CHAPTER CLXVIII.
AFRICA—Continued.
THE PYGMIES.
A TRADITION OF THE CENTURIES — AN ETHNOLOGICAL QUESTION SETTLED — DR. SCHWEINFURTH’S DISCOVERY OF THE AKKA RACE — HIS INTERVIEW WITH ADIMOKOO — WAR-DANCE OF THE LITTLE PYGMY — CORPS OF AKKA WARRIORS — DR. SCHWEINFURTH’S PYGMY PROTEGÉ, NSEWUE — PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE AKKA — THEIR RESEMBLANCE TO THE BUSHMEN — DR. SCHWEINFURTH’S CONCLUSIONS IN REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF THE PYGMIES.
One of the chief results of Dr. Schweinfurth’s travels in Africa is the solution of a problem that for thousands of years has remained without any satisfactory answer. The ethnological question respecting the existence of a dwarf race in Central Africa, which has occasioned so much discussion, this traveller has forever settled. The classical writers of the centuries gone make mention of the Pygmies. The poet of the Iliad alludes to them as though the fact of their existence had been long and well-known. Historians like Herodotus and Aristotle, as well as the poets, give similar testimony. For three or four centuries before the Christian era, the Greeks seem to have fully believed in the existence of a dwarf race in equatorial Africa.
So, too, modern travellers on the Nile have much to say about these small people. Du Chaillu asserts that he met them in Ashango Land. Knapf says he saw one on the eastern coast. But despite all the ancient traditions from the earlier ages and the testimony of recent explorers, the existence of such a race has been stoutly denied. It has been regarded as the “immortal myth of poetry,” over which scholars and travellers have fought a long and, till recently, only a drawn battle. To Dr. Schweinfurth is to be ascribed the credit of having turned the tide of this conflict and caused victory to perch on the banners of those who have believed in the veritable existence of the Pygmy race.
This traveller found that his Nubian attendants never wearied of talking about the Automoli or dwarfs, whose country they were daily approaching. It seemed strange that they should be so thoroughly possessed with the conviction of the existence of such a people. They would state, with the utmost confidence, that south of the Niam-niam land lived a race not more than three feet in height and wearing beards so long as to reach to their knees. They described them as armed with lances and accustomed to creep beneath the bellies of elephants and kill them, so adroitly managing their own movements as to avoid any injury from the trunk of the infuriated beasts. This skill, it was represented, made them of great service to the ivory traders. The name assigned them was “Shebber-diginto,” meaning the growth of the elongated beard.
That those of Dr. Schweinfurth’s attendants and servants who had been attached to the Niam-niam expedition should be such firm believers in the fact of a dwarf race that they never described the wonders and splendors of the court of the cannibal kings without referring to and describing the Pygmies who filled the office of court buffoons, excited the surprise of the traveller, and awakened the keenest desire to solve, if possible, the vexed question of the ages. He could not resist the impression that there must be some substantial basis for these unequivocal and positive assertions of the natives. The way in which his doubts were all dispelled and this ethnological problem of the centuries solved is graphically described by him:—
“Several days elapsed after my taking up my residence by the palace of the Monbuttoo king without my having a chance to get a view of the dwarfs, whose fame had so keenly excited my curiosity. My people, however, assured me that they had seen them. I remonstrated with them for not having secured me an opportunity of seeing for myself, and for not bringing them into contact with me. I obtained no other reply but that the dwarfs were too timid to come. After a few mornings my attention was arrested by a shouting in the camp, and I learned that Mohammed had surprised one of the Pygmies in attendance upon the king, and was conveying him, in spite of a strenuous resistance, straight to my tent. I looked up, and there, sure enough, was the strange little creature, perched upon Mohammed’s right shoulder, nervously hugging his head, and casting glances of alarm in every direction. Mohammed soon deposited him in the seat of honor. A royal interpreter was stationed at his side. Thus, at last, was I able veritably to feast my eyes upon a living embodiment of the myths of some thousand years.
Eagerly, and without loss of time, I proceeded to take his portrait. I pressed him with innumerable questions, but to ask for information was an easier matter altogether than to get an answer. There was the greatest difficulty in inducing him to remain at rest, and I could only succeed by exhibiting a store of presents. Under the impression that the opportunity before me might not occur again, I bribed the interpreter to exercise his influence to pacify the little man, to set him at his ease, and to induce him to lay aside any fear of me that he might entertain. Altogether we succeeded so well that in a couple of hours the Pygmy had been measured, sketched, feasted, presented with a variety of gifts, and subjected to a minute catechism of searching questions.
His name was Adimokoo. He was the head of a small colony, which was located about half a league from the royal residence. With his own lips I heard him assert that the name of his nation was Akka, and I further learned that they inhabit large districts to the south of the Monbuttoo, between lat. 2° and 1° N. A portion of them are subject to the Monbuttoo king, who, desirous of enhancing the splendor of his court by the addition of any available natural curiosities, had compelled several families of the Pygmies to settle in the vicinity.
My Niam-niam servants, sentence by sentence, interpreted to me everything that was said by Adimokoo to the Monbuttoo interpreter, who was acquainted with no dialects but those of his own land.
In reply to my question put to Adimokoo as to where his country was situated, pointing toward the south-south-east, he said, “Two days’ journey and you come to the village of Mummery; on the third day you will reach the River Nalobe; the fourth day you arrive at the first of the villages of the Akka.”
