ say they ‘pass among us to market unmolested,’ nor has one ever been known to be plundered by the men. These nigger Moslems are inferior to the Manyuema in justice and right. The people under Hasani began the superwickedness of capture and pillage of all indiscriminately. Dugumbé promised to send over men to order Tagamoio’s men to cease firing and burning villages. They remained over among the ruins, feasting on goats and fowls, all night, and next day continued their infamous work till twenty-seven villages were destroyed.
“I restored thirty of the rescued to their friends.... An old man called Kabolo came for his old wife. I asked her if this was her husband; she went to him and put her arms lovingly around him and said ‘Yes.’ I gave her five strings of beads to buy food, all her stores being destroyed with her house. She bowed down and put her forehead to the ground as thanks, and old Kabolo did the same; the tears stood in her eyes as she went off.
“The murderous assault on the market-people felt to me like Gehenna without the fire and brimstone; but the heat was oppressive, and the firearms pouring their iron bullets on the fugitives was not an inapt representation of burning in the bottomless pit.”