CHAPTER CLXV.
AFRICA—Continued.
UNYAMWEZI.
SIGNIFICATION OF UNYAMWEZI — EXTENT OF ITS TERRITORY — CHARMING SCENERY — STANLEY’S DESCRIPTION — TREES OF FOREST — FRUIT-BEARING TREES — THE “MEDICINE MAN” — CREDULITY OF THE PEOPLE — DISEASE — PEN-PORTRAIT OF A MNYAMWEZI — THE YANKEE OF AFRICA — LOVE OF MUSIC — SINGULAR CUSTOMS IN REGARD TO BIRTH AND BURIAL — OLD AGE SELDOM SEEN — PROBABLE EXTINCTION OF THIS TRIBE.
Although an extended and interesting account of the people of Unyamwezi has been given in a former portion of this work (see page 386), we think our readers will be grateful for the additional sketch of them compiled from Stanley’s “Travels and Adventures in Central Africa,” resulting from his romantic and successful expedition in search of Livingstone.
The name Wanyamwezi, or Banyamwezi, as Livingstone gives it, is derived, he says, from an ivory ornament of the shape of the new moon, hung to the neck, with a horn reaching round over either shoulder. The tradition is that their forefathers came from the sea coast, and when people inquired after them they said, “We mean the men of the moon ornament.” This ornament is worn very extensively now and a large amount of ivory is used in its manufacture. Sometimes, however, the curved tusks of hippopotami are substituted for ivory.
If the name referred to the “moon ornament” as the people think, the name would be Ba or Wamwezi, but Banyamwezi means probably Ba, they or people, Nya, place, Mwezi, moon, people of the moon locality or moonland.
Note.—M is a prefix to denote a person of any country, as, for example, M-jiji, a native of Jiji. U is a prefix to denote the country, as U-jiji, meaning the country of the Jiji. Wa denotes persons, thus, Wa-jiji, means people of the Jiji. Wa-nya-mwezi, the people of Mwezi.
The pronunciation of this word, Unyamwezi, by the natives is Oo-nya-mwezi. Its meaning, according to the African explorers, Krapf, Burton, Speke, is “Country of the Moon.” Mr. Desbrough Cooley thinks it means “Lord of the World,” and its orthography, he thinks, should be Monomoezi. Mr. Stanley, however, differs from them all, and gives the following as the reason for his interpretation: There once lived a powerful and successful king in Ukalaganza, the original name of the country as known to the western tribes. His name was Mwezi, and after his death his sons contended for the possession of his power. The portions they secured as the result of their wars were named from them. The people of the central portion, Ukalaganza, accepting the one whom the old king had appointed his successor, came to be known at length as Children of Mwezi, and the country as Unyamwezi, while the other districts were called Konongo, Sagozi, Gunda, Simbiri, etc. This theory, so in conflict with the opinion of other travellers, Stanley bases upon a tradition related to him by the old chief of Masangi, which lies on the road to Mfuto. He confirms it also by the fact that the name of the king of Urundi is Mwezi, and the name of almost every village in Africa is named from some chief either living or dead.
This country contains about 24,500 square miles, and is divided into districts known as Unyanyembe, the most populous, Ugunda, Usagara, Ugara, Nguru, Usongo, etc.
No portion of East or Central Africa equals Unyamwezi in beauty of scenery. The blending of its forests with the clearings and plains, the rocky elevations here and there seen rising above the vari-colored leafage that lies like a carpet widely extended, constitute a view of unusual attraction. Though there are no majestic mountains, no picturesque or startling scenes, and a journey through the country does not awaken the emotion of sublimity, yet the landscape, as far as the eye can stretch in every direction, is one so lovely as to be forever remembered.
Stanley in describing it says, “The foliage is of all the colors of the prism; but as the woods roll away into the distance, the calm, mysterious haze enwraps them in its soft shroud, paints them first a light blue, then gradually a deeper blue, until, in the distance, there appears but a dim looming, and on gazing at its faded contour we find ourselves falling into a day-dream, as indistinct in its outline as the view which appears in the horizon. I defy any one to gaze on such a scene without wishing his life would fade away as serenely as the outlines of the forests of Unyamwezi.”
These forests abound with a great variety of trees, the wood of which, according to the peculiarity of each, is made useful by the natives.
The mkurongo is harder and more lasting than hickory and is susceptible of a very high polish. The pestle for pounding grain is made of this tree.
