Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/332

318 N E G E for the avowed purpose of procuring a f resli supply _ of human food, and from other incidents of modern exploration cannibalism would seem to prevail very generally in the little known equatorial regions of the interior. 1 Political institutions are in a rudimentary state, and where a higher system has been imposed or adopted from the whites, as in Liberia, it does not appear to have materially con tributed to the improvement of the race. The great bulk of the natives are still in the tribal condition, while in the kingdoms that have been founded in Guinea and elsewhere the authority of the sovereign is everywhere absolute, and its exercise often marked by the most wanton and atrocious cruelty. The largest and most powerful native state is that of Ulunda, whose present " muata yanvo," or ruler, is the fourteenth in descent from the founder of the dynasty. When visited in 1879 by Dr Buchner, this potentate, to impress his guest with his power, caused one of his subjects to assume the part of a chief just arrived from a remote province of the empire. The sham cortege of soldiers and women advanced to the throne all thickly plastered with mud from head to foot, and the "chief " approaching on all fours deliberately rolled himself in the sand at his majesty s feet. The administration of justice is regulated, not by any sense of right or wrong, but by the caprice of the king, who is himself often in the power of the navum- bula, or witch-detector. Beyond what has been acquired from without, of letters there is absolutely no knowledge, unless an exception be made in favour of the invention or adaptation of a rude syllabic system some years ago by a native of the Vei tribe. Hence literature is purely oral, and limited to a few tribal legends, some folklore, proverbs, and songs of the simplest kind. The arts also are exclu sively of an industrial character, and restricted mainly to coarse weaving, pottery, the smelting and working of metals (chiefly copper and iron), agriculture, and grazing. Architecture has no existence, nor are there any monu mental ruins or stone structures of any sort in the whole of Negroland except those erected in Soudan under Hamitic and Semitic influences. No full-blood Negro has ever been distinguished as a man of science, a poet, or an artist, and the fundamental equality claimed for him by ignorant philanthropists is belied by the whole history of the race throughout the historic period. On the other hand the native languages, all of which belong to the agglutinating order, are often very highly developed, and the Bantu group especially is characterized by an intricacy of structure and an alliterative phonetic system of an exceedingly delicate type. 2 From the wide range of this Bantu speech, which occupies all the southern half of the continent except the Hottentot and Bushman territory in the extreme south-west, Lepsius concludes that it is the original language of the Negro race, and that the numerous linguistic groups of Soudan are merely scattered fragments of that speech or of the Hamitic intruding from the north. Thus has been developed his theory of the two ethnical and linguistic stocks originally in exclusive possession of North and South Africa, and gradually amalgamating in the now diversified intermediate zone of Soudan. But this theory cannot be accepted as at all adequate to explain the present conditions in those regions. It is not by any means certain that the Bantu itself was originally a Negro language at all. There seems, moreover, to be good reason for believing that its present diffusion over South Africa dates from comparatively recent times, and that it is due to the intrusion of foreign con querors penetrating from the north-east up the Nile valley and through the region of the great lakes into the Congo and Zambesi basins. Nor is it possible to regard the Mandingo, Vei, Haussa, Fulah, and many other Soudanese tongues as fragments or off- 1 Amongst the Niam-Niam "human fat is universally sold," while "the Fan barter their dead among themselves," and even disinter them to be devoured (Heart of Africa, ii. pp. 18, 19). Still more pronounced is the cannibalism of the Monbuttu, who dry the bodies of the slain in battle for future consumption, and "drive their prisoners before them, as butchers drive sheep to the shambles, and these are only reserved to fall victims on a later day to their horrible and sickly greediness" (76., ii. p. 93). 