The patience of Adimokoo having been exhausted by the persistent and prolonged questioning of Dr. Schweinfurth, he made a sudden, violent effort to escape from his curious inquisitor, but being surrounded by so many in the tent his attempt was fruitless. After some persuasion he was prevailed upon to go through with some of the war-dances characteristic of his race. His dress was like that of the Monbuttoo, and he was armed with a small lance and a bow and arrow. The height of this interesting representative of the Pygmies was four feet and ten inches, which is about the average measurement of these small people. Dr. Schweinfurth was familiar with the war-dances of the Niam-niam, and they had excited his astonishment by the wonderful evolutions displayed; but the exhibition that this dwarf gave surpassed all he had ever seen. Notwithstanding his bandy legs and large, bloated belly and his age, his rapid and dexterous movements were simply marvellous. The spectators were convulsed with laughter at the grotesque expressions that accompanied the leaps and various attitudes assumed by this little fellow.
Dr. Schweinfurth won the confidence of Adimokoo, and loading him with presents sent him away, expressing the desire to see others of his people, and promising that they should lose nothing by making him a visit. Having overcome their fear of the stranger, some of them visited him almost every day. It is to be regretted that Schweinfurth’s sudden departure from the Monbuttoo territory interrupted his study of this singular and interesting race, and prevented him from learning all their peculiarities. A somewhat amusing incident occurred which corroborates Dr. Schweinfurth’s discovery. Mummery, brother and viceroy of King Munza, was returning from a campaign against the Momvoo. Among his soldiers was a corps of Akka warriors, the Akka being tributary to him. Dr. Schweinfurth had occasion to pass through the village where these troops were halted. Just as he reached the open space in front of the royal halls he found himself surrounded by what he supposed to be a throng of rude, insulting boys. They pointed their arrows at him and made a show of fight, and treated him with so much disrespect as to excite his indignation. But his Niam-niam attendants immediately corrected his misapprehension. “They are Tikkitikki” (the Niam-niam word for Akka), said they. “You imagine that they are boys, but in truth they are men; nay, men that can fight.” Mummery discovering the situation, at once relieved Schweinfurth’s fears. The strange spectacle of such a company of trained warriors, yet all so small, deeply impressed the mind of the traveller, and he resolved to inspect their camp the next morning. But his purpose was defeated, for Mummery and all his followers took an early departure; and thus, as Schweinfurth says, “‘like the baseless fabric of a vision,’ this people, so near and yet so unattainable, had vanished into the thin obscurity of the innermost continent.”
None of the measurements taken of these Pygmies much exceeded four feet and ten inches, except in instances in which they were descended from the Monbuttoo by intermarriages. Dr. Schweinfurth secured one of these little men and made him his protégé, departing from an hitherto invariable rule, allowing Nsewue (this being the name of the little Akka), to be the companion of his meals, a privilege he never allowed to any other native African.
The race of dwarfs does not differ materially from surrounding tribes, except in size. They have a redder or brighter complexion, and reports of travellers vary in regard to the growth of the hair. The Niam-niam, however, uniformly represent the Pygmies as having long beards, and yet Schweinfurth never found this characteristic in any of the Akka who came under his notice.
The head of the Akka is disproportionately large and is balanced on a weak, thin neck. The upper portion of the body is long; the chest being flat and much contracted, widens out in the lower part, to support the huge belly. From behind, their bodies seem to form a curve that resembles the letter S. Turning their feet inward, unlike other Africans, who walk straight, they have a waddling gait. Nsewue could never carry a dish without spilling a part of its contents, as every step was a kind of lurch, and he was a good representative of the physical peculiarities of his race.
The structure of their hands is singularly delicate and handsome. The most marked peculiarity of these people is the shape of the skull and head. The prognathous character of the face is developed to a large degree, the facial angles in the two portraits that Schweinfurth gives, being 60° and 66° respectively. “The snout-like projection of the jaw, with an unprotruding chin and a wide, almost spherical skull and gaping lips, suggest a resemblance to the ape. In these peculiarities the Akka and Bushmen of South Africa exhibit undeniable resemblances. We conclude this account of the Pygmies with the summary into which their discoverer has briefly embodied his opinion in regard to the origin of the Akka and their relationship to other African peoples.
“Scarcely a doubt,” says he, “can exist but that all these people, like the Bushmen of South Africa, may be considered as the scattered remains of an aboriginal population now becoming extinct; and their isolated and sporadic existence bears out the hypothesis. For centuries after centuries, Africa has been experiencing the effects of many immigrations; for thousands of years one nation has been driving out another, and as the result of repeated subjugations and interminglings of race with race, such manifold changes have been introduced into the conditions of existence that the succession of new phases, like the development in the world of plants, appears almost, as it were, to open a glimpse into the infinite.
“Incidentally, I have just referred to the Bushmen, those notorious natives of the South African forests who owe their name to the likeness which the Dutch colonists conceived they bore to the ape, as the prototype of the human race. I may further remark that their resemblance to the equatorial Pygmies is in many points very striking. Gustav Fritsch, the author of a standard work upon the natives of South Africa, first drew my attention to the marked similarity between my portraits of the Akka and the general type of the Bushmen, and so satisfied did I become in my own mind, that I feel quite justified (in my observations upon the Akka) in endeavoring to prove that all the tribes of Africa, whose proper characteristic is an abnormally low stature, belong to one and the self-same race.”