The bark from which their cloth is made comes from the mbugu. After being thoroughly soaked, it is pounded and then dried and rubbed, so that it resembles felt. The natives sometimes make ropes from this bark, and also round boxes for storing grain. These they ornament in various ways.
Another tree, called the imbite, is capable of being ornamentally carved, when made into the shape of doors and pillars. As it also emits an agreeable odor, this quality, with its beautiful color, makes it a choice and favorite wood. Stanley mentions some twenty other varieties, most of which are made subservient to some useful purpose. These trees abound everywhere in equatorial Africa.
From the Guinea palm-tree the natives extract an intoxicating liquor, called “tembo.” A toddy which they call “zogga” is made from plantains.
There are various fruit-bearing trees in Central Africa, and the kinds of grapes, some of which are poisonous, are numerous. The common articles of food among the different tribes are sorghum, sesame, millet, and maize or Indian corn, pulse, beans, and rice, with many kinds of fish. There is one kind called “dogara,” which, though one of the smallest, contributes more than any other to the food of the people. It is minute, a kind of white-bait, and is caught in nets in great quantities, in Lake Tanganyika. They are then dried in the sun or salted, and often become an article of commerce as far as Unyanyembe.
Belief in the power of the “medicine man” is almost unlimited. The natives thought Stanley was able to make rain; that, with some preparation, he could kill all the people of Mirambo, a hostile chief who was making frequent raids upon them. They would carry their sick to him, believing he could cure them. It was only by his most earnest and positive assertion that he possessed no such power that he could satisfy them. One old man took to him a fine, fat sheep and a dish of vegetables, to enlist his services in curing a chronic dysentery, but he refused them, disclaiming any ability to help him.
This credulity of the people is the basis of the wide and sometimes terrible sway of the “medicine man” in Africa. Says Stanley, “No hunting expedition of Wanyamwezi starts without having consulted the mganga (medicine man), who, for a consideration, supplies them with charms, potions, herbs, and blessings. A bit of the ear of a zebra, the blood of a lion, the claw of a leopard, the lip of a buffalo, the tail of a giraffe, the eyebrow of a harte-beest, are treasures not to be parted with save for a monetary value. To their necks are suspended a bit of quartz, polished and of triangular shape, and pieces of carved wood, and an all-powerful talisman in the shape of a plant, sewed up jealously in a small leathern pouch.”
The same diseases to which civilized peoples are subject prevail in Central and East Africa. The most terrible scourge of all is the small-pox; its ravages are seen everywhere on the line of caravans and in the depopulation of villages. A rigorous quarantine is attempted, yet multitudes die by this foul and fearful disease. If any of a caravan become sick with it, they are left in the wilderness, as the caravan can not stop. The poor sufferers will not be received into any village. They therefore betake themselves to the jungle, with store of food and water, and there await the issue of recovery or death,—most frequently the latter. The skulls bleaching in the air on the line of every caravan indicate the ravages made by this loathsome disease.
Mr. Stanley thinks the Wanyamwezi are the most remarkable tribe in Central Africa. His fine characterization of them, given below, is taken from his interesting book, “How I found Livingstone.”
“A beau ideal of a Mnyamwezi to me will be a tall, long-limbed black man, with a good-natured face, always with a broad smile upon it; displaying in the upper row of teeth a small hole, which was cut out when he was a boy to denote his tribe; with hundreds of long, wiry ringlets hanging down his neck; almost naked, giving me a full view of a form which would make an excellent model for a black Apollo. I have seen many of this tribe in the garb of the freedmen of Zanzibar, sporting a turban of new American sheeting, or wearing the long diskdasheh (shirt) of the Arab, presenting as fine and intelligent an appearance as any Msawahili from the Zanzibar coast,—but I cannot rid myself of my ideal.
“A Mnyamwezi is the Yankee of Africa; he is a born trader and traveller. From days immemorial his tribe has monopolized the carrying of goods from one country to another. The Mnyamwezi is the camel, the horse, the mule, the ass, the beast of burden to which all travellers anxiously look to convey their luggage from the coast to the far African interior. The Arab can go nowhere without his help; the white traveller, bound on an exploring trip, cannot travel without him.... He is like the sailor, having his habitat in certain sailors’ boarding houses in great seaport towns, and, like the sailor, is a restless rover. The sea-coast to a Mnyamwezi is like New York to an English sailor. At New York the English sailor can re-ship with higher pay; so can the Mnyamwezi re-hire himself on the coast, for a return trip, at a higher rate than from Unyamwezi to the sea. He is in such demand, and during war time so scarce, that his pay is great, ranging from thirty-six to one hundred yards of cloth. A hundred of these bites de somme will readily cost the traveller 10,000 yards of cloth even as far as Unyanyembe, a three months’ journey, and 10,000 yards of cloth represent $5,000 in gold.