2 For this remarkable linguistic phenomenon see vol. xiii. p. 820. shoots of Bantu, from which they differ as fundamentally as they do from each other. To Dr Gustav Nachtigal 3 is due the recent discovery or determination of another independent and widespread linguistic family, which had its original home amongst the Hamitic Teda or northern Tubus of the eastern Sahara, and which, gradually spread- j southwards, has been imposed through the Dasa or southern Tubus on the Kanembu and Kanuri of Lake Chad, the Baele of Wanyanga, the Zoghawa of Dar-Fur, and other Negro or Negroid peoples of central and eastern Soudan. The whole of Soudan, or, more correctly, the whole of Central Africa between the equator and the Sahara, is in fact a region of linguistic confusion, such as is elsewhere found only in Caucasia, Melanesia, the Anamese high lands, and some parts of America. Several radically distinct stock languages have already been determined, especially in Guinea, Senegambia, and the Chad basin. But many more are known to be current in Adamawa, Bornu, Baghirmi, Wadai, Dar-Fur, the White Nile Valley, while others will doubtless be revealed by the future exploration of the lands watered by the Welle, Aruwimi, Mangala, and other streams flowing either to the Nile, the Congo, or the Shari. Most of them may be properly designated as strictly Negro tongues. But in the north, that is, along the skirt of the Sahara, and in the east, that is in the Blue Nile and Atbara basins, in Kaffa, Galla, and Somaliland, the current speech is mainly Caucasic, and here also the populations are mainly Negroid and sub-Negroid rather than of pure Negro descent. The Caucasic speech again is represented by Hamitic, Tubu, and Semitic groups, all intruders in this Negro domain from prehistoric times except the Semitic Arabic, which dates only from the introduction of Islam. In attempting a complete, however brief, survey of this vast ethnical and linguistic area, account must also be taken of other disturbing elements within the area itself, which are of unknown origin, and whose actual relations to the surrounding Negro masses are still involved in much obscurity. Conspicuous amongst them are the Nubas of the Middle Nile, apparently inter mediate between the true Negro and the Egyptian Karaite ; the Fulahs of central and west Soudan, who, although now much mixed, seem to have been originally distinct both from the Negro and the Hamite; the Fans, who have in recent times reached the west coast just above the equator, and who are also a clearly non-Negro race ; lastly, the dwarfish Akkas, Obongos, and others, who appear to be scattered over the whole of the continent south of 10 N. lat. Many, perhaps the majority, of the Bantu- speaking southern races Waswahili of the Zanzibar coast, Waganda and others of the great lacustrine region, Zulu-Kaffres of the south-east, Marutse of the Zambesi, Ovambos of the south-west coast are also variously affected by foreign elements, some no doubt either Arab or Hamitic Galla penetrating from the north-east, but others drawn from now long-forgotten sources. Thus the popular idea that Negroland presents a homogeneous ethnical field must be dismissed as absolutely erroneous. It will be safer to say that, while the Negro strain is here everywhere conspicuously present, it has been re peatedly crossed and re-crossed by diverse interminglings, which began with the first appearance of the Hamite on African soil, and which have been continued from that vastly remote epoch down to the present time. 4 From the subjoined rough scheme of classification of the chief Negro and Negroid races and languages are excluded the above- mentioned Caucasic-speaking Hamites and Semites, who hem in the Negro zone proper by a mighty ethnical barrier stretching almost continuously from the Senegal river through the Sahara, Abyssinia, and Gallaland to the east coast at the equator. From it are also omitted the Hovas, Sakalavas, Betsimisarakas, and other peoples of Madagascar, all of Malagasy (Malayo-Polynesian) speech, as well as the Bosjesman and Hottentot groups of the extreme south-west, as lying beyond the scope of the present survey. 3 Sahara und Sudan, Berlin, 1881, vol. ii. p. 283 sq. See also "North African Ethnology," by A. H. Keane, in Nature for March 1, 1883. 4 In support of this conclusion, which to some may seem over drawn, appeal might be made to the language of many modern African explorers, one of the most careful of whom thus expresses himself : - "If we could at once grasp and set before our minds facts that are known (whether as regards language, race, culture, history, or de velopment) of that vast region comprehended in the name of Africa, we should have before us the witness of an intermingling of races which is beyond all precedent. And yet, bewildering as the prospect would appear, it remains a fact not to be gainsaid, that it is impos sible for any one to survey the country as a whole without perceiving that high above the multitude of individual differences there is throned a principle of unity, which embraces well nigh all the population " (Schweinfurth, op. cit., i. p. 313). The principle of unity here spoken of is the autochthonoiis black element, mostly predominant, and everywhere forming the substratum, nearly as far north as the tropic of Cancer.