“The Wanyamwezi, weighted with the bales of Zanzibar, containing cottons and domestics from Massachusetts, calicoes from England, prints from Muscat, cloths from Cutch, beads from Germany, brass wire from Great Britain, may be found on the Lualaba, in the forests of Ukawendi, on the hills of Uganda, the mountains of Karagwah, on the plains of Urori, on the plateau of Ugogo, in the park lands of Ukonongo, in the swamps of Useguhha, in the defiles of Usagara, in the wilderness of Ubena, among the pastoral tribes of the Watuta, trudging along the banks of the Rufigi, in slave-trading Kilwa,—everywhere throughout Central Africa.
“While journeying with caravans they are docile and tractable; in their villages they are a merry-making set; on trading expeditions of their own they are keen and clever; as Ruga-Ruga they are unscrupulous and bold; in Ukonongo they are hunters; in Usukuma they are drovers and iron smelters; in Lunda they are energetic searchers for ivory; on the coast they are a wondering and awe-struck people.”
The Wanyamwezi are very industrious and quite ingenious. They smelt their iron, and make their weapons of war and implements of agriculture. They are ready to exchange their hatchets, bill-hooks, spears, bows, etc., for cloth. It is a common sight,—the peddler endeavoring to make a barter trade with his various wares. He will sell a first-class bow for four yards of sheeting, and two yards will buy a dozen arrows.
They are quite clever smiths and manufacture iron and copper wire. The process is as follows: a heavy piece of iron with a funnel-shaped hole is firmly fixed in the fork of a tree. A fine rod is then thrust into it and a line attached to the first few inches which can be coaxed through. A number of men haul on this line singing and dancing in tune and thus it is drawn through the first drill; it is subsequently passed through others to render it finer. Excellent wire is the result.
Love of music is one of the characteristics of this tribe, as of almost all Africans. Though the music is rude, yet those who hear it are not usually the most accomplished and fastidious critics. It therefore has its uses and merits. Sometimes it is made the vehicle of satire or humor. The latest scandal or sensation is incorporated into the song, for many of the people have the faculty of the improvisatore, and so contribute to the amusement or interest of their villages by these allusions to or criticisms of matters of public concern or personal gossip.
The women are generally very homely and coarse, unlike those of the Batusi who are very often beautiful. Their chief ornament is of the half-moon shape. They are not generous having learned the Arab adage “nothing for nothing” yet they are respectful in deportment.
This tribe have some very singular customs in regard to birth and burial. “When a child is born,” says Mr. Stanley, “the father cuts the caul, and travels with it to the frontier of his district, and there deposits it under the ground; if the frontier be a stream, he buries it on the banks; then taking the root of a tree, he conveys it, on his return, and buries it at the threshold of his door. He then invites his friends to a feast that he has prepared. He kills an ox or half a dozen goats, and distributes pombe. The mother, when approaching childbirth, hastens to the woods, and is there attended by a female friend.
“After death the Wanyamwezi remove the body into the jungle, or, if a person of importance, bury it in a sitting posture, or on its side, as in Wagogo. On the march the body is merely thrown aside and left for a prey to the hyena, the cleanest scavenger of the forest. When death has taken away a member of a family, it is said by the relatives of the deceased, that the ‘Miringu has taken him or her,’ or, ‘He or she is lost,’ or, ‘It is God’s work.’”
Very few old men are seen in Central Africa. There are the evidences in every village of premature age, such as gray hair and bent forms. The Wanyamwezi seem to be diminishing in numbers. What with emigration to other tribes, the hardships of the life of travel and burden-bearing to which many of them are exposed, and the ravages of the slave wars in which their chiefs are engaged, this people is evidently dying out. It is a saddening spectacle, this decay and disappearance of one of the most intelligent and capable tribes of Africa.
It is the testimony of Stanley that “eight out of ten of the bleached skulls along the line of commerce in the interior are those of the unfortunate Wanyamwezi, who succumbed to the perils and privations attending the footsteps of every caravan. What a power in the land might not a philanthropic government make of these people! What a glorious testimony to the charity of civilization might they not become! What docile converts to the gospel truths through a practical missionary would they not make!”